‘What should we drink too?’
‘Well how about we drink to the continued memory of your existence and how it burdens us to this very day’
Uncorking a bottle that was either vodka or formaldehyde–the labeling system of the mortuary was admittedly poor–Regan took a cautionary swig from the bottle: employing the scientific method of a battering ram.
Deeming his continued vision to be a sign of good news, the mortician tipped a healthy glug into a beaker and then took an even healthier glug for himself.
Taking in the stale air of afternoon with a deep breath, Regan lost himself for a moment in the brilliant radiance of the setting sun as it casted a glow across the mortuary, the warm light emboldening shadows as they grew long–illuminating a bucket marked Spare-hands quite beautifully.
Michael, Regan’s friend and colleague, saw this and followed suit by dumping a vase of flowers out of the window and gesturing for the bottle.
Serious for a man who appeared predestined to become funeral director, Michael appeared to many to have been born without the muscles required for the natural act of smiling.
His own grandmother had once described him as “A parking inspector who was unpleasant enough to ticket his own car as a matter of professionalism.” While true in sentiment this was a particularly cold thing to be announced at a child’s birthday party–a party that would later prove to be the last Michael would ever attend in celebration.
Crumpling his brow at the strength of the vodka’s odor the Funeral director relented and took a short draught of the liquid without taking any time to savour the taste, or lack thereof.
Both men enjoyed the silence of that moment.
Leaning in stretch, Reggan swung backward slightly too far and bumped his chair against a cupboard behind him, just managing to regain his balance before toppling over and dashing the cabinetry to the floor.
Pausing for a moment in the precarious aftershocks of overbalance, he grew startled to hear a sudden thud-ish type of noise from somewhere within the cupboard, a noise that was similarlly followed by a much wetter, and much more concerning, drip. Rocking all four legs of his chair back to the ground, the mortician spun around and twisted the cupboard’s key into the locked position, leaving that eventual problem for another day.
A clumsy man, Regan once had managed to kick his own foot into the spoke of a bicycle whilst cycling over a footbridge. Upon fishing himself out of the river below, he decided from that moment onwards to never again attempt any feats of exercise as a matter of personal safety and basic perseverance of existence.
With that in mind it would be truthful to claim that Regan was a walking disaster of limbs. His unconsidered and overtly expressive use of hand gestures had slapped all too many passers-by as he emphasised things, like what coffee he would like to order. But no matter the circumstance the mortician was ever unflappable in his positivity.
Obscure with life experiences, Regan had cobbled together a bizarre skill set over his 40 years that had left him uniquely qualified to become a mortician. Having spent a fair part of his young adult life in training within the ever shifting departmental dichotomies of university, Regan had a wonderful two years of laughter and intelligent discussion while teaching the ins and outs of optical neuro-mechanics.
His study and labours were sadly to be brought undone by but a simple slip of the wrist; one that, while acceptable in many professions, had the unfortinuate pecularalities to be looked down upon when eye surgery was involved. And so it was that Regan became a mortician.
Truly it is a forgotten wonder of circumstance that following his sacking from the university Regan would later that find himself operating on that very same person, in his new profession, but this was lost on the mortitan as he was never a man who was good with faces.
Knocking back the remnants of his beaker, Regan burped and looked out the basement window into the early twilight above, ‘ye oh so few of poetic heart, be merry as the world falls down upon us.’
‘Cut the melencolia Regan,’ Michael snorted. ‘If you have to quote things tawdry enough to have ye in them at least get the context right.’ Pushing his glasses up his nose Michael handed the vodka back to Regan and crossed his leg over his knee. ‘It would be more apt to quote “long hangs the absent night o’yer thou forgotten home. Curel the winter, cruel the distant spring, gone not the cruelty of strangers”’.
‘If I wished to be apt I’d bloody well be apt then, you ruddy teapot!’ barked Regan, indolently gesturing each word with a shake of the vodka bottle and splashing the drink onto the mortuary carpet. ‘What should we drink to then, Michael?’ he continued, ‘Should we drink to the end of the world, the miracle that is childbirth? Should we drink to the days of auld lang syne, or is auld not contextual enough for this sentence?’ Now thoroughly drunk, Regan allowed himself to slump to the floor and then began to singing the opening verse of a folk song he only half remembered.
‘Regan…*Hic*’ Michael beagan, also beginning to feel the effects of the vodka–gods, he thought to himself for a moment, when was the last time he was drunk? ‘I think…I think we should burn down the mortuary, let it all go up in a big whoosh,’ gesturing his arms upward Michael half slipped off his chair, ‘it’ll be like a cremation but for a building, we can do that.’
Forgoing the beaker to drink directly from the bottle, Regan took a swig and passed it back to Michael. ‘Mate, me old mate, you’re talking my language. If we were any smarter they might have called us heretics.’ Standing in stumble and accidentally barreling into the cupboard he had already once accosted, Regan tipped the cabinetry over hearing a loud slosh of liquids then beginning to pool together within, ‘That sounded expensive,’ he muttered while reaching into the bucket of hands.
With a drunken laugh, Regan lobbed one of the detached hands at his friend, using a second to knock a kerosene lamp onto the floor.
Standing next to the spreading flame the mortician lifted his new extremity triumphantly, ‘We’ll use these and they’ll only find the fingerprints of dead men.’ he cackled.
Madden by alcohol, Regan began to knock unlabeled bottles of highly flammable liquids to the carpeted mortuary floor.
Pausing to look at the bottle of vodka before polishing off the remaining dregs, Michael sniffed at the annulus of the glass. ‘Reggie, I think this was formaldehyde,’ he muttered before finally noticing the building flames.
Considering the mortuary’s lack of a fire exit to not yet be a pertinent concern, the funeral director leaned back into his chair and began to drift off to sleep.
Vodka warming him within the haze of contentment, Michael felt himself relax, noticing for the first time that he could currently remember that he was smiling.
J.McCray
2020
Sunday Short Stories 