The Wall of Death

"You sorry bastard. You couldn't tell a joke right if your life depended on it."
"And you wouldn't know a good joke if it bit you on the ass."

It would take them two hours to walk the mile from the hardware store to the coffee shop, arguing all the way about who was funnier or who was better looking, and they did it every day for nearly twelve years. When Murray died in June of last year I thought Bern would follow on his heels, cursing his friend all the way. I was more surprised than anyone when Bern announced he was moving to Florida. The two of them had struck me as a curiosity right from the beginning. Their friendship had evolved as an accident on the day they tried to buy the same hammer and fought over who had it in their hand first. They fought every day after that and when I said goodbye to Bern I asked him about Murray and he told he was happy the old bastard was gone. Now he could get on with things and leave this shit hole behind. The word curmudgeon describes both of them admirably.

Poor old Bern must have been pissed that he died before he could leave town and then found himself still here, walking up and down the same street over and over again with Murray. At first they scared the shit out of everyone in town, but after a few months we all got used to the decrepit swaggering of the two old ghosts who haunted the main street. I have to tell you it made me seriously question the existence of a benevolent God and I wondered where I might end up when I passed on. I asked my wife about that and she suggested that I'd likely end up somewhere in Thailand trying endlessly to buy pot from frightened locals. I don't get her sense of humour, sometimes.

It was a couple of days ago, now, that I got a glimpse into the great unknown. I was sitting on the step in front of my store, the hardware store, when they walked up and stopped in front of me. I was a little nervous because since they'd come back neither one of them seemed to take any notice of the real world going on around their run-on crackpot spook show. Now here they were, standing in front of me, looking at me and generally giving me the urge to shit myself. Then Murray coughed into his fist and said, "Hey there, Mike. We need you to give us a hand with something here." I just stared at him until he said, "Are you deaf, boy?" and I said, "Uh, sure Mur, what do you want to know?"

And this is it. It seemed that both Bern and Murray were well aware of their incorporeality and they'd decided that they'd had enough. They asked me if I knew anything about getting rid of ghosts, like maybe an exorcism or something. I said, "You want me to exorcise you off to heaven?", thinking it more likely they were headed in the other direction, and Bern said, "Yeah, like the priests used to do to get rid of demons and such." I asked them again, just to be sure that they knew what they were talking about and finally I agreed to ask my wife about it, since she was about the only person I thought I could trust not to laugh in my face. She did laugh in my face until I took her down the street to talk to the two old coots and they confirmed the story again and told us to hop to it. Apparently they weren't getting along any better dead than they had when they were alive. The first person we recruited was, of course, Father Bleary, mainly because he was the priest at the church on second avenue and because he, more than anyone, was bothered by the swearing up and down the streets at all hours of the day. When he'd done some brushing up on how to send a couple of lost souls home he had us all gather in the back room of the hardware store. That was where they'd started their unholy friendship and Father Bleary figured that this was where it should end.

It was kind of touching, in a way, when they took one last look at each other and said, "See you around, shithead.", and the other said, "Not if I see you first." Father Bleary was wandering around shaking his incense holder and stinking up the store and my wife was splashing holy water on everything and I sat there, a little wild eyed, as we prepared to send them packing. As Father Bleary's chanting grew louder and louder the two old farts seemed to waver in and out of focus and then as they faded out for good with my wife crying and yelling her goodbyes, I realized that the place wasn't going to be the same without them. I actually got a little choked up at that point but then it was over and the three of us stood there for a while looking at each other and wondering if things could get any stranger in this town. I hope not and for the most part things are back to normal around here but I will admit that the whole process has got me thinking. Not about the afterlife or what colour God's hair is or anything like that. I wonder exactly what those two old bastards did that got them saddled with each other and what kind of bond can walk right through the wall of death and remain unscathed on the other side.