Short Story: Dead Weight

Short Story: Dead Weight

I stare at Jim, disbelieving. I don’t dignify his stupidity with a response, that would only encourage him.

“Well it’s true though isn’t it?” he bulldozes on, “People shit themselves after they die ‘cause they’re so scared. That’s where we get the phrase.”

“What phrase?” I know I’m not supposed to reply, but there is something inherent in his particular brand of idiocy which requires me to question him.

“To be shit scared. We say that ‘cause of how people shit ‘emselves after they die.”

“No,” I pause before responding, struggling over just how to set him straight, and whether or not it’s worth the effort. “We say that because people have been known to shit themselves when overly frightened. Living people, not dead ones. Dead people release their bowels because there is no longer a conscious brain to stop them.”

“No longer a wha’?”

“Never mind.” That’s become my catchphrase since hiring Jim, “just help pick him up n let’s get him in the van.”

Together we lift the recent mister Thomas on to the dolly and wheel him out in to the bitter morning air. The body is beginning to kick up a reek already, thankfully Jim seems to have picked up on the etiquette of not telling the deceased’s loved ones exactly what he thinks they had for tea the night before. Nobody can get jobs, they say, yet the only applicants for an assistant mortician were frighteningly moronic.

“So,” Jim begins conversationally, “you gonna watch the X Factor special tonight?”

“I can’t, I’m afraid,” I exaggerate a groan, “I’ve got a full night on the torture rack planned followed by having my eyeballs pecked at by starving ravens. Wouldn’t want to miss that.”

“Why would you want to do that?” he asks, genuinely incredulous. I thought that if I made the sarcasm so explicit and over the top, he might just grasp it, but no.

“Never mind.”

“Jasmine should’ve won it you know.” He continues, unabashed.

“Should she now?”

“Yeah! Her parents both died when she was only twenty two.” He shakes his head with genuine pity.

“That’s a shame. How old is she now?”

“Thirty nine.”

I laugh for an instant before realising he hasn’t joined me. So that wasn’t a joke, he genuinely feels the plight of this adult woman who’s parents died over a decade and a half ago. Yesterday we picked up the cadaver of a seven year old boy who fell down the stairs and he chatted away about football as if we were sat having a coffee. Yet when some woman who can sing a bit does well in a television show, he weeps with the rest of them at her half arsed sob story.

“What’s so funny?” he asks me.

“Never mind.”

“Missus Thomas,” I call out to the newly announced widow, “you can come by and make the arrangements any time within the next week. We’ll take good care of the body.” Why does Jim always wink at the client when I say that?

“Oh, and Merry Christmas.”