Chapter 4 -End - Corpse Whisperer

Corpse Whisperer: Chapter 3.
All chapters here.

Grass spirit was the kind of alcohol that gave you a hangover just by looking at it. Grass spirit was a drink that had hangovers at you.

"Look, Tronton, I'm sorry my lad, but I need to look for it later tonight. I've lost it again and this time it can very well be permanent."
Norman gave a startled look, then enquired "Have you stared?"
- "For the best of the afternoon, yes"
- "Have you looked in the kitchen? Missing chairs?"
- "None"
- "You, sir, need a drink".

The answer hung in the air before going through his lips. He didn't feel like going home for a second round of searching. He didn't feel like spending a restless night thinking about it, and most of all, he didn't feel like being sober.
"I think you're right."

- "Have a sip then, and don't spill will ya? It kills the lawn if you spill and I have a hell of a time growing it back."
He quaffed the content of both cups, in a row, almost snatching them from Norman's hands. The liquid tasted obviously grassy, somewhat piquant, and in the same time had a sort of dull , warm presence. It tasted like a bee sting at the base of your neck.

At the temporary cost of several dozens IQ points, he immediately felt better. "Boy, isn't this a most needed slap in the face of an exhausting, belaboring day!" was how he thought he expressed his gratitude. To everybody else, it sounded like "Wharbl". Instant drunkenness had struck.

Henri looked at him with an annoyed expression.
"I limp, you lurch. How's that for you?"
- "You're jsut jaeluos beacuse yuo gonna ooze out if you drnik taht"
- "Yes, so there this is low"
- "Adn you're bieng all Fnrech agian!"
- "And you're being dyslexic!"
- "And yuo, yuo are daed!"

Tronton, suddenly feeling several time zones away, decided to leave that place where everybody spoke in tongues and went on opening the gate as a sign that everyone should call it a day.

The pair left, staggering and bickering so eagerly that the distance home was covered in no time.

Arrived at destination, they unlocked the apartment's door and, too absorbed by their discussion, went directly inside without disarming the door's spring trap.
A short pang of noise exploded in the air,  a crossbow bolt surged from the end of the room, pinning their dispute right off their mouths, straight into the opposing wall.
The bolt kept vibrating for a while under their nonplussed gaze.

- "I think we'll leave it at that" Henri opined.
- "Brilliant idea. I'm suddenly a lot more sober"
- "I would say, slightly more sober, you're still lurching"
- "Whatever, let's get inside and look for it, I won't have dinner before I've found it."
- "As you wish." Henri pause for a split second. "Hey, do you remember that time when we made it come back with some loose change? Maybe it could work?"
- "Ha! Yes!" he almost shouted, brightened, while almost instantly reaching for coins in his trousers pockets.
His fingers burrowed down.
He was expecting the greasy, cold feeling of spare change, but instead he came in contact with a very familiar shape.
He couldn't believe what he had found.

- "Henri! That's it! In my pocket, I've found it!"
- "You mean you had it with you all along?" Henri asked, baffled.
- "No, of course not. It must have gone to the Somehow Dimension. You know how object lost there tend to reappear when alcohol is involved? Problem solved."

He raised it to eye level, a content smile on his face. He would be able to sleep tonight, and tomorrow would be an easy day at work. Hell, the whole week would be easier. He'd got it!

Glowing with joy, breathing deeply with relief, he entered his bedroom to store it in his closet. In a tighter box, this time. Where it would be safe, still, and waiting there for further use. No more losing it, no more wandering.

He opened the closet's door, still holding it… then he lost his grip.

He had pulled it out of his pocket in a rather clumsy way, and hadn't been holding it firmly enough. It slipped through his fingers, starting its inevitable course toward the floor.
It wasn't fragile, trying to crush or squeeze it would never damage it.
It was, though, very unstable. In the way of some very capricious chemicals.
The ones that have their very own deflagration scale.

A drop from more than a half a meter would definitely make it burst. And probably the whole building with it.

He had not time to react. It was over in a blink. Everything went noisy, then white, then black…
…then Henri, upside down, his face in a dubious close up.

- "I'm about to spit out a cliché about this being heaven and you being a very ugly angel…"
- "Oh, but not at all, chief. This is earth. You've been, hm, asleep for a little while"
- "How long?"
The disembodied voice of Norman Tronton spoke from somewhere above him. "Around two weeks I'd say, sir. Long-ish, if you ask me. But then you don't look too bad."
- "Tronton where are you? I can't see a thing but Henri's face!"
- "I'm above, sir. I didn't close your box, or your hole. We bet, Henri and I that you'd come back. Seems that he won."
- "Come back from where? What hole, what box?" He was disoriented, his brain only marginally faster than a narcoleptic slug.
- "Sir… half your building's turned to dust, all the windows in the block got shattered by the blast. You didn't think you'd survive that, did you?"
- "So, you're trying to tell me that I've turned into one of my clients? How are Henri and I not some splatters and a plume of smoke then?"
- "Somehow, we didn't get dismembered" Henri replied with a wide, yellow grin, giving a strong inflection to the word "somehow".
- "Owh we're lucky bastards aren't we" His tone was joyless.

The Somehow Dimension had still been open in his pocket, and had sucked them both in, to let them come out at a random place and time. Just like a couple of almost empty lighters at the end of a party.
It was a poor consolation; If the whole transition had prevented them from being quite literally all over the place, the explosion had still killed him.
And now he was back. He fell silent.

"Where did we reappear?" he asked after a moment, in an almost disinterested tone.
- "A couple of streets away, two weeks ago, we popped through a man-hole. I brought you here. A jar of war pickles made it, too. Useless to say they threw a fit."
- "Ah well… let them. They'll calm down eventually…" his words trailed off.

