Backdrop - Part 3

Backdrop 

3

TEN YEARS LATER

David and Maura are both dead. Luckily, their children - and yes, they did have children - are now fully grown and are much more interesting characters.

Their eldest daughter Jood is eight feet tall, and can predict the future. Their middle daughter Faye has an unusual accent and leads a subterranean revolutionary army. Their son Alto is a clone of Steve Martin. Their youngest daughter Caroline has a very dry wit, and knows lots of well-connected people.

On a bright spring morning, they all meet at their parents' graves to discuss the annual family get together. which Alto has dubbed 'the sibling ribaldry', despite the incestual overtones. Jood had predicted that they would all go to Universal Studios in the summer, but Faye doesn't want to spend too much time away from her sewer command centre.

All of this information could have been imparted by dialogue, but wasn't.

Caroline's fashionable handbag spilled open, and dozens of cigarette holders tumbled out onto the grass. She sighed and rolled her eyes.

"Woo har yein goad illa demfa?" said Faye.

"I'm attempting to civilise the worms," said Caroline, lighting the big long wizard pipe that she'd been holding all along.

"Wurms fitin holdos. Cad smoak demshelps."

"Would that we all could," muttered Caroline.

The two gravestones had been chiselled in different fonts, which irritated all of the siblings.

"I think the 3D Transformers ride alone would justify the trip," said Jood. "And when you throw in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter..."

"We're not going to Universal Studios!" shouted Alto. "It's too expensive."

"Ang I'ch tordyoo: am bizzry."

"I know you're busy," said Jood. "We're all busy. But this is tradition."

"So is dying alone," said Caroline. "Anyway, I agree with Al and Faye. Can't we all just hire a barge and get smashed like last year?"

"Lash yur?! I lass faur regimens! Faur massakurs!"

"Come on, they were all part of the same massacre," said Jood.

"Graveyards make me bored!" shouted Alto. "And they're too expensive!"

Alto was cheap. But, to be fair, this one was more pricey than most.

He wandered towards the cafeteria, with Caroline and Jood bickering behind him. Only Faye remained. She looked at the gravestones of her parents, and beyond them to the dozens of other markers, tight together in rows, waiting expectantly like chairs in an empty theatre.

Faye had lost so many friends. But the uprising was gathering momentum, and she knew that their sacrifices had not been in vain. She also knew that her decisions had led to many deaths on the other side, many fallen foes filling graveyards similar to this one, many families grieving as she had done.

On the floor, the cigarette holders still lay scattered between the reeds, on top of the untended earth. Faye picked them up, and bunched them together like flowers, before sticking them in the space between where her mother and father lay.

A worm, disturbed by the new bouquet, writhed in the disturbed soil and then disappeared.

"Mee tooh," said Faye. "Amm goan ta go bak unnergroun."