The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man

Germany

The trade fair was a success. Few of the two thousand exhibitors were met with as much interest as Booth D128, the one with nine coffins and banners that said things like ‘Heaven Can’t Wait’, ‘Ticket to Paradise’ and ‘The Last Journey’. Sabine wasn’t quite sure what message she was trying to get across, but she was in charge of designing the booth and wanted everything to be as lively as possible around the death they were marketing.

The first to go was the VfB Stuttgart coffin. A diehard Karlsruhe fan offered three thousand euros; his goal was to humiliate Stuttgart somehow, with the help of the coffin, when the occasion arose. If no such occasion presented itself in a reasonable amount of time, he planned to charge ten euros per Karlsruhe fan who wanted to relieve themselves on the coffin in a public place. Then he could set it on fire and put the video online as a potential viral success.

‘Does you-know-what really burn?’ Sabine asked the customer, who had shared more of his plans than the salespeople truly needed to know.

Julius stepped in and said that the purpose of the coffin had been to honour the organization that was VfB Stuttgart, not to deride it. Furthermore, Julius went on, he understood now, if he hadn’t before, why the concept of peace on earth seemed so remote. Last but not least, he sincerely pitied the buyer of the coffin for putting hate above love.

‘All that said: three thousand euros, it’s a deal.’

The second coffin to sell was a pre-order for a Karlsruhe coffin. It so happened that a Stuttgart fan, in all the fuss, had happened to overhear the preceding conversation and acted accordingly.

‘He who pisses last pisses best,’ he said to the Karlsruhe fan, once the coffin was ordered and the agreement signed.

At which the two fans began first to bicker and then to scuffle, until they were carried off and ejected by security.

Before the day was over, they had sold twelve more coffins, including pre-orders. The only coffin they’d brought that didn’t move was sunset-at-sea. Sabine believed this was because it was six hundred kilometres from Stuttgart to the nearest sunset at sea, but Julius thought it might be because the sunset had turned out an awful lot like a sunrise.

Fourteen coffins at three thousand euros each made forty-two thousand. The company Die with Pride wasn’t even formally established yet, but it seemed to be headed for a fruitful future.

If only it hadn’t been for that damned bad luck.