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Diener: A Novella

By: oneiria



JOB DESCRIPTIONS

Hi there, my name is Igor Stiffpounder, and I'm a diener. No, make that a senior assistant diener. I was promoted last month.

In other words, I work with the dead.

However, most of my deceased helpmates just lollygag around and are of no help whatsoever. Sometimes I almost feel as though I'm working solo. That's one of the reasons I've got two jobs, just to meet my corpse quotas.

My primary job is senior assistant diener in the morgue over at Our Lady of Uncounted Sorrows Hospital. In case you don't know, a diener is basically someone who wheels human cadavers around, gets them in and out of the autopsy drawers, and cleans them up so that they can properly greet their (oftentimes dissecting) public. The word is derived from the German word Leichendiener, which literally means "corpse servant." That's about where I stand on the totem pole of the dead. To me, Leichendiener sounds like "lunch and dinner," which is what you will generally lose when you try to cram a bloated six-day-old floater into one of these stiff drawers that are fit only for skinny-jean-wearing anorexics. For some reason, the manufacturers have not kept pace with the obesity epidemic here in the States. Probably trying to save on aluminum, the cheap bastards.

And they say they are trying to reduce healthcare costs. Go figure. Just make a wider drawer, I say, or at the very least a panel of extra-jumbo drawers for cases like these.

So when I get a floater like that, I typically have to get one of the chainsaws out of the supply closet and then go to town on their mammoth white rolls of blubbery flesh. First, I lift them in a fireman's carry, and plop them down on one of the size EEEE autopsy tables, no easy feat when you've got a waterlogged 320 pound floater. That's why I go through an exacting daily physical training routine. If I failed to be able to bench-press a 670-pound cadaver, even once, that son-of-a-bitch pathologist Dr. Ricky "Pluto" Yama would have my job in an instant or at the very least dock me a week's pay. 

Some of our guests have bodies of such a magnitude they would easily be disqualified from the Biggest Loser TV show due to health concerns and simple aesthetics. Also it is difficult to visually assess weight loss progress when the contestant is roughly spherical, as even a large loss will only result in a small change in the contestant's radius. You could try to measure them with whole body calipers, but then there would be endless arguments about which folds of fat the caliper jaws should be inserted into in order to provide the most accurate estimate of the contestant's radius. Plus the audience wants to see the weight loss process with their own eyes rather imagining it from the readout of the caliper angle, which would be too abstract, given the increasing mathematical illiteracy of the American viewing audience.

But I digress.

Once I get the floater on the supersized examining table, I pull the chain on the chainsaw and bifurcate the stiff right down the middle. You'd be surprised how cleanly they split apart. You can see every organ in the two halves, most of them in cross-sectional view of course.

With an oversized bloated floater, putrid water generally pours out of their lungs and stomachs, and the smell is awful (or should I say "offal"), even to my well-inured nose. What in God's name are we doing to our oceans, lakes and streams?

You are sometimes are confronted with wildlife crawling and spilling out of the floater corpse. Such fauna include pinching crabs, blowfly maggots, and poisonous jellyfish that have taken up residence inside the stiff. Then there are the barnacles that coat their skin and will rip you palms apart unless you get just the right grip on them. This list is far from exhaustive. And who gets to mop all this up? None other than yours truly.

Then I would carry each half of our example floater and lift them into separate drawers. This isn't too bad, as their weight is only half that of the full corpus-a-mundo in Fonzie speak, and who wouldn't use Fonzie speak, when the only decent cinematic portrayal of a denier is Henry Winkler in Night Shift (unless you count Linda Fiorentino in "Men in Black," although she played a deputy medical examiner, not a diener).

But again I digress.

Getting back to the floater in our example, once I get her squeezed into into the two drawers, I label them both with the loved one's name, and mark them as Part A and Part B, sometimes with a notation such as "right side" and "left side," although this should be obvious even to a retarded autopsy technician. But who knows in a world where they now have to mark an X on a cancer patient's thigh so that the docs will not amputate the wrong leg? One shudders to think of all the perfectly healthy legs that were thrown into offal pits in the eons before the invention of felt-tip markers, although it must said that such mistakes are a Godsend to the workers in the prosthetics industry as well as to manufacturers of felt tip pens. They deserve every dollar they earn through their hard work and tireless fund-raising efforts.

You might think that such "retrofitting" of the corpse to fit the available drawer space would screw up the autopsies. But those autopsy guys would never be thrown off by something as mundane as a vertically-bifurcated cadaver. They are made of much more sterner stuff than that.

Hell, if you get a decent-sized natural disaster such as the explosion at the Better Living Through Chemistry plant last November, you often have to sort the body parts and personal effects into separate drawers marked Eyeballs, Teeth, Tongues, Ears, Digits, Skull Fragments, et cetera, et cetera.

You would think that would throw off the autopsy docs, but in fact they seem to enjoy it. They must all have been jigsaw puzzle freaks when they were kids. Some of them will even juggle up to 18 eyeballs at a time, inspecting them in flight and passing them (sometimes behind the back) to the correct autopsy techs who are standing guard over their respective corpses in the process of reassembly. They rarely make a mistake.

But again I digress.

In addition to my diener job, I literally moonlight as a funeral cosmetologist working the graveyard shift at the Shady Pines Funeral Parlor in Yorba Linda (although technically they are all graveyard shifts). I'm not licensed or anything like that, but they don't seem to care. With me, they know they have the right man on the job, not some bozo who may or may not have a beautician certificate from the Arthur Murray Dance Hall for the Dead.

I take on the most difficult cases. You wouldn't believe how many families want an open casket ceremony for their loved ones who had their head sheared off in a collision with a semi or who were burned to a crisp in a house fire or an explosion, such as the aforementioned mishap at the Better Living Through Chemistry plant. Many such families almost seem to relish (and indeed salivate at) the prospect of viewing their loved one's irretrievably disfigured corpse. 

The very first thing we do is DNA-test each body fragment, no matter how small. Shady Pines' prudent financial motto is: "Wrong stiff and we go down the cliff." Of course there may still be body parts out there, but we make no claims regarding the completeness or proper permutation of the loved one's earthly remains. "Don't mind 'em if you can't find 'em," we tell our grieving customers in regard to missing body fragments. It seems to provide them with some degree of solace and closure. 

You want to talk about a rat race. That's exactly what my job as a funeral cosmetologist is. Literally. (Although to their credit, Shady Pines management has repeatedly called the good people at Minnie and Mickey's Rodent Croak, Inc. to see if they can slow the rats down to, say, zero miles per hour to make it easier for us to grab their little gray asses). The rodent problem has become a pressing issue ever since those two foot-long Norway rats chewed off the better part of Mrs. Pearl Rabinowitz' nose, eyes, and cheeks. That posed a real makeup challenge for me. Luckily, Danny down in Stiff Flow Management came up with the idea of plugging fake eyeballs into her sockets and then putting a Lone Ranger mask on the old bitty and then telling the grieving family that the interment ceremony would be Halloween-themed so that Ms. Rabinowitz could enjoy her favorite holiday one last time. In fact, we could have presented just her skeleton just to get a rise out of the bereaved, but this idea was nixed by some squeamish humorless prig in the Mourners' Outreach and Fund Raising Extortion Department.

As it turned out, Danny Green's idea of a Halloween-themed funeral proved to be a great success. I had no idea how many different slutty widow, slutty undertaker, and slutty welcoming demon costumes were on offer at Halloween stores these days. As you might expect, many of the grieving multitude chose to stay through the hard cider, Manischewitz wine, and cheese and cracker cocktail party. Soon what should have been a sedate session of sitting Shiva devolved first into a drunken Irish wake and then into an orgy of Bacchanalian proportions. Needless to say, many of the coffins down in the storage room were soon filled with amorous couples. I saw the lid of one of our top-of-the-line teak silk-upholstered coffins bouncing up and down in rhythm with the vile thrusts of the fornicating couple prematurely defiling what could well prove to be their own final resting place. Little did I know that a similar fate would befall me within a fortnight (two weeks, for those of you who eschew the pretense of being English).

But I digress once again.

So how exactly does a funeral cosmetologist prepare a floater or a burnt marshmallow crispy for an open casket funeral? Let's continue with the simple example of the two-drawer bifurcated floater described above. The first thing you have to do is to check the casket and coffin supply down in the cellar. The average dimension of a casket is 84 inches in length, 24 inches in width, and 23 inches in height. Or at least it used to be 15 years ago. Due to the obesity epidemic, the average width has increased to 27-28 inches. Don't forget the clothes and the folded hands. They might run you another inch and a half in the vertical direction.

I'm sure you dear reader, if you're anything like me, already know the difference between a coffin and a casket, but if you don't, a casket is a rectangular box, whereas a coffin may have six or even eight sides. Thus, for a serious floater, you probably want a coffin, as they are flared at the middle and may more easily accommodate waterlogged, bloated, and super-expanded floaters.

Once in a while you run into a floater who has spent some serious water time in the head down position. This is often the case with mob stoolies who have been sent to sleep with the fishes wearing a concrete block for a necktie. For these floaters, you may want to go with a simple rectangular casket in order to get the loved one's watermelon-sized head successfully inserted into the box. 

If you've got nothing big enough in the basement, just give the guys at www.oversizecasket.com a call. They'll get you what you need in two days, three days tops. Plus they can send you the casket by a drone disguised as a pair of heavenly angels. You can even make it part of the ceremony. The preachers love it. And why wouldn't they, as these drone deliveries inevitably generate a significant number of new converts?

As you can imagine, floaters are generally the most difficult remains to cram into a coffin designed for the non-waterlogged deceased. The first thing we usually try is to hoover the water out of the floater. In the case of the bifurcated individual discussed above, this would involve turning her bodily halves bloody-sides up. I would recommend starting with a with a standard 746 watt vacuum pump. That will pull most of the water out, without pulling out very much of the patient's (i.e., stiff's) guts and internal organs, in keeping with the tenets, principles, guidelines and best practices of corpse management. 

Sometimes if you get a really nasty floater, you may want to go to a 1,000 watt machine. However, this runs the risk of pulling out large amounts of the deceased customer's tissues, bodily fluids, and other unmentionables (two of which were just mentioned). Some of these bodily components inevitability run down the drain in the course of the autopsy and water extraction process. However, as noted above, one of our main credos is: "Don't mind 'em if you can't find 'em." Another is: "Don't sweat the sweat."

