A Man Of Many Talents

By Noel Hansen

The loud shrill beep of the fire alarm woke James Cardigan up from sleep with a start. He sat up straight in his bed, confused, and looked around the room to try and identify what woke him up. All seemed quiet and calm. James looked at his alarm clock: it read 4 am, 2 hours before it was scheduled to wake him up for his first day on the job. He laid back in bed and attempted to drift back to sleep, but was startled by the same sharp, tinny alert that had woken him before; this time he was awake enough to realize that it also said “low battery” shortly after it woke him.

He stumbled to his feet and walked through his apartment, trying to identify which alarm was having the issues. The apartment was dark so he stumbled into pieces of furniture as he felt his way around, only half-able to see where he was going. He didn’t want to turn on the light, for fear that it would make him unable to get back to sleep; and since he slept naked, he didn’t want to open any windows to let moonlight in. He was a very modest man; his friends had a hard time getting him to wear anything more adventurous than a button down shirt with two buttons undone when they went out on the weekends.

The alarm beeped angrily at him again from somewhere in the apartment. “Low battery” it said in a monotone woman's voice, coming from everywhere and nowhere. Slightly bewildered, James moved from room to room; he had thought he would be able to track it down by sound alone, but was finding that impossible, so he elected to watch each alarm separately and see if the light flashed red. He watched the one in his room, and when the light flashed green, moved to the hall. “Low Battery” came that voice again, hot on the heels of that piercing buzzer, both seeming to bounce off the walls all around him like balls in a game of snooker. No dice from the hall, so he moved to the little kitchen area.

Standing in his small kitchen, he leaned against the counter and searched for where the smoke detector was located. He found it above the stove, and locked eyes on it. “Low Battery”, it said as it flashed red on the small LED light. He quickly grabbed it from the ceiling and ripped the battery out of it as quickly as he could. He bent over the counter after he did that, leaning on his elbows. He closed his eyes for a second and lowered his cheek to the counter, to feel the comforting cool smoothness of it against his cheek. It relaxed him. He stood up and moved towards a drawer, drawing out a battery and inserting it into the alarm, then hooking it up to the ceiling again.

Returning to his bedroom, he falls down on his bed, face down. He takes one breath, then flips over and pulls the sheets over his body. He wriggles a little under the sheets, enjoying their feeling on his skin. He crosses his arms and stares at the ceiling. During this entire time he has avoided thinking, focusing on execution of the task at hand. With that gone, his mind begins to spiral over tomorrow's tasks.

He catalogs everything he needs to do tomorrow morning, in order: wake up, brush teeth, use bathroom, shave, shower, comb hair, put on deodorant, make coffee, drink coffee, make breakfast, eat breakfast, put on clothes, leave for his new job at the mortuary. He silently recites this list over and over and begins to think about the best order to do the various tasks in, considering which he can do at the same time in order to be more efficient and potentially sleep in slightly more. He has never had to wake up this early for a job before, they expect him in every day at 7 am so he can perform miscellaneous tasks before mourners arrive for the day's funerals. This doesn’t calm him at all, but the thoughts are coming unbidden and James doesn’t know how to stop them so he just leans in and lets them flow, hoping they will exhaust themselves.

He turns over in bed and stares at the wall for a while. He is still getting used to sleeping alone.

The next morning, James pulls up to the front of the mortuary while it is still dark. It is early January and the sun still doesn’t rise until 7:45 AM, though there is a faint glow on the horizon, visible behind the mortuary.

The mortuary itself is an imposing building, a large old Victorian home that was renovated and converted roughly 20 years back. It used to be the house of the grave keeper before the other mortuary nearby burned down and the old gravekeeper sold the cemetery to a funeral home conglomerate.The representative of the corporation loved the look of the house when he visited the property, called it very “stately and regal”, and evidently that was enough for someone at the company to decide to convert it into a funeral home. A funeral for a home led to a funeral corporation turning the home into a funeral home.

James pulled at the collar of his suit to loosen it a little; he hates how tight collars felt so close to a noose. He checks his watch: 6:51 am. He climbs the stairs slowly and knocks at the front door. He hears shuffling coming from inside and soon the door is opened by a wizened old man; he is heavily stooped, to the point where he could easily be 5’5” from a height of 6 feet even. He also wears a suit, but his is the color of the dust that collects in rooms that are not visited for weeks in old houses. His mouth is puckered, and if it weren’t for the enormous coke-bottle glasses he wears that make his very active, bright blue eyes appear to be the size of saucers, James would have sworn that he was one of the corpses he would need to attend.

