CORPSE WHISPERER
The story of a man who, somehow, lost it.
CHAPTER 1
He was staring at the content of his cupboard.Four full hours had already passed, and he couldn't get himself to acknowledge the fact that he'd lost it.
How, wasn't the problem. Things in cupboards disappear. Thieving frog-rats, paper-mouthgaps, and other abducting or devouring pests see to it. The somehow dimension, where lighters, keys, and small change regularly transit, is also a usual suspect in case of spontaneous disappearance. Really, the means didn't matter.
"Why me, why now" was another question altogether. A question with an aftertaste of depletion.
It was his only one, hard earned, well kept, still in prime condition. And it was gone, gone, gone.
Once again, he let his gaze run along the wooden, narrow shelves, packed with a lifetime of collections.
23 pots of war pickles, neatly aligned on the top shelf, were answering his scrutiny with tiny muffled squeaks.
A pair of twin perpetual motion engines were occupying the two following rows. One had stopped working and its counterpart would sometimes intterupt its routine to point and laugh at it.
Then came the collectible underwater cheerleading cards, a fully operational defenestration kit and a medium-sized pile of heaps.
"It will durate again a long time?"
The question pulled him out of his trance.
The second most praised piece of his collection, Henri the French Corpse, was getting impatient and calling from the living room.
"You can drop the French accent now, Henri, I'm not in the mood"
- "Ah, sirah. Shall I then entertain you with a selection of amusing noises?", Henri replied, annoyed.
- "Cut it, dead man. I've lost it again and this time I'm not sure I can get it back. At least not before long"
The French carcass fell abashed. "Have you stared?"
- "I've been doing nothing but staring for hours, the pickles are on the verge of mutiny."
- "Merde… are you sure it hasn't fled to the kitchen like last time?"
- "I checked, no chairs are missing, so it's not there"
- "Indeed".
Silence loudly interrupted the conversation, to finally leave when he slammed the cupboard shut, in a firework of expletives from the pickles.
"Staring won't work. We should take a walk, in any case we're late" - And he was right. His 4 p.m. appointment was already waiting since 4 p.m.
Henri looked mortified. "I know not how you are going to make without it". His French accent was thickening and, this time, authentic.
"I know you're nervous, but with or without it we should carrion"
- "Oh so funny, as always"
- "As always. Now let's go."
And so they left. Unheartedly, they armed the door's spring trap before going downstairs and started pacing slowly toward his next appointment.
He was a necrologist, specialized in post mortem psychology, and was heading, as he did every Thursdays, to the town's cemetery for his routine evictions.
Corpses were particularly resilient when it came to leaving the graveyard's premises, and it always took all of his expertise to convince them that, yes, they could be once again productive members of society.
To many a commoner, their arguments against mingling with the living were sound: they had been working most of their lives and they wouldn't be deprived of a well deserved rest. But he knew better. A deceased should always contribute. They had spent years abusing other's resources and now that they had no need for food nor sleep and were ignoring weather conditions, it was a long overdue pay-back time.
A long preliminary walk was always necessary to empty his mind and stock enough patience to interact with his clients. "I Deal With Undeads" was written on his business card; it was more than a skill: it was a demanding calling.
As he passed the novelty shop, 4 block away from his flat, he remembered that place as the background for his first encounter with Henri.
That day, his routine afternoon walk had come to a stop before the shop's front window. Henri was there, on sale, a disgruntled look on his face and a discounted price tag pinned on his lapel.
"Companion Corpse, French breed, 5 years experience"
Once inside, he insisted to inspect the goods himself. Many companion and recreational bodies advertised as French were in reality cheap Canadian spin-offs or, worse, Swiss.
"Oui, non, la baguette, la tour Eiffel, go get intercoursed. That is enough as proof or you need again?"
A tart, snappy answer with a dash of vinaigrette and a rotten syntax. Genuine! It was a deal.
From that moment on, he and Henri became inseparable, united in a mutual hatred that soon became the driving force of the best Necrology office in town...
GO TO CHAPTER TWO!
More about the Corpse Whisperer here.
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Corpse Whisperer, Chapter 1 by Danny Hefer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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