If you question the professionalism of such practices, why don't you try to find these bodily parts and liquids after they're all mixed in with the effluvium of toxic waste that we and the good people at the revitalized Better Living Through Chemistry plant continually discharge into the Peaceful Valley River at a point approximately one mile downstream from our fair Shady Pines Funeral Parlor? 

If that doesn't work, you can use our spanking new Medela Dominant 50 liposuction pump. However, that of course runs the risk of hoovering up many of the patient's lipids and other unpleasant liquefied organs and organ by-products. Of course you would then be ethically bound to separate out the water from the patient's liquidized tissues for the purpose of burial. (Recall Shady Pines' financial motto: "Wrong stiff and we go down the cliff.") If possible, we want the stiff, the whole stiff, and nothing but the stiff.

It is true that on more than one occasion, the DNA of some of our deceased clients has been detected in the drinking water of the good citizens of Happyville, which lies about two miles downstream from the effluvium discharge point. This can result in something of a sticky wicket if the feds or Happyville CSI literally conduct a dragnet of the Peaceful Valley River. I can't tell you how many times the feds have knocked on our doors because they have found the DNA of wanted killers or murdered citizens in the river itself in or the tap water supply for Happyville. God forbid that they exhume the corpse and find suspicious DNA suggesting that the coffin may harbor a runaway felon hoping to slip beneath the tectonic plates without being detected.

Thankfully, we can usually produce a death certificate, funeral guest book, and pictures of the deceased in the coffin to show the pigs that as far as we know it was a righteous burial, cremation, or pureeing of the deceased (see below). We sometimes tell them that we had no way of knowing that deceased was a perpetrator or a victim of mass murder. For all I know, the coppers' accusations that Our Lady of Uncounted Sorrows Hospital and Shady Pines Funeral Parlor comprise a mob-owned conglomerate enabling us to "launder" what Al Gore might term "inconvenient stiffs" might be true. I've already noted that I am a very low man on the totem pole of death, so I wouldn't know about such things.

If liposuction fails (and it generally does), we put the loved one into our spanking new eight-foot whole body centrifuge and crank 'er up to maximum (usually about 3000 RPM). When you do that, the water shoots out of them faster than off a dog doing the post-bath shimmy. It's kind of like giving the loved one a one last trip to a water-themed amusement park. I would have to say that they seem to enjoy it for the most part, as their eyes generally open wide, with the eyeballs protruding. They also get shit-eating grins on their faces while they're spinning past you. My colleagues think these phenomena are the results of centrifugal force on the vitreous humor of the patient's eyes, as well as the stretching of the facial tissues to such a degree that the face comes to resemble that of the hyper-Botoxed Bruce Jenner, who once won an Olympic gold medal in the decathlon but is now reduced to a semi-estranged member of the Kardashian family "reality" TV show. Jenner's face is now permanently frozen in a horrific rictus grin that would make even the headless horseman turn around and skedaddle back in the dark woods from whence he came. 

However, my colleagues may be excused for their ignorance of science, as they are simple funeral directors and assistants, whereas I am now a senior assistant diener at the prestigious Our Lady of Uncounted Sorrows morgue. As we'll see in more detail below, the complexity of the diener job surpasses even that of the medical examiner, whose responsibilities rarely exceed the complexity of pronouncing the cause of death of a burnt crispie lying on the floor of the Better Living Through Chemistry plant or a human head dislodged from it shoulders by a clothesline tackle and rolling still encased in its Green Bay Packer helmet in the general direction of the thirty-yard line, as videotaped and witnessed by a stadium full of fans. Surely such a deliberate decapitation warrants something more than the 15 yards personal foul penalty assessed against the Seahawks by the perpetually incorrect but well-chiseled referee Ed Hochuli, whose bad call cost me $500 in this instance.

But I digress once again. 

If you're lucky, the blood, bile and other precious bodily fluids will stay trapped in their various capillaries, ducts and other bodily containers throughout the centrifugation process. If they don't, it's not a total loss. Generally, the water, muck, slime and other environmental sediment and detritus can be easily siphoned off from the outer layer of the centrifuge, with only minimal loss of the loved one's precious bodily fluids.

The real problem with floaters is the sheer amount of liquefied flesh you have to deal with when you are preparing the loved one for his or her final open coffin joyride. Fortunately, you at least have the skeleton to work with. Most importantly, you generally have the whole skull. It's pretty easy to reconstruct the loved one's face from a fleshless skull.

The first thing you have to do is siphon off the liquids that are still hiding in the hollows of organs and other visceral pockets. I usually just lipo it all up into a single bucket (there is no hope separating the organs at this point, anyway). I then carefully pull the two halves of the skin off the surface of the residual slime. Did you know that your skin is generally considered to be a single organ? That's what makes it so easy to retrieve it from the bio-slime essentially intact, although only topologically, as the chainsaw process generally leaves pretty nasty tears in the torso, face, scalp and groin areas.

In the next step, you have to glue the two halves of the skeleton back together. I would recommend crazy glue for this purpose. Some people use staples, but in my view they can result in noticeable bumps on the loved one's body. 

Then you insert the skeleton's arms and legs back into the onesie of human skin they wore in life, making sure to slide the finger bones and the toe bones into the right dermal grooves. But not to worry. It's as easy as putting on a sweater and leggings or putting a pair of Dr. Denton's pajamas on your kid. . 

Then you carefully roll the waterlogged loved one into the prone position, being careful to maintain the proper positioning of front of the skeleton on its blanket of skin. 

Next, you suture up the chainsaw-induced tear in the rear skin of the loved one.

Then you carefully roll the waterlogged loved one over into the supine position, being careful to maintain the proper positioning of the skeleton on the blanket of its soft silky, delicious skin. You then suture the front flaps of the skin. Generally, I would recommend beginning with the head. Just pull the skin as tightly around the skull and rib cage as you can. This may take great strength, which is another reason why dieners and funeral cosmetologists undergo a rigorous program of physical training and conditioning. We are also constantly lifting bodies in and out of caskets, and some of these (e.g., floaters) can be quite heavy due to waterlogging and total subsistence on fast food.


Diener: A Novella



Of course with the loose skin of a floater, stretching the skin is not the problem. Most often the skin is too loose, and you have to take it in as though you were a tailor at Joseph A. Bank "taking in" a cheap suit. 

You will need the technical prowess of a plastic surgeon to ensure that the stiches are fine enough that they will not be noticeable under the caked makeup (most deceased grandmas looks like nineteenth century whores at their open-casket funerals anyway). But a diener generally has to do a lot more sewing than a plastic surgeon does, so this is no problem. You then suture the skin over the scalp, face, neck, ribs, spine and crotch of the skeleton.

Take care to line up the nose and lip fragments. The eyes are less of a problem. You can pop them in later. 

If you're lucky, the stiff will be a decapitation, and you will be able to pull the facial skin and scalp vertically off the beloved's neck and skull. Then when you're ready, you can pull the skin back over the skull and neck as if it were a ski mask (or should that be "terrorist mask" at this point in our cultural devolution?). If you're not lucky, you can always resort to a do-it-yourself decapitation. Most of us postmortem guardians have resorted to this trick at one time or another. 

Also, if the deceased parts his hair in the middle as Comedy Central's Jon Stewart does, you've got to be careful to line up the front and back end of the part as best you can. This was a major problem for the Apaches. If you brought back a scalp that was parted in the middle, the tribe would generally not give you credit for it when it came time to count coup, as they would often claim that it was the scalp of a woman or an old man.

Your conditioning should also include speed training, which most American exercise programs do not. A runaway fully rejuvenated stiff (of which more later) can generally run a hundred meter dash in 15 seconds flat. If a reanimated corpse has a 40 meter head start, to catch up with it in 20 seconds, you're going to have to be able to run a hundred in just about eleven and a half seconds. Of course, you can do what our ancestors did with large prey and just run after it for hours, until it's spent. But if you let the stiff get too far out of the containment area, you may have a few witnesses to deal with in one way or the other. And you do not want the other. So if a fleet-footed stiff gets out, you are going to need to be the diener equivalent of Usain Bolt. 

Of course, a reanimated floater doesn't get any further than she could have waddled if she were still in her prime. A lot of time, the sheer effort is sufficient to rip her back into two halves, given the sheer mass that must be contained by her skin, which was never designed to be a weight-bearing organ. Then you've got the right half and the left half of the floater crawling in different directions, each with just one arm and one leg (and one eye and half a motor cortex for that matter). Then you've got to grab each half by the ankle and drag it back down into the grave. This hardly ever happens, as only an idiot would rejuve a floater. There's just no upside with that, as the organs are waterlogged and partially vacuumed up. That's why there is basically no market for floater tissue, unless you count the skin fetishists, and most of them are probably living in the basements of their mothers' houses, with pockets no deeper than the funds required to purchase their next double meat Whopper with cheese and fried onion rings.

MARKETING YOUR FLOATERS

However, there are a few twisted skin connoisseurs out there who would give their right arm for a L-Z Boy recliner upholstered with pulsating skin that maintains a constant temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit through out the year. Fat chance of that trade. It's going cost you more than an arm and leg for such a chair, literally. You're going to have to spring for the floater, the whole floater and nothing but the floater (of course not counting the internal organs). Hell, we can make a whole sofa in addition to some scrawny-ass recliner out of a floater's skin.

Throw in a few muscles and ganglia and you've got yourself a matched set of massaging furniture. All you've got to got to do is untwist the E-Z open cap once a week, bleed some of the fluid out, and pour in a warmed quart of Carnation Instant Breakfast Essentials Complete Nutritional Drink (laced with stem cells of course, as discussed later). This is a small price to pay for a week of sensual pleasure and warmth (our dermal furniture covers come prepackaged with neural programs to ensure a Happy Ending whenever you crash face down on the couch). Your neighbors and friends may also enjoy a little ride on the couch once in a while. Be forewarned that some of these people may become upholstery-addicted, and it may be tough to keep them from becoming a nuisance. If this is the case, just give them a tall, cold glass of Shady Pines Amygdala Cola. This will induce a mild case of dermatophobia. In some cases this may become so strong your nuisance guests attempt to strip off their own skin with their fingers. If several such cases develop in your immediately vicinity, Shady Pines skin and neural grafts are DNA-scrambled, so that no suspicion with fall upon you or, Heaven help us, upon Shady Pines.

You will be amazed at how much the perpetually warm human skin of Shady Pines furniture will save on your utility bills. To save even more, you could get our Chloro-Sofa, which includes photosynthetic genes to extract energy from the electric lights you already use throughout the day. Using a variety of photosynthetic pigments, we can make your furniture any of the beautiful colors of fall leaves.

