- Look at the work of the master! Rubble spun around on the swivel stool and beckoned me over with his hand.
I just refilled the embalming fluid. I closed the lid and removed the nose plug. The damn thing smelled mercilessly.
We had a night at the plant tonight. It was so cool that we worked without a boss and we could drink a few beers. Rubble sat at the "dead table" and hid his toys. I watched as brushes, tweezers and other gadgets disappeared into the Hello Kitty sachet.
Rubble was twenty-eight and had the sickest sense of humor in the business.
We picked up this job right after graduation, it was certainly a better alternative than the "restaurant" on M. Two students being a graduate of Polish studies. The plant was located in a small building on the outskirts of Krakow. Upstairs was the funeral home, and downstairs was our studio, a small windowless room with white-tiled walls. Beside the front door, there was another metal door leading to a tiny cold room. There was a corpse table in the middle, and an embalming fluid dispenser by the wall. At the other end, metal cabinets, with all the equipment needed in this profession.
I went over to him. He actually made it. The "client" was an elderly woman whom they did not find until several days later. In addition, she died lying on her stomach. She must have vomited on the pillow in the last seconds of her life. Now she was lying on the corpse table, a little too ruddy, covered up to the neck with black foil. The boss laughed that Rubble would bring even crisp to his original state. These were the people who died in the fire.
It was three in the morning. At this hour, we usually slowed down the pace of work and started talking about crap. And the beer was chilling in the fridge.
I fixed the seals. I rolled up the hoses, put protective caps on the spikes. These were inserted into the blood vessels of the "patient", turned on a small pump and drained the blood. A special liquid flowed in its place. The boss, explaining to us the very idea of embalming, described it as "fixing the deceased so that he looks good long after the funeral." Rubble then asked him politely, "What for?" All in all, he was right.
There have been many absurd situations in our industry. Not to mention the freaks who came to the plant and asked if they could see the dead body. I remember how the whole family wanted to be present at the embalming. People generally have the wrong idea of what our work looks like. By the way, I wonder how they reacted when they heard Rubble at work.
This one approached one of the walls, in which there were nine hiding places.
- It looked the same as in American movies. That's what I thought when I first came here.
He opened one of them and slid out the guide. Then he studied the make-up of the deceased and nodded appreciatively. We have one last customer left today.
- Come on, you have to put grandma in the drawer. he grunted and grabbed the stretcher on one side. I helped him.
The corpse table was waiting for another delinquent. In fact, it wasn't even a table top, an altar, but a brick, tiled pedestal, one meter by two, on which we put the stretchers with the dead. Or the corpses themselves, when they needed to be washed. The table was slightly sloping, the edges a few centimeters higher, and there was a drain at the lowest point. At the bottom, on the side of the pedestal, were a pair of doors, and in the center was a small storage compartment for cleaning supplies. And access to the pipes through which the water flowed. The corpse table itself was right in the center of the room, under a powerful halogen lamp.
The stretcher ran over the guide, but it jammed. We jerked them back and forth several times. At some point, a wooden pad fell out from under the neck of the deceased. Her head hit the metal dully.
- Calm down or you'll kill yourself. I growled at the dead one. Rubble chuckled.
We tugged a few more times, finally the stretcher rolled into the drawer. I closed the door.
- Cigarette?
- Cigarette. I nodded.
We went out to smoke.
It was cold outside and crickets were heard. There was peace and quiet. A small plot surrounded by a high hedge, almost in a remote area, on a road not frequented. Not a single car passed on the street.
- Beer?
- After Malshall. We'll do it quickly, it won't be much work. Rubble winced
- I'm not touching that motherfucker. Don't count on me.
Malshall has been at the plant for ten years and a year with us. Then he retired. He was a balding and inconspicuous old man with a large belly. While on the scale of a sick sense of humor, Rubble had an 8/10 from me, I rated Malshall at 11/10.
Apart from the fact that he liked to scare a new employee with something on good morning, he could, for example, send someone upstairs to pick up some junk and tell himself that he was going to smoke. However, he did not go for a cigarette, but hid in the body drawer, left, at the very bottom. The left-hand box had a built-in thermostat that, if touched, caused a short circuit. Then all the lights in the studio went out. Malshall waited patiently in the cold for the delinquent to return to the cellar. And suddenly it was getting dark. Something began to rattle in the cupboards, and after a while the doors opened with a soft creaking. He did something like that to Rubble.
Malshall scared me, hiding under the corpse table in a lockable compartment. He sat there curled up, and as I began to embalm, he opened the door quietly and grabbed my calf. I screamed and fell to the floor. And Malshall cried with laughter.
Unfortunately, an aneurysm quickly interrupted his retirement. And he came back to us. The boss refused to accept money from his family. We all liked him. Except Rubble.
We dumped the butts in the wax tin in the coffins. We went downstairs. I couldn't convince Rubble to help me. He stubbornly refused and described the feelings he had for our former employee.
- I'm drinking beer. He grunted and opened one of the corpse cupboard doors.
- Holy shit, man. I winced.
Keeping groceries in cold storage for corpses was his hobby. The boss caught him hiding Cola there once and made quite a fuss. It seems he even cut his bonuses.
- Hence, it tastes better... He opened the can... Temperature lower than in the fridge!
I gave up. I took the clothes Malshall's widow had brought from the cupboard yesterday. I fumbled for shoes for a while, digging through a dozen sets of clothes for the dead. The boss bought a lot of them once. Customers, however, most often brought clothes belonging to their relatives.
- Okay, help me. I stood by the drawer door.
Right quarter, middle row. I turned the metal handle and opened the hatch.
The drawer was empty.
- Very funny! Very. grunted Rubble.
I checked another one, then another. And another one: the old woman Rubble painted, the young suicide hangman, the grandfather from the car accident.