“Mmmm yes, what is it?”, the man spits out, as if the words taste bitter in his mouth.

“Uh hey, hello sir, I am James?”, James replies. He wonders for a second about why he replied in that way, as if he was unsure of his own name, before continuing. “James Cardigan. I am here for the mortuary position? I had an interview with someone else on staff, and the information I said told me to report here today.”

The man takes a long, hacking cough. Little bits of a bluish-gray substance flies out and sticks to the carpet here and there.

“Ah yes”, he finally replies. “Yes, come in, come in.” The man leaves the door open and starts walking in the opposite direction, motioning for James to follow. The two of them walk a little ways into the lobby, before stopping. James looks all around the lobby. Every piece of furniture here is at least 50 years old. This would have been considered a stylish front hall during his grandparents' time but now it seems outdated in an uncallassy way; too old to be retro, but too new to be antique. The hall itself was wide and open with plenty of seating and windows, but still somehow felt cramped and dark due to the ceiling being only 6 and a half feet up and the big front windows being covered in heavy, burgundy-colored velvet curtains that only let narrow shafts of light through. The other man turns to him and gestures for James to have a seat while he still stands.

“Ah yes, I am Beurogard Sophomore, I will be your boss here… most days anyway. I run the place by myself most of the time now, at least since your predecessor quit, but there shall be times where I will have to rely on you to take over and run things on your own. You may be surprised because of my glowing complexion and air of vigor-”, he says, before seemingly stumbling over his own feet while walking back and forth, and nearly falling to the ground. This causes him to pause, and lean over, putting his hands on a nearby chair to catch his breath before continuing. “Where was I again? Ah yes, right right. Well as I had mentioned, my health is not exceptional nowadays, and I find myself having to take breaks from time to time for various medical procedures, and just to recover my strength. So while you and I will work together most days, I warn you now that you will sooner or later find yourself having to handle all the work here alone!”

“I think I can handle that Mr. Sophomore, but what about the other employees here? I interviewed with someone else, I had assumed they would also be working here”, James replies.

“Ah sorry, you assumed wrong there. The company does all the interviews from their offices and just sends me whoever they decided fits the bill. I don’t get any say in the matter nor do I interact with the process in any way. Anybody you talked to would have been located at their headquarters back east; they have probably never even set foot in the damn place! No, its just me and you now, so we have to make the best of it”, Beurogard says. He leans over the back of a chair and takes a cigarette from his pocket. He lights it and begins to smoke. James smells a hint of clove in the air. “Ah don’t mind saying, don’t mind you being here one bit. Gets awfully lonely here. And while you see plenty of folks coming in and out, its good to have someone you can really get to know too”

“Yes, I feel the same way Mr. Sophomore. I look forward to working with you as well”, James replies, trying to be nice.

The two just sit there in silence, as Beurogard finishes his cigarette. He puts it out in a shiny ashtray sitting on a table next to the chair.

“Ah yes, well that's enough chit-chat”, Beurogard says with a straight face. “About time I gave you a tour of the place, and instructed you on your duties”. Beurogard turns around and starts walking, without checking to see if James follows. He scrambles off the chair where had allowed himself to lean back and relax a little.

Surprisingly quick on his feet for his feeble appearance, Beurogard quickly shuffles down a hallway at the back of the room. James scurries to follow him and finds himself walking down a hallway lined with portraits. He stares at each as they pass, before quickly looking away. The portraits are quite good, but also have this odd quality where they look lifeless. The usual sparkle in the eye one would expect to indicate life is gone, every expression seemingly in a grimace and their eyes gray and dull and glassy.

“It's a service we offer”, Beurogard yells behind without looking back. “Portrait of the deceased in their funerary garb as if they were still alive. We put them up on a stand during services and allow the customers to make prints. We have a few local artists we contract out to do them”.

Despite the dead look in each portrait's eye, each has an expression on their face like they are just about to start speaking.

Beurogard rounds a corner and James follows quickly behind, barely keeping up. The other man is moving without any regard for him, never checking if he is lost or lagging, forcing him to stick close if he doesn’t want to lose him. They walk quickly down a hallway lined with doors. Each door has a frosted window on it, obscuring the interior, but James can pick out enough from the blobs that come through to see that each room is a private room to display bodies in for mourners. The doors are all spaced evenly apart, indicating all the rooms here are of the same size. At the end of the hallway is a large set of double doors, with an empty display plaque sitting outside it.

