Dead Broke – By MNBrian
When you really think about it, there’s not a whole lot you can do with a dead body. You can put them on ice or bury them in the ground. You can dress them in different clothes; put them in their Sunday’s best. And, of course, if you plan to prep them for a wake, you’ll have to embalm them or they’ll start to smell -- which I had a feeling would be my least favorite part of this job. I mean, don’t get me wrong, people aren’t exactly lining up to become funeral directors. But if anyone knew what was really going on at Spring Valley Chapel & Funeral Home, they’d understand why Carl Humphries packed his bags and retired so suddenly at the ripe old age of forty-two.
I didn’t think much about why Carl left when I got the job. I needed the money, and my options were… limited. In fact, I didn’t even think to ask Carl why he was retiring, but seeing my predecessor being rolled back into Spring Valley Funeral Home in a black body bag, only three short days after I’d watched him leave – you could say it was a bit shocking.
“Evelyn, is it? Can you just sign the intake form? I need a signature so I can go home,” the driver of the Hirsch reiterated, still extending a tablet in one hand with one of those fake plastic pens in the other. I read the name again. Carl Humphries. They prepare you for a lot when you go to funeral director school. You heard me right. Funeral director school. That’s a thing. But they don’t prepare you for something like this. I had hoped my first intake would be someone older.
“Sorry,” I shook my head. “Of course. Here,” I signed the form and handed the tablet back.
“It’s Jake, by the way. You’re new?” He asked, even though he obviously knew the answer. Everybody knew everybody in Spring Valley, or at least that’s how Uncle Scott made it sound.
“Yeah. Been here since Monday, but this is my first solo intake.”
“It’s a weird way to start a new job,” Jake said. His lips were curled into a constant frown, as if that was his natural state of being. “I mean, you were hired as Carl’s replacement, right?”
“Just bring him in,” I said as I turned to go inside. The last thing I needed was to make friends with the body retrieval tech.
The front entrance of the funeral home opened up into a sky lit lobby with cream colored walls and a crystal vase of brilliant fresh flowers resting on an antique table in the center. Uncle Scott replaced the flowers on Wednesday. By Friday, they were in full bloom, just in time for the weekend services. My uncle had grown quite fond of Carl Humphries. He said he couldn’t bear to watch me embalm his friend.
Personally, and maybe this was cold of me, but I didn’t understand how it was any different than anyone else in this small town. Spring Valley, Montana had a population of two thousand, a stark contrast to Chicago where I’d lived for 22 years, and Uncle Scott’s was the only funeral home in a fifty mile radius. One would think he’d expect most everyone who gets carted in is probably someone he knows. But Uncle Scott wanted the afternoon to grieve, so I was on my own.
Jake, the perpetually frowning Hirsch driver, rolled the cart into the elevator. I followed him and hit B for basement. The old elevator, barely large enough to hold two people, a stretcher, and a dead guy, jolted into motion with a groan of ungreased pulleys. The doors started opening before the elevator even finished descending. In fact, it overshot the landing and was rising back up an inch to self-correct. Once at the appropriate height, the elevator dinged, doors already wide open, as if notifying us that we had made it safely to the basement. I stood bracing myself against the elevator wall, eyes wide. Jake had one eyebrow raised while studying me.
“You okay there?”
“I’m fine,” I lied. “Just don’t like elevators.”
He chuckled as he pushed the cart onto the linoleum floors.
The basement was a lot bleaker than the funeral home above. The fluorescent lights flickered against the white walls as we moved down the hallway to the embalming room. Jake helped me lift Carl Humphries’ body onto the mortuary table. The room was a dry kind of chilled, like a freezer with no airflow, the wall of refrigerator doors on one side and cabinets of various tools and supplies for the task at hand on the other.
“You need anything else?” Jake asked.
“I’m good. Thanks.”
Jake rolled his cart down the hallway to leave as I unzipped the black bag. Carl’s face was dull, purpling, and cold to the touch. He’d need a lot of makeup to look more like himself. At first I considered quitting before this awful task had even begun, saying thanks to Uncle Scott for being such a generous guy and helping me out in a major bind, but telling him how I never wanted to be a funeral director. Truth was, Uncle Scott didn’t know the half of it. But so what? Who cares if I made some potentially questionable decisions resulting in two felony convictions that were totally not my fault? Maybe flipping burgers at age 26 and probably working for a manager who was still in high school would be better than... this. Then again, I’d have to flip burgers for 6 years to save enough money to sneak into Mexico. If I could just put up with this for two years, I could disappear and never come back. I swallowed my pride.
