The Violet Rose

We were tipsy, so I asked, and their least-popular package was the “Flowers & Farewells” one because everyone was sure they could buy the flowers more cheaply on their own, and they were absolutely correct. But every once in a while, the grieving prioritized convenience over all else, and the mortuary made a tidy profit margin as a result.

“Haha, so funny to hear the word ‘tidy’ used in conjunction with the dead,” I said.

“Oh no, no,” he replied. “It’s all tidy. So tidy. We clean everything impulsively. We dust nightly. You can’t have a cobweb in a viewing room. It’s too much. Imagine the Yelp.”

“Really?” I leaned forward and let my fingers play across my wine glass. He was cute and not at all ghoulish like I’d imagined. I thought I wanted ghoulish when I swiped. But cute was turning out to be preferable.

“In fact, I don’t come home smelling like death. My clothes all smell like Pine Sol,” he laughed. “Our entry floors are more wax than wood at this point.” He also leaned forward and lowered his voice. “We run air purifiers, big industrial ones, in every room, every night, all night long.”

“For what?”

“For the air!” And he burst into a laugh that sounded delightfully uncontrolled, less amused at himself than at the moment we had created, sharing this absurdity. His teeth were straight. Mortuaries afford orthodontics, I suppose. “My dad wants the air to smell as crisp as linen!”

“Does it?”

He wrinkled his nose, which had a few freckles across its bridge. It was a little oversized, but, together with his large ears, it gave him an expressive and adorable face, like a baby elephant. “It smells like … like nothing. Like a building holding its breath.”

I took a sip of my wine and blinked at him slowly. “How poetic.” He gave a small bow of his head.

Our bar was all zinc and copper and mirrors, with expensive stools and artfully worn farmhouse two-tops carefully filling the floor space. It served complex cocktails and over-described pickled vegetables for snacking. There was a supposedly fancy pizza truck that tried too hard squatting in the parking lot out front to receive a long line of expensively besotted patrons still in work clothes. I don’t remember the name, but it may as well have been called “first date” or “team drinks” or “company credit card” or … wait, it was “The Violet Rose.” I remember because the logo featured a cactus, and I wondered if I needed to look something up about cacti to understand.

“I’m talking too much,” he said magnanimously. “What about you? What’s your job like?”

I demurred. Nothing interesting. Picture an impossible-to-describe job with mysterious consequences, then drop it into a bland environment. I swung the arrow back to him.

“Do you just work upstairs? Or do you also do things … downstairs?”

He frowned. “We don’t have a downstairs.”

“I’m sorry, I thought that’s where the bodies were dressed. Embalmed? Prepared? It always looks like a basement on TV.”

“Oh, we outsource that.” He was too artful and interested in me to be annoyed, but I could still tell he was annoyed. This was a boring line of inquiry. The first thing people asked. I was perhaps going too quickly on the wine, and now had slipped into basic behavior. He deserved an interesting evening after all, and I pride myself on being interesting.

I slapped the table with more force than my carefully manicured hands would suggest is my habit. “So! Enough about dead people. Have you lived here all your life?”

This made him sad, as I’d guessed it would. “Yes. Family businesses do that. I mean, I did go off to New Hampshire for college, but then I scurried right back.” Now he was embarrassed. “I try to travel, though. I’ve been to a few continents.”

He was clearly eager to tell me about China or Chile or whatever, but I knew from long experience that probing this weak spot was the right move. “Wow, you must have seen a lot of change in this town. I mean, it’s grown so much. Do you still keep in touch with friends from high school?”

“They’ve moved away, mostly,” he said.

“Mostly?”

“Yeah. I mean, I guess there are a few still lingering around in some neighborhood or suburb but I don’t … I didn’t … have, like, a ton of friends in high school.”

“Because of the family business?”

He seized on this. “Yeah.”

His confidence was draining so I put my hand on his, letting my red nails touch the line of his wrist where a watch would be. In times gone by, there would always be a watch, but boys these days have bare wrists. “That’s so strange. I would have thought everyone would like you.” He met my eyes. “I like you.”

He blushed. “I like you, too,” he said at almost a whisper.

“Can I give you a kiss?”

This would seem too soon, for some. We were only nearing the end of our second round, and had barely scratched surface details, but I know how to do this. I know when too soon is actually the right moment. He shrugged, then reconsidered and met my eye contact with more force and said, “Yes, please.”

I leaned forward slowly, stopping an inch from his lips, then, making the final approach charged with possibility, allowed my nails to dig ever so slightly into his flesh, as if I needed the purchase to maintain my forward balance, nothing more, nothing painful, the sensation just another warm part of my lips on his. The kiss lasted a full second, then I withdrew and coyly took up my wine again, holding it in front of my mouth with my chin slightly downward so I was looking at him through the tops of my eyes, both my hands wrapped around the large bulb of the glass.

“That was nice,” he said. Then, shifting on his stool, “We should do that again.” Then, when I said nothing, “At some point.”

“Yes,” I said.