Many Shady Pines furniture purchasers soon find that they have no need for their current spouse or simply no longer have their current spouse. This too will cut down on your costs, unless of course your spouse is the primary breadwinner in your family. If so, Shady Pines upholstery may not be for you.

But I digress again. 

If you cannot use the Dr. Denton approach described above, you will have to stitch the skin into gloves and booties around the beloved's skeleton fingers and toes. Be forewarned that the talus bones and the index metacarpals require precision work, especially if the deceased loved one will be expected to crawl his or her own way out of the grave under their own steam in the middle of the night and then run to report for duty at our very own underground abattoir, conveniently located right between the Our Lady of Uncounted Sorrows Hospital and our own humble Shady Pines Funeral Parlor. This practice literally saves us an arm and a leg on transportation costs and eliminates the questions that would be raised if we were to run hearses around town in the middle of the night.

The sewing of the gloves must be done very subtly, as many mourners in an open coffin ceremony will glad-hand the deceased as though they were politicians running for county commissioner and the stiff was a swing voter. Also, you do not want the skin to peel off the bones if one of the mourners gives the corpse one last high five in recognition of their high school football prowess (and you wouldn't believe the things that some of these grieving motherfuckers can do). That would be discomforting for all concerned, and might close down Shady Pines for as much as year before it could reopen under a new name (perhaps "Bones R Us?").

By now you may have already gathered that we directly market body parts to consumers, although we are careful not to mention their origins in our advertisements on Crazy Boris's Late Late Show of Horrors, which regularly features scenes of dismemberment and may not be suitable for younger viewers (or older viewers with more than three marbles still rattling around in their skulls). Hair and fingernails can be very profitably sold as rhinoceros horn, as both just consist of keratin. For that matter we often sell human cartilage as ground shark's fin. If we expand into pet funerals as I have long argued we should, we could market Great Dane testicles as tiger balls. Hell, we could convince many veterinarians to sell us fresh 'nads right out of the "fixing" process. That ought to drive the Chinese mad (not that they aren't already).

I know that a lot of pet owners continue to hang on to their "fixed" canine companions' discarded testicular orbs, apparently hoping that they may one day reunite Fido's body parts in a magnificent mausoleum and make him ready for the Great Resurrection that awaits us all on the Day of Judgment. (See Pope Francis' recent ruling that dogs can go to heaven. As for you cats, forgetta'bout it.)

But with the right coin, you can pry any mourner's gripping fingers off of their dear pet's extracted testicular orbs.

I'm pretty sure this traffic in body parts is one of the reasons we hear a lot of talk about moving the morgue at Our Lady of Uncounted Sorrows a little closer to the ORs. Who knows how many usable fresh organs we might be able to get our hands on if the walk was only 80 feet rather than the length of two football fields? It would be pretty easy to grease some starving surgical resident's green-rubber-sheaved palm to look the other way. Lot of money there, that's for sure. Hell they could even share in the profits, those poor bastards who have run up hundreds of thousands in medical school debt, while currently receiving the pay of a third-grade classroom teacher.

A few decades ago, scientists estimated the worth of a human body as less than a dollar. The good people at DataGenetics estimate that the market value of the atomic elements in a human body alone is $160. The even better people at the Finance Degree Center estimate the price for a human body and all its parts in the black market as $45 million. Pretty good profit margin I say (especially when we are sticking the stiff's beloved family with exorbitant funeral costs}. It's no wonder that few people make it from the morgue to the grave with their bodies intact.

In the old days, to a get a floater's body ready for the big show (i.e., funeral), all you needed to do was to fill the skin out nicely. If the floater's internal organs were pureed during the centrifugation process, we simply injected the organ sauce at appropriate places into the guest's body with an extra-jumbo hypodermic needle. However, this practice all too often results in a face that is too liquid for most mourners' tastes. We tried pureed rat meat, which would be killing two birds with one stone (i.e., health inspections and funereal aesthetics), but the results were not much better, and many mourners with fur allergies broke out in rashes and hives. This just led to more rumors about an unchecked murine infestation at Shady Pines.

Finally, some genius proposed using silicone instead of actual meat. However, the aesthetic results were no more favorable in inanimate corpses than they were for such luminaries as Michael Jackson, Cher, and the aforementioned honorary Kardashian Bruce Jenner. Also due to the viscosity of silicone, whenever a mourner pats the cherished loved one on the cheek, a rather noticeable pool of ripples passes over the countenance of the dear departed. When these waves are partially reflected off the cherished family member's skull and collarbone, a set of standing waves can form on the client's face. This can transform the skinny face of a timid accountant into a Neanderthal's mug of protruding brows, cheekbones and lips, to an extent that many of the dear departed's relatives and friends may question the identity or even the species of the deceased's mortal remains.

STEM CELLS TO THE RESCUE

Then some genius out there got the fancy idea of extracting a tissue sample from the loved one's cheeks or (more revoltingly) urethra, converting some of the cells into pluripotent stem cells and injecting them back into the patient. As the reader of this journal is no doubt aware, pluripotent stem cells are capable of giving rise to a variety of tissues and organs. These weren't just any pluripotent stem cells, but cells engineered to possess long flagella (like the wriggling tails of a human sperm or a tadpole) as well as additional mitochondria to provide extra energy (remember that these cells have to operate in a dead body and thus in the absence of oxygenated blood). These cells then migrate throughout the body and differentiate into new cells appropriate for their location (e.g., neurons for the stem cells reaching the brain, blood cells in the bone marrow, muscle cells in the biceps, and skin cells in the face). 

These wandering stem cells were a spectacular success, even though most people now regard them as the seed of the Devil himself. When injected properly, they colonize the loved one's entire body, bringing a rosy glow to the departed's cheeks, filling out the loved one's face, pumping up the honored guest's muscles, in many cases bringing a smile to the beloved corpse's countenance that surpasses the usual death rictus popularized by the twice-aforementioned honorary Kardashian Bruce Jenner.

These stem cells even regenerate the subject's internal organs. They also raise the corpse's temperature, sometimes to a disconcerting degree. Mourners are sometimes shocked by the relative warmth of the skin of these soon-to-be Meet St. Peter contestants. We just tell them that we keep the cadaver in a specially-heated chamber to keep the loved one's flesh fresh. Somehow most of them accept this explanation, although any child past the age of three knows that the best way to achieve this is to freeze the meat and then reheat it in body-sized microwave. By the way, don't try this at home, but if you do, please use the low setting. You would not like the results if you use a higher setting (just think of the movie Gremlins).

Another thing you have to watch out for is corpse desiccation or at the very least dry, flaky skin and chapped lips. Over the counter remedies such as Chapstick and skin moisturizers are powerless to heal the heartbreak of postmortem psoriasis and seborrhea that results from the deceased's failure to drink and the resulting dehydration. The dead are notoriously stubborn and will aggravatingly refuse water even when it is politely offered to them.

You do not want the loved one falling apart into dust like a poorly-excavated mummy of some Egyptian pharaoh when a dear guest pats it on the cheek or administers an old-fashioned back slap in congratulations to the semi-liquidified loved one for being in the vanguard of departure from this often troubling mortal realm.

There are even cases on record where a psychotic mourner will try to administer the Heimlich maneuver one last time in a futile last-ditch attempt to dislodge that pesky chicken bone that got stuck in obese Grandma's rapidly devouring gizzard. Hell, some rookie coroner has probably already mounted and hung said bone as a trophy on his office wall. However, generally such a wet-behind-the-ears medical examiner will quickly grow jaded at such minor demonstrations of his medical acumen and perspicacity (I know these words mean the same thing, but I rarely get to use them in view of the minimal academic skills of millennial physicians). A novice medical examiner will gradually learn to bide his time and wait for trophies of more major accomplishments (e.g., the skull that bears the Operating Thetan Tom Cruise's still-glistening and grinning teeth).

Thus, there is no way to bring Granny back. (Or is there? Read on.)

In view of most corpses' impolite refusal to accept the complexion-saving gift of water, the only way to hydrate such a stiff is to get out the old OXO turkey baster, shove it down the loved one's throat and squeeze the bulb as hard as you can. This will get the water down the protesting client's esophagus, but even that is not sufficient to ensure that patient's extremities get hydrated. That's why we usually have to get out a vacuum cleaner, although they don't usually call it that but rather a "PROBE" (which stands for Post-Rectal Offal and Bowel Extraction" device). Then you shove it up the dear one's darkest and hopefully virgin passage and hit the "High" button. This will totally hoover out the contents of the client's stomach, ileum and colon. This is just like a refreshing new age colonic cleansing at a health spa for the patient, although for us dieners located at the other end of the process, the results are somewhat less spa-like. A PROBE treatment will also pull the water through the stomach and down through the lower digestive tract, which keeps the patient's body hydrated enough to support the regeneration process. Also, the whipping of the stem cells' flagella can propel them more effectively in the newly fluid environment. Many patients' hearts are already slowly beating at this point.

SHOW ME THE MONEY 

By now you have surely guessed that the main reason for these maneuvers is to keep the cherished one's organs fresh and alive so that they will get top dollar on the transplant black market. As they say in our business, money talks, while religious bullshit walks. Of course, most of us dieners never see the money, aside from our raised hourly rates, which are basically "hush money," as we all had to sign nondisclosure agreements in order to be eligible for the higher pay.

We can harvest the organs right after the client's death or even after they have been interred. Some of them are still warm a full seven days after burial.

There is even sporadic evidence that we are doing much more than just keeping their organs healthy, viable and warm.

The first thing we ever heard about a strange report regarding one of our own guests was the time that the dear deceased grandfather of three children, Happenstance E. Collins, ripped out a wicked fart just before Father John O'Malley closed his coffin door for the procession over to the Happy Endings Graveyard. The stench was enough that many mourners hightailed it for the olfactory sanctuary of their own cars and the procession to the graveyard, much to the consternation of the owners of the Shady Pines' Relics of the Saints Gift Store and Mausoleum.

And gases are by no means the only only thing the dead can expel from their bodies. Happenstance Collins' exhibition of almost superhuman flatulence was poor timing for sure, but such events are by no means unusual. Corpses often release trapped gases, usually in the form of belches that would repel even the most jaded and hard-nosed of police cadaver dogs. Sometimes they will even speak a word or two before collapsing back into the cadaver file drawer or coffin. Sometimes they are capable of much more complex behavior. In fact, a fair number of them prove to be alive and crying out for someone, anyone, to get them out of the cadaver drawer. I can't begin to tell you how many living people I have helped out of cadaver drawers. I still get Christmas cards from many of them.

