I’m not equivocating because, obviously. She was a gardener, though, right? She won that flower thing at the community center back in ’87 and then again in ’93? Now isn’t the time, but there are almost certainly legions more, dead from the pitiless blade of your grandmother’s trowel. I know, I know, I know I shouldn’t bring it up here. It’s just—standing at the edge of this hole, watching as she’s lowered into the pillaged earth, her final wish to be buried in this grotesque allusion to her preferred killing grounds of so many decade—I’m sorry, I find it macabre. Sick is what it is. And you can go right on giving me that look, because it’s not just me. Everyone is thinking it—just look at those long faces.

Consider that nice lady on the photo stand—big smile, outstretched arms, bingo wings on full display like she could give the best hugs of your life. Now look at the wreath surrounding her portrait. Does it look familiar? Those are flowers from her front garden, her death factory of fifty years. Sure, they’re pretty. Of course, they are. She had a green thumb. A black heart, too. How do you think her wreath looks to that little half-worm sticking out of her grave hole? Trick question: the excavator cut off its head, just like that senile monster would have wanted. I can just imagine her in that box right now—her pale, dead face flushed with whatever perverted excitement she used to feel when she enacted her tortures on those tiny, harmless creatures. If that preacher would shut his gob for two seconds, we could probably hear her in there getting her jollies just from being so close to that little guy’s suffering, the sick old crone.

I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s a major character of worm myth. They probably tell fairytales about her to their babies and dress up a chosen worm virgin every season in a tiny frumpy housecoat to symbolically slay her as part of their harvest ritual or whatever.

Now though, she’ll be incapacitated down there in the worms’ domain. Will they finally get their revenge? Crawling in and out and playing pinochle on her snout, and all that? Of course, not. That pretty little box she’s in will be sealed in a concrete tomb. Think of her in there, rotting and smelling so delicious to those little guys that they bang their stupid heads against the concrete because they don’t know physics, concussing themselves day after day as she slowly melts into that fancy silk lining. At least you can take comfort that she died how she lived—as a sadistic ghoul.

No, no, you’re right. Everyone loved her. She made those pastries and had those cute old lady folds. My own grandmother was the wrinkly, melted-in-the sun type, and she never made homemade jack shit. But she was an indoor gal, above reproach, and she’s probably up in heaven right now, smoking Pall Malls with Jesus and spitting over the edge of clouds onto people she deems to look too “ethnic.” Where do you think your old gal ended up after a lifetime of murdering The Lord’s innocent creations? I’ll give you a hint: that crane is going to need longer ropes.

Yes, your grandma’s in Hell. I said it, so what? She’ll probably spend her eternity being picked out of a Styrofoam cup and baited onto a hook, over and over, like some musty, permed Sisyphus.

Back up. There’s no need to ask me to leave; I’m going. Seriously, though, fuck your grandma. (You have a bee in your hair, by the way. I’m not going to swat it for you because, unlike some people, I’m not a monster).

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M.C. Schmidt’s fiction has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Pinch, Southern Humanities Review, The Saturday Evening Post, EVENT, and elsewhere. He is the author of the novel The Decadents (Library Tales Publishing, 2022) and the forthcoming short story collection How to Steal a Train (Anxiety Press, 2025).