Gravity Falls was a dangerous town.
Despite the small population, Valentino's Funeral Home enjoyed a steady stream of business. Well, not really "enjoyed". His parents might be vultures of the first degree, but Robbie hated every corpse that came in. Hated the pallor. Hated the stench. Hated that he had to help with body prep. His parents didn't make him help with the postmortems, of course—that required a license. What didn't require a license, however, was putting the bodies back together when the families invariably demanded an open casket funeral.
This particular body had been decapitated. Not a nice clean cut, like from a blade or a guillotine. No, a ragged tear from having the head forcefully torn off. The report his dad had turned in called it a "bear attack", but Robbie knew that was bullshit. Bears didn't rip heads off with pure brute strength, and neither this body nor the other one had been eaten at all.
Still, it had been fixable, even if the ends were too ragged to suture properly. A bit of wooden dowel to replace the chunk of spinal column that had been obliterated, some wax to replace the skin and flesh, and concealer to disguise the seam. Looking at her now, you would have never guessed that something had torn her head off. Of course, that was only half the battle. Once you had them looking undamaged, you had to get them to look like they were merely sleeping instead of dead. Right now, her eyes were open. He gently used his index finger to shut them, but the lids wouldn't stay; instead they slipped back open, giving her an uneven, half-lidded look. Figures.
Whatever. They were sunken now anyway, and probably would've looked bad even if the lids had stayed shut. He pulled open a drawer, dug around, and pulled out two eye-caps. He carefully placed the little plastic caps over her eyes to mask the "sunken" look, then pulled the lids down over them. The caps had little plastic ridges on them to "catch" the lids and prevent them from opening. Time for the cosmetics. Though he hated the entire process, Robbie found he hated doing the cosmetics the least. He was good at it.
And at least he'd been given a decent photograph to work from. It was always frustrating when he was trying to do the makeup on some old lady, and the family gave him a photo from when she was in her 20's. But in this case, the picture was perfect—it had literally been taken the day before she died, so he'd be able to make an excellent approximation. To make things even easier, his parents had gotten a hold of her actual makeup kit, too.
Of course, he couldn't just use her makeup right out of the box; some things would have to be altered. Robbie carefully blended her foundation with one of his stock ones to get the right match. Yellow undertones were the trick—no matter what their skin was like when they were alive, you needed a yellow undertone when they were dead. Corpses, even fresh ones, tended to get a blue-to-purple cast under the pallor, and yellow corrected and reduced that.
On this particular corpse, a blue vein stood out near her temple. Robbie squinted at the photo, to see if it had been evident when she was alive. It hadn't. He dipped his brush in the concealer, and very carefully followed the track of the vein, being sure to "color inside the lines" and not lighten the skin around it. If you lightened both the vein and the skin nearby, the result was that everything was paler but still visible. Once he'd followed it's track, he carefully stippled over it with a wedge sponge to blend it all together.
Robbie applied some more concealer both above and under the eyes to make her look well-rested. For a moment, he considered using the eye shadow, liner, and mascara from her makeup box, but quickly dismissed it. She wasn't wearing any of them in the photo, and putting too much on her now might make her look like a doll. He used a small brush to apply some of the lipstick, but found himself wiping most of it away. Too much.
He dug around in the cosmetics bag and pulled out her favorite shade of blush, applying it liberally over each cheek. Normally this would be WAY too much, but in the photo she was practically glowing with color, and it seemed appropriate. Finally, he grabbed a fluffy brush and dusted the body's whole face with powder to set everything. With a sigh, he got up, stepped back, and surveyed his work. Not bad; honestly probably one of the better jobs he had done. It left him feeling cold.
Still, it meant his job for the afternoon was half done. Time to put her back in the cooler, and get started on the other twin.