I opened all nine. Rubble kept complaining that he couldn't fall for the joke. When I opened the last one, he fell silent immediately. Malshall's body was gone.
I was standing in front of the corpse caches. Rubble next to me with a beer in hand.
We searched all the drawers again, as if by some miracle we might have missed the corpse.
- Fuck. I finally coughed up.
- Maybe he went to the toilet? Rubble's joke sounded extremely uncertain.
I frantically considered the situation. The boss brought the body himself, so it was waiting in the hearse. Then we moved the stretcher downstairs to the cooler. I closed the door myself. I even put a name tag on it.
"Middle, right," my boss told me as we entered the lab with the stretcher. I remembered it exactly. The center on the right was empty.
- Wait wait. After all, we went to smoke.
Fact. I forgot about it. As soon as we packed Malshall into the drawer, we went to smoke. The boss joined us a few minutes later.
- The boss moved him. In the fridge for sure. Rubble said.
He yanked on the door leading to the cold storage room. It was a small room for one stretcher cart. We kept the rotten bodies there so they wouldn't stink in the drawers.
- Damn... I tried to open the door which was often jammed... help.
It was quite possible. Our boss also liked to make such, for lack of a better word, jokes from time to time. People have become like this, I guess, because of this industry. The late Malshall, for example.
Finally managed to get in. The hinges creaked horribly. It was dark inside. The light bulb burned out a few days ago.
- Is! Our fugitive! He shouted triumphantly.
I sighed with relief. There was a cart with stretchers in the cooler. There was an oblong black shape lying on them, we couldn't see very well. The wheels squeaked as we pulled him out. It was too light, I was disappointed. On the stretcher lay an empty black body bag.
- How the fuck can you lose a corpse?!... Rubble started pacing around the studio... Tell me, Sweetie, how?! He waved his arms.
I sat down on a stool. I tried to reconstruct in my mind the events of carrying Malshall out of the car. It was obvious that the boss was joking with us, I didn't see any other option. I kept thinking about loading Malshall into the drawer itself.
The boss and I took the cart, unloaded the stretcher on it. Then we drove to the back door, walked in here. We threw in Malshall, I closed the door. Then you came over to ask if I could help, but it was over. So we went to smoke, and the boss stayed here. He left after a few minutes. With an empty cart.
- He hid it. For sure. Fucking freak. Rubble said
- Okay, we'll search everything. Lockers, everything.
I got up from the stool and kicked him against the wall.
We checked the wardrobes with clothes for the corpses. Then cupboards with tools, utensils for the post-mortem toilet, embalming agents. Of the dead, I found only the mummified carcass of a mouse. We checked the restroom and walked around the building to be sure. I even looked in two trash cans. Empty. We went back downstairs not really knowing what to do. We stood in silence for a long time. A lamp hummed softly above us.
- I'm calling the boss. I pulled out my phone and dialed the boss's number. It was four in the morning. It's hard. He wanted jokes, he will have a wake-up call. He didn't pick up the phone.
- Call the police. A fat man will pass by on command to translate his moronic jokes.
- And what will I tell them? That our corpse disappeared? It's being recorded.
- Say that, the boss hidden body somewhere and is not answering the phone! It's a corpse, damn it!
We cursed our employer sharply for a while. It helped relieve the tension a bit. Besides, it made us believe that he had hidden the corpse. There was no other possibility. I mean there was one. Nevertheless, we preferred to believe that such things only happen in horror movies.
- Just think, as if he was explaining himself at the command: "yes, officer, it was supposed to be a joke" ... Rubble brilliantly parodied the boss's voice ... "Well, I hid the corpse from them for a joke! At home, I hid in my child's room. I was supposed to take it to the freezer in the morning, I swear!"
I cackled. Suddenly something occurred to me. The thing was obvious. Banal downright. I slapped my hand to my forehead. Rubble looked at me questioningly.
- The dead table!
It would even fit. Malshall often hid there.
We approached the pedestal. We crouched by the door. Rubble put his hand on the doorknob but hesitated. Despite the absurdity of the whole situation, I felt a little uneasy. I think my friend did too, I saw the fear in his eyes.
I opened the door. Malshall's naked corpse lay in a small cupboard next to a bottle of cleaning fluids. The chief set them so that when opened, the deceased's hand slid out and hit the floor.
We said "fuck!" Then we burst out laughing. All the stress of the last few minutes evaporated in a moment. Even though we knew it was a joke, there was a spark of uncertainty somewhere. A truly eerie spark of uncertainty. By the way, the boss had to work hard to get him in there.
- You pull it out yourself, I promised not to touch that joker... Rubble got up and took his cigarettes from his pocket...I'm going to smoke.
I fully understood him. He stood for a moment, fumbling in his pockets for his lighter. He finally found it and tossed it up a few times. At that moment the phone rang: the boss.
- Tell him he's a dick. Rubble grumbled and left, slamming the door.
- Hello?
- Tell him I heard it. you called. What's up?... the boss was sleepy, but I heard he was barely suppressing a laugh. Son of a bitch had fun... Do you miss a patient? he started laughing out loud.
I started chuckling too. All in all, the prank was good. We laughed for a while.
- Look, just to make it fun... the boss got a little serious... Malshall once told me I had perpetual permission to scare an employee with his corpse. A bit like the last wish of the deceased. You know what he was like. He would be pleased.
I got up from the floor and sat on the corpse table. Now that my nerves had passed, I just wanted to sleep.
- I think so. That last joke.
- I was afraid you'd hear a noise and come downstairs. But it worked
I cackled.
- That door creaked so hard it gave me goosebumps. continued the boss.
I stopped laughing in a second.
- Small door?
- No, the door when I put him in the freezer.
I felt an icy hand grab my ankle