Dead Romantic

by C. J. Skuse

  ‘Chips,’ he shrugged. ‘I guess five minutes would be okay, if you really wanted to see him.’ I nodded again. ‘Okay.’ He took a bunch of keys out of his trouser pocket and found the one to unlock the door.

  I’d never been in a funeral parlour before. I’d expected it to be all dark and cobwebby and for a big, meaty, dead-people stink to hit me. But the reception was warm and biscuit-coloured and smelled of tea and sweet flowers. There was a small tropical fish tank in the corner and a painting of a field full of lambs.

  ‘How’s your nose?’ he asked, bringing the potatoes in for me and closing the door behind us.

  I touched my face, then immediately wished I hadn’t cos my nose started throbbing again. ‘Hurts,’ I said. He looked really guilty, and at that moment I would have said anything to make his face not go like that, even though he had caused both my nose to hurt and his face to go like that. ‘Only when I touch it though. Otherwise, it’s fine, really. So, what do you do here?’ I asked him, looking around.

  He looked at me. ‘Well, we deal with dead people and stuff.’

  ‘No,’ I laughed, ‘I mean you. What’s your job?’

  ‘Uh, a bit of everything really.’ He tapped the side of the little fish tank in the wall. ‘Preparing the coffins. Getting the suits ready. Dressing the clients. I’m allowed to drive the cars now sometimes but my dad still won’t let me direct the funerals. He’s kind of fussy about stuff and I’m not really. He doesn’t quite trust me not to mess things up.’

  ‘They’re nice fish,’ I said, nodding to the fish tank. I was just making conversation really.

  ‘They’re mine,’ he said, wiping a sheen of rain from his forehead. ‘I’m not allowed pets at home so Dad and Uncle Pete let me keep these instead. They’re for the mourners really but I feed them and clean them out and stuff.’

  ‘They’re pretty,’ I said. ‘I’m not allowed pets either. But I . . . kind of found this Jack Russell puppy and he’s mine now. My mum and dad don’t know about him yet. I’ve been hiding him. It’s hard though, running straight upstairs every time I come home. Running straight out first thing. I’m sure they’re beginning to smell a rat. Or a dog.’

  Louis laughed.

  ‘I’m going to keep him though. They can’t stop me.’

  ‘Good for you,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t dare with my dad. Talking of which, we’d better . . . um, I’ll just go and . . .’ Louis chucked his keys down on the coffee table and disappeared into an office next door, mumbling about his phone.

  Zoe popped up from behind a sofa. I clasped my hand over my mouth to stop from screaming.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she whispered. ‘Why the hell’s he here?’

  ‘He came back for his phone. I didn’t know what to do so I pretended I was all upset over Luke the Lifeguard. He’s let me in so I can see the body. A last time before the funeral, kind of thing.’

  Zoe sniffed. ‘Well, boys’ll do anything if you cry hard enough, I suppose.’

  ‘Or maybe he’s just being nice?’ I snipped.

  ‘Just hurry up and get rid of him,’ she said, getting up. Behind her back, she was holding a large, scary-looking meat cleaver. She ducked down again.

  Louis came back into the reception area, waving his phone to show he’d found it. ‘We can go in,’ he said. ‘I’ve switched it all on. You can leave the potatoes here if you like.’

  He led me along a small corridor to an unmarked door, opened it for me and I went in. The room was small and red and dimly lit by large candles. It smelled sweet, like summer pudding, and in the corner was a little CD player softly playing the theme tune to Baywatch. A large object painted orange and shaped to look like a dinghy stood on a stand right in the middle. I guessed it was a type of coffin. Inside it lay a man with his hands clasped over his chest. He was dressed in a wet suit and over his legs was draped a blue Chelsea flag.

  ‘I’m going to back to the restaurant for a bit, okay? Otherwise Dad’ll wonder where I’ve got to.’ Louis whispered. I nodded. ‘I reckon I could give you about ten minutes. Then I’ll make some excuse and come back and let you out.’ I thought he was going to clasp my shoulder in sympathy, but at the last minute he itched his nose instead.

  ‘Thank you.’

  He closed the door behind him. I heard his footsteps down the hallway and the front door closing. Then nothing.

  Zoe appeared from behind a red curtain. ‘About time.’

