The Embalmer's Husband

With the passing of her husband, it was no surprise to anyone that Rita withdrew from public life and the glare of the spotlight into which Estan’s job had so often dragged her. Preferring always the intimate company of her husband in their cottage, it was testament to conjugal devotion that she was invariably found on his arm at any and all social functions he was called on to attend. A loyal wife from the instant she uttered her vows, Rita’s devotion had been repaid by Estan’s unquestioning acceptance of her pastimes, which some might have said bordered on the macabre and were certainly well ensconced in the realms of the unusual.

Their home, a reasonably large, Victorian-era cottage lying on the outskirts of town, had never known the footsteps of children, and any who did visit left with a disquieting sense of never wanting to return. Dimly lit with antique bronze lamp fixtures, the walls were adorned with heavy dark wallpaper which seemed to suck any noise from the air. The rooms were populated with heavy mahogany furniture which lurked solemnly alongside impenetrable curtains, which when drawn succeeded in their role of totally excluding any traces of daylight. But the truly shocking surprise awaiting any of the infrequent guests to this home was the array of stuffed animals which adorned every shelf, bedecked every bookcase, graced every mantelpiece and occupied any nook and cranny available.

This was how Rita passed her time and, aside from her husband, it was her greatest pleasure in life. With an interminable dedication and timeless patience, Rita would prepare the corpses of rats, rabbits, hamsters, cats, small dogs, moles or pheasants which lurked throughout their house like a thousand interlopers. It was here that Estan and Rita had lived their life in tranquillity, surrounded by their cadaverous cadre who watched over the lives of their hosts in silent judgement.

When, after forty-seven years of dutiful union, Estan succumbed to a fatal heart attack, Rita found herself utterly alone with only her passion for embalming to occupy her days. She soon struck upon the idea of how she might distract herself from grief and at the same time keep her husband with her forever.

Employing what power of Estan’s influence remained to her, Rita succeeded in procuring her husband’s body and having it delivered to their house from the morgue. A closed coffin and ceremonial funeral were all that was necessary to appease the town officials, leaving Rita at liberty to practice her art and tackle her greatest challenge to date.

With her beloved husband’s body laid out on the table of her laboratory, Rita began. As she worked, she reflected how the desk where Estan now lay had once been the desk where he worked and wrote his speeches with Rita sat opposite him, occupied with the preservation of some rodent or other. As their years together had progressed, Rita’s work had come to occupy more and more of the desk until Estan had taken his writing to the dining room table, leaving Rita in peace. Now as she worked, surrounded on all sides by a multitude of rictus rodents peering out from around bottles or nestled between books, she longed for her husband’s company and a return to their friendly battles for desk space.

Seeing him now, laid before her, Rita marvelled at how small her husband looked. In life, he had occupied every room he entered with a presence that was at once confident and welcoming. She wondered now how this gaunt covering of skin stretched over a network of bones could ever have held the attention and aspirations of entire theatres, held sway over politicians, and businessmen and enraptured women.

In the days that followed, Rita employed the skills she had perfected over the years, restoring Estan’s body and granting him an appearance in death that reflected the presence he had commanded in life. Working long into the night, fell asleep with her head resting on the desk next to Estan’s chest. When she woke the next morning, rather than fear, she was comforted by the vicinity of her husband once again, his lack of breath posing no problem to the affection she still felt for him.

With her work complete, Estan’s body was a magnificent representation of the man she had adored in life. When it had come to the pose, Rita had pondered long on how her husband should spend the rest of eternity. As the powerful orator he was, surely he should be immortalised standing proudly, but that wouldn’t be the Estan Rita had known and loved. The Estan of her affection was the man who sat with her in the evenings in their cottage where only the two of them existed.

So it was that Estan’s preserved remains came to rest in their living room comfortably on the sofa in his usual spot. Admiring her handiwork, Rita found no alternative but to admit to herself that she had indeed accomplished a work of no small success. She had bestowed upon the corpse of her husband the magnificence he had carried in life. Yet with the completion of her masterpiece, Rita could no longer find distraction in the embalming and preserving of lesser animals. So it was that more and more often she found herself sitting in their living room with Estan upon their little sofa. Only now did Rita look inward and see the gaping hole in her life.

With her days stretching on interminably as she listlessly pendulated from boredom to depression, one evening Rita was curious to find a book tucked away which she had never previously noticed. As she tried to draw it from its hiding place on the lowest shelf, Rita was irritated to find that the book’s cover had become attached to the wood of the bookcase and that by pulling it free she caused the smooth leather of the cover to rip, meaning the title was still a mystery to her. Turning the volume over slowly in her soft, wrinkled hands, Rita was surprised by its weight and hefting the tome, followed by herself up from the floor, she settled down next to Estan.

