I’ll be honest. When the realtor mentioned there was a pet sematary in the woods behind our new house, it gave me pause. I’ve read Stephen King’s seminal classic! Gave me the heebie jeebies back in college. But after living here for nearly six months, I’ve got to say, I don’t know what that guy was talking about. My pet sematary is great!
Sure, it’s a little spooky when you first see it. The crudely marked gravestones arranged in eerily perfect concentric circles, the tree branches that never seem to grow leaves, even in the middle of summer, the faint wolf howls and owl hoots you here whenever you approach the clearing it resides in… at surface level, all of this would seem to point to a nightmarish hellscape befitting the author of Carrie and The Shining. But the thing is, the characters in King’s novel never made any attempt to spruce the space up! I dragged some lawn chairs and patio furniture out there the second or third day after we moved in. Put up some white Christmas lights in the trees, a fire pit to grill brats over, etc. Now our family spends almost every evening in the pet sematary! It’s wonderful! We play cornhole over the graves of long-deceased pets and have a grand old time.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: Isn’t the powerful dark magic that hums beneath the earth a little unsettling? Short answer, yes. But eventually, you succumb to the alluring, hypnotic pulses that area gives off. You even get to liking them after a bit! Some mornings I would wake up and find myself lying on the cold ground of the sematary with no memory as to how I got there. That place has a magnetic power, I can’t deny that. But hey! So does Cinnabon, and nobody’s written a novel slandering that place.
And I haven’t even gotten to the curative powers of the sematary. You know it brings things back to life? Of course you do, you read the book. But what King fails to mention is how handy that comes in. It’s like a Magic Eraser for life’s boo boos! When our pet cat, Crankshaft, passed away from her heart condition, we were all devastated. But after spending a night in the sematary, Crankshaft was good as new! Better, even! She’s more well-behaved, she’s curiously strong, and she can read our minds! Isn’t that great? If she’s bothering us at dinner, we just mentally will her to go outside and she’ll do it! Granted, she may tear a tree stump out of the ground in a fit of rage using her newfound supernatural strength, but as long as she’s not hurting anyone, who cares! She’s the ideal pet now, as far as I’m concerned. And it’s all thanks to that old Native American burial ground. Thanks, Native Americans!
If it were up to me, every family in the country would have a pet sematary in their backyard. Imagine, being able to reverse the forward march of mortality! We’ve brought our parakeet back to life so many times now I’ve lost count. He can vibrate through walls now! We’re playing God and loving it.
And boy, you better believe I was glad we lived next to the pet sematary when I choked on that piece of brisket last Thanksgiving! I was a goner! Really, I was. I was legally dead for twelve hours. Fortunately I had made it very clear to my wife that, were anything to happen to me, I wanted my corpse to be submerged in that satanic soil, pronto. I saw what it did for Crankshaft and the bird, and I wanted in on some of that hot resurrection action. Lucky for me, my wife complied, and now here I am! Six feet tall, telekinetic, and grotesque as hell. But alive! I can read my neighbor’s thoughts, tear the garage door off it’s hinges with my mind, and absolutely dominate Apples to Apples with the kids. I’m basically Superman!
So if anyone wants to insinuate that we’ve upset the delicate balance of nature, well, that’s their prerogative. My family and I have been using the sematary with reckless abandon for half a year now, with absolutely zero negative consequences. If anyone implies otherwise, I’ll penetrate their fragile mind and tear their arms right out of their sockets. God bless the pet sematary!