by A. L. Mengel
He remembered, a while back, a boy was wheeled in after getting hit by a car riding on his bike. He was thrown fifty feet. His skull was crushed.
Ned had felt the boy’s head, and it felt like a bowl of jelly. The bones were shattered underneath his scalp. The family had begged for an open casket. But Ned knew that the possibility existed that he would not be able to prevent the corpse from being grotesque. There were large gashes on the side of the boy’s head. But the mother insisted.
And Ned was one of the top Morticians in Florida.
He was able to work his magic, he applied the just-so shades of makeup to cover the gashes, filling the wounds with cotton and covering it with a layer of clay, smoothed over very delicately with the detail and precision. And then, the makeup would come into play. The foundation, his artistic palette. While the gashes on the sides of the cheek were there, it did not matter. They were not visible once he was finished; Ned worked his magic.
And when the family was ushered in to the Biscayne Room for the initial viewing, there was no indication that the boy was anything other than asleep. The body lay in a small, white casket with rose tinted lighting and flowers surrounding the coffin, and when family members passed by the casket, stopped for a few moments to shed tears and view the young boy, no one noticed the line on the side of the face – where the makeup met skin, where the clay was covering the cotton, there was just the slightest imperfection if one were to look extremely close at the finest of details.
But Ned was not worried.
Because the family was not concerned with that tiny detail.
They knew that their boy was mortally wounded. They knew that Ned was behind closed doors, working his magic, preparing their boy’s body for viewing one last time. They didn’t care about those little details. They longed for the big picture. They wanted to see their son as if he were sleeping, and that’s what they got. The details, Ned was able to conceal. Because concealing is what it’s all about, that’s what Ned had always been taught.
And that is exactly what he was doing with Stephen and his purple lesion on the forehead just at the hairline. Because Ned knew that Stephen would be having an open casket.
There was no reason not to.
“The cheeks are sunken,” Ned had said to his assistant, Pat, when Stephen’s body rolled into the morgue on a shiny, silver gurney which gleamed in the harsh florescent light. “They have to be filled.” Ned pushed some hair away from the forehead. “I have something that can cover that.”
“Says he had AIDS,” Pat had said, his southern drawl still eminent despite living in Miami for several years.
Ned looked up. “Oh did he now?” He returned back to the body, examining all parts that would be on display in a coffin. He paid close attention to the hands. “He had nicely manicured fingernails. That’s surprising for an invalid.”
But after Stephen’s body was prepped, ready on the table, Stephen had seen exactly how macerated the man had become.
The purple lesion on Stephen’s forehead at the hairline proved to be one of many.
Pat had cut the pants and shirt away from the body with a pair of scissors. As the clothes fell to the floor, each rib was taught against the skin, and several more lesions on the torso were revealed.
Ned stepped back, and Pat looked up from his clipboard. Pat looked over at Ned and raised his eyebrows.
“A little more than you were expecting?” Pat asked.
Ned shook his head. “No, no.” He looked up at Pat, directly in his eye. “You know how many of these AIDS queens come through here? Please. Just another day at the office.”
But these days at the office were what Ned had signed up for. He remembered when he was sitting in the front office at Heavenly Slumber, just upstairs, several years ago, interviewing for the role that he was now in.
“I demystify death,” he had said to a grey-haired stoic man sitting behind an expansive mahogany desk. The man’s face twisted a bit. “What do you mean?” he asked.
Ned shifted in his seat, tapped on his shiny loafers for a minute. He bit his lip as the man sat back in his chair with a creak.
“So many people are afraid of death,” Ned said, leaning forward. “I am here to make things a little easier for them.”
The man nodded, breathed in through his nose, and picked up Ned’s resume again, and read it for several minutes until Ned finally broke the silence. “There are a lot of people who fear death. And fear taking care of their dead. That’s where I come in.
THE BLOOD DECANTER:
BOOK THREE
Miami.
The Devil’s city.
The land where the sun sets later, and the days are hotter, brighter, sweatier, and filled with more caffeine. Where the tall royal palms line the sidewalks; where the manicured lawns are a deep, forested green all twelve months of the year; where the water remains blue and bright and brilliant.
But the darkness of the Devil –
Miami.
It’s the crystalline jewel on the tip of the Atlantic coast – hugging the Caribbean, surrounded by tropical waters and majestic million dollar mansions that line the docks and the inter-coastal waters which were usually scarcely used, except by Hollywood elite and celebrities. Most of the time, the waterfront palaces remained empty. And not far from the mansions and high-rises one finds the tiny, shoebox single level cement homes, dirty, bars covering the windows, litter on the lawns and too many cars parked along the streets.
Ah, Miami.
The brightest city with the darkest shadows. Yes, the city has a dark side. But it’s the place that I call home. The place where I work; where I follow my calling. The city I love, and have come to love. And it’s the city where I truly feel that I came face to face with the Devil himself…
*****
Do you remember me?