No one is likely to forget the projectile vomiting and explosive diarrhea of the Reverend Loquacious P. Diddy, as he was being put to rest in his own church down in Hoochiekoochie Parrish just outside of New Orleans back in '09. Almost every pane of the stained glass windows in the good Reverend's church had to be precisely replaced after the Reverend's Guinness-certified record-breaking act of human expulsion.

As to be expected, many of the non-deceased incontinent and acid-reflex-plagued contestants protested loudly to the Guinness committee that the competition should be restricted to the living. However the Reverend Loquacious P. Diddy's living descendants pleaded that the man of cloth deserved this final honor, especially considering the fact that he was generally excoriated in the media after his followers sold their every last possession in order to join the Reverend in his vigil on Mount Jambalaya, where the righteous man of cloth had proclaimed that the world would be destroyed by an immense, demonic entity taking the form of a resurrected roadkill armadillo who would devour the world to avenge for mankind's pollution of the Earth, unless his churchly minions demonstrated the same faith in God in that a Labrador retriever invests in his psychopathic owner.




Diener: A Novella



Regular ole' just plain dead folks can sometimes perform more complex acts than you would think possible. For instance, in 1818 the Scottish physician Andrew Ure electrically jumpstarted the neural system of one Matthew Clydesdale, an executed killer. The dead man's face danced like the legs of a galvanized frog, expressing the full gamut of human emotions, including rage, horror, and despair, topped by a ghastly smile. The dead slayer's eyes carefully watched the proceedings, astonished that his soul was so abruptly recalled to pull the wires of the fleshy puppet's mask it had so recently shed. If you don't believe me, just read Roseanne Montillo's book The Lady and Her Monsters (HarperCollins, 2013), the lady in question being Mary Shelly, the author of (the original) Frankenstein.

Of course the piece de resistance occurred last week in Arlington, Texas at the funeral of "Wild Bob" Hitchcock, who had been a gun-totin' used car TV salesman in his prime. At the end of the service, the stem-cell enhanced cadaver of Robert E. Lee "Wild Bob" Hitchcock sat straight up in his coffin (which is one more sit-up than the blubbery used car dealer did during his entire terrestrial life) and regaled the congregation with Porky Pig's standard farewell: "Bee a blee a blee, that's all folks!"

Before it could make a final pitch for that special used car, the corpse of the portly ersatz gunslinger and one-time automobile magnate collapsed back in the coffin, despite wide applause from the assembled multitude and enthusiastic cries for an encore.

Well that's all the background you need before you hear the tale of Jack and Dianne that I am about to tell you. Check that, a quick internet search suggests that this title has already been copyrighted by one John Cougar Mellencamp. So much for anonymity then. I'll use our real names.

THE TALE OF IGOR AND PERSEPHONE 

But when we are going to get to the pornography, you ask. Here it comes.

For all intents and purposes, my personal voyage began the night they wheeled Persephone Jones into the deluxe corpse suite at Shady Pine's Funeral Parlor for a little rest before the big show at ten o'clock the next morning. Persephone was riding in the very same super-deluxe teak coffin that had previously hosted the despicable acts of fornication by two unknown mourners at Mrs. Pearl Rabinowitz' Halloween-themed funeral, as described earlier in these letters.

It was a very nice coffin. I can't tell you how many times I have lain in its welcoming bed and pictured myself lying next to one of the loved ones, stoking the soft silk of the pillow and sheets, not to mention my own joystick. I also can't tell you how much love I bestowed on these honored guests, at least not if these letters are to be published and sent by regular mail to repressed countries like Iran and Texas and to a too a lesser degree China. Hell, I wouldn't even kick the lone-ranger masked Mrs. Pearl Rabinowitz out of the coffin, and I know what lies behind that mask. I'm getting a boner just thinking about it.

But Persephone was a world apart from ordinary mortals. She was the only person I could ever talk to about my feelings about technically deceased people. She would hang on my every word about my emotions and the final acts of kindness that I wished to perform on the loved ones before their big send-off to the inferno of the crematorium or the infinite coldness of the grave.

And now here she was, delivered at last to my humble little chamber at Shady Pines. I listened to the sounds of the night cleaners, the last people remaining in our little house of horrors. Soon they too would be gone. But I could wait no longer. Something fierce pulled me to the resting bed of Seph Jones, just as though I were a Romulan Bird-of-Prey trapped in one of Kirk's diabolical tractor beams.

They had already cleaned the basement floor. Hadn't they?

I popped the lid on Seph's coffin and threw it open. There, splayed before my hungry eyes were the delicious mortal remains of Persephone Jones. How I had dreamed of this moment. The dead cannot refuse our love, and Seph and I were about to enter a new phase of our relationship.

I ran my fingers through her scarlet hair and bent down to kiss her lips. They were definitely not as cold as you would expect for a person already 12 hours into whatever passes for an afterlife in this shithole universe. In fact, they kissed back a little.

Somewhat emboldened by the unexpected ardor of her kiss, I took the liberty of slipping my trembling hand beneath her dress and bra. Her breast, like her lips, was warmer than I expected and softer, showing no signs of rigor mortis, which should be well underway at this stage. Her nipple was erect, and I teased it with my hand. Suddenly she gasped and she opened her beautiful blue eyes.

"Oh, shit, not this", she exclaimed. "Sorry, no offense Iggy. If I'm going to have a Prince Charming, I am so glad that you're the one. I have always longed for your kiss. But your timing could be a little better."

I could be hallucinating again, I thought. As an experiment in existential cosmology I had not taken any Haldol for the past few days. But then I felt her sweet hand on my cheek, and I felt her love taking over my brain. Such a passion could not be an illusion.

"Iggy, I'm so cold. I need your warm body next to me, surrounding me."

I started to climb into the coffin, but she said, "Not like that. You must first take off our clothes. I need your heat skin-to-skin."

I obliged the little lady. I will not describe the process, but on a good day I can get a stiff in and out of a funerary gown in under ten seconds. If you're a funeral cosmetician, you have to. You wouldn't believe some of these mourning moms. Sometimes they will ask you to try ten different dresses on their precious Pammy Sue in the last fifteen minutes before the funeral. I only put up with this because many of these moms are going to be silfs someday (you know, sort of like milfs, but with stiffs). 

I must have been in a hurry, for when I ripped the gown from Seph's body, her boobs bounced back and forth for a good five seconds. I yanked her gown and underwear down off her lovely white flesh. I unhooked her bra, slipped one strap down her shoulder, and drew it out from under her body.

She took my head in her icy white fingers and raised herself to give me a prolonged kiss. She fell back upon the bed of the coffin, her corpus delecti seductively splayed before me. I can rip the clothes off my body faster than those of any stiff. In the diener and funeral cosmetician businesses, you have to work fast to avoid discovery.

My heart was racing in both fear and excitement as I leapfrogged into the coffin, being careful not to hurt Seph. I don't know if the dead feel any pain, but I expect they do.

She threw her arms around my neck and I looked deeply into her blue eyes. Those coquettish peepers compelled me, despite the fact that I knew some diener had probably played paddle ball with them using her optic nerves in lieu of rubber bands).

My scepter was rock hard and was seized by the grasping lips of her cunt, which drew it deeply into her groove. Her lips met mine, her tongue slithering into and out of her mouth. She arched her back and I somehow slipped a little lower on her body. I pushed upward, my cock violating her perfectly made-up body (right down to her combed pubes). She grabbed my head and forced it down on her pulsating and gyrating tongue, throwing her arms about me as I began to ride her. I could feel the beating of her heart, her skin warmer now as her arms squeezed me more tightly against her skin, as though she were trying to prevent my escape from the silky spider's web of the coffin in which we were both now trapped. The tightness of her grip suggested that for her it was a matter of life and death that I shoot my hot seed into the coldness of her corpse.

Her body undulated beneath mine, her stomach rolling in time with my thrusts. I was driven to pound her harder and harder, my body no longer under my own control. Her flickering tongue licked my eyes and cheeks before darting in and out of my mouth.

I could feel her suddenly warm breath against my neck as she took my ear between her lips. Her still icy hands slide down the skin over my ribs and wildly-beating heart, then over my naked hips to grab the cheeks of my ass. She shoved me inside her harder and harder, and then dropped her hands down to my balls, squeezing them cruelly as I pounded my way in and out of her. She tightened her grip on those orbs, and emptied every last sperm that lurked in those twin worlds into her cold, cold body, the walls of her cunt milking me ruthlessly until I was just an empty sack craving more and more. 

When I looked into her eyes to show my appreciation for her kindness to this humble diener, I was shocked to see that her formerly azure irises were now silver and seemed to be strangely whirling around her deep black pupils. I somehow knew that those silver eyes owned me now. I was now just a slave to do her bidding.

I heard someone walking down the stairs, and my heart began to beat faster and faster with each of their steps. I quickly pulled the lid of the coffin over our bodies. You never knew when some newly-employed, whistle-blowing, do-gooder prig was going to make an appearance.

I heard the noise as the coffin lid was opened, throwing harsh fluorescent light into the perfect blackness of our paradise. This was not going to be good.

When I saw who it was, I breathed a sigh of relief. It was just Jesus (pronounced "Hesus"), a member of the Shady Pines cleaning crew who shared my proclivity to provide the dead with some small degree of comfort before they embarked upon their final journeys.

THREE-WAY WITH STILL LIFE

"Jesus, Hesus, you almost gave me a heart attack." I said. "Do you remember what a pile of clothes on the floor next to a coffin means?"

"Si, boss. It is the secret signal that you are humping one of the guests."

"That's right. What else?"

Jesus recited the credo of the Shady Pines night shift, which I had myself composed. "If there's thumping, there's humping," he said with a chastised look on his face.

"Are these two principles too difficult to understand? These truths should be self-evident," I said, shamelessly plagiarizing the Declaration of Independence.

"Si, boss. Sorry, boss. It's just that she is so beautiful. I think she pull me down here. I wasn't theenking. It was as if the chica was dragging me down here."

"OK, Hesus. I understand." I too had been drawn to Seph's corpse and was now mesmerized by her glowing silver eyes. I could feel her hunger rising again. Too soon for me. Hesus was going to have to answer this call.

"OK, Hesus. I get it. You need a ride on the cadaver train. I understand. Go ahead and knock yourself out. But hurry. There are only six hours before the big show, and the beloved's family will probably get here two hours before that."

