Revival House

by S. S. Michaels

  I vacate Aunt Billie’s room so she and Uncle Sterling can enjoy some privacy. Taking a seat in the crowded community room, I try not to think about what my uncle may be doing to his wife in that dark and stuffy room filled with hissing and pinging machinery. Against my own will, I imagine him struggling to lower the bed rail and stepping on the plastic guest chair to mount the raised bed. I shudder and realize my head hurts.

  Plenty of interesting geriatrics, along with a bottle of Uncle Sterling’s Klonopin, divert my attention.

  Seated on a plastic-covered floral patterned club chair across the dark cherry coffee table from me is a lively old gentleman who repeatedly asks some apparition what has happened to his socks. I do not hear any answer, of course, but whatever he imagines makes him cackle like a tickled witch. I casually bend over, holding an ancient copy of Southern Living in front of my face, and check out the man’s ankles. He is wearing socks. One blue, one gray— mismatched, but socks nonetheless. Clearly psychotic, this octogenarian. I feel a sudden urge to pull out what little white hair he still has by the roots, shoving his ill-fitting dentures down his throat. Then, I consider slipping one of my business cards into the pocket of his moth-eaten cotton robe. But, I had probably done that on an earlier visit. Everyone in The Home has at least one of my cards. They probably dread my visits, now that I think about it.

  Next time, perhaps I’ll wear a long black hooded robe and carry a sickle. Just for laughs, of course. On second thought, maybe that would help business. Perhaps I could visit other retirement communities, too, dressed as the Grim Reaper, scaring people to death. These are desperate times, and Uncle Sterling sure as hell isn’t doing anything to save our skins.

  An unpleasant-looking stocky woman, dressed all in white, paper crown to orthotic shoes, drifts through the room distributing small paper cups filled with various medications. I assume she is a nurse. I hope so, in any case. She looks more like a prison warden or perhaps that nurse character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. She wears no nametag or any other form of identification. I think about questioning her position within The Home, but I’m not that interested. Perhaps I will get lucky and someone will ingest an overdose or be dealt the wrong meds and require my professional services. Wouldn’t that be convenient? My head throbs and I think about rushing the white behemoth and pilfering some narcotics, something stronger than Klonopin. My Seroquel and Imitrex are just not enough these days. I feel like someone shot me in the head. I feel like gouging out my own eyes.

  I wonder if anyone has a cigarette. Perhaps the woman with the tracheotomy, who is engaged in some complicated-looking card game with two other animated cadavers. The thought causes me to laugh aloud, though I do not mean any disrespect to the unfortunate tracheotomized, of course. I bite my lip and straighten my silk tie. The Sock Man stares at me, his mouth hanging open, grizzled cheeks pocked and concave. He looks like the men who beg for change down on River Street. I almost tell him to get a job, but then I remember where I am. I think he’s trying to tell me something. Telepathically.

  “How are you on this fine evening, my good sir?” I ask him, smiling my toothiest grin.

  “Huh?” he shouts. A heavy odor of urine and decay drift my way in the cool breeze from the air conditioning vent overhead. My smile inverts itself and I step away.

  Never mind. I am too depressed to converse, even with the most charming of the incontinent. If he is reading my mind, I don’t care at the moment. I have bigger problems, such as the resuscitation of my livelihood and the courtship of my fair Scarlet, which perhaps are intertwined in some way I haven’t yet discovered.

  Of course, I’d be more likely to win her favor if I remained employed, wouldn’t you agree?

  There’s the connection.

  Uncle Sterling hobbles at top speed out of Aunt Billie’s room, looking flushed, his shirttail flapping from beneath his brown waistcoat. “Let’s go, boy,” he gasps at me.

  “You forgot your cane,” I say, trying not to look at him, trying not to imagine how he came to look so disheveled.

  “Well, get it for me.” His bulging eyes dare me to disobey. I swallow nothing, hard. I am growing tired of his domineering yet passive behavior. I would describe him as passive-aggressive, however, I do not know if that is the correct psychological term for his recent actions.