Henri and Norman's voices faded into the background. He was slowly realizing what had happened to him. He was at the bottom of his own grave, for the excellent reason that he was legally dead. After years and years interacting with awakened corpses, he had become one. Poetic injustice were the words he would have chosen.

But at the moment he didn't feel like talking.
After all, he had been diligently working for most of his adult life, and now that he was dead, he had the right to feel like doing nothing at all, and do it well.
Maybe, at some point, he'd become a picketer, a marketer or, who knew, a necrologist again. But that was for later.

He let out a yawn. Now was time for some long, long holidays.

FIN.

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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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Chapter 2 - Corpse Whisperer

Corpse Whisperer: Chapter 2.
All chapters here.

He came out of his daydreaming as they came near the graveyard.
His heart was laced with the acid adrenalin spike caused by the morning events. Nothing could distract him long enough to dislodge that one fact from his thoughts: he'd lost it, again.
And the pickles were mad, to the boot…
Maybe the place, familiar and, in a very literal sense, prone to resting, would offer a more peaceful environment to help his mind focus on something else.
It was immense.
People who where new to the town would always wonder how such a huge necropolis could have formed. The truth was hidden in history: several small villages had held the terrain as a the "common boneyard" for centuries. It had not been a problem until the tenants started complaining of leaks, and men who could handle a growing population of complaining revenants were suddenly needed.

Men like Norman Tronton.

Norman was the local corpsekeeper. A tough job if there was one, which consisted not only in keeping the awakened deads steady, but also in preventing them from forming unions. If Necrologists were engineers, corpsekeepers were their much needed artisan counterpart.

Tronton was at the main gate as they arrived, warmly greeting them.
"Good morning Doctor!"
- "Good morning, Norman! So, how are they today?"
"Pretty quiet if you ask me, sir. I'm a bit surprised actually. 'tis the angry season alright but they're all euthanasic… aenestitic… asthenic, that's the word!"

"Do you think", he asked, "that there's a cause for it, or could it be some abnormal behavior?"
Norman's expression changed to a thoughtful frown.
- "What I think is that you're doing a mighty good job, sir. The more you come, the quieter they get. Honest,  now I'm wondering if they could go dead a second time".
- "Only if you chop their head off. Plus, they are still picketing  at sunset aren't they?"
- "This picket thing, that's their only past-time sir, they won't stop until they find something better to do. I reckon you won't be needing to chop, sir. And it's tougher than it looks, really."
- "I wouldn't doubt you opinion, Norman… Now, tell me, where's my 4 o'clock?"
- "Ah, yes. I wouldn't know sir."
He looked at Norman's complexion, going increasingly redder. Norman was a very tall man. The only feature equaling his height was his weight. Fat Norman, as the residents would creatively call him, was momentarily looking like a tomato about to burst out of shame.
That incident was a first. The misplacement of a tenant meant extraordinary circumstances; Norman liked could sometimes be a tad heavy on the bottle, but he was not the careless type.

- "It's not like you to lose track of a corpse. How comes?". - "Well… say… You know, she hadn't been dead for long when she awoke, say, ehr… maybe a day or two. Still looking pretty green if you allow me the expression."
- "She tried to seduce you?" he asked, slightly disturbed by the thought.
- "Why, no! They'd do that sometimes, but look at me! 'Been doing the job for 27 years and shan't fall for beginner's tricks." With indignation in his voice, he continued. "When I say green, I say spry. She ran, see. Very, very fast. Now she's hidden in some mausoleum, but I'd be damned if I knew which one."

Trying to visualize Fat Norman running after a lively she-corpse was a horse short of an epic. Norman knew his trade, but wasn't of age anymore and his knees would have given-up after a couple of steps.

"That's alright, that's alright. Don't bother yourself too much. She'll be out at dusk along with all the others and I'll have a little chat with her."

A runner. Of all the thing, he'd have to go after a runner. Had he brought it with him instead of losing it, the matter would have been completely different. Getting to convince a runner while empty handed was an agonizing task.
Henri proposed to get on with helping the regulars as a warm-up. Dusk was still a couple of hours away and, in any case, the only other choice was a round of Norman's home-made grass alcohol.
After venturing a "Liquor or succor, dear sir?" Henri recovered from a heavy duty scowl and proceeded to fetch the remaining remains for his employer.

Said employer had a hard time focusing. The usual babble occurring during his consultations,  about the dead proletariat, peace for passed, and other gimmicks was getting under his skin. He found himself relieved when the sun ultimately set.
Nightfall woke the picketing corpses from their theoretically eternal rest  (actually a 6 hours slack break) and, as usual, they gathered toward the graveyard's gate to continue with the protests.
-"How do we rest?"
-"In peace!"
-"When do we want it?"
-"Forever!"
The same slogan went on and on, with infinite patience, hoping to get what they wanted by wearing-out any available listener. The heavy iron barrier they were standing near to had actually started to rust out of boredom, proof of their marginal yet increasing success.

The running dead girl was there, shouting with the others.
He approached the mass of protesters with the intent to deliver his usual speech. It would send a third of them back to their grave, another third back to work and irritate the remaining ones enough to give them a migraine.
Everything happened exactly as planned, save for the runner, who came at him with a dull look in her eyes.

CHAPTER 3 HERE

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Chapter 1 - Corpse whisperer

 CORPSE WHISPERER

The story of a man who, somehow, lost it.

(Featuring a thousand elephants and one big lie)
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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!

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Corpse Whisperer, Chapter 1 by Danny Hefer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.