"I understand boss," Hesus said, as he rapidly shed his clothes, revealing an "El Toro" tattoo on his back. Where were those picadors when you actually need one?

For some reason, I was not jealous, although I had come to love Seph with all my heart. I sensed that she needed this, that her hunger was deep.

The naked would-be Mexican ghost rider climbed up into the coffin, with a little help from yours truly. The guy definitely needed to go to the gym more often, or at least cut down on the burritos. He lowered himself upon Seph's willing corpse. Hesus stared at her dazzling silver eyes and bent down to kiss her. He was shocked when her tongue slithered between his lips and she threw her arms around him. "Vampiresa! Bruja!" he screamed as he jumped off Seph's body, and ran off to get the large wooden stake that he stored in the corner of the prep room for just such occasions.

He ran like a berserker at the Seph's coffin holding the stake above his head like a javelin. I caught his teak spear before he could thrust it into Seph's naked, trembling and willing body.

"Look into her eyes, you beaner moron."

Hesus did just that.

"What do you see?" I asked Shady Pines' undocumented janitor. I forced his head closer to hers. "What do you see?"

"Diosa," he said, "La diosa hermosa." A goddess. A beautiful goddess.

"What must you do?" I asked him, as I drove the point of his exquisitely crafted teak stake a millimeter into the flabby tissue of his neck.

"Serve her, boss."

"Do you feel her hunger?

"Si, boss."

"I want you to get out of that coffin and stand against the wall."

Hesus did exactly that, although I had to give him a hand up as usual. His boner was impressive, but I guess Seph just has that kind of effect on people.

I marched him up to the wall. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Seph stick the landing on a double somersault dismount from the prison of her silky coffin. Her silver eyes were all awhirl, and Hesus' boner grew even larger. She rushed over to the mesmerized undocumented janitor and knelt before him like a vassal before her king. Her mouth took in his throbbing cock up to the hilt on the very first gulp. She looked up at him with those dazzling silver eyes and smiled as she began to nurse on him harder and harder.

Watching the flames of her fiery red hair dancing on the whiteness of her pale back, my own scepter most improbably began to rise again. I quickly took the umpire position with respect to Seph's catcher's crouch. I grabbed her crimson hair, pulling her head back and almost off my undocumented janitor's throbbing schlong. I took her ear in my mouth and rammed my strangely ascendant organ into her bizarrely warm and eager cunt. She began to milk me with that nether mouth of love, even as she sucked on Hesus' tool like a Mayan priestess accepting the plunge of a conquistador's sword.

I stroked the sides of her pale, dangling and undulating tits. Soon Hesus' and my thrusts became synchronized, driven by Seph's gasps and screams. She grabbed Hesus' balls tightly, rolling them and squeezing them as though they were a pair of Chinese baoding exercise balls as he continued to fuck her face.

As I drove into Seph harder and harder, I pulled her head sideways, again using the reins of her silky crimson hair. Her mouth found mine and our tongues found their mates. Then she returned to the task of extracting every last drop of Hesus' sperm. I grabbed her massive pale hooters and began squeezing them brutally with each thrust into her cooz, as her head bounced up and down feverously on Hesus' Mayan / Aztec / conquistador's root. Sweat dripped off her violators' bodies, but her skin remained pure, cool and dry, maybe because she was technically dead, maybe because she was dehydrated.

All three of us exploded at the same time. Hesus and I cried out when we came, pouring our life into the beautiful, reanimated yet nevertheless certifiably dead corpse of Persephone Jones. In her throes, Seph let out a terrifying scream of hunger and loss, the likes of which I had never heard before in my mortal life and never want to hear again.

THE PLAN

All three of us were spent and just sat against the wall trying to recover our breath.

"Anybody got a smoke?" Seph asked.

Neither Hesus nor I did.

"You really should drop that habit," Hesus said. "I you don't, you're going to wind up... Never mind."

Seph was a suicide and thus by no means averse to death, but our faithful mortuary cleaner had no way of knowing that.

I broached the question that was the unspoken elephant in the roof: "OK what we going to do now?" 

"We gotta clean all this mess up and get ready for the big show at 10:00."

"Hesus, my man, you are still thinking as a custodian. If I thought like that, I would never have ascended to the ranks of senior assistant diener and mortuary cosmetologist."

"So what do you want to do, amigo?"

"We'll need to clean this up. Make sure our DNA is not all over the floor, then get her back in her dress. We'll need to put her back in the coffin before her relatives start arriving for the big show. If she's dead by then, we'll just have to go on with the show. Otherwise, we'll proclaim her resurrection as a miracle. Maybe get her a spot on Conan or Colbert, the PTL club for sure."

"But what if she is a vampiresa? We should stake her, boss. If we don't, there could be beeg trouble."

"Hello, I'm sitting right here!" Seph said. "You guys don't have a clue about what's going on, do you? Don't you ever watch TV?"

"I mostly read," I told her.

"And what is it that you read, genius?"

"I mostly read professional journals like American Cadaver. But I only get it for the articles, I swear. I hardly ever look at the pictures."

"You must be behind in your reading, handsome. At least two months behind."

"OK I'll admit that several of the pages in the September issue are kind of stuck together. But I've ordered some Hustler Anti-Stick. Works on paper, underwear, sheets, you name it."

"Those stuck pages wouldn't by any chance be the foldout of the Anna Nicole Smith autopsy, would they?"

"Maybe."

"I thought so, you necrophiliac pervert. Just like all the others. But I don't hold it against you. In fact if you two guys are ready to go again, so am I. But first we need to develop some kind of plan. Your idea that I will simply fall asleep will never work."

"OK boss," said Hesus, rising to his feet with some difficulty. He bent down to retrieve his finely crafted wooden stake. "This will be a perfect sleeping pill."

"It won't even kill me, you moron. I am not a vampire or a bruja, a witch. You stick that thing through me, and I'll just be walking around with a stake through my body. It might also look like a wooden penis. You wouldn't want to be fucking somebody with a literal woody sticking out from between her legs, now would you? Besides, you couldn't kill me if you tried. In fact, you can't even try."

Hesus tried to try, but it was no use. Like me, he was a slave to those whirling silver eyes.

"Then what are you?" Hesus asked. "A chica lobo, a werewolf? Or a zombie?"

"I am what they are calling a silver meat walker, but we like to call ourselves the twice-born. I say "we," although I have just joined the ranks of the twice-born this very night and have not yet met my compatriots. But I have been reading and hearing about them for weeks. I hoped that I would not become one of their numbers, as I had grown very weary of life. That's why I killed myself at a remote location, inside a culvert pipe. But they still found my corpse through the GPS function on my phone, the sons of bitches."

She turned her head my way and asked "Iggy, how do you think I got to be this way? Come on smart boy, tell me."

I shook my head to show that I had no clue.

"It's all the stem cells you assholes have been pumping into our dead bodies to make our organs fresh for transplantation. It's what maximizes profits for the great medical-funereal establishment, or the Lords of Death as we call them.

"But you guys didn't exactly perfect the process, and our bodies start to fall apart once the stem cells lose their tails, or flagella for those of you scientifically literate enough to read the International Journal of Molecular Dienerology."

I couldn't count myself among the readers of that august journal. I am strictly an American Cadaver guy, as my interests are more refined, eclectic and aesthetic than those of the typical techno-geeks that get so hot and bothered about the biochemistry of whatever embalming technique that is currently in vogue.

Remind me to get the Anna Nicole Smith autopsy picture unstuck, framed and mounted on my office wall. The picture's not the only piece of Anna Nicole Smith memorabilia that I want to mount, if you know what I mean and I hope you don't (although I am about to tell you).




Diener: A Novella



Eduardo Mendez, a hardworking and hard-drinking diener down in Nassau, the Bahamas, is going to send me Anna Nicole's actual tannin-preserved cooz (all the way up to the fallopian tubes) to enhance my viewing of her foldout. It comes complete with pulsating walls installed by none other than great corpse-meister Eduardo Mendez himself. That greaser wants me to pay two hundred grand for it, which is kind of steep for a diener, although since the stem-cell treatments began, my salary is many orders of magnitude greater than it was during the days when I was reduced to slop-moping the guts, eyeballs, entrails, gore and other miscellaneous viscera off the greasy floor of Our Lady of Uncounted Sorrows' morgue. That task was sometimes almost as bad as mopping the detritus off the floor of an MMA cage at the end of a UFC Fight Night beat-down extravaganza, but not quite I don't know how those ring girls manage to wade through the octagon between rounds with their shit-eating grins intact. Must be the seven-inch spike heels, I thought. I would do it if I had heels like that, instead of the low morgue sneakers I was forced to wear per OLUS regulations. Six-inch heels, no way.

Anyhoo, I told Eddie to put the mummified cooz on eBay, to see what he gets offered for it. I told him I would double the highest bid. No way was I going to walk away from a sacred relic like that. He also offered Anna Nichole's mummified tits on eBay as well as on StiffTrader, but only as a matched pair. He didn't want to break up the set. I pointed out that I could only give one gazonger at a time the treatment it deserves, as I needed one hand free to manipulate the organ that most appreciates the beauty and sensuality of the Anna Nichole relics. I hope Eddie will find some full-figured corpse aficionado to spring for the full ten million he was asking for.

But I digress once again.

After we sat against the wall for a while, Seph began to fill both of us in on the events of the previous two months, which we had missed due to my perhaps too intensive scrutiny of several past American Cadaver issues and Hesus' imploring prayers to the great marble statue of the naked Blessed Virgin, the nature of which I did not even want to think about (although a few of these orisons suggested that I should really be calling him Jesus of Oedipal Bliss).

"It all started," the beautifully reanimated Seph said, "with those genetically-engineered stem cells you guys have been injecting into corpses to keep them fresh and youthful. Your real concern is of course the health of all the internal organs to be transplanted, which is a very lucrative business, as both of you already know.

"What you illiterates probably don't know is that these stem cells have brought bring some of us back from death," Seph said. "These stem cells code for a gene called flog'em flagellum."

Those geneticist wags can never pass up a good pun or even a bad one, I thought.

"The flog'em flagellum protein enables the stem cells to regenerate their lost flagella and the corpse to be revitalized, to become what is colorfully called 'walking meat.' That's evidently what I am now boys, walking meat. I sought death, the emptiness, and I found it. But it looks like those transplant tycoon sons-of-bitches ripped it right out of my hands again. However, the flagella in these stem cells, the little tails that enable them to swim about the body, start to decay after a few days and the corpse then dies a second time.

