Friday Flash: LOLA

Lola, she was a dancer… something about flowers in her hair or was it silver underwear? He couldn’t actually remember the lyrics to the song or who sang it, but the melody pounded in his brain like a ball-peen hammer. What the hell was he going to do? What the HELL was he going to do? Lola was a crappy name anyway. What the hell did it stand for? Lolita? Margola? Some sort of anagram, or whatever the hell it was when you smushed the first letters of a bunch of words together for the sake of brevity. All he knew was that Lola, whatever it stood for, meant trouble.

Standing over the open grave, he reconsidered his life choices. The wind howled through the post apocalyptic landscape, whistling through the cement cracks of mausoleums, blowing debris across the barren soil. The cemetery’s location outside town limits had spared it more damage than major cities, though grave robbing was now more dangerous than before. Ever since the bombs, others had resorted to what he had always done professionally. What need did the dead have for their possessions when they could help the living continue on in this gods-forsaken world?

He gripped the shovel’s handle tightly with his gloved hands, staring in horror at the metal canister, LOLA painted in stark, black letters across its top. Shivering in the warm evening air, he swallowed, then slowly and carefully began shovelling dirt back into the hole. This time, he decided, some things were better left buried.

 

 

*image courtesy of BigFoto.com
*written for the prompt “Lola” on the six minute story site. If you are curious, the original draft can still be found on the site here.