  I stepped closer to the body in the coffin. It was weird how it still looked like Luke the Lifeguard, but not quite. Like Mrs Cleak had, except not old and wrinkly. His skin wasn’t pink any more, it was sort of bleached. There was no expression on his face at all. Like a doll. Tucked into the sides of the dinghy coffin were some car magazines, a bottle of super-strength lager and a photograph of a group of sunburnt men with their tops off and pints in their hands.

  ‘People always say they look peaceful, like they’re asleep, but he doesn’t look peaceful. He just looks dead.’

  ‘Just as well,’ said Zoe, pulling the meat cleaver from her waistband. ‘He won’t feel this then.’

  And before I even had time to look away, she swung the cleaver high into the air and down again, hard onto his thick, pulse-less neck.

  Kerrrrrrrr-chunnnnnnnk!

  Rest in Pieces

  Ahead on its own was pretty disgusting – so disgusting, it was almost funny. It was a bit like something you would see in the window of a butcher’s shop, all bright red and cleanly cut and stinking of meat, until you remembered that it was not just some pig or some cow’s head – it was a human head. A human head I’d been flirting with all last summer. A head that had laughed and cried and fallen in love and blown out candles on birthday cakes.

  ‘I don’t know how you can be so . . . fine about it, Zoe,’ I told her. ‘So cold. You’ve just cut a man’s head off.’

  ‘No, I’ve just cut a corpse’s head off. It’s dead meat, Camille. It has no nerve endings. No feelings anymore. Once you accept that, it’s mind over matter. It’s easy.’

  I still couldn’t quite accept that but, as it turned out, cutting Luke’s head off had been the easy part of the process. Getting the body out of the coffin was major diffs, and getting it out quietly was even more diffs. Because the coffin was on a stand, we had to get it on the floor before we could lift him out of it. And I never realised just how heavy a coffin was.

  ‘Come on, heave!’ Zoe whispered. ‘Bend your knees, one, two, three, LIFT!’

  ‘I am. I’m trying as hard as I . . . can. It’s not going to . . . budge!’ We both let go and stood back. The dinghy coffin had shifted on the stand, but only slightly.

  ‘Dead weight,’ said Zoe. ‘Blast.’

  ‘Well, it moves on the stand, so it must be able to move off the stand as well,’ I whispered. I rounded on it, standing at the head end, opposite where Zoe had spread a black curtain out on the floor.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Zoe.

  ‘Tipping him out. We’re not going to get him out of it otherwise, are we? If we can’t lift it, we’ll have to tip it.’

  ‘No! The force will bruise him!’ she said. ‘Help me slide it back.’

  We both took the foot end of the coffin, pulled it backwards with all our might. With an almighty THUD the stand collapsed.

  Kerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrumph!

  We both stood absolutely still and silent, listening out for signs of Louis or a nosey neighbour or the police, but there came nothing. Baywatch still tinkled along on the speaker.

  ‘Well, that’s one way of doing it I suppose,’ I said when the dust had settled.

  ‘Okay, quickly, help me pull him upright,’ said Zoe and we grabbed hold of the body by its arms and pulled it into a sitting position. As we did, the head rolled back off the shoulders and plonked into the coffin.

  We dragged the body out and lay it on the curtain, where we wrapped it up and tied both ends with curtain cord. Then we put the coffin back on the stand and filled it with the two
heavy potato sacks, plus a spare water-cooler bottle we found in the corridor to weigh it down more. Once we’d wrapped the potatoes and the bottle in the Chelsea flag, it kind of looked like it had been before, except a bit more lumpy, with just his head on show.

  ‘There. That wasn’t too taxing, was it?’ she said, then stopped. She sighed and banged her eyes shut like she’d just remembered the answer to the million-dollar question when it was a second too late.

  ‘What? Zoe, what is it?’

  She turned to me, coming back to life and posting the cleaver back into her waistband. ‘Right, when Louis comes back, I need you to get him to do something.’

  ‘What?’ I frowned, dreading what she was going to get me to do next.

  ‘Nail the lid down.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Louis must nail the coffin lid down, otherwise when they nail it down tomorrow morning for the funeral, they are going to know someone has tampered with the contents. It looks all right in this dimmed lighting, but in broad daylight it is not going to look like a body.’

  ‘Well how am I going to get him to do that?’ I cried. ‘I’m only supposed to be saying goodbye.’

  ‘Use your feminine charms on him. Cry again if you have to. You can do it.’