"As it turns out, only way to delay and possibly reverse this process is to introduce live sperm into the empty, longing corpse. The sperm cells somehow temporarily splice the gene for their flailing tails directly into the recipient's genome. That pioneering discovery was made by lay investigators in the realm of erotic funereal preparation such as you guys. Thus, I am denied even this second death." "Gee, that's tough," Hesus said, but his eyes kept roaming over every luscious inch of the statue of the Blessed Virgin that was displayed in a niche of the prep room so the families' loved ones will never again be abandoned by the Lords of Light (which seem to be the same as the Lords of Death in my experience).

"Now here's a crucial fact," Seph said. "If human sperm with their even more powerful flagella genes are directly and naturally introduced into the walking meat's body, the revivication will not only be prolonged, but the walking meat will become what is called a 'silver,' a meat with hypnotizing silver eyes. One look into those peepers and an ordinary mortal becomes our sexual slave forever, although I must say that it appears that Hesus here is more dedicated to his marble virgin mommy up there than to this delicious meat spread before him."

"Hey, I'm just an art lover," Hesus protested. "You're my main squeeze. Always will be."

"Even a silver must acquire more and more sperm, if he or she or it wants to avoid the decay of the second death," Seph explained. "So it's pretty likely that I am going to need to find people who are more than willing to gang-bang me, which by the way I'm going to need pretty soon boys, so don't go anywhere.

"That's why I am so horny. I am going to have to blow, fuck, or be cornholed by every guy I come across if I don't want to feel this horrible hunger and emptiness. I'm going to have to feed at least six times a day to satisfy my hunger and keep my silver meat body on the prowl. 

"It's no good trying suicide. Been there, done that. Some meats have cut off their own heads, only to have them grow right back. Usually the regrown head is the size of a baseball. The discarded head will sometimes regrow a tiny body in which it can waddle around on like a spider for a few days. Who's going to fuck me if I have a microhead or I'm megacephalic spider?" Tears began to run down Seph's cheeks.

I was pretty sure that Hesus and I would totally be up for it, but I didn't give voice to that thought. Seph would only find it patronizing or possibly revolting, and she was the one who was in pain here.

"As you might imagine, some of the meat-fuckers' wives don't take too kindly to our making sexual slaves out of their hubbies, although some are pretty cool with it, especially if you throw an occasional bone to them from time to time, if you know what I mean," Seph said, batting her eyelashes at us, which made her silver irises spin even faster and our cocks harder and harder. I wished I had a towel to bite down on.

"Some of these broads are so crazy that they have formed the Women's Army of Decency, also called WAD, a vigilante group that hunts down and re-kills every meat and silver they come across. In such cases, they of course have to prevent the living fragments of the meats and silvers, such as brain tissue, roving eyes, crawling six-inch worm penises and various viscera from crawling back together to reconstitute the meat (or even, like a hydra or a slime mold, spawn several meats). That's why they burn every body fragment they come across and scatter its ashes in the wind to prevent the re-resurrection of the meat.

"Many of these women also particularly enjoy hunting down and killing the normal humans who have become thralls of the silver meats. Some of them entice their victims, which may include spouses, co-workers, neighbors, casual acquaintances, and complete strangers, with offers of massively depraved sex. But this age-old tactic seldom works, as the bond between a silver thrall and his silver overlord is almost impossible to break. So they generally resort to the tried and true method of picking off their victims one-by-one with automatic assault rifles. This also provides them with the delicious spectacle of the human thrall's head exploding into fragments, especially when the thrall in question is their ex-hubby. 

"Before we go out there boys, I've got to go over some ground rules. First don't call them 'meats' to their faces. They find that term very offensive. They prefer to be called 'predeceased Americans.'

"Also, you should know about sunglasses. Silver-eyed meats cannot command or make a human their thralls if either of them is wearing dark sunglasses. Our silver eyes have to be seen directly for us to make a human our slave. That's why you're going to see a lot of people wearing sunglasses when we get up top. They may be meats trying to pass for humans who have not undergone the second birth. They also may be humans whose partners insist they wear they wear shades 24/7 to ensure that they do not enter the thralldom of some silver meat. Some of these poor bastards have 360 degree wraparound shades that are locked on their head like chastity belts.

"At least that's what I've heard. But hell, I'm as new to meat business as you guys are to the meat thralldom community. I only know what I heard on the news before my death. 

"These helmeted guys would be pretty easy for even a normal woman to recruit, because their wives are such bitches. All she has to do is flag him down the old-fashioned way, such as pushing him into an alley, ripping off her halter-top, grabbing his cojones, kneeling before him, taking him in her mouth, and then deep hovering him like there is no tomorrow. This is such an obvious technique, it is amazing that there are any lonely women out there at all. But I guess they don't cover that technique in Cosmo. I'll bet they have in American Cadaver, right Iggy?"

I nodded my head.

"So then all such a woman would need to do is grab her guy's hand right after she blows him. Then she'd be set up for life. Ain't no way in the world some guy's gonna turn down a blow job, a full body fuck or a good cornholing every four hours. So we women don't even need silver eyes to totally control a man. Take note, all of you normal, un-reborn bitches, the way to a man's heart is right there in the crotch of his pants. Always has been and always will be. Forget the beauty tips, the gym and the charm school, and just bone up on the basics of jism swallowing and reverse peristalsis.

"All a shy, timid girl has to do is go up to some guy she fancies and ask him if he wants a blow job. I'm pretty sure he will say yes. Try it, you'll see, all you bitches out there."

PREPARING FOR BATTLE

"The way I see it boys, our next move is to get far away from here before my funeral, when all hell is going to break out. I assume you guys have cars and credit cards. We'll need to get a shitload of cash so that they can't trace us through credit cards. I'm going to need sunglasses so I can disguise myself as human.

"From what little I remember hearing on TV before my suicide, the sunglasses need have to have a UV rating of 99% or higher to avoid thralldom. There are a lot of guys walking around with low protection glasses to fool their wives into thinking that they will be chaste, while they are actually hoping to run into a silver meat, to gain a greater appreciation of the Atkin's diet.

"Do either of you guys have guns?" she asked us.

I shook my head. Before these revelations, I had never felt that the deceased people I work with posed much of threat to me. In hindsight, I should have anticipated that someone might raid the morgue for transplant organs in an attempt to cut out the middleman. When things get back to normal, I will write a memo about this. Who knows? I might get promoted to senior associate diener or even junior diener. The possibilities are endless.

But I had forgotten one thing. "We've got that car salesman Wild Bob Hitchcock's pearl-handled Colt revolvers in the Museum of Funerary Arts up stairs," I told Seph. "You know, the guy that signed off with a Porky Pig impression at his own funeral down there in Arlington Texas. If I am not mistaken we also have a couple of boxes of silver bullets up there also. Wild Bob kind of fancied himself as the Lone Ranger."

"That would be great if we're going after werewolves, homes," Hesus said. "But we're facing an army of loco human bitches hungering for our death. A set of revolvers might work if we're in 1890. But they're way too slow if you're a tunnel runner for El Chapo or any of the other drug lords or human traffickers." He threw up his hands, "Not that I was, amigos. If they find a tunnel under Shady Pines, I don't know nothin' about it. I just know a guy who knows a guy, if you know what I mean."

"So you got anything better, Hesus?" Seph asked.

"Si, si, boss," Hesus said. "Like any other red-blooded Mexican family, back home we got automatic rifles and crossing ammo belts and sombreros, although I guess I don't need no sombrero if I'm gonna be wearing shades for disguise. We got a lot of other stuff, including machetes, axes, automatic pistols, flame throwers, grenade launchers, antiaircraft guns, Molotov cocktails, military drones, brass knuckles, you name it."

"Jesus, Hesus," I said. "What are you expecting, Armageddon next Thursday afternoon?"

"Ee's tough in the barrio, man. But I guess some pampered gringo like you wouldn't know nothing about that."

"Boys, boys," Seph interjected. "Let's cut down on the testosterone, although we're going to need a lot of it in a few minutes. What kind of rides do you guys have?"

"I drive an SVU," I volunteered.

"What the fuck are you, amigo, a soccer mom?" Hesus asked.

"There's nothing wrong with men sharing the childcare responsibilities," I said. "Get into the twenty-first century, you macho beaner moron. What the fuck you got for a ride, some coyote to take you through the tunnels?"

"I got a Humvee, gringo."

"No offense, Hesus," Seph said, "but it might be a little conspicuous to drive a Humvee around town. What else you got?"

"I can borrow my cousin's jacked-up truck. You can raise the chassis five feet off the ground in that baby. You can drive it into a concrete wall, and the wall's gonna be the one to give. It's got dual flame throwers in the back. I already got the keys, and he don't mind if I take it."

"OK, Hesus," Seph said, "you cram all the weapons and ammo you can into that pickup, and for God's sake cover it with a tarp. Iggy, you go get your SUV. I could try to go home and get my car but it is too dangerous, everybody is going to be up getting ready for my funeral.

"All of us should get all the cash we can. We'll all meet up in the Motel 6 out on Danny Tjelo Road at noon. You know the place?"

We nodded.

"Finally, those WAD bitches are going to be all over the place, and our little army is going to grow in numbers. We may need something to tell us who are the good guys and who are the bad guys," Seph said.

"We could use doo rag colors." Hesus suggested.

"I ain't gonna wear any Mexican doo rag," I said.

"How about badges?" Seph suggested.

All too predictably, Hesus said, "We don' need no steenkin' badges."

"Doo rags it is then," Seph pronounced. "But before you boys go, I'm going to need a little pick-me-up. Hesus has already experienced my ravenous mouth. It's your turn, Iggy. I'm an equal opportunity cocksucker. Why don't you lie down right here, so I can taste that luscious looking cock?"

I quickly assumed the supine position, with my genitalia fully locked in the upright position and exposed for easy access. She lay down on me, her body T-boning mine. She plunged down on my cock with her eager mouth, and said to Hesus, "My mont you make me from meehind?"

"What? Hesus asked.

She pulled her mouth off my shaft. "I said, why don't you take me from behind," she repeated. "Cornhole me. My poor ass is neglected, throbbing and dripping wet. I want you to ass-fuck me like I'm Rock Hudson and there is no tomorrow. With the Women's Army for Decency on the prowl, I'm going to need all the strength I can muster. So fill my colon with jism, my favorite undocumented bandolero."

