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{This is a response to a prompt from What Pegman Saw. The challenge is to come up with 150 words, based on the prompt photo. For the curious, Hurricane Betsy did hit New Orleans in 1965, and had significant flooding. The rest, as they say, is fiction. Thanks for the prompt, and, as always, thanks for reading!)
Max and Gladys Iverson, childless landlubbers, never left Orleans parish. Barely had they been locked in their crypt, when the weather turned.
Hurricane Betsy had arrived.
The vault’s eaves spilled ivy. All manner of green leaked through cracks in the puddled walkway.
High ground. But below sea level, nonetheless.
The vault’s handle-less concrete “door” permitted no ingress or egress. Sealed against the elements for eternity.
They had paid extra, knowing the coastline’s penchant for meandering, for undulating. Knowing, what boggy muck passed for soil.
Now, storm surge topped the tallest monument.
Some vaults, providentially, had been tied off by family members. But Max and Gladys had no one.
A great crack formed near the step that bore their name. The entire crypt lunged upwards, like a buoy among the seething whitecaps.
Inside, Max turned to Gladys, bony arm outstretched.
“It’s time we tested our sea-legs! Shall we dance?”
Nicely done.
Oh! How delightful. I love this take on the prompt. Macabre humor at its best.
Thanks Alicia. Glad you liked it!
Clever and imaginative, I loved their abandon and abiding love. I couldn’t help but picture the Lovers of Valdaro.
How interesting. I had never heard of them. According the article i read they were a Neolithic couple of 5’2″ tall young adults or teens, found in an embrace with arrows as the likely cause of death. Romantic indeed!
I loved the gallows humor of this, that these two corpses have nobody but each other now, but are still up for rolling with the punches — or with the waves, as the case may be!
Thank you joy.
OHH! This was fun to read! Nicely done! 🙂 Na’ama
Thanks Na’ama!
Danse macabre! That’s a very ingenious take on the prompt, and a great ghost story.
Trying to play on the two meanings of shanty, as a hut or a sea song. Where there’s music, there’s dance…These old bones need to shake a leg!