“Sorry buddy,” I said as I started removing Carl’s clothes. “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you. It’s not like you can hear me.”
After his clothes were off, I checked vitals.
“Clouded corneas? Check. Rigor Mortis? Check. No pulse? Yep. I’m sorry to tell you this, Carl, but I think you might be dead.” I turned and walked to the table to fill a bowl with water.
After giving Carl a bath and setting his face based on an old photo Uncle Scott had left for me, the real fun began. Using a pump that basically acts like an artificial heart, I emptied him of blood and replaced that blood with a fluid that slows the decomposition process and gives his body a little livelier look. And that’s when I grabbed the trocar. The next step was removing the gasses from his internal organs by essentially sticking a tube with a blade on the end into him. This was the part I was least excited about. I looked down at his naval, looked up at his face, and shook my head.
“I’m sorry about this, Carl,” I said as I began inserting the trocar. Only that’s about the time that Carl sat up.
I screamed as loud as I could, and Carl opened his eyes and started screaming as well. I fell backwards onto my haunches, scrambling until my back hit the cabinets.
“What are you doing to me?” Carl screamed.
“What--- what…” I attempted to say something back but couldn’t. Carl looked down at his stomach, and then quickly averted his eyes. “Oh no… Oh no… Are those… my intestines?” The trocar had slipped, slicing his naval open when he unexpectedly rose, and now he was sitting up with internal organs hanging out. He swore. “I’m dead, aren’t I?”
My hands were still shaking. I forced myself up and grabbed a scalpel from the table. “Stay away from me…” I said, reaching for my phone with my left hand. I pulled it out but I barely had service upstairs, let alone in the concrete basement of the funeral home. I thought about running for the elevator but… then what? Call the police? Tell them a dead guy just woke up? “You’re… you’re… dead… this can’t be happening…”
To my surprise, Carl sighed deeply. “Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere? Sorry, it always takes a minute for the brain to boot back up. Good instincts on the knife tho. Well done.”
“What… the….hell… is going on…”
“Weird, isn’t it? Don’t worry, it won’t last long.” Carl glanced at the clock to his left. “We don’t have much time. Jesus, where do I even start? You’re lucky, you know. I figured all this out the hard way.”
“Figured out what?”
“This place, Spring Valley Funeral Home, it’s special. Don’t ask me why, but everyone who dies and comes to this place, at some point in time, they just sort of… wake up.”
My jaw went slack. “This isn’t real. I’m dreaming. I must be dreaming.
“Listen. They wake up, but just for a little while.”
“This has got to be a dream. It’s not possible. Maybe there was something in my coffee? Shoot. Did I mix up my meds?”
“Evelyn, you’re not dreaming, okay? Just listen. We only have a little time, so I’m gonna give you a quick crash course here.”
I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. It was all so ridiculous. Here I was holding a useless scalpel in a threatening way at a dead body that couldn’t possibly be sitting up. It had to be a dream. I mean, weird dreams were part of the job description.
“First off, learn everything you can about your intakes. And I mean everything. This can be dangerous. I’ve seen some truly dangerous people. Check the top drawer behind you. You’ll find a set of handcuffs and a revolver.”
“You must be joking,” I said.
“See for yourself,” Carl smirked. I slowly opened the drawer while not taking my eyes off Carl, arm still extended with scalpel in hand. I quickly glanced down and then back at Carl. Sure enough, the drawer held a silver revolver and a pair of handcuffs. I glanced again to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, my eyes quickly darting between the contents of the drawer and Carl. I swapped the scalpel for the revolver.
“Now we’re talking,” I said, pulling back the hammer.
“The safety’s still on. Plus it won’t do you much good anyways. It’ll just knock me off my feet so you can run away until I eventually die again. That’s rule number two. You can’t kill someone who woke up, not for the time they are awake at least. So if you run into a truly twisted individual… you best handcuff them to something sturdy like that metal bar I attached to that refrigerator.”
“Riddle me this, Sherlock. Does my Uncle know about this?”
“Of course not,” Carl responded. “And you’d be wise to not share this with anyone, you hear me?”
“Is heaven real? No wait, how’d you die?” I demanded, feeling emboldened by the gun in my hand.