She raised her ass to him, and he was on it in a Tijuana minute. He grabbed both of her boobs and rammed his shaft into her like a picador shoving a lance into a bull, ascending all the way up her descending colon on the very first thrust.

Hesus began pounding into her harder and harder, and her head plunged up and down on my tool in time with his thrusts. She ran her left arm down my legs, stopping to tease and squeeze my balls every now and again, which caused my body to spasm. Her right hand roamed over the hard muscles of my chest and arms (you try lifting 300 pound floaters on a daily basis, it's way better than a spa). Her left hand ran up my thighs, parting them to tease my balls one more time, as Hesus plowed her as though he was an undocumented Beverly Hills gardener providing full implantation services to his delight of his sexually deprived housewife employer.

With each of his thrusts, Seph's mouth dragged my tool from side to side like a metronome at a Santana concert. She increased the pressure of her lips on my shaft along with the frequency of her bobbing. Meanwhile, Hesus was ramming into her like Generalissimo Santa Ana battering through the front doors of the Alamo. 

Simultaneously, we all cried out, like lobos howling at the moon, and our bodies collapsed upon each other, spent for now. I never wanted to move from this position of total bliss.

But move we must. Such is the fate of the living, and as it turns out, the reborn dead.

DOWN AT THE MOTEL 6

After a few enchiladas and aguas at Hesus' favorite taquería, we sprawled on the bed to watch a little postcoital TV. (Seph had chosen this particular one-star hotel for its cable offerings).

Seph lay over our naked bodies on the queen-sized bed. Her cooz covered my lap and I stroked her lovely ass and fingered her while she sucked on Hesus' root and played with his balls. Neither of us could get soft in the presence of Seph. She wrapped my own throbbing shaft in the lips of her cunt, which actually seemed to suck it in a way that no human cunt could.

I stroked her crack as her cunt teased me. Somehow she was able to know I was about to come before I did, and her love tunnel surrounded me every time, drawing the precious sperm deeply into her body. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her head bob up and down on Hesus' immense chimichanga, swallowing him deeply and squeezing his cojones each time he came, while I ran my fingers down her ass crack and into her anus and cunt as she screamed out with every orgasm. I ran my palm over her sweet ass cheeks and up and down her back as she trembled in orgasm after orgasm. I squeezed her buttocks in time with the percussion of Hesus' eruptions, and she bucked and slid her nonhuman grasping crack up and down my throbbing cock, swallowing it as I came in torrents, pulling my essence straight from my balls.

After she had emptied both of us, I retrieved the TV clicker from the bed. We had already finished the Robert Rodríguez film festival, so I turned on the local news to see what was happening.

BOOB TUBING

Blond Anchor: "Well, Fred, it appears that the Great Awakening has now found its way to Yorba Linda. A woman who sources say is Persephone Jones was a no-show at her own burial today at Shady Pines Funeral Parlor. Also AWOL are Igor "Iggy" Stiffpounder and Hesus Gonzalez. Stiffpounder was a funereal cosmetologist at Shady Pines and a diener, which is some type of morgue attendant, at Our Lady of Uncounted Sorrows Hospital. Gonzalez is a decontamination specialist at Shady Pines, which seems to be a fancy name for janitor.

"As most of you undoubtedly know, there has been a troubling rise in the number of reanimated corpses, sometimes called "walking meats" or "zombies," prowling around in the Southern California area. These reanimated corpses themselves prefer the term 'predeceased Americans.'

"Here's our scientific consultant on the Great Awakening, Dr. Josef Mengele, who is a professor of regenerative medicine at Stanford University.

"Hello, Dr. Mengele."

"Hello, Tracy. Please just call me Dr. Joe."




Diener: A Novella



"Dr. Mengele, what can you tell our viewers about the awakening process itself?"

"Ve at Stanford and ze other medical centers in ze Consortium of Reanimation Medicine haf been vorking on vays to better preserve human organs for donation. Ve are trying to preserve precious lives, especially for affluent Aryan Americans such as yourself and Fred, and for many of your viewers as vell.

"Ze basic idea is an old one. Ve zeek to keep human organs alive and fresh for longer periods of time. Do you vant the heart zat is going into your chest to be moldy and barely beating from being carried in an Igloo cooler, or do you vant the still-beating precious perfect heart to be ripped from ze youthful donor's useless body und placed directly into yours. I zink it is a no-brainer. It vorked for Aztecs und ze Mayans, and it's going to vork for zose of us in ze upper echelons of the Third Rei...I mean society.

"Ve are engaged in research zat vill keep ze organs fresh and alive. Ve are even trying to reduce ze cost of medicine in ze Fatherland, I mean our country, vich ve can all agree is spiraling out of control.

"To keep ze corpses or bodies alive, ve inject zem with modified stem cells, with bitchin'flagella, vich is vat ve call the little thrashing tails of various microorganisms such as paramecia. Zese cells can reach all the organs in ze body. Zis enables us to march ze organs from ze source hospital to ze intended and rightful recipients of ze donated organs." The white-haired Mengele hit his hand with a fist to punctuate this last point.

"Here is a clip of ze transportation process."

The screen was suddenly filled the images of naked donor bodies, chained to one another and slowly walking and stumbling through a graveyard in the night as filmed with an infrared camera.

"You zee, zey seem to be enjoying zemselves."

"Dr. Mengele, hello. This is Fred Toothsome. It appears that many of the marched corpses are screaming in pain. Can you comment on this?"

"Ya, zhey are zinging zongs in praise of za Fatherland, I mean ze medical establishment, for giving zem a few more hours to experience ze vonder of zis universe."

"Isn't it true, Professor Mengele, that many of the awakened walking meats are calling these forced marches the Trail of Tears after the forced migration of the Cherokee and other Indigenous Peoples in the shameful history of our conquering of ze so-called Vild Vest, I mean Wild West? Aren't they just asking for the same right to life for all ambulatory Americans, both predeceased and nondeceased?"

"Ya, but zose ver only redskins, I mean indigenous peoples. Zey signed a treaty in 1835. Zere removal vas thus purely voluntary. Zey loved the trip. It vas zere first real vacation. Zame zing mit the valking meats. Zey haf all signed organ donor cards und zey each haf been issued a zertificate uf death. Everyzing is strictly legal und on the ze up und up."

Fred Toothsome chimed in once again. "Dr. Mengele, what can you say about the following statement from the reawakened corpse of O.J. lawyer Johnny Cochran, which was briefly resuscitated last week, and I quote: 'The insinuation that these predeceased Americans have no souls or consciousness is scurrilous, outrageous, and perfidious. If the skin fits, you must grant the writ, of habeas corpus, that is.'"

Mengele replied, "Zis lawyer's license to practice expired mit his death certificate in 2005. Also, in regard to Al Sharpton's claim zat he zpeaks for zeze meats, I vould note zat he is a college dropout mit no degree in theology, He himzelf ztates zat he received his real education through zerving as one of James Brown's roadies, ze late Fuhrer of Soul." 

"Dr. Joe, this is Tracy Implantz again. What can you tell us about the rumors that some of the walking meats have silver eyes that entrance humans and make them do their bidding?"

"Ah yes, ve still haf to iron out zome of ze kinks in the ze reanimation process. Zis is vone minor glitch zat ve didn't anticipate. It zeems as zough if zome human directly ejaculates into ze corpse zat is avaiting activation, zese corpses zpring to life und develop zese sparkling und vhirling zilver eyes zat can put any human zat gazes into zem into a trance. Zen zese humans becomes ze slaves or thralls uf zese zilver-eyed meats.

"Ve think zat zis is due to ze fact zat zprems haf flagella to die for und zat the flog'em genes zat produce the zperms' flagella zomehow gets spliced into ze meat's genome. Zen ze neurons in ze meat's retina ztart to devolop zilver crystals along zere dendrites und axons. Zen for zome reason ven humans gaze into zere crystal eyes, zey become thralls to ze zilver meats und must obey zere every vish und command. Possibly zis is due to zome sort of resonance effect, but ve really don't know at zis point.

"I vill tell one zing, I vish ve had zese genes back in the old days in ze Fatherland. Zen ve could really have done zomethink." Dr. Joe's eyes began to grow wistful at this point.

"Dr. Mengele, Fred Toothsome again. How long do these humans remain thralls to these silver-eyed meats?"

"Ve really don't know at zis point, but it is early yet. Ve haf yet to zee any thrall break its bond, so possibly for the rest of zere subhuman lives or until zere zilver-eyed overseer dies. Ve simply don't know yet. Ve do know zat once someone is a thrall uf a zilver meat, zey cannot be made thrall to a different meat unless ze first meat is kilt."

"What do you say to your critics that denounce your research as dangerous and ethically unacceptable?"

"I vould tell zem to be zilent! Zhis process is necessary for ze survival of ze Aryan peoples. If zome zubhuman meats rot in ze process, ze benefits far outveigh ze costs."

"Dr. Joe, what do you say to your critics who believe that walking meats are fully conscious and thus have rights equivalent to those of non-predeceased Americans? They often point to the study showing that brain activity in meats is comparable to those of undergraduates at Tulane University. "

"Zere is no consciousness in meats. Maybe not at ze Tulane University either. Many prominent philosophers, zuch as Daniel Dennett at Tufts University have shown conclusively zat not even ve are conscious and zat ze universe is a dark place vithout souls, consciousness, or mind. Zat's vy ve also favor ze immediate harvesting of all ze organ donors, vether zey are dead or not, despite the protests of ze right-to-lifers.

"As you can zee from ze clip, zese meats vould not likely be embraced at the next family reunion, given ze numerous strips of zkin hanging from zere faces and zere dangling eyeballs. Many of zem are shot by vould-be zombie hunters, including WAD, ze Women's Army fur Decency, who may haf watched too many special reports on ze History and Discovery Channels. Of course bullets can't easily kill zem, given ze ongoing regeneration process, but you try get to full price on a liver riddled with bullet holes, even if such organs are capable of regeneration even vithout additional ztem cell injections."

"Dr. Joe, Tracy Implantz again. One more question, and then we will let you go. Why would someone deposit sperm directly into a corpse. It seems a little sick."

"Vell Tracy, as you probably know zere is a mental disorder called necrophilia, in vich zere is a pathological sexual attraction to deceased persons. You zee, zese people view dead corpses as more accepting of zere luff zen are most living people who regard zem vith unconcealed repulsion und disgust. Ze dead are much less judgmental.