Have you possibly seen me before? I always wear my black suit and tie. My hair is gelled, slicked back, cut tight and cropped to the sides. I most likely tower over you. I am quite tall. I am also somewhat quiet and reserved. Most of my chatter takes place inside my head. But I still can exude charisma. Can’t I?
But if you have seen me before, you probably won’t ever remember meeting me. Especially if you are wheeled in to my preparation room, just waiting for my trocar. Some of you may recall when I first met you when I was embalming in the preparation room.
Preparing a body. It’s what I do.
The whole process relaxes me.
The cleaning and sterilizing, and then the actual procedure where I plunge the trocar – that long, reflective needle – with its wide mouth, into the neck, pumping the pink fluid into the corpse.
But my descriptions aren’t always so clinical. For when that body arrived, there were always relatives waiting – those who were devastated, awash in loss and despair.
But that is when and where the art really begins.
For then, when a body arrives in my preparation room, that is when I can allow my creativity to run wild. I have a kit – a small, plastic box filled with makeup. Creams and foundations, even lipstick and nail-polish. I apply the foundation to both men and women, bringing life back to the skin, making it appear as if blood still flows through the empty veins, as if the person lying in the casket is not really dead; but just merely asleep.
For that is my calling.
But there was a time, not long ago, when I had a visitor. I only remember it because it was the same day that the man I described above moved through my chambers –
There was a day when I was not in Miami, but across the ocean, thousands of miles away, in a small preparation room in a similar chamber, for the body that I was called to prepare was a close friend. And I was asked to fly to Frankfurt – and so I called upon my fellow Mortician; the one family member who understood me so well. And I was able to use his quarters.
The sun shined through the small, square window in the little preparation room. It was small and boxy, the walls a stark and pale green, the overhead flor
escent light was harsh that morning as it had been every other morning. I would pick at the grit in my eyes that was usually there every morning. But that particular morning, there was a knocking on the door, it broke the silence.
It wasn’t the door to the long, barren hallway covered in the noxious green tiles.
It was on the door to the outside.
And the only one who would come knocking on that door was either the coroner – or better have a pretty damn good reason. I set my coffee on the table.
I lay my clipboard down on the black body bag before me, and looked towards the door. I didn’t see anyone in the small, square window. But then, I usually don’t. There aren’t too many people who will peek inside the lower levels of a funeral home.
I placed my hands on the cold, steel handle, looked out the window, and saw a small man standing in the frigid air; his clothing devoid of color and dressed in black and grey, with a black hat, and dark sunglasses. He looked up towards the window, and smiled. “Can you open for me?” His voice sounded muffled through the glass, like he was speaking into a pillow.
“We do not accept outside solicitations, sir.”
The man took a few steps back.
He didn’t seem very tall or imposing in the slightest, standing there in his black coat and grey pants. He shoved his hands in his pockets, then looked down at the pavement, and then back up. “You will want to let me in, Mr. McCracken. I have spoken intimately with Monsignor Harrison. I just returned from Rome.”
I stepped back and swung the door open. The cold air was striking. The man took a step towards the threshold and looked up at me. He had wisps of grey hair under his hat. But I could not see his eyes through his dark lenses. “Are you going to let me in?”
I stepped aside and he entered the preparation room. He stopped just short of the stainless steel table in the center of the room, and looked around. His mouth dropped open slightly, but he did not make a sound. I closed the door and moved towards him, and he spoke. “I have never been inside a room like this before.”
“Understandable. Most haven’t, until the one time at the end of their lives when they come into this room.”
The small man stopped and looked directly towards me. He removed his dark glasses, and his eyes pierced me. Dark brown, against an olive complexion. Much more noticeable under the florescent lighting, without the sun shining in my eyes. “Oh, Mr. McCracken, I have heard many things about you.”
“What kind of things? And from whom?”
The man folded his sunglasses and placed them in his coat pocket. “Rome sent me. Antoine sent me. Because I have a warning. A warning of the greatest importance for the immortal kind.”
I grabbed the clipboard from on top of the body bag and flung it on the counter. “Do you have identification?”
The visitor looked at the clipboard as he fished through his pockets. “Who is in that body bag?”
“That isn’t any of your business until you have shown me identification that proves that it is.”
I waited. And watched for him to fish his ID out. And then I remembered. It was such a distant memory, but it stuck out in my mind nonetheless. It was of Stephen. My, brother, who died on the side of Telegraph in Michigan. “I have had a lot of experience with Funeral Homes,” I said, accepting his ID. “And it says here you are a Mortician as well?”
The man nodded and removed his coat and placed it on the counter. “Yes, Ned. Yes I am.”
I nodded and handed him back his ID.
“I’m Hector Tabares.” He started walking around the preparation table as he talked to me. “Rome sent me, as I said, with a warning.” He looked down at the body bag on the table. “You see, this man here, I know who is in there. That is why Rome sent me.”
I took a step back. “Okay. So Rome sent you. The Monsignor? Can you tell me a little more about the purpose of your visit here today?”
“I come with a warning.”
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Mengel, A.L. All Rights Reserved
