Ben C. O. Grimm

I have seven corpses lying around, and I don't know what to do with them. Some are lying on slabs of cold stone, some are on trolleys, and others are still in their coffins. One is in the furnace. It sounded so revolutionary back then. He came in here, twenty-five years ago, his face sporting a positively radiant smile. He shook my hand before speaking a word. "I got it, Jim! Finally! This is really something new!" And so it was. I'm in a pretty conservative line of business. Serious suits and straight faces. Marble. Wood. Copper. Flowers, music, speeches and hymns. Mourning families. There was the occasional smile, depending on the wealth of the deceased. It is not up to me to admonish or judge them. I just take the coffin off their hands and put it in the ground or burn it. I make sure the headstone is placed and the hole is filled. I polish the containers and attach the name cards. I keep my registers and journals. And I clear the graves after twenty-five years, to make room for a new generation to rest and find peace. This is not a very rich town. Most people around here do not have enough money to buy a place in my cemetery. So they get a few square feet for twenty-five years. After that, I inform the remaining relatives about the upcoming events. They can purchase another twenty-five years, but most of them (if there are any left) approve of the silent disposal of the remains. I burn the bones and get rid of the ashes. And that is that. But now it's not that easy. I had almost forgotten about that day twenty-five years ago, when Kosinski came in here to announce his new scheme. "Jim," he said, after he calmed down, "you gotta see this." I told my assistant to take over, and left with Kosinski. He didn't want to tell me what was going on. I got into his car with him. "You'll see it when we get to the store," he said. And indeed, I did. At first, there didn't seem to be much to see. Which was exactly Kosinki's point. "Feel it," he said. I put my hand on the surface. "Look close," Kosinski urged me on. Plain wood. Or so it seemed. It sure felt like it. Kosinski's face radiated victory. "Smell it," he said, and his face turned evil. Now, wait a minute. I smelled it, again and again. Something seemed to be missing. "Pick it up," Kosinski said, barely managing to suppress a cheer. I lifted the panel, bracing myself for lifting the weight. Only there wasn't much to brace myself for. The wooden panel was incredibly light. And it didn't smell of wood. I managed to lift the entire coffin with one hand. I turned around to Kosinski. "What is this stuff?", I asked, "Plastic?". "Something like that," Kosinski replied. "Polyester." My face must have betrayed my disbelief. He reacted in a commercial way. "It's the stuff of the future, Jim. It's light, it's cheap, and you can't deny it looks remarkably like real wood." I couldn't deny that he had had me fooled. "Do you think people will actually buy coffins like these?", I asked. "I'm sure of it," he said. "The price is considerably lower, and my profit margin is considerably higher. It's a win-win product." I guess he saw that I wasn't exactly convinced. "Think of it, Jim. So much less dead weight to bear. So easy to burn. And after twenty-five years in the ground, all they need is a scrub. Re-usable coffins, Jim. By that time, every undertaker in the country will take them off your hands and give you some money for them. A deposit, so to speak." I wanted to know who made these coffins. "I make them myself, Jim. For now. Look." He took me back to his workshop. The walls were lined with polyester panels, which looked like real wood. "A friend of mine mixes the fluid polyester with a coloring agent, which gives them the appearance of wood. Depending on the amount, they look like oak, or mahogany, or birch. A layer of wax, and it looks like the real thing. Better still..." He paused for a few seconds. "I've already sold three." Ah. Fait accompli. "What happens when I burn them?" "They vanish almost completely, Jim. It's a very light mixture. Lots of air in it. It flies straight out of the chimney. There may be a small residu, but you can scrape that off very easily. Believe me, I experimented with a panel under varying conditions." Well. What else could I say? "I'll give it a try, Kosinski," I said. "But you must understand," I added, "if it causes problems with my furnace or with my staff, I won't accept future deliveries." He shook his head. "You won't have anything to complain about, Jim. You'll love it. I will start looking for an industrial manufacturer this month. Soon, they will go national. 