Chapter 3 - Corpse Whisperer

Corpse Whisperer: Chapter 3.
All chapters here.

Her death had occurred since a maximum of two days, leaving her skin several shades of grey but none darker. Her hair was still fixed on her scalp and so far she'd only lost the nails attached to the fingers cut off during her fatal car accident. There was a slight depression on the left side of her torso, but she was still nimble and didn't limp.

"The limps is for posers" she said, as she noticed him looking at her ankles.
- "In a couple of month, when your foot falls off, feel free to call Henri and tell him about it."
- "Who's Henri?"
- "My corpse helper, the one with a limp"
- "He's lost a foot?"
- "No, he's a poser and that would teach him a lesson. Now, I wanna know why you've been giving Norman such a hard time, and I wanna know why you'd skip the 4 p.m. appointment he took for you." Is wasn't a question as much as an order.
- "To piss you off, livestock."
He gave her an even look. "Two days on the field and already picking up bad habits. I'd watch your mouth with soap if I weren't afraid to melt it"
- "Bad habits? I remember my mom dragging me out of my bed by my ankles to get me ready for school. That's a bad habit. Just like you're trying to drag us out the grave to send us work in factories."

He wondered whether she was that fast a learner or if she had actually practiced being dead just in case. Then again, runners were graveyard bullies, naturally bad tempered. He'd have to play the game to the end.

"Nobody said anything about factories. You could very well become a companion corpse. Or even a lawyer, nobody would notice"
- "And we could all find our place and work days-in days-out for the greater good" she said in a sing-song tone.
- "And it would be perfect." he replied, in tune.
- "And we'd never get any rest".
He snickered. "Tell me, if you stay under your tomb until you turn to dust, what are you resting from?"
- "Life!" She sounded as if he'd overlooked the obvious.
- "Tell me, how do you feel when you're not picketing?"
- "Bored, why?" While she seemed to have taken the bait, after a moment considering the questions, she realized she was giving in.
"Look", she continued, aware of her mistake, "if the dead and the living mingle together, terrible things will happen. Have you never heard of the prophecy?"
This time his curiosity got genuinely aroused. That was something new.
"A prophecy?"
- "When life and death entwined in the flow of the day, will bring a new era despite of nature's way, Dur Shargath will descent upon the earthly realm and engulf all that's known and all that is unseen. Really? Never heard of that?"

Henri, who'd been listening in the distance, busy with head-aching protesters, burst out into the most honest -yet slightly maniacal -  laughter he'd ever heard.
"I've seen creative ones, lady, but you beat them all" Henri shouted, half choked.
-"Thanks, really, thanks for ruining it! And I thought I had him!" she retorted, furious.
On his knees, half gagged by his own giggling hiccups, he managed to add "I can't more… ah! A prophecy… what's next? Vampires?"
-"How did you know?!" She was fulminating. Henri was literally rolling on the ground, muffling his voice in his sleeves.

"I guess I'd file this one with the last two doomsdays and my discarded rapture cards then. You almost got me interested though."
He was smiling, knowing that sarcasm was more helpful against a militant live-again than a sharpened shovel.
"Look, I can even see a bright career for you: you could be a marketer."
- "I could?"
- "Well, you use slogans, fear, and an outstanding sense of hyperbole to pass your point across, it's that or politics"
- "You're being nasty for the sake of it."
- "No, I'm just trying to help. You're wasting your time here. Think of all the things you could have done during the last 48 hours."
She paused to gather her thoughts. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I have a talent in death I didn't have while alive." She was visibly brightening.
- "Dying does that. You have less things to care about, so you can focus on what you really like. Beats sitting in a wooden box."
- "I'd never seen it like that. It's true, I can do whatever I want now! Oh I'm so glad I wasn't cremated!"
She ran away, smiling.

Henri was still recovering from his mirth attack when he was helped back on his feet by his smiling comrade.
"Either runners are getting dumber, or I'm getting better at this job. That one was fairly easy".
- "Runners are getting slow, sir. It's the limp."
- "Henri, you're going to receive a phone call one day, and then I'll chop off your foot and chain it to a tree so it doesn't come back"
- "I am afraid I am not entirely following you, sir."
- "It's the limp."
They locked their gaze on each other and Henri started to growl.
- "You growled first, you lose, tonight beer is on you."
- "Strumpet of brothel! Again!"
- "That's my job, Henri. I am paid to make your kind do things"
Realizing his last sentence sounded wronger than a pit-bull in a kindergarten, he sighted and, eyebrow raised, waved a hand to signal the retreat.

Norman caught them at the gate, bringing grass alcohol with him, a cup in each hand and half a bottle in his stomach.
"Sir you can't leave just like that you can't! You've evicted the green lady and she made me ashamed and I couldn't look at meself and now I feel so relieved you oughta drink and celebrate with ol' mister gravekeeper and a jug of greener!”


Realizing ethanol had melted nearly all punctuation out of Norman’s speech, they looked at each other and though at unison that drinking that particular beverage was definitely a bad idea.

FINAL CHAPTER HERE

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Corpse Whisperer: Chapter 3 by Danny Hefer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.