IN
THE
MORTICIANS
MOONLIGHT

A Short Fiction
In Celebration

Of

The Fall Season

By

David A. Archer
02/15/1968

10/04/2006


Of all I have heard – stories of mortem, that is – and experienced for myself, I have come to realize it to be a façade. All that it entails as per our perception, except of course the “dead” part, is a façade. A distraction to some degree, as it were.

The reaction to it, the sorrow, the curiosity, the fascination, even the fears in various forms. It is all a detour. The glimmering object which draws your attention. I am not alluding to an after life here.

At least not in ways most recognized.

Like I said, the “dead” part is real. I guess I should be inclined to divulge just how it is that I have come to this realization and I will do so, but I am not even sure if you will be willing to believe it. It isn’t as though what I have found is so far fetched as not to be believable, only that there are very few people that are willing to have their frame of mind altered to such a degree as even considering the facets I am to present here-in.

I have experienced several personal instances with the indescribable faction called death, in a few different manifestations. The dead pets, the exposure to television and a few I have come to find are a bit more real than is most common in society.

My mother died when I was quite young.

I remember certain elements of the experience rather clearly, and then others seem rather indiscernible. As if they are really neither here nor there. Something I have come to find quite interesting in my investigative curiosity into this strange and eternal nothingness in our existence, called death.

I have also hunted various forms of wild life from a rather young age, as well as having raised live stock.I have been in a close relationship with forms of death from very early on in life, but have come to find that everyone else has as well, but in different ways and whether they know it or not.

When I began this curious endeavor, this effort to clear some things up for myself, the notion for which I guess I simply stumbled on having had a closer exposure to even the idea incarnate of death than most people. It is that I began where any logical individual would.I began to crash funerals at first. Sometimes just to watch the people, and then other times to observe more closely the remains of the personal introductions to a deeper understanding of death, as they lay there in full view of any interested. Lifeless as expected, but still seeming to have some quality about them. As if there wasn’t one of them quite ready to have been in such a situation yet. As if perhaps, they even all still had something left to say and knew to whom they wanted to say it.

Even the old, wrinkled and poorly disguised remnants of human life, now all boxed up and ready to disappear except for the occasional thought and cheap arrangement of flowers.

There was much more to it though. Something I hadn’t as of yet realized fully. It was as though they were even involved in some sort of relationship beyond what we commonly see in the most common respect, through that myriad of distractions.Soon, I found myself rather comfortable in such situations. So much so, that I began to do what I could to wait around until everyone was gone. At first just to chat with the remaining employee’s of the given institution where the ceremonies had just taken place, then to find myself stealing into closets to wait for long after all had gone home.

Not much different I imagine, than many groupies toward various entertainment genre’s.

I realized things that not many people ever consider in those brief experiences toward this curiosity. Those conversations and quiet moments.

One of which is that we all most certainly are dying from even the moment of conception. The process of aging itself, is really nothing more than an extended period in the onset of death from some perspectives.

In fact, if you go to bed with someone every night...then you are already sleeping with a dead person, you just don’t know it yet.

I began to do other research as well. Most notably to the fact that there is, as with many other trade groups, a considerable amount of people that begin, but never quite go on to become morticians.

After some observation and consideration I soon realized that it wasn’t because the trade is difficult by any means. This became readily evident to me when considering what I knew about the live stock trade and how easy it was to maintain standards during slaughter for meat products meant for consumption.

It doesn’t and didn’t seem as though it could be so different. But it is, though not so much in the ways one might expect.

When I considered it, it just seemed as though work in the line of slaughtering for food stuffs would even be more difficult given the standards which must be upheld to meet specifications for consumption.

It turns out, that it very much is… but again, not in any way that a person might begin to suspect.

People that went on to be Morticians, were very much selected to do so… but yet again, not for any reason that I even could personally have begun to consider at that point.

I had a hunch and I followed it. And as morbid as it may seem, I am really glad that I did.

I began to pursue my morose curiosity with the mystery around the bustling trade of undertaking.

Why did it seem so lucrative? Why was it that obviously only a select few were chosen to fill said roles?

It was just death, after all.

Less than a century ago such rituals were still carried out in the house hold by family members.

What could possibly have changed in that short amount of time?

I began to become more aggressive with my investigative techniques. This mostly because of the secrecy and closed knit community I found the trade to be comprised of.

