17:58 Jun 25 2020
Times Read: 795
Most people know the word “embalming,” but few people actually know what it means. Embalming is a process through which the blood of the deceased is replaced by a concoction of a known carcinogen, formaldehyde, and other chemicals. This is done by accessing an artery and a corresponding vein, making slits in each, and inserting an instrument called a cannula into the artery through which embalming fluid is pumped. The blood will be forced out of the vein and flows down the porcelain embalming table into the drain. After this step, a large, pointed suction tube called a trocar is stabbed into the abdomen to aspirate, or suck out the contents of, each of the organs within.
Now, you have to be careful and wear gloves in order to embalm, of course, because you can get Hepatitis or worse- Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. The latter is a prion disease, similar to “mad cow disease,” that can be transmitted through blood. The prions eat away at your brain, driving you to a state of severe dementia, crippling you to a shell of a person that can hardly function, until you die.
On a happier note, it always warms my heart to see young people with an interest in the industry- one day those little deathlings will grow into the next great generation funeral directors. The one day of the year I don’t welcome kids is Halloween. I know, I know, it probably seems like I’m a killjoy or a sour old woman, but Halloween seems to bring out the mischief in young folks. More than a couple times, I’ve had to threaten to call the police as teenagers tried to break into my mortuary. That seemed to make them quite angry, but they scattered once they heard (completely unrelated) sirens coming down the street. I’d never actually called. They were probably thinking it would be spooky to trespass in a funeral home on Halloween night, but I was thinking about the merchandise they might scratch up in the process and the damage they could do to the expensive cremation retort.
Cremation is an interesting process. It’s actually more than just burning a body and turning it to ash. When a body enters the retort, after the door closes, a large column of flame is shot down onto the chest area- the torso takes the longest to burn because of all the organs and fat that are contained there. Once the organic material (flesh, fat, organs- anything carbon-based) has been eliminated by the retort’s 1700-degree fires, the remaining material in the machine consists of bone fragments. These are left to cool, then they are removed and ground up by a large, blender-like machine called a cremulator. The dust and tiny bits of bone that come out of the cremulator is the “ash” that you, the loved one, receive back.
Last year, on a crisp autumn evening, I was preparing to close up early for Halloween. I was about to lock up and head to my car, when I noticed a group of teenage boys circling in the parking lot, occasionally putting their faces up to the tinted windows to try and see inside. There were five of them. I rolled my eyes and was going to just try and walk past them, ignoring their taunts, but then the water balloons started.
Just as I stepped through the door to leave, they started pointing and yelling.
“That’s her! That’s the witch who runs this place! GO!” I felt a big, wet splat as the first water balloon splashed straight into my face. My hair and the front of my jacket were soaked immediately. My eyes widened at the audacity of these children. Did nobody teach their kids to respect their elders anymore? Shock quickly turned to panic.
Another water balloon exploded into the window to my right. Hurriedly, I fumbled for the building keys and slipped back inside. There was no way I was getting back to my car without getting absolutely drenched. I caught my breath and sighed, sauntering over to the bathroom and drying my face with our rough paper towels. My hair was still dripping, so I went back into the embalming room, also known as the prep room, to find a spare towel. I could still hear the kids yelling outside, and it was at this point that the water balloons were exchanged for rocks. BANG! BANG! BANG! on the windows. They pelted rock after rock until they finally found one big enough to do some damage. I heard the glass begin to crack, and my poor old heart just couldn’t take it anymore. I dialed the police.
As most of you probably know, Halloween is a big night for crime, and cops are stationed throughout the city to keep kids safe. So when I called 9-1-1 and the police didn’t answer, I wasn’t totally surprised. No, what surprised me was that there was not even a dial tone. The funeral home’s landline had been cut off. Part of being a senior is not being glued to a cell phone all the time, and I rarely brought mine to work, so I was out of options, phone-wise. I heard raucous laughter coming through the new crack in my window as the next round of rocks hit.
This time, they crashed through the pane altogether. Startled, I jumped and looked around wildly. Where could I go? What was the safest place to hide?
The refrigerator. It had a 6-inch thick stainless steel door, but the door didn’t lock. It also had four bodies. Suddenly, a lightbulb went on in my head. As the crashing stopped, I quickly wheeled an empty gurney into the fridge, unzipped the body bag on top of it, and crawled in. I was able to fiddle the zipper back up so that only a little bit was open- that way I would have some airflow. The old bag carried the unmistakable scent of decomposing cadavers, despite having just been washed. It’s the kind of smell that sticks to things.
The fridge door had closed on its own, but I was still able to hear the footsteps of the five boys as they entered my place of business uninvited.
“Mrs. Calhouuuun…” a voice called, tauntingly.
“You should have let us iiiin,” another chimed in. I heard the sound of metal scraping against metal and imagined my beautiful show caskets being marred by insolent teenagers.
