Sprinkling Ernest
an excerpt

Throughout the course of a less than extraordinary life, I was never lucky enough to board an airplane. I can remember the occasional boating excursion, I am very familiar with all manner of automobiles, but it is only in death, and in a form not of my choosing, that I find myself currently trapped in the ugliest display of ceramic work I have ever seen, living or dead, and precariously braving the blue skies over some ocean or other body of land that none of the passengers seem to be able to name.

I'm sure your next thought will be wonder if anyone else is on this precariously propelled plane, and whether I am controlling the plane, but I assure you that I am more than adequately attended and am in no shape to pilot an aircraft, especially considering that this is my first trip, and I am a pile of dust.

It is of the most crucial importance that a person plan out the end of one's life while still living, because a pile dust in an ugly ceramic urn aboard a plane is just one of the many possible outcomes that could await your inert form once it has been placed in the hands of those people in your life who meet the qualifications of that dreaded title...

Next of kin.

Unfortunately, I have next of kin. I say unfortunately, because they are mostly very unfortunate people, or they are mistakenly of the opinion that *I* am an unfortunate person. Truthfully, everything about the word “kin” feels fairly unfortunate at this point, as I am resting in the most permanent of ways in a form I never planned on taking, and I have utterly no idea where my kin are taking me, but I am generally horrified (well, as much as a person can be horrified when they are in fact dead and disintegrated) that they are likely to spread all of the little pieces of me in such a way that there is no possible chance of my ever being put back into one piece.

It really is enough to make me want to haunt a person or two, but I haven’t figured that bit out yet.