The Antithesis of a Mortician

Antithesis of a Mortician

Charlotte sighed audibly and rolled her crimson eyes at the distressed woman in front of her. After this busy day, she had about enough of the living and the dead, which is saying something. This ignorant woman was blocking her way to blissful freedom. In response to this, Charlotte could not help but feel deeply agitated. The bags under her eyes felt as heavy as her feet, aching from the glamorous heels she wore at a service earlier in the day. Humans different from her do not understand what it is like to spend all day breathing in the chemicals that keep their dead ones preserved in a stupid box in a stupid hole in the stupid ground.

"Listen, Ma'am," Charlotte responded, her voice obviously hinting at the sleep under her eyes and the ache in her feet, "I've been here all day. We can schedule an appointment for another day. My watch is telling me it is time to depart."

The distraught woman was uptight, and would not take no for an answer. Her grey, deep-set eyes were puffy and glistened melancholily as the marigold rays bounced off of them. Evidence of upset was marked as the makeup had been cleansed in stripes down her face from endlessly racing tears.

"No, you listen, Ms. M! I need to get my son buried right away! As a mortician, you should have the sympathy to understand the emotions that the wringer of God is throwing me through!"

Charlotte scoffed. "I have bent myself backward for others today, lady..." she calmly boasted, moving a ghostly hand to her pale lips in order to cover an overdramatic yawn. "I do not wish to do anything for anyone but myself for the rest of the day..." She raised her thin, black eyebrows and fluttered her straight eyelashes at the woman.

"A quizzical, foul lady you are!" the woman responded with her hands on her hips and tears birthing from the corners of her eyes. "My ignorance of your cruel nature has defied me into thinking you might spare some empathy towards me!"

By now, Charlotte was twirling strings of her silky black hair between her sharp-pointed fingers. Tapping her heels on the pavement, an echo drummed through the empty parking lot. She gave another sigh under her breath.

"What did I say?" Charlotte commanded the woman to repeat. "My life as a mortician is a busy one. I am done with my duties for today. Your name is not written anywhere on the face of my watch. Now shoo..."

The woman's eyes were desperate, and the tears began to flow as if rain clouds were embedded in them, and her cries rolled like thunder. She was now on her knees on the solid ground, grasping at Charlotte's black knee-high socks.

"You have to do this for me, Ms. M! I really don't think you understand..."

Charlotte had about enough. This despicable woman was wasting the precious time she had left before she had to come back and work all over again the next day. However, the amusement she got out of the woman begging on her knees as if she were some high and mighty goddess was a lustful delight to her self-appointed grandiose. So, she continued to let the woman beg.

"Go on..." Charlotte's voice whispered down to the woman, being monotonous like the rest of her words.

"My son..." the woman cried, "was just a baby..."