Unseen (Death at Ten, a short story)

He shall not forget the moment he walked though those metal doors, it was his own first sight of death, there was a cold chilly silence in the room, he stood about while Mrs. La Rose saw, and claimed the dead body to be her husband’s—discolored and bloated; he was ten-years old, she was his babysitter. The man was just lying there; it was to him, new and terrifying. He wanted to run away, out of the city morgue. His mind came dashing back though; he leaned against a pole; the warm day and hot car Mr. La Rose was found in, found dead in (heart attack) made his body decay quicker than normal, someone said, it smelled like dead rotting something. After a few more minutes, he was actually comfortable. That’s what it was like for him that day, death previously, unseen, had lost its mystic.
As for the body—well, Mr. La Rose was a medium size man, and there had been booze on his breath—and reeking from his body, out of his pores he had sweated booze, fifty-one years old, separated from his wife for years, Margaret.

∙

It stayed in my mind all these years, that even though Mr. La Rose, was a womanizer, a drunk and non-supporter of his two boys, the same ages as me and my brother. She could not hold back her tears, although there were at the moment only a few drops from each eye; so determinedly when death came, and as it lied in front of her, she shivered with pain, I can see it again, as so often I had seen it back then, her love for a man, perched on top of a hill top, once bold.
And then as I stood there shivering in that cold room, with my boyish interest in death, a curiosity, and nervous dread, I thought: here was a man who really was not through with his life…had he been old, in his late 60s or 70s or even 80s, death might have become a comforting theme—something of that sort; at any rate, he wasn’t. But he quieted me lying there perhaps put a fear and chill in me as well.
I knew him slightly—I cannot now remember, every time I saw him, it was although only a few times, I do remember with patches of inky darkness, shadows of those days.

He was as one who goes though a wide tall building, newly constructed by the hand of death, the elevator man, as he stops from floor to floor he jumps out and tries to fling all of life he can into his already over flooded, over intoxicated system, in a matter of minutes, he never makes it to the top floor, awakening in the land called “The Dead!” thinking it’s all part of his imagination.

∙

Broken Silence

(Uncomfortable silence ensued and in the end it was broken by the voice of the morgue staff.)

Staff: There’s no one here except your husband, Mrs. If you’d like some time alone, I can watch the two boys, in the hallway. I might as well make myself useful!

Mrs. La Rose: (taking off her shawl, a dray woman—she nodded her head ‘yes’ waited for everyone to leave, she also turned to look over her shoulder to see if we all did leave, and we did.)


Note: written: 5-16-2009 (No. 400/SA 5DS)