Mourner
He was enraged to see the state that the cemetery had been reduced to. Here in this mausoleum, on the wall where his mother’s name was chiseled into a marble wall amongst the other deceased. There were cobwebs and mold, and black fluid leaked from the cracks in the walls. Jasper nearly wretched onto traces of his own mother’s leaking remains, a mixture of embalming fluid and decomposed biological matter, when he saw his shoe had stepped onto her puddle. He stormed out of there, seething past the cracked and distorted gravestones that had become undone by the elements, covered in overgrown vegetation and dead flowers.
Though the cemetery was almost entirely deserted, he did come across, standing quietly on a hill overlooking the distant town ahead, a frail old groundskeeper raking over the same patch of leaves in a repetitive, unproductive motion.
“Sir, how do you explain this mess? Are you the one responsible for everything this place has degraded to? The dead deserve more dignity than this. My own mother deserves better.”
The old groundskeeper did not seem moved by the mourner’s rage. He did not look up from his patch of dead leaves. He merely continued raking.
“Are you deaf? I’m talking to you.”
As he persisted in his repetitive task, the old man finally spoke with a soft, kindly voice. “I do the best that I can, considering the owners of this cemetery abandoned it long ago. I’d say for one old man, I’ve done as well as can be expected.”
“You best tell me who you work for so I can send them a strongly-worded complaint.”
“My employers are these fine folks buried beneath the ground and in the tombs stacked together. They don’t seem to mind the state of their living conditions. They rest fine all the same.”
“Disgusting, absolutely disgusting. I will be making all the necessary arrangements to have her taken from this place. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
The man drove off, so enraged, and screeching his car away. And even when the night fell, the groundskeeper did not stop raking that patch of leaves.