The Ballad of Jelberprigo

Anson Poe

 

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Hillcrest Singles Cemetery tour. I’m Tammy, and I’ll be your guide today. We’re approaching the cemetery now; you can just see it at the top of the hill there. Hillcrest Singles Cemetery is on a 10,000 acre lot overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The moisture from the salty sea air allows for nice even decomposition, which aids in the matchmaking process at Hillcrest, which I’ll tell you more about later. Here’s an interesting fact: Hillcrest’s founder, Jelberpringo Schmitz, decided to locate the cemetery in between San Francisco and Palo Alto to keep your loved ones coming back to pay their last respects again and again! Oh, looks like we’re here. I’d like to draw your attention to the twin Cupid statues near the gates of the cemetery. Talk about form and function! They’re made of the finest Peltier marble, but don’t let their beauty fool you. There are security cameras in them monitored by cemetery guards 24 hours a day to keep unrefined riff-raff out of our fine establishment. But we know you’re all cultured people and, more importantly, aging singles, so we’re going to let you have a look inside…

***

He remembered the acid trip like it was yesterday. His eyes, now scarred on the sides by deep crow feet wrinkles, screwed up behind his 300 dollar Yves Saint Laurent sunglasses. In his mind, he once again could see the Alpha-Bits he had been eating swim around in his bowl like rabid goldfish. Slowly, they had to a stop and had formed two words: Jelberpringo Schmitz.

He had gotten so deep into his scam that he actually started to buy it. Following the tenets of the branch of medicine he created to make himself rich, he immediately had his name legally changed to Jelberpringo Schmitz because what he saw on his trip was obviously a sign from his subconscious that his birth name, Alan Peters, was a reflection of the preconceived image his parents had of him before his birth and that, deep inside, this was causing a conflict with his true self.

Holistic psychology? How the hell did he think he could get away with that?

***

Before I show you the cemetery itself, I’m going to have you all fill out our questionnaire. It’s a little long, I know, but believe me, it’s absolutely necessary. It’s a scientific compatibility test, so we know who to bury you with. Everyone who is buried in this cemetery is required to fill one out. We want to make sure that you have the best possible hereafter, and what better way than to plant your remains next to someone you can really connect with?

What’s that, sir? Oh, there’s no need for worry if the compatibility test doesn’t work! See, here at Hillcrest, we have a threefold process to make sure your relationships in the afterlife are better than any you have experienced while living! The first is the test you are taking at this very moment. Be as honest as you can; no one will see it but our scientists at the prestigious Alan Peters Center for Holistic Psychology. The second measure is what we call the "grass test." Top Hollywood landscapers come by our cemetery once a month to check the grass at each grave site for healthiness. As our wise founder Jelberpringo said, bad blood makes bad fertilizer! The third measure is personalized counseling from the very best psychics and parapsychologists, approved at APCHP. They have one-on-one meetings with the spirits of the deceased every month to make sure everything is going all right among our pairings! If anything is wrong, we can exhume your remains and try pairing you with someone else.

***

Jelberpringo’s real trouble started when he began the excursions to Amsterdam. He purchased a home on the outskirts of Amsterdam, which he called the Alan Peters Center for Holistic Psychology Introspection Spa. It was basically an excuse to take the dumbest and prettiest misguided starlets to a place where drugs were legal and to have massive orgies with them.

The starlets always thought he was the wisest person they ever met (due to his constant uttering of homemade ubiquitous aphorisms such as "As the river flows, so goes love"), and that only fed his ego. It made him feel like he could suceed at more than just bullshitting. The problem was, he started to believe it. Maybe he had just hit the drugs so hard that his brain was addled into thinking that his notion of holistic psychology was more than an elaborate scheme to make lots of money.

But that wasn’t meant to last. Jelberpringo bit the curb of reality when he was walking to his meditation chamber on his 52nd birthday and suddenly his knee stopped bending. He fell flat on his face and, in that moment, realized that he hadn’t been to a legitimate doctor in over 30 years. Well, he couldn’t go now, he had gotten this far without so much as being charged with possession, and he was almost sure they would make him give a urine or blood sample or something. He dragged himself into his meditation chamber and locked himself there for a couple of weeks to suffer through dozens of different withdrawals.

Finally, when the last of the shuddering and screaming had ceased, he went to the doctor. His knee was crippled by arthritis and had to be replaced with a fake one. But he never went back to his beloved center because, in his lucidity, he remembered getting the idea to start it as a bitter and dreadfully bored college student, bent on scamming his arch-nemesis, the whole of humanity, into thinking he was a wise man. His "bad attitude" had earned him less than desirable grades in high school and as a result, he was only able to attend a public university where the low academic rigor left him with a lot of spare time uninhibited by personal relationships.

He left the center in charge of an assistant and moved to the East coast to try to start his life over.

***

This is the main part of the cemetery. You’ll see pairs of gravestones all over where we have currently successful pairings of singles in successful afterlife relationships. And as you can see, you don’t have to worry about looking the same as the next guy, because our gravestones are fully customizable! We can make them out of any material you want. As you can see, a car lover who was recently buried to your right had his stone made of pure chrome! Accessories are also available, including our newest, a waterproof LCD screen for anything from interactive touch-screen menus to slide shows!

A little up the road, there’s our unmatched section, where you’ll most likely be buried. As you can see, there are no shortage of deceased singles at our beautiful Cemetery.