  “No, sir, I will not go in there. Get your own damned cane.” I find his untidy state disturbing and do not wish to see in what state of dress, or undress, he’s left my aunt. I make an involuntary sour face, anticipating a blow to the ear.

  None comes.

  I don’t care.

  He hurls a sigh in my general direction and spins on his heel. “This is no time for your asinine nonsense, boy.” He can move quick as a riled gator when he wants to. Further proof he does not need that damned cane. The only reason he carries it is to remind me of the day I threw Aunt Billie from the parade float. He’d twisted his knee, falling into the pothole, running to her rescue, and had needed the cane for a few weeks. But his injury was minimal and should have certainly healed over seven years’ time. Brandishing the cane is his way of punishing me. I have to admit, it is highly effective. Especially when he uses it as a nightstick against my thick skull. Could be the reason I suffer so many headaches.

  “Mr. Exley,” a woman in a lime green pantsuit calls after us as we make our way toward the exit. I wince at her gaudy out-of-season St. Paddy’s Day fashion sense. “Mr. Exley!” She jogs to catch up with us, waving a sheet of paper in front of her at arm’s length.

  Uncle Sterling stops, looking sick and deflated.

  I want to punch him in the stomach. Just another one of my violent instincts bleeding through my psyche. I think it has something to do with the headaches.

  “Sir, I hate to keep you, but we need to discuss your wife’s account.” Apparently, this woman is The Home’s accountant or manager or something. Judging by the look on my uncle’s face, I do not think he is very excited to speak with her.

  Sterling flashes me a sad look that turns my stomach and tells me to wait for him while he sorts things out.

  Having had my fill of others’ weird smells, despair and misery, I retreat to the car to scavenge for a cigarette and to swallow a pill or two.

  Chapter 5 – Caleb

  “That’s not gonna fucking work.”

  It is against Georgia’s state law to use profanity in the presence of a dead body in a funeral home. It is true— look it up.

  Four doesn’t give a shit. He slouches on the stainless steel counter on the other side of the embalming table, slurping a Red Bull and shoveling Cool Ranch Doritos into his wide mouth while I shave Stella Fox’s face. Yes, everyone is shaved when they die, including women and children. Even the tiniest of hairs affect the make-up’s adhesion.

  “It’s been done before, man,” Four continues. “You said it wasn’t that big a hit in the eighteen hundreds, what makes you think it would be any better now? People have their own cameras now, in case you haven’t noticed. They don’t have to wait for some shithead with a Daguerreotype or whatever.”

  Ms. Fox has an abnormal amount of hair on her face. A veritable forest of downy white fuzz grows on the periphery of her cheeks and chin. It’s like shaving a late-stage dandelion. I pull the razor from her earlobe to the point of her chin.

  Then, from somewhere near the ceiling, I watch myself whisk off her eyebrows with a couple of quick flicks of the wrist.

  Do you ever feel like you’re watching yourself from the outside? Like you’re in a movie or something? I do. In fact, that’s how I feel most of the time these days.

  In discussing ways in which to save my business, over sweet tea with Four, the practice of post-mortem photography had come up. I had gotten the idea from the pictures in our sales parlor, the ones that hang on the wall near my desk. Intrigued by their historical appearance, I’d done a bit of research on memento mori over the past few weeks and was considering giving it a try.

  The disposa
ble razor catches on the sizable mole near Ms. Fox’s nose and falls to the cracked white tile floor with a hollow clack.

  “Four, you have such little regard for tradition,” I say, bending to retrieve the razor. I do prefer to use a straight razor, but my hands have been a bit shaky as of late. Too much caffeine or some damn thing, I’m sure, or not taking my meds regularly.

  It is true, anyway, about Four and his disregard for tradition. The Mercer family is a Savannah institution. Ask anyone. They’ve been here since the day Oglethorpe set his drunken boots upon our soil and settled the eleventh American colony. But, the historical significance of his family’s past is wasted on Four. He lives in a world of his very own, where history means absolutely nothing. In his fantasy world, populated by super heroes and zombies, the only things worth living for are horror movies, comic books, and scads of loose women. He could at least try to write songs or renovate a crumbling Victorian mansion or something.

