Tales from the Otherside

The Artist

Robert always considered himself an artist. While he wasn't an artist in the usual sense of the word, he considered his work an art form. He painted in brilliant hues of reds, blues and golds. However, his canvas was rather unconventional. Personally, he considered himself an artist, professionally, he was a mortician.

As a mortician, Robert was responsible for the embalming of corpses as well as making them over to look alive, a job that he relished the challenge of.

It was flu season, and this year there had been a particularly nasty strain of the virus going around. Robert's hands were full from all the carnage. He didn't mind though, business was booming.

On one night in particular, Robert had gotten a delivery of three subjects from Pleasantville General Hospital, an unusually high number for a Wednesday night.

The more the merrier, Robert thought.

His subject's misfortunes were his fortune.

Robert never liked to refer to them as people, he only referred to them by their subject number. Dehumanizing them helped Robert to sleep at night.

"Got a couple of fresh ones for you," the hospital director said and unloaded the three corpses. "Make them look pretty."

It was already 7pm on the cold and dark January evening, but Robert didn't mind a late night alone where he could work. Besides, it wasn't like he had anything waiting for him at home anyways—unless you count his taxidermy collection.

Robert loaded each of the subjects onto metal slabs and placed two of them into their refrigerated units, their housing accommodations for the evening.

He placed subject number 124 on his examination table and set to work.

He began first by removing all of the jewelry on the body. There had been a rash of graverobbings in town recently at the local cemetery. Gravesites had been completely excavated and the coffins had been completely exhumed. In some instances, the bodies themselves had even been taken. So, word had come down to remove jewelry from all of the deceased prior to burial, to discourage the graverobbers.

After the jewelry had been removed, Robert set to work on embalming the subject. This involved piercing the corpse intravenously with an eighteen gauge needle and draining all of the blood from the body and then replacing it with embalming fluid.

Robert reached into the drawer underneath the examination table for the eighteen gauge needle and retrieved it, holding it directly up to his face and admiring its sharp bevel.

Robert grabbed the subject's arm and felt around until he had found the perfect vessel. He swabbed the area and then readied himself for the puncture.

He placed the end of the needle right up against the subject's cold, clammy skin and then began to glide up the vessel, preparing for the initial penetration of steel through skin.

Suddenly, there was a noise that stopped Robert in his tracks.

Tap, tap, he had heard lightly, like a fingernail being lightly pressed against metal, and he turned to face the direction it had come from.

When he turned, he was facing the refrigeration unit doors where he had placed the other subjects, 125 and 126.
He stared intently for a bit and then shook his head.

Must be hearing things, he thought.

He took the needle and punctured the vessel of the subject, then attached the tubing to the needle and watched as the dark red blood drained out of the body into the bucket by his feet.