Somewhere up front, a ceramic urn shattered on the floor. Then, the footsteps grew closer. And closer. Until they were just outside of the fridge. I clamped my mouth shut so as not to allow any whimpers to escape. I didn’t know what these boys intended for me, and I was hardly in any shape to defend myself. I forced myself to pull it together, because I had to stop shaking if I was to be a believable corpse. I heard the WHOOSH! of air that always accompanies the fridge door opening. I shut my eyes, praying that they wouldn’t recognize me if I acted dead enough.
“Mrs. Calho- OH SHIT! Guys! I found where they keep the bodies!” This was followed by the slamming of the door and a chorus of “No way!”s and “Where?”s. Eager footsteps shuffled up to the fridge door as the boy who seemed to be their leader re-opened the door, whispers sussurating in the darkness of the embalming room behind him. The fridge light flicked on, and I squeezed my eyes shut tighter. Please, please, please just go away, I thought to myself, but in they came.
I slowed my breathing as much as I possibly could to try to create the illusion of a still chest that had long ago taken its last breath. The boys filed in. Once all five of them were in the refrigerator, the heavy metal door clicked shut behind them.
“Look at that one! God damn, that looks like it hurt,” one of the older ones remarked at the suicide-by-handgun victim.
“I dare you to touch one,” came a younger voice, giggling as he spoke.
“You touch it first!” replied the first boy.
“No way!”
“I’ll touch it.” I recognized this deeper voice as the leader’s. My breath caught as I heard the bag to my right being unzipped. The empathetic part of me began to rage due to the boys’ disrespect for the dead. How would the decedents’ families feel about kids poking and prodding their loved ones just for the fun of it?
I heard the leader exhale in anticipation, and then, a moment later, he declared,
“There. Done. You guys are such pussies.” The gang chuckled nervously. I heard another bag unzip, the one furthest from me. The suicide victim that had come in last night. The leader spoke again,
“I’m gonna stick my finger in the bullet hole.”
“No way, fuck that, dude,” scoffed one voice.
“Touch her brain!” another chimed in. There was a moment of silence, the air electric with anticipation. I could hear the sickening squelch of a finger sinking into the deep bullet wound on the side of the decedent’s skull. Gasps followed. The squelching sound came again as he began to pull his digit out, and he suddenly cried out.
“What is it?” someone asked.
“Nothing,” said the leader, exhaling, “just nicked my finger on a skull fragment.”
“Dude, that is so fucking metal!” commented one. They laughed and poked a few more times, then got bored rather quickly.
“Alright, this is lamer than I thought. Hey, I bet they have one of those cremation machines here, want to see what a real fire looks like?” The others agreed eagerly and were about to file out of the fridge when I heard another zipper. And another. That was four zippers total, and there were four bodies in my fridge, excluding mine.
“What was that?” a young teen asked voice trembling. I dared to open my eyes, just the tiniest bit, and tried to move them without moving my head or neck. The boys were still standing in the fridge, and the door they had opened to leave slammed back shut. A few of them jumped. Then, the chaos began.
I saw blurs to my right moving towards the boys more quickly than I’d seen anything move in my life. Screams erupted from the group as they pushed open the door to frantically scurry out. When I heard the door shut again, I cautiously began to unzip myself. As I got out, I looked over at the other body bags. That was it- just body bags. Empty. A chill ran down my spine, but I figured the boys were distracted for the moment and it was time to make my great escape.
Tentatively, I swung my legs over the edge, listening to the blood-curdling screams on the other side of the door, unsure of what awaited me out there. In spite of my fears, I gathered myself and pushed open the door, peering around the corner. The screaming sounded like it was coming from everywhere at once, and my brain told me to RUN. But I didn’t run. Curiosity got the better of me.
I followed a scream into the crematory, arriving just in time to see the thick, mechanical door closing. With a person inside. I gasped and was about to lunge for the control panel when I saw it. Standing there, swollen fingers hovering over the ‘ON/OFF’ switch, was a living corpse. Notice that I didn’t say zombie- zombies were mindless, brain-eating idiots. This was something else entirely. The cadaver may have had clouded-over eyes and pieces of skin falling off, but it was no idiot. This corpse knew exactly what it was doing. It switched on the machine. The shrieks inside became louder and more frantic, until I heard the rush of flame come down from the roof of the machine. Then, the screams began to sound like someone trying to gargle molasses. Thick, hacking coughs followed, until finally, the only sound left was the flame.
Another cadaver shuffled in, dragging a hollering teenager behind it. This boy carried a firearm, which was promptly kicked away by the corpse dragging him. I scurried over to it and snatched it up, while the second corpse dragged his victim toward the cremulator. Flicking the machine on, the corpse jerked back the boy’s head so that its fingers could peel back his eyelids. It wanted him to watch. The heavy-duty blades began to spin faster and faster, sharp and ready to crush bone.
“No…” he groaned weakly, but the corpse pushed his head closer into the bladed bucket until his screaming was silenced by a moist THWACK, followed by the sound of a crunching skull.