  My uninspired friend drains his can of Red Bull and lets out a table-shaking belch. “Damn right, man. Why live in the past? Move forward. Four words: In. O. Vate,” he says, smashing the empty can against his forehead. He was never much good at math; perhaps the can crushing has something to do with it. I marvel at how hard his forehead must be. Those skinny cans are not easy to collapse, even when you stomp on one with your foot.

  I envy the way Four keeps from mentally maturing. I wish I could be so carefree. His mention of innovation is a surprisingly mature concept; one I’ve actually thought a lot about lately, though I never speak of it.

  Born and raised in Savannah, to a family who has resided here for nearly as long as the Mercers, only once had I dared to defy tradition. And I did the unthinkable.

  I attended college in the North.

  The North is where I learned of innovation.

  The South is where I learned not to speak of it.

  Such talk is not polite conversation.

  “Well, sir,” I say, “It may surprise you to know that I do indeed have an eye toward the future.” I throw the pink razor into a biohazard receptacle, cover Ms. Fox’s denuded face with a sheet, and lead Four out to my desk in the showroom. I drop into my creaky leather chair and move my computer’s mouse, turning off the Exley & Sons screen-saver. The Forever Hollywood Cemetery’s website lights up my monitor.

  “Look here, my vile and disgusting friend, I found this website just the other night,” I say to Four, his unshaven moon face hanging over my left shoulder. Working with cadavers on a daily basis, I thought I could handle the world’s worst odors, but my friend’s foul Dorito breath makes my eyes water. I turn my nose a bit to the right. It doesn’t help. I wish for my jar of Vick’s VapoRub which I use while working with particularly ripe specimens.

  I click on a link to a webpage that details the cemetery’s LifeStories™ options. “They take photographs and videos, the decedent’s favorite music, and other scraps, and assemble an impressive multimedia presentation honoring the deceased. It can be viewed not only at the service, but also at various video kiosks placed throughout the graveyard, at any time. I believe said presentations may also be ordered on DVD or even downloaded straight from a website. For a fee, of course.”

  I don’t know how to operate a video camera or edit footage or anything, but I think Four might be able to assist me with that. I know he has a webcam anyway. He mostly uses it for nefarious purposes such as showing strange women his private parts. Or for selling ‘new-in-box’ comic book action figures, which could also be construed as nefarious for a grown man.

  Four clicks on a link taking us to a sample of the cemetery’s work. A video of an elderly couple dancing in a crowded banquet room dissolves into a still photo of an old woman posing with a dour youngster wearing a mortarboard cap and graduation gown. The image then fades into one of the crone with several smiling children surrounding her on a park bench while, ironically, ‘Moon River’ plays on the soundtrack.

  “Moon River” was, of course, written by Savannah’s very own Johnny Mercer, a distant relative of Four’s. I wonder if Four is even aware of that fact. He’s never mentioned it. He did not react to hearing it on the soundtrack to this woman’s life. I think he’s somehow embarrassed by his most famous relative.

  “O. Kaaaay,” Four says, drawing out the word, drawing his bushy black brows together. “You want to make videos? I thought you just wanted to take pictures?”

  I look at him, furrowing my own gray eyebrows.

  Odd thing about me: I’ve had gray hair ever since that ill-fated St. Patrick’s Day. People are always stunned to learn that I am much younger than my appearance belies. I think it lends credibility to my profession. More importantly, Scarlet once told me she finds it ‘deliciously deceitful.’ I took that as a compliment.

  “Um,” Four says, sucking Cool Ranch dust from the tips of his blunt fingers, confused. “Wait. You want to make some kind of music videos or something, and take pictures of dead bodies?”

  I can tell that he thinks I’m crazy. Why should he be any different from anyone else? I can see it in his eyes, just like everyone else’s. Everyone looks at me that way these days. They all know what I’m thinking. I want to slam my elbow into his nose. You see why I’ve never broached the subject of funerary innovation before? I knew my ideas would meet resistance from someone in this anachronistic part of the world. But, I never expected that someone to be Four.