At his place, an hour later, I pushed him backward onto his bed, observing the tightness in his pants with apparent fervor. I put my hands on his knees and sank low. He was probably starting to feel distracted with dizziness at this point. He lifted his head as high as he could to watch my approach with stunned, excited, disbelieving eyes. When he did, his neck snapped, and I got to work.

All his bones were now fragile as dry balsa wood. I folded him into a cube-like shape, expertly snapping wrists and ankles to tuck the odd bits in, then hoisted him up — he was much lighter now — and packed him into his bedroom closet, tucked into a corner where he was obscured by some hanging suit pants. I stripped and placed my hands on his back, which I had made the lid of the crouched cube, and said my words. His essence, his funk, his smell, his memories, and his strength flowed into me.

I stood as him. His corpse vessel was now desiccated as a mummy and black as a burn victim. I admired my new body. As I’d suspected from his pants, I was endowed quite nicely. I had a pleasant coat of bodily hair and a surprising, hidden, strong set of sinews in my forearms. He must have played tennis. As often happened in the exciting immediacy of a new transformation, I found myself with an erection. After so long in womanly form, I wanted to indulge in a quick spray of seed. I took myself to the shower and bathed my new form while releasing it of his pent up energy and mine. I am not, technically, a sexual creature, but in times like this, with his soul still fresh in my rib cage and her loins still hot in my muscles, I feel as satisfied as a Satyr. I popped like a champagne bottle, then carefully wiped the human ooze from the tiles with body soap before cleaning myself thoroughly.

On the bed, still naked, I sprawled and gazed at the whirling ceiling fan as I pondered my possibilities: a stint in a mortuary, or a cross-country murder spree? Clean out the accounts and find new hunting grounds, or stay put and puzzle out the routines of a claustrophobic family? While the options geared toward freedom may sound superficially appealing, I’m often drawn to the challenge of mimicry and occupation, and I have perfected my antennae for those who exhibit hesitation at my uncanny errors. Sometimes, I occupy them next, though it is a bother in times like these when the detectives of eerie difference are most likely to be blood relatives, and the prevailing culture of the day is so opposed to incest.

Again with the erection! I had forgotten what it was to be encased in youth. I had been working my way back down the ladder of age — a habit of mine, to journey down into pubescent youth then back up into middle age, though never further, lest I be felled by medical ailments — and as always it felt as invigorating and annoying as a cold lake. Sometimes, in my duller moments, I thought it might be time to hop from comfortable body to comfortable body, forgoing these adventures into the electricity of youth. But boredom is what it is. I flicked my penis to punish it for its impudence. It flagged a bit, but remained sullenly defiant.

The apartment door opened. There had been no signs of a roommate. I hadn’t had time to practice with my voice. The bedroom door was not closed. “I’m naked,” I called hoarsely, then sprang to my feet and slammed the thin door. “I just showered,” I added, to cover all bases in terms of my relationship with this person.

I had expected a reply along the lines of “okay” or “I’m just putting away groceries” or “dude get dressed we’re going to the club” or “daddy?” Instead, the door burst open, and my former vessel walked through wearing an identical green dress to the one I’d just had on and was now crumpled on the floor.

I was stunned. This was not possible. A vessel, once occupied, was used, broken, litter.

“Don’t move,” she said, smirking at my position and look of fright.

“How…” I began. I began but then I realized. No. No, not here. Not now.

The woman, the most recent me, melted away, as befitted a replica constructed of fragile body wax from our glands. She was a primitive copy, a pretense, something only used by those who frowned upon our biological impulse to predate, or in emergencies. Before me stood the black skeletal figure of a compatriot I had never met. “I’ve been following you for years,” it chittered in our native speech. “You’ve been busy.”

“I thought I was alone here,” I lied, speaking human English, trying to prevent my thoughts from surfacing about my child, a mistake I had run from.

“Yet you procreated,” it said, advancing. I scooted back on the bed and drew my legs up protectively in front of my chest.

“I can’t! I’m inert! I’m in exile!”

“Yet,” it said, tilting its oblong skull, “you procreated.”

It was true. I had been carried away, occupying a marriage bed inside a truly strange coupling, where the man was expected to force himself upon his wife. I was the wife, and he had activated my illicitly intact spawning receptors in my anal pouch.

“You are no exile,” it continued. “You are” — and he said my name, my true name — “escapee from justice, but no more.”

“Are you,” my mouth was dry. I wanted to speak our tongue but these fleshy impediments prevented me from the dignity of that, forcing me to baby talk in this mammalian moan instead. “Are you here to arrest me.”

“I am here to end you,” it said, and that was the last thing I ever knew of the three-dimensional universe. Since then, I’ve been here, voiding, just like you.

Anyway, that’s my sad tale. What’s yours? I’d like to get to know you better. As long as we’re here, in this seedy nowhere, surrounded by formless nobodies. I like to call it the Violet Rose. Since we cannot touch, at least, please, give me the pleasure of knowing your former name.