Special Salutations

Eye Opening Eulogy

"Who wants to start their eulogy first?" Skaipiss nudges me pointedly. I nudge her back, because why are you putting me in the spotlight. I don't want to go first. Skai sighs, resigned and picks up her black sheet, the words printed in glittery white on the charcoal page. "Very well." Skai takes a deep breath in. Her lips quiver as she begins to read her eulogy. 

"Lady Lovisa Bambra made me feel... emotions. What I am today, I owe to her. For that alone, I shall forever remember her." There's a long silence. The audience exchange weird glances.

"Um... Bruni?" Skai pleads. She's finished her eulogy. It's unsatisfactory like their mother had been.

"What do you want me to say?" It shouldn't be a question. Bruni should know because Lovisa was her mother and there should be a lot to say about mothers. 

"Just wing it." Skai presses the sheet into her hands.

Bruni starts where Skai had left off. It's another short trite message that doesn't say anything profound.

"Love Bambra was a fluffer... if you don't know what that is, she basically had to keep porn star's dicks hard on the set. She was confident in her sexuality and utterly proud of her work. She was a brilliant actress, a great fetish model and camgirl. A fair master— mother-"

"She was a monster," I cut her off, looking at the pink coffin which cost a fortune. Jo laughs hoarsely, cigarette smoke leaving her botched pillow lipped mouth in short sharp swirls. "Hear hear. A bitch and a monster mother. The world's better off without her."

"Don't!" Bruni snaps but doesn't really mean it. She agrees with us. Lovisa was a bad bad person.  

"Yes Brunipuss, bruised pussy? Do you know why our names sound the way they do? Because our mama couldn't be bothered to give us actual, normal names. What kind of idiot names their kids Stuffedass, Joanal, Brunipuss and Skaipiss?" Jo lists.

Someone from the audience snickers. "Very creative." 

i try to keep my temper in check. Just a little bit longer, just a little bit longer, come on.

"She wanted us to be celebrity children, only she was never a proper celebrity other than the times she did porn movies. What do you think of that? What do you think of all the times she had you be an underage porn star? Or when she made me s-"

"Shut up, shut up! This isn't the time to talk about this. We have guests!" Bruni hisses, shaking her red head, looking crazy. 

"Yes it is. In fact I'll do the damn eulogy for our mother right now!" I march up on the podium, starting to talk almost immediately. 

"Lovisa Bambra was born in 1962. She died in 2002. One time, she had sex with her eldest son... Staffan. Not Stuffedass as she liked to call him. And another time, she tried to kill him with a shot gun. He had to go to hospital so they could remove the bullet which went through his shoulder bone, collapsing his right lung, lodging itself into a muscle 2cm from his spinal cord. He survived as you can see... Truly a remarkable woman, our mother Love, who never loved us." I go back to my seat and the silence is so loud you can hear crickets.

Jo starts walking to the stage too.

"Jo! don't!" Bruni pleads. She's always been such a coward. 

"We need to move on, Bri. This is a good way to do it. Ok so... I'm Jo or Anna everyone. No Joanal, not anymore. I'm the second eldest child, my mother Lovisa had. She has four... had. She caused them us all our body image issues. See the lips? And my boobs. And everything else. She was liked everywhere to be disorderly in her own ordered system. The plastic cloth was always gummy, the outline of the plate and saucers and coffee stains on it permanently there. The refrigerator was full of sulfurous scraps, dark crusts, furry green bread. We never had proper food. There was mould everywhere. She smoked a lot too so we were always sick and coughing." Jo pointedly takes a long drag of her miniature ciggarette butt.

"I first started up when I was ten. I met all her clients before that but it's ok they liked me enough to not hurt me too much. I was the prettiest of all her ki-."

"Hey!" Skai protests, as she'd always thought she's the prettiest. 

"You know it used to be true Skai. Before all this. I'll have another procedure done soon, don't you worry. Then I'll be the most beautiful again."

"Don't kid yourself you could ever get Holly to like you again. She thinks you look a freak with all your knife augmentations."

"I do it for myself!" 

"As if! You did it because mama forced you after you didn't get the lead for Griblo. You failed her."

  Jo winces at the dig. We all know it's true. There's another ugly silence as Jo lifts her glowing ciggarette butt up absent-mindedly. Then she presses it in her cross wide open eye.