  “I have not yet come to any firm conclusions, but I’m beginning to get some ideas.” My face is its usual blank mask, hiding a perfect torrent of ultraviolence. After his reaction to the Hollywood Forever video presentations, I don’t dare mention any of my other tentative plans, which focus on not only post-mortem photography and piecing together bits of the decedent’s home movies, but also— hush, now— placing the bodies themselves in the decedent’s favorite locations and photographing them there.

  While Four views himself as ‘cutting-edge’ and ‘forward-thinking,’ he’s never been any further from home than Charleston, and he does not follow any news other than the local stories or what is popular in the areas of horror comics and ghost hunting. Most things related to any kind of hard science or even ‘outside-the-box’ ideas are well beyond his cerebral grasp. My Lord, ‘cutting edge.’ Please. He would freak out if I told him of my budding plans to photograph the deceased in, let’s say, more natural settings.

  I, in stark contrast, being from a Funeral Family, have always been fascinated by death, mostly from a scientific rather than a philosophical perspective. I fully understand why someone’s body stops working when their carotid artery is severed by a bowie knife or when someone jams a flathead screwdriver into their ear. But, why can’t we fix those victims? How can we slow down the dying process in order to make life-saving repairs? Why, if someone is clinically dead for a short time, can’t we restore them? The usual ‘mad scientist’ questions, I suppose. I’ve conducted my own experiments on various small animals in my basement lab, but I just can’t seem to figure out why death absolutely must be a permanent state. The question has kept me awake at night since I was a kid.

  One does not mention this kind of intense curiosity to one’s friends, when one is an adult with access to medical equipment and a healthy (well, freshly dead) supply of test subjects. Ideally, the subjects would be near death and not already there, but I am rarely the first person on the scene of a burgeoning fatality, and the authorities always know about the accident that caused it well before my arrival.

  Four’s made-up zombie face goes as blank as mine for a moment. Then, his caterpillar eyebrows knit together again, cracking the gray greasepaint at the bridge of his nose. His black-circled eyes widen, as does his red ringed mouth, which for some reason makes me think of Scarlet. He looks like someone slapped him, which also makes me think of Scarlet. “You’re not going to videotape yourself draining corpses’ bodily fluids and pinning their jaws shut or anything, are you?”

  Ever since we were teenagers, Four has been i
nterested in ghosts and things, but show him the simplest arterial hook or trocar and he’ll either vomit last night’s dinner or fall away in a girlish swoon. He might faint right here, right now, if I say yes to his question. It might be fun to watch, but I don’t want to waste my time.

  Instead, I sigh and roll my eyes. “God, no. Nothing like that. Most people are squeamish, like you, the Puking Pansy,” I say. I grin at the blush that fights to color his gray cheeks. I say no more for fear of him thinking I truly am some kind of ghoul, though I know it’s too late for that. He can see it in my transparent eyes, my glass heart.

  Again, I don’t give a shit. I care less and less of what people think of me. I’ve been having some weird ideas and dreams lately— beating people with two-by-fours, smashing their heads in, blood spattering my green tie. I think they’re dreams, anyway. I’m so afraid that I may act on some of them soon. I’ve been in a number of fights lately, feeling like there’s some kind of monster lurking within me. People look at me funny, too, like they can read my mind. I can tell they think I’m a nutcase.

  Sooner or later, I will confirm everyone’s suspicions. I’m sure of it, and I’m afraid.

  My friend and I sit in the glow of the computer monitor for a few silent moments, each thinking our singular thoughts— mine far more sinister than his, I am certain.

  “Whatever you’re planning to do,” a loud voice says from the doorway, “don’t bother.”

  I spin my chair to see Uncle Sterling in his soiled bathrobe leaning on the doorframe. “Taking photographs, making videos. Ha. Foolish boy talk. You want to do something to save the business? Find a lamp with a genie in it and start rubbing.” By his slurred speech, I can tell that Uncle Sterling has recently indulged in a snifter or two of brandy. Something he’s been engaging in more and more frequently. “You can’t save this business, boy,” he says, pointing at me with that damned cane. His head turned to the side, eyes glittering in the yellow half-light streaming from the parlor beyond his shoulder. “The whole industry is a goddamn sinking ship. Go find something else to do, you simpleton.”