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What my Family Should Know in the Event of my Demise

Darrell Z. Grizzle is a former parole officer who now works as a counselor in private practice. He writes horror and crime fiction in shadow-haunted Marietta, Georgia, where he lives with two cats and way too many books. His stories have recently appeared in Mad Scientist Journal, Eldritch Tales, and Story & Grit.

The passwords for my email and other accounts are in a little Moleskine notebook I keep in the center drawer of the desk in my home office. I also keep track of them in a Word file on my computer, titled "Passwords." My checkbooks and other financial papers are in the left-hand drawer.
My funeral should be a simple one. Nothing too fancy. My favorite scripture passage is Ecclesiastes chapter three ("To everything there is a season"). I'd like to be cremated, with my ashes spread in the woods behind the house.
Feel free to split up whatever belongings I left behind. I know most of it is books and records and CD's that you may or may not want to keep. That's OK. But be aware that some of the Grateful Dead albums, especially the ones in the Road Trips and Dave's Picks subscription series, are now worth over $100 each.
I do have a safe deposit box at the bank, where I keep a few family heirlooms like Grandmother's pearl necklace and Great-Grandpappy's flintlock pistol that he used in that duel. You'll want to keep them in the family, I'm sure.
Whoever takes care of the cats after I'm gone, please keep them together. They're brothers, and they shouldn't be split up. If I died alone in the house and it was a while before my body was found and the cats ate my face, please don't hold it against them. They're just being cats.
As you know, I never married and I don't have any kids--unless you count the feral children who live in the woods behind the house. They come up on the back porch occasionally, where I leave food out for them. Whenever they see me, they hiss and run away, so don't be surprised if they treat you the same way.
I've occasionally mentioned on my Facebook page "the loathsome hellspawn that lives in the crawlspace under the house." I'm sure most people have assumed that was just part of my macabre sense of humor. But you should be aware, especially if you intend to sell the house, that it wasn't a joke. He (I don't know his name) is the reason for the two padlocks on the crawlspace door. The keys to the padlocks are in the "key bowl" in the kitchen, where I keep my car keys. He feeds on human flesh, but I've found that if I dig up a fresh corpse from the nearby cemetery about once a month, that will keep him sated. (The corpses, of course, are already dead, so there's no need for murder, despite what he might tell you). The corpses also keep him from trying to escape and going after the feral children who live in the woods. The shovel and other grave robbing implements are on the back porch, near the cat food bowl. I can easily fit one dead body in the trunk of my car, and I've been doing that for years so if you intend to sell the car, you might want to air out the trunk and use plenty of Fabreze.
I think that covers the important stuff, but if I left anything out, you can probably contact me through Charlie, the Tarot card reader from the coffee house. He's actually a very adept medium, so he should be able to contact my ghost if you have any further questions.
The End
This story was first published on Wednesday, March 21st, 2018
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