“It’s not important,” Carl replied. “Can I continue please? We’re running out of time.”
“Tell me how you died,” I demanded again.
“It’s not important.”
“I’ll shoot you, Carl. Don’t think I won’t. Now tell me.”
Carl closed his eyes, wincing. “Fine, okay. I was out hiking in the woods and I sat down for lunch. While eating my sandwich a squirrel came down the tree for some food. I gave him a piece of bread and when he wanted more, he crawled on me and bit me. Next thing I knew, my throat was closing up. I apparently had a severe allergic reaction to either the squirrel or the sandwich.”
I shook my head. “It was the squirrel. Something in the saliva caused you to go into anaphylactic shock.”
“It’s just my luck too. My death happened at the worst possible time. I was about to get away with more cash than I could spend in six lifetimes. So of course, the timing was perfect.”
“Wait, what?” I demanded, eyes getting wider. “You mean like money? How much money?”
Carl sniffed the air and glanced down at his stomach. His eyes darted towards the ceiling, “Oh no, I can smell them. I think I’m gonna pass out…”
“Wait, can you even pass out? What do you mean you’re going to pass out? How is that possible? The money, Carl. What about the money!”
Carl winced again, trying to think of something else. “Heh, I guess it won’t do me any good anymore. Ever heard of Dilbert Cooper?”
I shook my head, still in shock and convinced I was dreaming.
“This town was settled as a mining town. Gold mining. Dilbert Cooper somehow managed to steal a bunch of gold from the mine. They eventually caught him but they never found his gold. It’s been a legend around town for a hundred years.”
“And you found it?” I demanded. Carl nodded. “Well, where is it? Where’s the gold!”
Carl’s face started looking flush. “That’s complicated. I mean, I wrote it all down in the margins of my favorite copy of The Great Gatsby. My wife probably has it. I was hiking to get Coopers gold when that squirrel...”
“Focus Carl. How much gold? Come on. Spill it,” I demanded.
“Spill… it…?” Carl’s face went white as a ghost at the sentiment as he accidentally glanced down at his internals and promptly passed out on the embalming table. I ran to him, shook him, tried to rouse him. But he seemed as dead as he was before he woke up. I pinched myself again, wondering if I’d wake up, but now I hoped I wouldn’t. Gold bars had to be worth a lot. Maybe there was a way out of this mess and into a hammock in Mexico. After all, any amount of gold should be enough to get me out of this town. I needed air. I rushed to the elevator and back to the main floor. The elevator dinged and I stepped outside into the lobby, looking at my one bar of service.
I typed in the name Dilbert Cooper to do a quick search. A moment later an article loaded that talked about the stolen gold. It was a cheesy advertisement for “Dilbert Days,” some kind of town festival, wholesome family fun. There were pictures of kids eating golden ice cream bars and horses and a hay ride. I kept scrolling down until I found a section called “The Legend of Dilbert Cooper.” And that’s when I heard the front doors of the Funeral Home creak. I looked up to see the local Sheriff walking in.
“Afternoon miss,” a flush of panic came over me.
“Hi there…” I didn’t know how to address him.
“Sheriff Johnson will do just fine. You must be Scott’s niece? He around?”
I sighed in relief. He was looking for Scott, not me. “Nope,” I said plainly, not wanting to volunteer any more information.
“Everything alright?”
I glanced up, feeling lightheaded. “Yeah. Just…“I paused. “It’s my first day is all. I needed some air. Doing my first embalming and…”
“Oh no ma’am you don’t have to share any more. I understand, and frankly, I don’t wanna know. Just, when you see Scott, would you let him know I was looking for him?”
I nodded. “Yes sir.”
He smiled warmly. “Thanks. It’s Evelyn, right?”
I hated this town already. “Yep,” I said plainly.
“Great. Nice to meet you,” Sheriff Johnson nodded at me and left.
I exhaled deeply. It had barely been a week and I’d already had more than one close call. Maybe a small town wasn’t such a good idea. I needed to get out of here sooner rather than later. I glanced down at my phone. The article was still up.
At the bottom of the article, the supposed total dollar value of Dilbert Cooper’s stolen gold was listed in big bold letters.
$10,000,000.00
That ought to do the trick.
Submitted March 25, 2017 at 01:07AM by MNBrian http://ift.tt/2nfFWuO WritingPrompts
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