Clarice

Mr. Frank Andrews worked at Highman's Mortuary from nine o’clock at night till six in the morning, decorating corpse's faces and listening to music on the small portable radio that sat next to a large container of formaldehyde on the gleaming counter..

The first day he began his work in that small, cold room, it seemed less somber than what he expected it to be, filled with carving tools and mutilated corpses. The bright white light and the cleanly polished marble walls almost reminded him of a hospital room.

Frank was not an unattractive man, but he found it incredibly difficult to talk to the girls he saw walking down the sun bleached sidewalks on his breaks or even to make new friends with the people he saw sitting at the bars when he had nights off. He was somewhat put off by the women’s neon lipstick that leered in the moonlight; by the way they swung their hips in skirts so short he could see half of their butts as they walked by him without a second glance. The way the men all laughed in hoarse masculinity as they chugged bottle after bottle of their beers made him feel undeniably nervous.

Lonely to the point of sheer depression, Mr. Frank Andrews began having conversations with the bodies that frequented Highman’s Mortuary. While being rather one-sided he found it somewhat refreshing to be listened to, although their glassy eyes or empty sockets always seemed to stare right through him just like the men and women did. At least they weren’t loud, he mused. He began calling them by the names on their death certificates as he worked on them, stitching up wounds and putting in fake eyes as he told them of what he had for lunch that day, or what happened in one of the soaps he watched before going to work.

One night, he was assigned to work on the body of a girl who had been caught in the motor of the boat she had fallen out of. Half of her face eaten away by the vicious blades, he could still tell that she had been beautiful, her mascara stained eye as deep blue as the water she had flailed and convulsed in just days before.

Checking her death certificate, he found out that her name was Clarice Whiskot and she had been twenty years old when she died. When he began stitching her gaping wounds closed he found himself talking to her. As he poured the flesh-colored wax around the ugly stitches he found himself running gloved fingers through her platinum hair, dried in clumps with rust colored stains.

“You don’t stare through me like everyone else does, Clarice,” he sighed while sculpting her cheekbones with a scalpel. “You look right at me. It’s as if you can hear everything I’m telling you.”

The sky was ink black, filled to the brim in aubergine clouds and winking stars as her steady transformation took place. As each star died; as the sky slowly got brighter she changed from a horrific tragedy to a beautiful one. He did her lips and cheeks in a rosy pink to give them a lifelike hue, and found a glass eye that almost exactly resembled the real one. The instructions had said, “Clarice always had such lovely eyes. Please don’t take them away.”

He was so caught up in his work, that he exhausted himself, head falling over to lay on the metal table right next to her pale arm.

The warmth of the sun’s bright gaze awoke him from his dreamless sleep. It reflected off of his silver equipment, off of the bleached walls, off of the empty table before him.


“Clarice?” he called out in a tremulous voice. Standing up on shaky legs, he looked around to see if anyone had broken in while he was asleep and stolen his beautiful work of art. Walking to the entrance, he saw no sign of forced entry. With a labored sigh, a hand moving up to his forehead in sheer exasperation, he walked back into the workroom and sat down. “Maybe she was nothing but a dream,” he thought aloud. “Maybe I’ve been working too hard.” A woman’s shriek erupted from the bathroom, a sound of animalistic terror.

The bathroom walls were painted a pale brown, the color of dried dirt and bleached wood. The lights, were a dim orange that reflected in glass globes in the rectangular mirrors that hung over the sinks.

Clarice lay on the marble floor in a broken heap as if someone had pushed her down, the fake side of her face flattened, the glass eye still rolling until it hit the wall. Frank stepped over her and looked at his reflection in the mirror. Bloodshot eyes, five-o’clock shadow- the very picture of desperation. “I need to get out of here,” he cried as he splashed cold water over his face.

The first thing he saw were golden ringlets of hair, cascading over a pale blue eye. Clarice was walking towards him, naked and pale in the dim light of the room, arms stretched out as if she sought to embrace him. He could see her skull potruding behind the thin-flesh colored wax, the pinkness of torn flesh visible behind that. Her face was a splattered canvas of smeared foundation, mascara, and oozing clear liquid. "My eyes!" she shrieked. "I cannot see!" He backed into the sink, upsetting the mirror off of the wall and causing it to shatter into a million pieces, flashing, deadly angles that reflected broken pieces of her blind gaze.