Hand over my mouth, and a firearm in the other, I snuck out of the crematory and into the prep room. What greeted me was worse than what I had just seen. One of the younger boys, rock still in hand from when they were barraging my windows, laid on the embalming table closest to me, trying to bash a corpse’s head in with his weapon. His efforts were futile and the deceased easily overpowered him, even with just one arm. The other arm was reaching for the trocar. Once the hollow, elongated needle was attached to a suction hose, the corpse went to work.
I watched the boy’s skin dimple as it stabbed the instrument into his abdomen just above the belly button. The boy let out a haunting screech of pain. I watched as the tube sucked out the contents of his stomach. The corpse pulled the instrument halfway out before giving it another hefty shove, this time aiming for his chest cavity. I saw the contents of his lungs as they were punctured and whisked away by the machine. Lastly, it punctured his heart. The machine made a sickening gurgling sound as it sucked the blood from his heart. He was dead.
But the boy on the other embalming table wasn’t- not yet. The fourth corpse, my gunshot suicide victim, held him in place as it picked up a scalpel from a nearby drawer. The boy’s eyes flitted fearfully back and forth, but all he could manage was a pitiful whimper. The corpse approached his neck with the scalpel and applied pressure to his skin. Blood began to trickle down his neck as he yelped. The corpse then jabbed its finger deep into the incision, searching for the carotid artery. Once the artery had been raised and the vein had been separated, it made precise little slices in both the artery and the vein. Blood began to spurt freely from the boy’s neck, spilling onto the porcelain table and swirling down the drain. For the first time, a corpse acknowledged me. It turned, still holding the boy down, and its eyes met mine. I had expected to feel fear, but instead, I felt numb. Then, it gestured to the empty embalming machine. I realized he was asking for chemicals. As if hypnotized, I pulled formalin and a couple other secret ingredients from the cabinets while the corpse filled the machine’s tank halfway with water, then I handed the supplies to it. Its fingers brushed mine, and they were cold. So cold. Refrigerated skin. I shuddered, backing slowly away as the corpse inserted the cannula into the dying boy’s artery to fill his veins with harsh carcinogens. Even from across the room I could feel my eyes burning from the formaldehyde.
Finally, I made it to the front of the building. The carpet was littered with broken glass and rocks, and the sides of my caskets had been keyed. Several urns lay shattered on the floor. Tears began to roll down my face. They had destroyed everything.
Standing guard before the front door was the boys’ leader. I could recognize his voice when he began to laugh sinisterly, though I could see tears staining his cheeks.
“You think you and your zombie army can kill my friends and get away with it?” he asked rhetorically, baseball bat swinging at his side. I felt my grip tighten around the gun, even though I had never used one before and probably didn’t know how to if I needed to. He advanced on me, bashing the bat threateningly into the side of an 18-gauge stainless steel casket. I jumped at the sound, backing up ever-so-slightly. I had to do something. I had to make up my mind. I wasn’t going to die in my own funeral home.
Slowly, hands shaking, I raised the gun, aiming just above his head. The boy froze and his eyes widened.
“You wouldn’t…” he trailed off.
“Wouldn’t I?” I replied, voice firm and steady for the first time since our encounter. He took a menacing step forward and I somehow managed to fire off a shot into the carpet in front of his feet. A puddle made itself apparent at the base of the boy’s jeans. He hesitated for a moment, considering his options. Then, he turned and fled, leaving his baseball bat behind. I sighed heavily and let the gun drop at my feet, wiping the fear-sweat from my brow and wondering if they would have used the gun on me had they had the chance.
I turned back toward the prep room and crematory, which were both now suspiciously quiet. Slowly, I crept into the back, half-wondering if this had all just been a fever dream. There was blood everywhere, but curiously, there were no bodies. Well, except for the perfectly still four bodies that I found zipped up in the freezer. It was as if they had never moved at all. I shook my head, accepting that there were some things about death that even a funeral director can’t possibly understand. I grabbed my cleaning spray from the prep room and went to work.
The police called it a “break-in,” and the four boys that died in my mortuary were listed as missing. There was no knowledge of their whereabouts prior to their disappearances. They wouldn’t ever be found. The leader of the group, whose name I eventually learned was James Cooke Jr. from the obituary, seemed to have suffered the worst fate out of any of them. Less than a year after the incident, James’ body was released from the medical examiner’s office with the cause of death listed as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. The prions took over his fragile mind and consumed his personality until he was nothing but a living ghost. Then, after months of torture, he finally expired.
I’m even older now, even if it’s just by a year, but by God, I’ve never felt so youthful and alive. The business is thriving, and I won’t be needing to call the cops on Halloween any more. I couldn’t ask for a better life, and now, I no longer fear death. So for all you young folks out there, be good to your local businesses on Halloween, and remember: If you decide to mess with a funeral director, you might be making a grave mistake.
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