***

The Introspection Spa was in a small octagonal house; 18’ x 18’ and cut off the corners. There was a huge aquarium in the middle of each wall with a dim, bluish flourescent light behind it, which made the shadow of the water and the tropical fish within flicker on the floor, which was basically a giant mattress. The roof had eight identical triangular panels which ended in a point, and in the middle of every other panel was a blacklight. A single column ran from the center point of the roof to the center point of the room, which was in the middle of a circular "herb" bar. Hi-Fi speakers on every wall softly propagated Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, and the like.

***

At the end of the questionnaire, you may notice two extra boxes. In the first one, you can indicate if you want to be cremated and have your remains scattered in our Swingers Scattering Garden, located in the southwest corner of our fine cemetery. It is filled with a mixture of exotic flowers that are maintained by the same Hollywood landscapers that administer the grass test.

We use only state-of-the-art kilns that capture every ash and self-clean after every use. Your ashes are then scattered in among the jungle of orchids, real Dutch tulips, the finest roses in every color, and many more exciting blooms. Your ashes will mix in well with the ashes of fellow swingers and fertilize the Garden and you can swing, swing, swing your way into eternity! Remember, what happens in the Garden, stays in the Garden.

***

Jelberpringo never really got the chance to start his life over. The minute he set foot on the East coast, he knew that the Atlantic was overrated. As he walked along the beach, reflecting on his life, he remembered his beloved uncle, who had made Jelberpringo the executioner of his will. His uncle was a thrifty bachelor, and had always liked Jelberpringo because it sometimes seemed that he was the only one in his family that had any semblance of matter within the brain cavity. His uncle had only one request, which was that, in his burial, no money was to be given to a funeral home. He told Jelberpringo of the elaborate scam run by funeral homes to squeeze as much money out of the mourning party as possible, and that soon, the monopoly would become so complete that ashes could only be spread in cemetery scattering gardens, which would of course come with a charge.

Jelberpringo knew he would no longer be able to live with himself if he was not scamming humanity, and thinking of his uncle gave him an idea: an exclusive singles cemetery. Why not? There were sngles bars, singles clubs, single parents, singles organizations, there was every imaginable opportunity for singles in life, so why not in death? Hell, it would even be a good way to get out of an unwanted but somehow long-lasting marriage, if you took that "till death do us part" bullshit seriously.

He immediately moved back to California to begin his work. He never finished.

***

And not only are our gravestones customizable, we can even add some pizzazz to your funeral, for a certain price. You can visit our website for detailed descriptions on our full range of options, but let me tell you about some of these exciting opportunities while you’re still here. All of the coffins we offer can be made in an extra-small size so you can bring your beloved pet with you on your journey to the afterlife. If you look to the right, you can see a fine patron who selected this option. Note the smaller and still fully customizable gravestone adjacent to the main stone. Your pet will be tastefully euthanized and mummified in a ceremony much like that used by the ancient Egyptians. There is also a full range of clothes and collars for any variety of pet can wear into the afterlife.

In the higher price range, we can also arrange for you to have a celebrity pallbearer. Because of busy schedules and time elapses between application to our cemetery and death, we cannot guarantee which celebrity you will get. However, we have a strict A-list and high B-list only policy, and you can make suggestions as to which celebrities you don’t want on the form.

***

Jelberpringo had it all written out when it happened. Everything he wanted the cemetery to be was basically on paper, all he had to do now was wait for the contractors to do their thing. He just had to sit back, watch, and occasionally give orders.

He looked in his rear view mirror at the twin Peltier marble Cupid statues sitting in the back seat of his car. What better guardians over the gates of a cemetery? Yes, this was a far bigger scam than even his little Center. He wasn’t going to laugh in the face of Death, he was going to emasculate Death; take away his sacredness from one 10000 acre corner of the Earth between San Francisco and Palo Alto.

Suddenly, Jelberpringo became aware of a growing headache. His vision began to blur, and his legs went limp, causing him to punch the accelerator. His car flew off the road and into a ditch, where it screeched to its final halt.

It was a stroke, according to the autopsy. One might think that this meant the end of his little cemetery, but Jelberpringo had one last trick up his sleeve: the psychics and parapsychologists he had hired to assist in the matchmaking. Jelberpringo’s body was laid to rest atop a hill in one corner of his cemetery, and the psychics would gather daily around his grave to receive "instructions." In accordance with Jelberpringo’s will, proceeds from the cemetery went into a private account, and checks were distributed as normal among his workers. The scam was complete; his irreverent cemetery was maintained from beyond the grave.

***

The second box, which you’ll notice is large and blank, is for an essay question for the bachelorettes in our group. Do you think you have what it takes to match up with the founder of our Cemetery and APCHP? Tell us why in 500 words or less, and our parapsychologists will read your responses to Jelberpringo himself.

That’s correct ma’am, he’s buried right in this cemetery. You see that hill way over there? The most beautiful spot in the whole cemetery? That’s where he’s buried.

Jelberpringo Schmitz is the most eligible dead bachelor in this cemetery, and probably even in the world! He enjoyed reading, having a good laugh, and traveling to his summer home in the Netherlands.

Remember, the word limit is strictly enforced. Just because Jelberpringo has an eternity to read your essay doesn’t mean he can’t become bored!