I'm a self-proclaimed 'cursed' novelist
because ever since I began writing my first novel, practically, not a night
goes by that I don't experience a horrendous nightmare, which is why sleeping
is among the least of my favorite enjoyable pastimes.
Cheryl, my beautiful wife, on the other hand, after
having enjoyed success as a high fashion international model, decided to
settle on a more normal career,
having now become the vice president of a Fortune
500 marketing firm.
The only drawback is that she's often required to
attend various company classes or business meetings out of town for several
days at a time during each month. And, during these times, are when
the worst nightmares seem to occur.
As she was away on such a trip
tonight, I again experienced a nightmare, this time, set in the distant
future and probably best described on a proverbial scale of 1 to 10, as
a 12.
At the very least, this one was definitely off the
Richter scale. The only good thing about tonight was that this was
my wife's last night away during this particular outing, and I anxiously
awaited her arrival in a few short hours.
In the nightmare, however, Cheryl had suddenly been
killed, although I don't know how, nor why. In the opening scene,
I was standing, watching the
embalming process through tear-soaked eyes, which
was nothing like it is today.
Firstly, the funeral parlor was
located in a strip mall, of all places. In fact, you could, literally,
walk out from having shopped at a shoe store such as Pay
Less next door, and directly into the funeral home.
Secondly, the embalming area of
the service was not located in the rear of the parlor as is tradition,
but was, alternatively, up front, on full display and
in open view, just as the other neighboring stores'
products and services were.
Strangely, no passersby seemed upset whatsoever with
this setup, except for me as I remembered how the experience of death was
once considered to be
a very respectable deal. But today, it was akin
to a stop-in at McDonald's, except you casually dropped your order off
instead of picking it up.
I watched other people simply walk by while seeing
all the gore, a few shrugging their shoulders, but all generally still
moving along, most of them apparently accepting of and not giving another
thought to any of it, or worse, oblivious to it entirely.
In any event, I was immediately
cast into this horrific scene, watching my wife being embalmed, which freaked
me out enough due to the fact that she wasn't being embalmed via the traditional
method whereby the body is lying vertically. She was, instead, standing...held
up and supported by some strange apparatus consisting of what appeared
to be an approximately 3-inch round
elongated PVC-like pipe running vertically from along
the left side of her head, down to her left leg, with the angular end of
it inserted into her calf.
Her legs were spread a shoulder-width apart and her
head sagged, with her chin resting against her chest. Her eyes were
closed and her arms were outstretched and supported on what appeared to
be a 5-feet crossbar that ran behind her neck, giving her the appearance
of having just been crucified. In fact, the apparatus on which she
clung appeared to have the overall relative shape of a crucifix.
Interestingly, she was also still professionally dressed,
sans stockings, in a purple skirt and wearing the patent leather black
high heels I remembered having bought for this particular business meeting.
I stared in horror as the blood churned and dripped,
making awful sounds as the unforgiving embalming system forced it from
her body and into what
appeared to be a bucket that had been placed directly
below her leg. Each drop seemed to be amplified as if a microphone
was sending its reverberating sound through a public address system.
Then, for some odd reason, I had the desire to approach
her in order to get a closer look at the system. I accessed the podium
on which she was propped and braved a peek at the top of the pipe-like
element, which I discovered had an open end.
Lord...I can't even remember what I saw (or felt)
next, but I moved away from her, and off the podium to the front
left angle of it. In my peripheral vision, I saw a female, whom I assumed
was a mortician, dressed in a powder blue shower cap and matching waist-length
clinical jacket, blue jeans and sneakers while on her knees spreading two
different types of gooey messes on
the floor with a mitten on each hand. I then
turned to look at her straight on.
One of the messes she was spreading with one hand
in a wide back-and-forth wipe ritual was a sparkling light green in color
while the other mess she
was spreading in a similar fashion with the other
hand, was a hazy yellow which also appeared to emit a foggy-like mist from
it that rose to the ceiling.
Instantaneously, an express delivery service person
wearing a dark brown uniform labeled, "Jetstream Services," across the
left side of the chest, burst into the parlor, flinging one of the double
glass doors against the wall, then rushed to the mortician and handed her
a small boxed package while saying
nothing. However, I could not see the face because
of a mask and cap.
Immediately, the mortician stared up at the deliverer
with fearful eyes and a gaping mouth, seemingly surprised. She, then,
went ballistic, yelling at me to
run out to her car and get her purse, which I did,
although I can't explain how I knew which car was hers, but I did.
All this time, I had the
feeling that the reason she had become upset, was because the rates of
the express deliverer, who now seemed to pace nervously across the floor,
would dramatically increase within a certain time frame upon arrival. At
least, that's what I reasoned at the time.
Rushing back inside and handing
her the purse, the mortician, still on her knees and upset, gave me what
I considered a dirty look, then jerked the purse from me and quickly opened
it. She extracted a money clip of bills and tossed it to the delivery
person, who caught it then rushed out the door just
as having rushed in.