I had gone as far as a death groupie could go in that direction. So I stepped up my game a little, knowing I might even find dangers beyond what I was prepared to deal with should I have gotten caught.

I soon found myself doing such distasteful things as peeping in windows and the occasional, rather sloppy “second story” job in addition to staying late a poking around, in the effort to bring myself closer to my burning curiosity… usually laying quite frigid and motionless on a stainless steel slab in a dark room.

I will have you know that there was and is nothing perverse about this curiosity. At least not at first… but now I am not so sure as to how it would be categorized after making the realizations and discoveries I have.

In the many “near field” visitations and sessions I witnessed as per the basic autopsies and preparation of the bodies, I began to sense that there was a much deeper relationship transpiring. Not just between the mortician and the cadaver… but as I have alluded to, even between the dead bodies and all of the rest of what we know to be our living realm.

Of course, in some of my more successful ventures after having gained entry into the venues, I found the average stuff that many have already heard of such as the worm we all carry between our ears being carefully removed and transported to another, waiting young host. And even further yet found the just as mundane aspects of recently abducted bodies being “doctored up” in order to hide the evidence of any such other worldly transgressions. This all complete with the guys in dark glasses and suits making subtle exchanges in document and instruction with the waiting, dead faced morticians.

This stuff didn’t really draw my interest too much. The things I found more interesting were, as I have stated, the subtle… even delicate presence of relationships on various levels.

I found one of the more interesting aspects further enlightened as time went on and I managed to gain the confidence of a few, near retiring persons of this mortal trade.

Their stories alone could fill volumes. If, that is, I ever saw fit to divulge them in entirety.

I have found that some things are better savored alone.

I will include that in some of the more confessional type of interviews I eventually managed, I was exposed to some of the more pristine and meaningful art work I have probably ever seen.

All of it done quite tastefully… much of it in various nude forms and settings.... but the entirety of it consisted of carcasses as subject and model.

Some of them having obviously been brutally maimed, which meant that the sketch work and other art forms had taken place before any sort of reparation in the interest of the façade we all perceive.

While I began to make myself at home one evening, after everyone had left the morgue. I found a rather interesting mood complimented with the dim lighting a person can find in any professional atmosphere long after the doors have closed for the work day. It was a welcoming comfort that I noticed as I strolled through the rows of ice box handles and cadavers laid out being readied for the most special of attentions. In allot of ways, it seemed as though the only thing missing from the “mood” could have been a fresh cut vase of flowers and candle’s placed at tasteful intervals.

As I looked, and observed… purposefully changing my own perspective at times, it was evident even more so at this point that it was a love affair.

Simply put, and in no complicated terms, a love affair.

It was a love affair between the dead and all that is considered living.

It is a longing in such directions, but in no way as per our perception through the clouded interpretations of death which we hold in our everyday.

It is the sort of longing a person can see as lovers pull each other closer… never seeming to be close enough. This as they lay there motionless without even a word, much less a discernable care for anything transpiring beyond what can be seen as this relationship.

Many people think that death simply arrives and is then gone… but look closely and you can see that it still resides with them, caressing the every nuance which remains of their existence.

An intercourse most absurd as per our everyday considerations. An exchange so enthralled and involved that a person might think it was the act of death itself, and further is the only reason for such an extreme transition to transpire.

It is quite active but suspended beyond anywhere we as living creatures could fully appreciate it for what it seems truly to be. So much so that it could be argued in the direction of actually enhancing beauty. Pronouncing the supple aspects of that which is so mundane now, in life.

I can see the advertisements now; “Death! The Enhancer! Get some today!”

As strange as it seems, I think people would buy it. Especially those so wrapped in themselves that they have managed to miss the simple pleasures of life.

I tend to look now at a filled coffin as if to expect a smile at any moment. Maybe it is the majority of those that missed out in their missteps while living, that tend to hold on to that relationship a bit longer than others.

Maybe it means that there are still depths within life that humans have yet to explore? Areas of existence with supernatural plains for instance. Large bodies of energies and un-thought-of possibilities for, and within existence… even perhaps at our very finger tips. All going un-noticed behind the density of what we call cognitive, waiting to be noticed for its superior qualities we are not yet equipped to receive? Only and finally, finding it post mortem.

And maybe it means quite simply, one way or the other, that there is someone for everyone, after all. Waiting quietly and patiently in those places you never look to, expect, or see, for that fated moment when at last you meet, and embrace. Never again to know any other, than death itself.