“Ah yes, the funeral hall. This is where all the big customers will have their funerals, it needs to be kept in tip top shape. There is an entrance around the back of the house as well, so that more… sensitive items can be shipped in directly”, Beurogard says, giving an outline of the room with his hands. “Our office is just to the side of the room”, he continues, and points to a small nondescript door sitting next to the larger doors.

The old man enters the office, and James follows close behind. Inside are two desks, both topped with computer workstations approximately ten years out of date as well as a landline telephone. There is a set of filing cabinets and a locker at the back of the room, and in the corner nearest the door there is a minifridge, microwave, and coffee machine haphazardly stacked on top of each other.

“This is where we answer emails and take calls. All calls will come first to you, and you can then redirect them to me if needed”, Beurogard says as he sits at his desk and starts fiddling with a set of multicolored pens laying kitty-corner to each other. He motions to the other desk, and James takes his seat. “You should find some instructions and training videos to get started on that computer. Let me know if you have any questions, I am going to go and prepare some bodies for funerals we will have later today. Be sure to watch the videos on how to act during funerals first! You will have to help me out with a number of them later today.”

James nods, and turns on the computer, to start the training. Beurogard leaves the room. The computer takes a long time to start up, a long time to log in, and a long time to become functional. The videos are long and dry, but also seem to go over information too quickly; James finds himself constantly having to rewind, which makes them even longer.

Hours later, Beurogard returns.

“Ah yes, you again. I had plum almost forgot you were here! I need you to go to the funeral hall, and handle the cleanup for this funeral for me. The family left a lot of decorations in there that need to be taken down, and I need you to re-stack the chairs and tables. I am afraid I have other things to attend to. Oh, and can you move the coffin back to holding? Got that? Great, I need to go”, he says, leaning into the room from behind the door briefly before disappearing down another hall before James can get a question in.

Resigned and slightly confused, James stands up and leaves for the funeral hall. He opens the door and is immediately assailed by an overpowering scent of roses. He sneezes several times as his nose gets used to the scents. As soon as his vision clears, he looks around the room; chairs are set up in 10 rows facing the center of the room, where a coffin sits on a burgundy catafalque. The lid to the coffin is open. He looks around the room and verifies nobody is there, before slowly approaching the coffin. Once in front of the coffin, he looks around again to confirm he is alone before peering inside.

A pale face of a woman looks up at him, eyes closed, blonde hair neatly combed down the middle. She has on a simple black dress, cheaply made but covered in lace to obscure its cost. She looks like she is asleep, but the left side of her face is twisted and bulging in a way that makes James slightly nauseous. This is his first time seeing a dead body outside of a TV news report.

Frozen at the sight, James stands there for a few minutes. He hopes that the reality of what he is seeing will set in, the mundanity of it, but that longed-for feeling of normalcy seems slow in coming. He finally starts slowly backing away from the coffin, still facing it, then quickly turns around and walks to the edge of the room. He starts gathering up the chairs, one by one, never looking in the direction of the coffin.

Silence fills the room. This deep in the building none of the usual bird song that fills the air outside filters in. The sound of the shuffling in other rooms isn’t even audible. The walls of the room are covered in a soft substance, like the velvet siding in a moving theater, and the carpet is a thick shag. Presumably this is to provide comfort to mourners but in reality it makes the room feel suffocating as all minor sounds are absorbed by the walls and everything else is noticeably muted. The chairs that James works to stack in the corners are heavily padded as well; their presence filling the room only adds to the effect. As he works, he finds the silence making him zone out into a trance-like state, his mind empty of any distractions.

Suddenly, breaking the silence: the sound of a window opening, with a brief moment of birdsong. There are no windows in the room.

James looks up from what he is doing, scanning the entire room for the source of the sound. The faint sound of wind comes to him, though not wind as he normally knows it; it is the sound of wind coming through on an old radio with the volume turned down low, staticky and faint.

“Hello. Where am I.” comes a whisper. Barely audible under the sound of the wind, it is entirely monotone and without accent. The gender of the speaker is ambiguous; it could be a woman trying to sound like a man, or a man trying to sound like a woman. Or both at the same time. James turns and faces the coffin; despite the low volume, it is clear the voice is coming from it.

“H-hello?”, James says.

“Hello. Where am I.” comes the voice again.

