Burdens
By Lucas Ahlsen
He ruminated on the feel of the pallbearer gloves: the stretched cotton, the parallel ridges on top of the fist. They turned his hands into a stranger's hands. For the third time this week, he sat down to eat and lit a cigarette instead. Even his favorite meal couldn't drive away memories of work. The spaghetti sauce had dried against the whipped cream tub he stored it in.
The present receded and the details of the service returned: cigarette musk, burnt coffee, rickety chairs, strong perfume, and stronger disinfectant--the wails and the sobs and the painted flowers. He always stood by the funeral director and briefed the pallbearers about moving the loved one to the internment site. "Coffins will seem much heavier than they are where there's an audience," he warned them. "Remember that you're performing a valuable rite. That will give you strength."
Despite fantastic insurance, the funeral home injured him in ways he didn't expect. The vacant services hurt most. Sometimes only a handful of mourners attended. There were regulars too, strangers to the dead sponging up the sorrow of others. Enemies of the deceased confessed their pasts to him before catching a cab. Whatever the case, these people reminded him of satellites streaming across the night sky, looking out for each other as they passed deeper into space.
It also reminded him that his girlfriend didn't have any living relatives. She often joked to him that he would be the one to bury her, unless their future children were up to the task.
Besides marriage, he thought, the funeral was the only ritual that gathered strangers in a room and encouraged them to button up their emotions. In ancient times, women would beat their breasts and men lopped off their hair. Competitions went on for days on end to honor the dead and distribute their belongings. Today, people wrung their hands and peeped at one another, waiting on someone else to break the dam of tears.
The cigarette singed his finger, he had stared into space for so long. He stubbed it out on his kitchen table with a cuss.
The phone hung heavy in his hand and his mother's number returned like a stumbling memory. She answered the phone dazed.
"What're you doing calling at 11?" she asked.
"Sorry. I know you're usually in bed by ten," he said. "Listen: thanks for the recipe."
"What recipe?"
"The spaghetti one."
"Oh, right. I forgot you took the recipe. I don't cook it anymore, with the diabetes and all. Are you," she said, "still seeing that girl you asked to marry you?"
Dizzy, he looked to his refrigerator at the wrinkled prayer card from her funeral. He worked that day, and the stranger's hands carted her into the earth.
"Yeah ma," he told her, "I see her as often as I can. But hey. Thanks again for that recipe. It's good to have a reminder of where I came from."
She was halfway through asking when he'd visit again when he hung up.
His chair squeaked when he returned to it, and he shoveled a forkful into his mouth and rolled his tongue around. It tasted like the midnights he spent raiding the refrigerator as a young man, when fireflies sparkled over the hay field while he drank stolen beer outside--a stranger's life now. Chewing like a bovine, he ground up a meatball and closed his eyes.
But the memories wouldn't recede. He thought of how his fiancee's lips shone in the accent lighting of the viewing room. The makeup guy got it all wrong. Her expression was never flat--always just slightly pursed, tinged with curiosity, as though she were always on the verge of a discovery. Even her hair seemed freshly bleached, not at all the dirty blonde he used to catch in his fist. The flavors turned to ash. Mechanically, his jaw opened and the food plopped back into the dish.
So he stepped back into his bedroom, where a woman looped a bra strap over her shoulder. "You'll have to pay for another hour, unless you want me gone," she told him. He told her "no," and lifted a discarded wig off the back of a rocking chair. He hated the stringy feel of it,but it was just the right hue.
"I would rather you didn't remove this again until you've left my house. This may be a game of pretend, but it's my game of pretend. So please--follow the rules." He finished his request with a hundred dollars and a smile. Rubbing her wrists, she took the money and wig from him and slipped off her dress.
The city awoke to a chorus of sirens led by the falsetto of an ambulance. He approached the bedroom window. It reflected his ghoulish cheekbones. An ambulance sped past in the street below, washing the cathedral across the street with scarlet strobe lights.
By the sound of things he'd work the weekend, but he determined to not let that spoil his evening. Opening his underwear drawer, he removed the rope he kept there and asked his guest to hold out her wrists.
- - -
Lucas Ahlsen grew up in the suburban forests surrounding Portland, Maine. He enjoys post-apocalyptic fiction and off-beat humor, but harbors an addiction to mythology. His fiction has appeared in Everyday Weirdness and Abyss & Apex. He also serves on the editorial board at BULL: Men's Fiction.
