Ceremony D.M. Dunn What scares me the most about being middle class is the idea that every time I buy a suit, it’s likely the outfit I’ll be buried in. This is why I only have the one. It’s a tad too large, and I think it has shoulder pads. It doesn’t smell though. And I’m pleased to report I’ve never owned a mothball. Not one. What if I swallowed it? At one time I tried to buy them in bulk, the suits, but no matter how many ways of looking at them, one always rang up last. Every Christmas is indeed last Christmas, as they say. So I burned all seventeen I didn’t like and kept this one. I could have given them to charity, but if there’s anything worse than the thought of buying one’s own death clothes, it’s buying someone else’s. But try explaining all that to Mason, who’s sitting across the conference table in his hoodie asking inane questions and now we’re at “what scares you like really scares you?” and I want to tell him about the suit I’m wearing but I say, “Ravens,” because they can recognize human faces and hold rudimentary funerals for their dead so I hope that’s good enough. I want the job, after all. |
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About the Author: D. M. Dunn currently works as an editorial director in Bloomington, Indiana. His biggest literary claim to fame is a 2012 Dishonorable Mention in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. His latest piece, Ceremony, was created during a flash fiction writing class at Indiana University.