  So I did it. When Louis came back, Zoe waited behind the altar with the headless body and I turned on the water-works. I got myself in a state, producing real tears, saying I was afraid Luke’s ex was going to visit the funeral parlour the next day and put a lock of her hair in with Luke (I’d seen that on a film once) and that was why I needed him to nail the lid down tonight. And even though he knew he might get in trouble with his dad who didn’t trust him with watering the flowers, let alone nailing down the lids, he did as I asked him. I hugged him in relief. He hugged me back. And even though we weren’t hugging for a real reason, it was the nicest thing that had happened all night long.

  Louis walked me out of the funeral parlour and we said one of those awkward goodbyes where we didn’t quite know whether to do a handshake or another hug.

  ‘I can’t thank you enough for, well, you know, letting me in and everything.’

  He shrugged. ‘It was no sweat, really.’ He smiled and looked at his shoes.

  ‘Will you get in trouble for nailing the lid down?’

  ‘Probably. So, will you be okay now?’

  I nodded, pretending to wipe my eyes with a tissue. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Yeah. Triple History, isn’t it?’ I said, rolling my eyes like I really hated it, even though I didn’t actually mind it too much.

  He frowned. ‘There’s no point going in for it though. You won’t be able to concentrate and you’d have to leave at ten anyway for the funeral.’

  ‘Oh yeah, yeah of course, of course. No, I don’t suppose I’ll bother.’ I mentally stapled it to my brain: don’t forget to show up at the funeral tomorrow morning. Wherever it was. Sniff.

  ‘Mr Atwill won’t mind, under the circumstances,’ he said.

  ‘I guess not,’ I said as he put his hand up to wave and then walked across the road and into Fat Pang’s, which was buzzing with people and colour and light. On the doorstep, he turned to look at me and I made out I was starting to walk in the opposite direction. But once his back was turned, I stopped and watched him go inside. He walked over to a long table beside the wall with the huge fish tank in it. He sat down next to Damian, who looked especially Yumsville in his black suit with his shirt wide open. He was leaning back in his chair chatting to some blonde girl with black roots. Louis sipped his Coke and seemed more interested in the fish tank and I couldn’t help myself smiling.

  ‘So, that’s Part One,’ said Zoe, climbing into the driver’s seat and carefully closing the door behind her.

  ‘What’s Part Two?’ I said. ‘The head?’

  ‘Yes, but we should get some serum into him first to retard decomposition.’

  ‘What’s decomposition?’

  ‘Rotting. He will have been taken out of the freezer at the funeral parlour around four for family viewing. That means he’s been thawing ever since. If I get the serum into him tonight, that will give us at least a few more days’ grace, provided he is kept at low temperature.’ She started up the engine.

  ‘I thought you only inserted the serum before you electrocuted?’ I asked her as the van rolled out of the street and waited at the traffic lights to the seafront. ‘We’re not going to electrocute him without a head, are we?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Zoe. ‘We need to do things a little differently with this one. The serum can be injected at any time before electrocution takes, but I want to give it longer to work in this specimen, so that it has less chance of going wrong. Like with the hamsters and your dog.’

  ‘They didn’t go wrong,’ I said. ‘The hamsters and Pee Wee are all alive and well thanks to you.’

  ‘Yes, but they’re flawed. They’re not perfect versions of their former selves.’

  The van turned onto the seafront. ‘Pee Wee looks okay to me.’

  ‘Have you seen what the hamsters have done to the college? A hamster should not be able to chew through concrete walls, Camille. And normal little dogs don’t behave like Pee Wee.’

  I looked behind me. The curtain-wrapped body was jumping off the floor as we scaled each speed bump on the road. ‘Why, what’s wrong with Pee Wee?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ said Zoe. ‘Maybe nothing’s manifested itself yet but it will. It always does. Did you ever hear about the cow that escaped up the High Street?’

  And something did manifest when we got back to Zoe’s house. Pee Wee was sitting on the doormat, like he was waiting for us, all sweet and smiley and panting.

  And covered in blood. Again.

  ‘Oh my god, what’s happened! Oh Pee Wee, my baby!’ I cried, clamoring to get out of the van and see if he was okay.

  ‘Raaaaarff raaaaahhf!’ he woofed at me as I lifted him up in my arms. I felt underneath him, all around his belly and his neck. Nothing. He hadn’t been hurt, I thought, but it was so difficult to tell by moonlight. Zoe was standing on the grass when I looked back.

