Mixed grill

 “Is our graveyard halal?”

Marvin stared at Jill while his brain processed what his ears had just heard, trying it a couple of different ways and still rejecting it as nonsense.

“What?” he said finally, frowning so hard it hurt.

“That’s what she asked,” said Jill.  “I did ask her what she meant by that, twice, and she said something about it being in all the papers.”

“Do people… do people actually try eating graveyards?” said Marvin, feeling rhetorical.  “I mean, don’t answer that, obviously, but how can something that you don’t eat be halal?”

“I’m not sure it’s just about eating,” said Jill slowly.  “Isn’t it halal from the way it’s done?  I mean, all the preparation, and where it’s done and who it’s done by?”

They looked at one another, united in their ignorance of other cultures.

“We could maybe ask around and see if we can find a halal gravedigger,” said Marvin at last.  “Maybe a halal priest, but… I mean, would a vegetarian do, in that case?  That might be easier to find, I know that Sebastian has a thing about not eating meat.  At least on Thursdays.  Is there a fixed number of days in a row you have to not eat meat to be a vegetarian?”

“I think vegetarian is a philosophy, right?”

Marvin shrugged.  “And kosher is religion, but what’s the actual difference?”

“One has a god… or many gods?”

“Meh, they claim to have gods but they never provide evidence.  I’d call that a philosophy.  But then maybe veganism is a religion since they seem to think that meat is the very devil.”

“Is the devil a god?”

“Can you have the Devil without having God?”

There was a crash from the outer office and Jill jumped.  “I’d better go back out,” she said.  “The woman who wanted the lay-away cremation made a bit of a mess and it sounds like this new one’s having a go too.  Can you get me an answer though?”

Marvin wanted to say “No,” both the Jill and the question, but he forced a smile on his face and nodded.  Jill darted through the door, closing it firmly behind her, and Marvin eyed the pile of invoices.  He still wasn’t half-way through.

“Halal,” he murmured, opening up a browser on his laptop.  He didn’t even consider phoning Kev, his boss, again to ask; Kev would be no more use than a chocolate teapot.  “In the papers?”

He pulled up the websites of all the local newspapers through a search engine,  though the first one he tried, the one that had ties to ChatGPT,  claimed the existence of two newspapers that he’d never heard of, and that Isvestiya was also a local production.  He found another search engine and a more reliable list of papers and scanned their front pages.  When that proved fruitless he scanned the obituaries pages, and there, in the Modern Times, found what he was looking for.

“This can’t be for real,” he murmured.  Talking to himself was almost a hobby.  The article claimed that the prevalence of non-human organ donation now meant that you could be buried in a graveyard where only 30% or less of the contents were actually human.

“This is as bad as the council charging us for littering,” he said, more loudly than he’d intended.  He looked around guiltily but Jill was still in the outer office, probably dealing with the idiot who’d read this article.  He looked once again at his pile of invoices and decided that the right thing to do was to go and help her.

The outer office looked like a whirlwind had been through.  Normally there was IKEA furniture set about the small room, a water cooler in one corner and some tastefully places swiss-cheese plants.  This was all largely Jill’s doing as Kev’s idea had been a chair for him to sit in, an ashtray that he never let anyone use, and a wood-chipper that had belonged to his great-grandmother.  Now the plants were rolling on their side across the floor, the water-cooler had a slow leak that was spraying an arc of water across the beige tiles on the walls and the IKEA furniture looked as though someone had tried to disassemble it.  A woman was sitting on one of the chairs and Jill, her arms folded defensively across her chest, was using the reception desk like a shield.

“Were you enquiring about our graveyard?” asked Marvin.  Jill looked suddenly relieved.

“Is it halal?  Only wifey here doesn’t seem to know!”

Marvin’s smile wavered.  He didn’t know whether ‘wifey’ was an insult or not.  Then he remembered why he’d come out.

“Very halal,” he said.  “We only allow human remains in the graveyard.  We don’t even allow plastic in there.”  As of today, he added mentally, but it seemed unnecessary to let the customer know that.

“See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”  The customer glared at Jill as though she’d been refusing to divulge state secrets.  “I want to have a barbecue there afterwards, too,” she continued.  “My Leonard loved that graveyard and he’d like to know we were all still there, eating and singing and making merry.”

“No,” said Marvin automatically.  He turned on his heel, but Jill darted through the door ahead of him and he paused, unwilling to leave the outer office empty.

The customer’s shriek would have been audible from the other side of the door anyway.