"You zee Tracy, necrophilia iz an infantile condition in vich ze only sexual joy is ze boinking of dead stiffs. Zey are not able to have an adult relationship because normal humans are repulsed by zem. Zey often zeek out work in morgues and funeral homes, as did Igor Stiffpounder and Hesus Gonzalez in Shady Pines. Zey are zome of the zickest creeps zat walk ze planet today, vorse even zen ze Jews und ze gays."

If I had a shoe on my foot I would have thrown it at the TV. "This is bullshit" I said. "I am not a fucking necrophiliac. I am schizophrenic. Dr. Robbins said so."

"Dr. Joe, let us pause for a minute for some breaking news. We have two always newsworthy celebrities, Woody Harrelson and Christopher Walken, on the phone, who will describe their own encounter with Igor Stiffpounder."

"Hi Tracy, it's good to see you again, both of you if you know what I mean." Woody said with a wink and his usual infectious smile on his face."

"Ditto," said Christopher Walken.

"So tell us all about it."

"Well, this happened while we were shooting the film Six Psychopaths," Woody said. "Christopher had to go down to the morgue over at Our Lady of Uncounted Sorrows Hospital to identify the bloated body of his cousin, which had been drifting around in the Pacific for a few months, and I went with him, but it wasn't her."

"Wasn't me," said Walken. "I mean, it wasn't her, my cousin, I mean. Not my friend's wife either. A second cousin, that's the ticket. But anyway, this guy Stiffpounder just gave me the creeps."

"Me too," seconded Woody. "We talked it over with Willem Defoe, and he totally agrees with us."

"My zympathies to you both," Dr. Joe interjected. "Zese floaters are very tricky to reanimate. I tell you vat, if you find it, vy don't you bring your zecond cousin's stiff over to ze Regeneration and Reanimation Clinic at Stanford Medical Center, and ve'll zee vat ve can do. At ze very least ve could make a highly fashionable table lamp out of her. It voud have live neurons in it, zo you could hold rudimentary converzations, such as reminiscing about family reunions, mit her. Even tell her to turn ze light bulb off and on.

"If you vould like ze platinum package, ve could very quickly clone her body from a zingle cell und reestablish her neural cricuits, und she vould be back to normal. Ve vould leave ze memories of her death out of zese recreated circuits, as zese may be troubling, both to you und to her, if she ever testifies." 

"Fuck this bullshit. Turn it to Channel 553," I told Hesus.

"What's that?" said my undocumented Hispanic wing man.

"The Necrophilia Channel." I told him.

"There's a necrophilia channel? "

"There are three of them."

"How did I not know this, homes?"

"Because you're too cheap, my wetback amigo. You gotta spring for the premium channels, you basic-cable-watching motherfucker."

Hesus brought up Channel 553, where a lively debate was in progress.

"Why are there so very few silver-eyed male meats, Dr. Phil? This creates great problems for our female necrophiliac viewers who just can't seem to find the right corpse master or mate? Many of us have tried eHarmony, only to find that most of the postings are from men posing as stiffs, so that whenever we ladies show up for the meeting, they invariably find that their supposed match is really some living guy. Many of these guys try 'playing possum' as they call it, but never convincingly enough to get our ladies off."

"Well Sybil," Dr. Phil replied, "as most of our viewing audience know all too well, that is because living men are simply dogs in the thrall of their genitalia and will do or say anything to get laid, even if it means tearing off part of their face and leaving the skin dangling as if they were some mummy coming out of four millennia of sexual deprivation.

"Also, you must remember that in order for a meat to become a silver-eyed overlord, they have be awakened by a kiss from a Prince Charming, and by 'kiss' I mean a vile act of sexual depravity and extreme moral turpitude leading to ejaculation deeply into the body of the 'Sleeping Beauty' meat in question.

"Now if we're dealing with a female Sleeping Beauty, there will be a fair number of straight, decent, and normal male necrophiliacs out there to fill the role of Prince Charming.

"But if you're a male Sleeping Beauty meat, you're probably going to need a gay Prince Charming, not that there's anything wrong with that. But gays make up only 3% to 5% of the population. No gays are likely to volunteer to be a morgue attendant, because of all the blood and slime and general untidiness involved.

"But funeral cosmetologists are a whole 'nother kettle of fish, with all the fancy gowns and makeup and all. Gays are going to beat down your door for a position like that."

I threw another imaginary shoe at the TV. No way was I gay. Sure, I like to boff the dead from time to time, but that doesn't make me some pervert gay creep. Please note that our own Persephone Jones is a stunning female corpse with a luscious mane of fiery red hair.

Dr. Phil turned his knowing eyes to the camera. "Next we will get the perspective of silver male meats about the obstacles they face in obtaining sufficient sperm to keep themselves 'alive,' but first a word from our sponsors."

"Hi there, this is Henry Winkler. Do your special someone's eyeballs keep popping out just before that special moment, no matter how much Mbalm ocular glue you use? Does your loved one's forehead keep peeling off every time you run your fingers through her hair? Do those pesky maggots and blowflies keep working their way into your own mouth with each soul kiss?

"If this describes your love life, do I have good news for you. You may be the victim of a botched taxidermy. Did you know that the vast majority of human taxidermists are not licensed to practice erotic taxidermy on human corpses?

"Our taxidermists are fully licensed by the Southern California Academy of Erotic Taxidermy Medicine. I am proud to serve as the Vice-President of this fine academy, which exists to serve you and uphold the postmortem dignity that your loved one deserves. All of our taxidermists and cosmeticians are fully licensed and experienced in the art of erotic taxidermy.

"Just call us at 555-555-5555. We are open to receive patients from midnight until 4:00 AM. Our services are discrete and you will never know the shame of being publically identified as a degenerate carcass humper.

"How will I pay for this? you ask. We can recommend several excellent attorneys, including the real-life drug lord consigliere Saul Goodman, famously portrayed by the character actor Bob Odenkirk in the series Breaking Bad. We can also temporarily reanimate such legendary mouthpieces as Johnny Cochran. One look at the decaying OJ attorney will empty the bowels of the prosecution as they attempt to flee down the endless corridors of the court house.

Remember that number: 555-555-5555.

Winkler's visage was then replaced by the craggy countenance of Tommy Lee Jones.* "Americans are always ready to work hard for a better future," he said. "Many of you may not know this, but I have been dead for several decades now, as have many celebrities who underwent experimental stem cell facelifts in the eighties, such as Mick Jagger. This explains why my personality is somewhat laconic and I often do not speak, even when being interviewed by Entertainment Tonight. As you might imagine, you do not have a whole lot of energy when you are dead. I am a living testament to the fact that your financial obligations may not end with your death. Fortunately, I have been able to generate a steady stream of income in my postmortem years. But not all of us are movie stars. That's why you should entrust your financial future to Ameriprise Financial. You may be dead for a very long time."

The next ad featured spokesmodel Jayne Mansfield, holding her head, which had been brutally decapitated in a tragic car accident in 1967, near her waist. Most viewers' attention was understandably riveted by her cleavage, but their eyes were inexorably drawn to her mouth when it began to speak. "Hi fellas. Do you wish your special someone's physique was like this?" Her hands passed over her smoking hot headless corpse like a trained spokesmodel. Do you wish that your partner's pesky head and its mouth, with all its nagging complaints, would simply be gone?"

To dramatize her point, Jayne's right hand grabbed her head by its corn-silk tresses and tossed it behind her back through a regulation NBA hoop. All swish and no iron.

But this was not enough to stop the incessant yakking of her still-rolling head. "I bet there a few things you would still like me to do to you and you to me," it said, licking and pursing its red-glossed lips.

I licked my own lips, imagining myself sitting on the couch using Jayne's reanimated head as an eternally cock-sucking bowling ball while I watched Nature or This Old House on PBS.

When Jayne's head finally came to a rest, it was upside-down, but continued its spiel nevertheless. "But you don't have to go to such an extreme, my little babies. Just call us at AcuGrow. We will give your loved one targeted stem cell injections that will invigorate only those brain and bodily functions that you truly need, namely insatiable sexual desire and compliance, lubrication where you want it and when you want it. No more sassy back talk, emasculating taunting, or noncompliance with your twisted sexual demands. Let your sweetheart be who want, when you want, and what you want. Call us at 888-888-8888 right now for our introductory offers.

When the station break was over, the images of Sybil Necromancer and Dr. Phil reappeared, accompanied by two male and two female thralls. The men sported boners, the likes of which our intrepid trio had never encountered before. Sybil and Dr. Phil were both wearing shades that were Stevie Wonder black.

"Welcome back," Sybil said to the TV audience. "We are joined by four thralls of the sliver known as Darius the Magnificent. Now please welcome their thrall master, Darius himself."

A buck-naked Darius strode into the studio, looked into the camera, and whipped off his heavy shades, revealing the silver irises of his eyes.

"You are all now my thralls," he told the TV audience. But then he smiled. "I'm just yanking your chain. For some reason the silver-eye hoodoo doesn't work over TV. I'm afraid you've got to look directly into my eyes if you want to become the thrall of Darius the Magnificent, ladies."

"Given our ratings, you would probably get more thralls by doing your eye whammy at your local 7-11 than if you converted our entire TV audience, anyway," Sybil noted. "Although our ratings have been skyrocketing since the Great Awakening." 

Sybil turned to the two female thralls. "So what are you girls going to show us today?"

Let the record show that both female thralls were voluptuous, with taut bellies and a lascivious look in their eyes.

The thrall named Moon Woman was the first to speak.

"Well, Sybil, as you stated in the first segment, male silvers are very rare. Male silvers who are strongly repelled by the gay life style also have great difficulty obtaining the hot sperm that they need to keep their bodies from decomposing.

"Obviously, this poses no problem for gay silvers or those straight male silvers who are willing to satisfy their reanimated corpse's needs by posing as women or by giving all the customers at a gay bar free blow jobs in the alley." She put her hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry. Can I say that?"

"Honey this is the Necrophilia Channel. You can say whatever the fuck you want."

Moon Woman continued her spiel. "But there is way around this problem. A female thrall can collect the sperm for her straight silver master and then forcibly inject it into the sliver's body cavities.

"I will now demonstrate the simplest of these procedures, which involves giving the sperm donor a blowjob and then expelling the jism directly into silver's mouth. Mandingo and Bart, please step forward."

The two male thralls came to center stage.

"The first thing to do is select the right donor. Now Mandingo here has, in addition to his bulging muscles a magnificent black cock. See how when I hit it with my riding crop, it sways back in forth but then quickly springs back into the upright position. Also note its thickness and length, at least ten inches or I'm a virgin as pure as snow.