'Kosinski' will become a household name in the next few years." Some of his enthusiasm rubbed off on me. The material looked great. The coffins were light. And people seemed to fall for them. A thought that made me smile. We do have a wry sense of humor occasionally. And so does fate. Nine coffins were delivered to me in the week after that. Two were burned succesfully, the rest of them were buried. Kosinski was in the last one of those buried. Heart attack. Poor guy. The polyester coffins never hit the market. They hit rock bottom when Kosinski passed away, twenty-five years ago today. A quaint sense of camaraderie urged me to take his coffin out of the ground first. Some sort of salute, I guess. His promise stood firm. The coffin looked completely intact, exactly like when it was buried. Unfortunately, so did Kosinski. I couldn't believe my eyes. I'm used to the sight of a reopened coffin. Dry skin, hair, nails, bones, dust. I had no reason to expect anything else this time. But I was very much mistaken. I guess I stumbled upon the flaw in Kosinki's scheme. There he was, in his black suit and tie, his skin looking like he died this morning. I couldn't help touching it. Shock. It felt like cold marble. Rock hard. I touched it again, pushing the skin with my finger. I didn't leave a dent. I couldn't make an impression. Kosinki's body felt like it was carved out of a rock. Twenty-five years in his own polyester coffin had turned him into a statue. The same thing happened to me. After a minute, I opened the other six coffins in a frenzy. My God. Mrs. Baumgartner, Mr. Crawford, Mr. and Mrs. DuPont, my cousin Alex, Mr. Constanza. Familiar faces. Familiar statues. I panicked. I had to find a way to dispose of them. I couldn't put them back in the ground. The slots were already taken. I couldn't wrap them in plastic and put them in the garbage. I knew every single one of them, I had seen their relatives in tears. Oh no, the relatives. I couldn't possibly contact them with the news that their loved ones are lying here, looking exactly the same way they did twenty-five years before. Mrs. Baumgartner is an old widow with grey hair. Her deceased husband looks like her son. It would kill her. No, I had to come up with some solution. No one must know. Quick. Let me fire up the furnace and burn them before the staff arrive. Yeah, that's it. Burn them. It went well before. Kosinski first. Of course. He caused all this. Goodbye, Mr. Inventor. Thanks for nothing, pal. In you go. The polyester started to melt immediately. Pretty soon, I could see the outline of Kosinki's body, with the polyster shrinkwrapped around it. All I had to do was wait for him to go up in flames, disintegrating and turning into ashes. But that just didn't happen. The polyester wrapping vanished, Kosinki's clothes vanished. But Kosinki didn't vanish at all. He turned black. He looked like a charred piece of wood. A statue covered in tar. More gas. More heat. Go, Kosinski, go! Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. You were in this business, you know what's expected of you! But Kosinski persisted. He would have been succesful selling his coffins, I knew that much by now. I sat down, waiting for the furnace to cool down. I grabbed a chisel and a hammer. Maybe I could break him into pieces. Bang. Bang. What an awful sound! But however hard I tried, Kosinski remained intact. I didn't even manage to chip the blackened skin. I turned around and looked at the other six bodies. I put some of them on slabs, some on trolleys. I examined all of them. They all felt solid as a rock. I had visions of chainsaws, acid, lime. But if the furnace didn't help, nothing would help. I saw myself behind the wheel of a van, with seven bodies wrapped in plastic, on my way to the local landfill. But I knew these bodies would never decay, and that they would be found and traced back to me. I sat down. And now it's almost eight. The staff will be here in a few minutes. Mr. Crawford's son is one of them. What will I say to him? "Look son, here's your dad. Surprise!". What will they say when they see that charred piece of wood in the furnace? Damn. Oh well, there's nothing I can do now. Let me make some coffee. Better get a bottle of Scotch out as well. I'm pretty sure it won't last twenty-five years.

© Ben C. O. Grimm