The mortician stood over an empty grave covered in sweat and dirt. He was less concerned with what was inside it and more so with what he had just taken out. The coffin was empty at the bottom of the grave, and its former inhabitant lay next to him in the grass. He looked down at her as he caught his breath.
She was beautiful, even in deceased condition. The makeup the mortician had dressed her with that morning was still intact. He remembered the moment they had placed her on his table.
He was a lonely man. He’d never married, and as he approached the end of his forties, he’d all but given up. His was an awkward existence. He was not a handsome man. He was tall, but lanky, with a back that was bowed forward from his work. He didn’t know how to converse well with anyone, especially not women, which is why he preferred the company of the dead.
However, when this woman entered his presence, he somehow felt seen for the first time. Even as a corpse, she made him feel at ease instead of feeling guilty for not knowing the right words to say or things to do. He could just be.
Talia was in her late twenties, much too young to be on his table. She’d been a teacher. Second grade, he thought. He admired the patience it took to teach children. Perhaps it was what drew him to her at the start. She was a good listener. She enjoyed reading whatever she could get her hands on and had a natural curiosity about science. The mortician had a high degree of intellect, but Talia could keep up with him and even challenge him. He imagined so, anyway.
The mortician looked back down at the empty coffin and shoveled the upturned dirt back down the hole. His arms burned from the effort. Muscles he’d not activated in years were wrapped in pain, but he pushed through it until the hole was filled up to the top once again.
He smoothed out the soil and tried to make it look as much like it had before he’d disturbed it. He set the shovel down, darting his eyes around the cemetery to ensure he was still alone. Despite the darkness, he felt confident that he had not been spotted. He knelt down beside Talia and scooped her up in his arms. She felt heavier now that his arms were burning so much, but he kept pushing through the final stretch.
He reached the parking lot and eased her into the backseat of his car. He laid her down and covered her with his jacket. He scurried to the driver’s side of the car and looked around once more before climbing in.
His fingers tapped the steering wheel as he drove. He made sure to go the speed limit and follow the traffic laws to the letter while still driving with urgency to get home. It felt as though every car he passed or pulled up alongside could see straight through the shadows of the back seat and under the jacket. Despite his anxieties, no one took notice of him. The drivers and passengers of every nearby vehicle were more concerned with the inside of their cars than what was happening outside.
The short ten-minute drive felt as though it took an hour. When he arrived at home, he opened the garage and pulled his car in. Once the garage door was safely down, he breathed a sigh of relief.
He ran inside, leaving Talia in the car. His home was quaint and quiet. The living room had a small couch next to a leather rocking chair. There was a small TV across from the furniture, but the room was mostly filled with books. Shelves lined the walls, stocked primarily with nonfiction. There was a wide variety of scientific exploration. Anatomy, physiology, biology. Specialized studies of evolutionary development in various species. There were also entire sections of his library dedicated to history. The mortician was particularly interested in ancient Egypt.
The most notable surprise was a short row on a shelf tucked in the back corner. This row contained classic Victorian literature. There was little else in the way of fiction represented other than this row. Jane Austen novels were placed at the front with each of the three Brontë sisters, and Elizabeth Gaskell stacked alphabetically behind them.
The organized nature of the bookshelves contrasted with the rest of the house. Dishes had stacked up in the sink. The carpet was in desperate need of a vacuum. The trash was overflowing.
He sprinted through each room, cleaning up as quickly as he could. He scrubbed the dishes, vacuumed the carpets, and took out the trash. He organized his belongings as best he could and lit the only candle he had to cover the sour smell that lingered in the air.
Once the house was perfect, he turned his focus to himself. He was still a filthy mess from his excavation. He stripped and threw away his filthy clothes, then took a thorough shower, scrubbing every dirty fiber from his body. Afterwards, he put on some of his nicest clothes and fixed his hair. When he was done, he looked at himself in the mirror.
He still wasn’t much to look at, but his efforts did make a notable improvement from the dirty mess that had entered not too long before. He gave himself and his home one last pass and went back out to the garage.
Talia lay under his jacket right as he left her. He removed the jacket and eased her out of the car and into the house. The mortician placed her onto the couch in the spot he had made up for her. Her limbs were stiff, but he managed to get her into an upright position. Then he sat in the chair beside the couch.