By Lucas Ahlsen
He ruminated on the feel of the pallbearer gloves: the stretched cotton, the parallel ridges on top of the fist. They turned his hands into a stranger's hands. For the third time this week, he sat down to eat and lit a cigarette instead. Even his favorite meal couldn't drive away memories of work. The spaghetti sauce had dried against the whipped cream tub he stored it in.
The present receded and the details of the service returned: cigarette musk, burnt coffee, rickety chairs, strong perfume, and stronger disinfectant--the wails and the sobs and the painted flowers. He always stood by the funeral director and briefed the pallbearers about moving the loved one to the internment site. "Coffins will seem much heavier than they are where there's an audience," he warned them. "Remember that you're performing a valuable rite. That will give you strength."
Despite fantastic insurance, the funeral home injured him in ways he didn't expect. The vacant services hurt most. Sometimes only a handful of mourners attended. There were regulars too, strangers to the dead sponging up the sorrow of others. Enemies of the deceased confessed their pasts to him before catching a cab. Whatever the case, these people reminded him of satellites streaming across the night sky, looking out for each other as they passed deeper into space.
It also reminded him that his girlfriend didn't have any living relatives. She often joked to him that he would be the one to bury her, unless their future children were up to the task.
Besides marriage, he thought, the funeral was the only ritual that gathered strangers in a room and encouraged them to button up their emotions. In ancient times, women would beat their breasts and men lopped off their hair. Competitions went on for days on end to honor the dead and distribute their belongings. Today, people wrung their hands and peeped at one another, waiting on someone else to break the dam of tears.
The cigarette singed his finger, he had stared into space for so long. He stubbed it out on his kitchen table with a cuss.
The phone hung heavy in his hand and his mother's number returned like a stumbling memory. She answered the phone dazed.
"What're you doing calling at 11?" she asked.
"Sorry. I know you're usually in bed by ten," he said. "Listen: thanks for the recipe."
"What recipe?"
"The spaghetti one."
"Oh, right. I forgot you took the recipe. I don't cook it anymore, with the diabetes and all. Are you," she said, "still seeing that girl you asked to marry you?"
Dizzy, he looked to his refrigerator at the wrinkled prayer card from her funeral. He worked that day, and the stranger's hands carted her into the earth.
"Yeah ma," he told her, "I see her as often as I can. But hey. Thanks again for that recipe. It's good to have a reminder of where I came from."
She was halfway through asking when he'd visit again when he hung up.
His chair squeaked when he returned to it, and he shoveled a forkful into his mouth and rolled his tongue around. It tasted like the midnights he spent raiding the refrigerator as a young man, when fireflies sparkled over the hay field while he drank stolen beer outside--a stranger's life now. Chewing like a bovine, he ground up a meatball and closed his eyes.
But the memories wouldn't recede. He thought of how his fiancee's lips shone in the accent lighting of the viewing room. The makeup guy got it all wrong. Her expression was never flat--always just slightly pursed, tinged with curiosity, as though she were always on the verge of a discovery. Even her hair seemed freshly bleached, not at all the dirty blonde he used to catch in his fist. The flavors turned to ash. Mechanically, his jaw opened and the food plopped back into the dish.
So he stepped back into his bedroom, where a woman looped a bra strap over her shoulder. "You'll have to pay for another hour, unless you want me gone," she told him. He told her "no," and lifted a discarded wig off the back of a rocking chair. He hated the stringy feel of it,but it was just the right hue.
"I would rather you didn't remove this again until you've left my house. This may be a game of pretend, but it's my game of pretend. So please--follow the rules." He finished his request with a hundred dollars and a smile. Rubbing her wrists, she took the money and wig from him and slipped off her dress.
The city awoke to a chorus of sirens led by the falsetto of an ambulance. He approached the bedroom window. It reflected his ghoulish cheekbones. An ambulance sped past in the street below, washing the cathedral across the street with scarlet strobe lights.
By the sound of things he'd work the weekend, but he determined to not let that spoil his evening. Opening his underwear drawer, he removed the rope he kept there and asked his guest to hold out her wrists.
- - -
Lucas Ahlsen grew up in the suburban forests surrounding Portland, Maine. He enjoys post-apocalyptic fiction and off-beat humor, but harbors an addiction to mythology. His fiction has appeared in Everyday Weirdness and Abyss & Apex. He also serves on the editorial board at BULL: Men's Fiction.
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