As I was still standing approximately ten feet away
from Cheryl's body, I had just turned to get another glimpse of her still
being
automatically embalmed by this strange insensitive contraption when she
startled me by suddenly jerking her head up from her chest, opening her
eyes and locking a fixed stare onto something directly across the room
on the far wall.
Simultaneously, she removed her arms from the crossbar
and brought them down by her sides. She then flexed the muscle in
her calf once, which caused
the contraption to react by automatically removing
itself while emitting a buzzing sound.
In the next few seconds, she elevated her left leg
in a quick jerky movement, holding it in a frozen state while the blood
still dripped from it intermittently.
During this, her eyes never altered their fixed state.
A male mortician, who was wearing the same type of attire as the female
mortician, entered from a
back room, looked at my wife momentarily, then stared
at me while stating that some unwelcome visitor had been in the funeral
parlor "messing with
the body."
He then led me to a side area to watch a surveillance
monitor, as I continued to stare back at my wife sporadically in utter
amazement. The monitor
revealed the top of my head, but not my face. Watching
it, I assumed the remote camera was located somewhere in the pipe-like
object I had just peered down though I never saw it. Suddenly, all hell
broke loose. Cheryl's body made a strange guttural sound, and she
released her fixated stare from whatever her eyes had espied, then turned
her eyes on me. With a hint of a faint smile, she stepped away from
the apparatus and down from the podium to the floor, as her body appeared
to gather its composure. Then, more bodies, in all stages of decomposition,
immediately appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and began dancing around
fluidly and happily in what appeared to be a celebration of being 'alive'
once more.
Seeing all of this, unnaturally, I'm now well past
the brink of any possible return to sanity and finally make my getaway
in half a heartbeat, bolting out
the parlor's front doors like a madman for my car,
which I had, obviously, used my last good sense to leave parked alongside
the curb.
Rushing to it and jumping in, while gathering the
keys from my right pants pocket, that old black and white movie, "Night
of the Living Dead," began
playing over and over in my mind.
The last scene I remember as I quickly slammed my
door shut, started my car and threw it in gear, was looking through the
parlor's window to see the male
mortician laughing uncontrollably at me while now
sitting in a rocking chair, holding and caressing a once dead baby who,
just like all the others,
seemed to have, somehow, miraculously come back
to life. I barely smelled the smoke and heard the screeching from
my car's spinning tires.
I was awaken from this nightmare by knocking at my
front door. I abruptly sat up, wiped the sweat from my brow, shook
my head several times in an attempt to rid it of the cobwebs and gathered
my robe from the foot of the bed, putting it on as I headed for the door.
Reaching it and peering through the peephole, I could
see two uniformed policemen. A cold fear enveloped me as I, reluctantly,
opened the door.
"Um, what's the problem, officers?"
"Are you Mr. Simon...Mr. Peter Simon?" one of them
asked.
"Yes, I'm Peter Simon...what's going on?"
"I'm afraid we have some unsettling news, Sir...it's..."
He hesitated, looked at his partner, then back at me. "It's about
your wife, Sir," he continued.
A chill ran down the length of my spine and I felt
my palms become moist.
"My...my wife?" I muttered. "Wha-what
happened?" I managed to get out.
"Sir, I'm afraid there's been an accident," the other
officer informed me.
"An accident? What kind of an accident?" I inquired,
uncertain if it was an inbound plane accident, or if Cheryl had an accident
on the way home, as she had driven her car to the airport, then left it
reserved there.
"Sir, your wife's plane crashed while en route from
Saint Louis. I'm sorry to say that, unfortunately, there were no
survivors."
Though I had suspected something was awry after seeing
them, hearing this hit me like a ton of bricks, causing me to stagger backward
a step, or two. I
drew my hand to my face as I began to openly weep.
"Sir," the other officer began. "Sir, we are,
indeed, sorry for your loss. If you will please come down to the
coroner's office for identification," he said, "we will be glad to take
you and bring you back."
"Yes...sure," I responded. "Please come in while
I get dressed."
I quickly dressed as they waited, then chauffeured
me to the coroner's office located on the east side of town. After
a 30-minute drive, we turned into an
all too familiar territory...a strip mall, pulling
alongside a curb.
The driver shut off the car and both of the officers
began to gather their accessories and exit the vehicle as I still sat,
reluctant to move. Afraid of
what was unfolding already, nervously, I turned and
peered out the car window and through the coroner's window to see in plain
view, my wife in a vertical position, supported by the same type of apparatus
I had seen in my nightmare.
I could also see the same male and female morticians
as well, dressed exactly as they had been, awaiting my exit from the police
cruiser with sly smiles on their faces. They stared at me, and I,
at them.
"God," I prayed as the officer opened and held the
door for me while I exited the cruiser. "Please let this be just
another friggin' nightmare."