  ‘Over here,’ she called and I went to join her on the grass, cuddling my poor bloody baby in close to my cheek.

  ‘Raaaaarff.’

  ‘His woof sounds funny,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not just his woof,’ said Zoe. She pulled the torch from inside her coat pocket and shone it down on to the patch of grass in front of her. Black fur. And a collar. And mush. Red fleshy mush.

  I could see what it was then. A dead dog!

  ‘What on earth . . . ?’ I cried.

  ‘That’s your poor bloody baby’s dinner,’ Zoe told me. ‘Suki. The poodle from two doors down.’

  ‘Ugh! That’s disgusting!’ I cried, putting Pee Wee down on the grass. ‘Ugh! Ugh. UGH!’ He sniffed around the poodle mess and started licking it.

  ‘See what I mean now about electrocuting too quickly? Come on; let’s get this one in the chest freezer.’

  Afterwards, Zoe dropped me and Pee Wee back at my house in the van and then drove on back up to her house. I wondered if we’d ever get the van back as I was pretty sure my mum was going to notice it was missing at some point. I didn’t have time to worry about that too much at the time though, cos I had to get Pee Wee upstairs to my room before I ran into a parental.

  I needn’t have bothered. The next morning, I was just finishing up my shower in the en suite when I heard a scream. Pee Wee had escaped from my room, gone all the way downstairs, jumped out of the lounge window and mauled a passing sausage dog. I had a twenty-minute lecture from the parentals about how I was paying for therapy for the poor sausage dog’s owner AND buying her a new sausage dog AND how selfish it was keeping a pet.

  ‘He’s mad,’ said Mum.

  ‘He’s not staying here. And he’ll poo everywhere and we’ve got to keep the place immaculate for the guests,’ said Dad. ‘You know they’re the most important people in this place.’r />
  ‘Yes, I know, but I’ll look after him,’ I said. ‘I’ll train him, properly. And he might be able to catch that mouse that lives in room three, Dad, you never know.’

  ‘Bloody thing,’ Dad muttered. At this point I think Dad was coming round to the idea. He’d been chasing that mouse with traps and cheese since we’d moved in.

  Mum huffed. ‘You know who’ll be looking after it, don’t you? Muggins. Muggins here will be buying the pet food and the kennel and the . . .’

  ‘He’s not having a kennel and I’ll buy all his food. I’ll take him to the vet’s and get him microchipped and everything.’

  ‘Damn right you will.’

  ‘And he can live in my room and sleep on my old baby blanket until I buy him a proper cosy bed.’

  ‘No, you’re not keeping him,’ said Mum. ‘We’ll have to take him down the cop shop and see if anyone’s reported him missing.’

  ‘Remember how upset you were when the gerbils died?’ said Dad.

  ‘Only when I found them lying on top of the rubbish in the bin cos you couldn’t be bothered to bury them,’ I snipped, cuddling Pee Wee tighter.

  ‘And when the kitten got run over?’

  ‘I wasn’t upset then.’

  ‘And when Jasper had to be put down?’ said Mum.

  ‘So the only reason I’m not allowed a pet is cos they die? You’re both going to die one day, why don’t I kick you out as well just to save me the grief?’

  Mum gasped. ‘Camille!’

  They both stared down at me. But I didn’t care one jot. Well, maybe one jot, but I wasn’t budging on the subject, no sir-ee. I decided to play the guilt card, which I only ever did when I absolutely positively had to.

  ‘Mum. Dad. You never gave me any brothers and sisters, and while I respect you for that, I’m lonely living in a house full of old people. I love you both lots but Pee Wee is mine and I’m keeping him. If you want to chuck him out, you’ll have to chuck me out too. So that means you’ll have to get someone in to do the breakfasts.’

  I was just about to turn on the tears when they finally stopped arguing and let me have my way. I think they finally realised that, actually, having a dog wasn’t too much to ask. As daughters go, I’d been a bit of a breeze. Compared to Lynx, for instance. She’d put her mum and dad through all sorts of dramas before they split up: drinking in the park, nicking earrings, all that business with our P.E. teacher at school. Reminding them of Lynx actually did help my cause. I kept quiet about the whole eating other dogs business though. They didn’t need to know they were living with a cannonball.