“Um, you are at the mortuary. I think you are dead.”, he replies.

“Dead. How can that be. I don’t feel dead.”, says the voice.

“Well, how do you feel then?”, James asks.

“I feel trapped. I cannot move, but I can see myself. I am standing above myself, looking down. I cannot avert my gaze”.

“Are you looking at yourself?” Growing in confidence, James creeps up to the coffin and looks inside. The woman is still laying there, silent and still.

“Yes. I look asleep, but something is not right with my face”, says the voice. The voice seems to be reflecting in James' mind directly; the body does not move when it comes. The voice is coming from the area around the body, not directly from the body itself.

“What is the last thing you remember?”

“The kisses of my lover. Her kisses felt so strange.”

“Where do you last remember being?”

“I was lying down. I was in an unfamiliar bed. The room was white, drenched in sunlight. I did not recognize it. I had never been in that room before. There was no furniture in the room besides the bed and a chair next to it. My lover was sitting in the chair. She didn’t say anything, she just kissed me and held me and touched me. She stroked my head, ran her fingers through my hair. She always loved my hair, she thought it was pretty. But my face felt funny. I felt a little empty.”

“Can you see me?”

“”Yes, I can see you. You are standing next to the coffin. I am standing next to you. Though I am not sure on which side.”

“What is your name?”

“I am not sure. I don’t remember. I believe it started with an L. I know I should be more upset about not remembering my name, but I am not.”

“Is there anything that does upset you?”

“Yes. I want to move, but I cannot. I want to look around, but I cannot. I want to scream, but I cannot. I want to leave, but I cannot”

“What is stopping you?”

The voice pauses. For a while, there is only the sound of distant wind. Then it begins.

“This is nothing stopping me. I just know that I cannot”

James stands up and backs away from the coffin, then sits down. The sound of wind filling his ears brings back childhood memories of the windy and rocky west-coast beaches he would visit with his family on summer vacation.

“So, why are you here? What is keeping you here? Is there something connecting you to your body? Some unresolved task?”

“No. I do not think so. I just do not want to go. I am cold and I do not think leaving will help. There is no way leaving can help. I do not even know how to leave.”

“Right before… The last thing you remember. What happened? Do you know how you got into that white room?”

“I was driving. There was a fight. I said some mean things, some cruel things. My lover said some things back. I cannot remember what. It was at night. All around the car was darkness and rain. The road was in a forest. We almost hit a deer, but we missed it. I kept wanting to look behind me. I kept feeling like there was something back there. Something I should not look at. But I wanted to look at it.

“All of a sudden there was a truck in front of us. Its lights were so bright. I briefly wondered when it became daylight. I swerved out of the way, but hit water and lost control. There was a horrible sudden crunch, then blackness. The only thing I remember after that was the white room”

James leans back in his chair. He stares at the coffin, then at the ceiling.

“Do you feel guilty about what happened?”, he asks.

“I am distraught. I hope my lover is okay. I hope that she doesn’t think harshly of me. The last thing I remember telling her is that I thought we should break up. She wouldn’t stop crying. I wish I could take it all back.”

“Whatever happened is not your fault. You were a victim of circumstance; you were driving down a rainy highway at night, a truck got in your lane and forced you in a situation you couldn’t control, and it got out of your hand. There is no shame in that, there is nothing wrong with that”, James starts. “You tried to handle it, but it fell apart. And someone got hurt and some things didn’t go right and it was horrible, but it’s over now. You made choices you felt were right in the moment.”

James moves his head to stare at the wall. The heavy purple velvet curtains appear like waves on a choppy sea through his tear-blurred vision. He makes a frown as he struggles to suppress a sob.

“And yet I still hurt someone. I hurt someone I loved. Once loved. Someone I once considered a lover. I made a mistake. That mistake has consequences. I made a choice. That choice has consequences. What am I to make of that”, the voice replies.

“The world is not always under our control. We operate how best we think given the information we have”, James says. “Things are going to happen that are out of our control. People are going to do things, say things, that hurt. And we are going to do the same to them. I am sorry this horrible thing happened to you, but, well… There is only the present now. The present and the future.”

The sound of wind continues to pour through the room. James sits in his chair for a few moments longer, tears staining his shirt. He wipes off the tears, and stands up to move towards the door.

When he reaches it, there is the sound of a door closing. The distant wind that had flooded the room a moment before suddenly ends. He looks back over his shoulder at the coffin, then leaves and returns to his office to continue his day.