Salt and pepper on his muesli. Stale bread soaked in milk overnight until it has softened enough to be spread across the lawn the next morning to feed the pigeons. A prized record player on a black stand complete with records, some still in the original cellophane, wrapped in black garbage bags, anticipating sticky fingers. Hospital bed corners. Three sons, one daughter and a wife. A small dog named Jack. The six o’clock news. A Jameson neat and whorls of cigar smoke. A portrait of an ordinary man.

The air was heavy with chatter as she remembered.

She absentmindedly pondered the idea that if she remained wedged between the two aunts any longer, she might become part of the linoleum. Maybe a chair would be set upon her head. The wooden legs, securing her placement as a permanent fixture at the dinner table. Maybe the broom would tickle her nose as it went about its perfunctory task. Maybe the shod feet that crossed her threshold would wear her down and she would eventually acquire a beautiful patina on her surface.

Maybe. Maybe…

She woke with a jolt from her reverie when a drop of scalding hot tea landed on her bare arm. Nerve endings tingling. She yelped. Had anybody heard her? How could they? Each voice in the kitchen trying to outdo one another, getting louder and louder, a cacophony of crows muscling for supremacy. She elbowed her way out through the crowd trying to get above the surface of the din. Gasping for solitude. Until finally she broke free.

She found herself alone with him. He was smaller now. Shrunken. With a pallor not seen outside of a vampire movie. Waxy. With a morbid fascination she sidled even closer. The tiniest of threads peeked out of the corner of his mouth where his lips had been sewn shut. An unmistakable musty scent swamped her nostrils. She wrinkled her nose. She was hot and sticky, beads of sweat forming on her upper lip, tasting salt with her tongue. With an impatient sigh she brushed wisps of hair off her clammy forehead.

She could hear the merriment drifting down the hallway towards her. Her time alone with him coming to an end. Her heart, roaring in her chest. She moved closer. To an outsider it looked like one final moment with a loved one. To say goodbye. She caressed his face one last time. And then brought her lips as close as possible, stubble grazing her cheek, and whispered her final message to him.

Burn.

He could feel her presence from within the confines of his resting place. They had thought of everything and spared no expense. Custom oak to fit his dimensions. The interior lined with white ruffled satin perfectly framing his dark wool suit. The suit which at that moment was irritating his bare skin, causing his flesh to goosebump and turn red. Him unable to adjust to ease the discomfort. This awareness of his new state of being was jarring. He felt her breath. The hairs on both arms stood on end. A wave of warmth battling the frigid cold he was currently experiencing, despite the wool suit amid the dog days of summer. He strained to hear her words. She spoke so softly. He could not respond. Even if he had wanted to. He was experiencing exquisite tenderness in his mouth from the sutures that were inserted through his jaw and up into his nasal cavity. That tiny thread she had noticed, the only evidence of his macabre manipulation. His eyelids shuttered. The glue they used irritating his sensitive cornea. His hands knotted across his chest, rosary beads intertwined between his fingers. A Hail Mary or two unlikely to make any difference to his current predicament. The noxious smell of death in his nasal passages. The holy water being applied to his forehead in the shape of a cross puddling and settling just behind his left ear, leaving a damp spot on the satin lining.

He fought to forget.

Forget what, you ask?

He found himself in his body again. He could hear the bed springs groaning and creaking under their weight. The slap of the headboard against the wall breaking his focus. His gaze momentarily switched to what was happening above the bed. The cross, lifting off the wall, perilously close to coming off completely. A symbol of hope. And of death before rebirth.

The piercing, high pitched sound of the drill interrupted his thoughts. Light was replaced by the darkest dark, cocooning him permanently.

He began to feel warm again. His spirits lifted. Luxuriating in the possibility of a resurrection. His terror and fear from before abating. The heat was unlike anything he had ever experienced. Almost unbearable. But tolerable if this was his rebirth.

The sizzle of his flesh in his ears. The smell. Impugning his nostrils. An echo of her last words to him. Burn.