“Uh…so…” he began. He half-motioned around the room. “This is…uh…my home. It’s not much, but I like it.”
She sat unmoved. He mostly looked across the room, awkwardly stealing a glance at her. He’d been planning this moment for over a week, since the moment he saw her. He knew she wouldn’t reanimate, but he thought this would feel different. A bit more fulfilling. He pushed that aside, grateful that at least he wasn’t alone again. An idea shot him up out of his chair.
“I usually like to read in the evenings. Maybe you’d like a book?”
He made his way to one of the bookshelves. He pulled his copy of Wuthering Heights and placed it in her hands on her lap. He flashed a quick smile and retreated to the bookshelf to get a book for himself. Once he had one in hand, he sat back down in his chair and began to read. Before long, the exhaustion of his excursion finally caught up with him, and he dozed off to sleep in the chair.
He woke with a start in the morning and looked over at Talia. She was sitting in the same position with the book still open to the same page in her grasp.
“Good morning,” he said shyly. He stood up from the chair and examined the preservative measures he’d put in place before she had been buried. Some were beginning to wear off, so he administered them again to help her retain her current state.
As he worked on her, the mortician spoke to her with a growing comfortability. He shared what the upcoming day would have in store for him, as well as the various errands he needed to run and the things around the house that needed to be done. It felt good to share the small things in his life with someone.
The next few days passed in the same relative manner. He went to work to ensure his absence was not noted. While he was there, he avoided her grave, but later wished he hadn’t, as he came to realize he’d forgotten the shovel he used to dig her up. The discovery led to suspicion, which led to the discovery that her body was missing.
No one seemed to suspect him. He was always somewhat invisible, so he carried on with his usual business, all the while suppressing his eagerness to go home at the end of the day to Talia.
This new routine solidified over the course of weeks, and with each passing day the mortician became more and more comfortable with this life change.
“I don’t feel much like reading, Talia,” he said on a Saturday afternoon. “Do you?”
He paused.
“No. Let’s watch some TV instead.”
He was now seated on the couch. It took him a week or so to gradually move from his chair to his new spot on the couch beside her. He thumbed through the local channels on the TV and stopped, stunned to see Talia’s face on the screen. Only it wasn’t the pale, lifeless face he’d grown accustomed to. It was a face full of color and life. She smiled with vibrancy and joy. Her picture hovered on the screen as reporters talked over it.
“…has been missing for weeks,” a reporter said. “Talia’s parents are at a loss as to why anyone would do this to their daughter.”
The screen cut to a clip of an older couple in their early sixties.
“What happened to our daughter was a tragedy,” said Talia’s father. “And for this to happen now is horrifying. All we want is for our daughter’s remains to be returned so she can be put to rest.”
“Talia was an active member of the community,” another reporter said. “She was a nurse at the local hospital and took immense joy in helping take care of her patients.”
The mortician rushed to turn off the TV but dropped the remote.
“The illness that took her came on suddenly and did not take long…”
He shut the TV off after having retrieved the remote. He didn’t want to hear the truth. He didn’t want to hear who she really was. His version of her was so much better. He’d felt more alive with her these past few weeks than any in his whole life. He wasn’t alone anymore, but somehow he knew it wouldn’t last.
The illusion was shattered when he saw her grieving parents; when he heard about her real life. Not the romanticized version he’d come up with. He looked over at her with a deep sadness in his eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
This would be their last day together, he decided. He cherished the remaining moments he had alongside her that afternoon and evening. They sat beside one another with their books. He spoke to her for the last time about the small things.
In the middle of the night, he drove out to the gravesite and dug. He placed her into the coffin and stole one last glance at her before filling in the dirt once again. He typed up an apology and left it at the grave to let the parents and Talia’s loved ones know that she had been returned. The funeral home, of course, ensured that she was, in fact, put back, and they never did discover who had taken her.
After that, he made a habit of walking the graveyard in the mornings before beginning on his work, and he often lingered at Talia’s gravestone to say a quick hello.
Tyler Chimento is a writer with a love for literary and speculative fiction. His stories often center on the introspective and emotional journeys of his characters. Tyler is also a voracious reader, drawing inspiration from inspiring stories regardless of their genre. Originally from Austin, Texas, he lives in Northwest Arkansas with his wife and their three children.
Featured image by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.