Through the torn leather, Rita made out the dark wooden plates that made the book’s cover and protected the aged and yellowed parchment inside. Leafing delicately through, it was impossible not to be held in awe by the ornate calligraphy as it performed its graceful ballet across the creamy pages, taking the reader’s eye on a whimsical journey. The title of the book, Rita discovered, was “On the secrets of bending nature to the will of the witch”. In desperate need of a distraction, and with her curiosity sufficiently piqued, Rita continued to leaf through the book. While the first few chapters concerned themselves mostly with how witches of the day might conceal their true nature from those around them and church investigators, in particular, Rita was intrigued to find the later pages appeared to be a grimoire.

As fatigue jostled with intrigue, the evening progressed and Rita found herself still upon her sofa next to Estan’s preserved corpse into the early hours of the morning. Muttering to herself the familiar phrase just one more as she turned the next page, Rita could scarcely believe her eyes as she read the title.

“On returning the dead to life”, ran the words across the top of the page. There could be no mistake, as Rita read on she confirmed her wildest dream that the spell could return to life a person who had passed into death. Would it work? She couldn’t possibly say, but if it did, this could be her chance to return her beloved Estan to her. But that wasn’t all, further reading revealed that the spell didn’t just cheat death by grasping a person back from his clutches but with a few modifications could actually steal that person away from his icy grip for all time. Further investigation revealed she could also cast a similar incantation upon herself, so as they might both be united once again as man and wife against death now and forever.

Revitalised by her discovery, Rita knew she must sleep soon, else she would be too tired to conduct the spell casting the next day, and the thought of passing another day without Estan by her side was now too much to bear. Marking the page with her worn leather bookmark, she gazed into Estans motionless eyes and kissed his cold lips for the final time. “Soon, my darling, soon”, she whispered before hurrying herself to bed.

Despite the hour of her retiring, Rita awoke early the next morning, and unable to remain in her bed, she rose quickly and dressed unashamedly in the clothes she had discarded the night before which lay strewn upon the carpeted floor.

Once again, while she made and consumed her breakfast, Rita poured over the book. The necessary ingredients for the spell seem to be none too difficult to gather. A number of them she had already in her kitchen and the others could be easily procured via a trip to the local shop or at most a walk through the woods behind their house. The only ingredient that vexed her was the still-beating heart of a rabbit. While Rita had never been squeamish when it came to dismembering the creatures she preserved, she was a little perturbed at the idea of actually killing a creature with her own hands. Steeling herself for the task, she imagined the reward waiting for her at the end and set off to collect the necessary items.

Rita spent the majority of the day collecting seemingly random items and ingredients, which when combined in the correct order, she hoped, would yield her most fervently held desire. That evening, as the final day she would spend without Estan drew to a close, Rita prepared for the ritual. Though the book made no specification for dress, Rita elected to wear all black. Then when she considered the moment correct and in good time to see the arrival of the sunset, she seated herself at the feet of her husband and began the incantations as they were written in the book. Combining the ingredients as prescribed seemed almost intuitive to her as she performed them for the first time. Nothing could be more natural than the chalk stars upon the floor, nor the shaving from the chalk block, which she let the rabbit lick from her fingertips in the seconds before she snapped its neck. So intent was she upon the ritual that she battered not an eyelid as the hot flecks of the creature’s blood landed upon her cheek when she cut into its stomach.

As the ritual neared its conclusion, Rita knew instinctually that success was on its way. Soon, her beloved would be returning. With her tension and excitement mounting, Rita screamed the final passage of the incantation and looked on the face of her husband with exalted anticipation, scarcely daring to disturb the air by breathing.

Immediately, Estan’s eyes flickered open and as he looked down upon the face of his wife, a smile began to spread across his face. He took a deep breath and screamed. An anguished and relentless scream of pain and suffering. Interminable torment that began in the pit of his soul, echoed through his body and spewed forth from his throat with a force to humble and terrify Rita. Unable to comprehend her husband’s suffering, Rita stood motionless, looking as confusion and pity wrestled inside her.

With the eyes of a beaten dog, Estan looked to his wife in supplication, imploring her to explain why she would inflict such suffering upon him, yet unable to articulate a single word through the incessant burning agony. As the screams rang from his throat, he began to claw at his skin, scratching fruitlessly as the formaldehyde pumped around his body, burning his insides, relentless in its inert capacity for pain.

Throwing himself on the floor, Estan’s scream marked his rebirth to the world of the living, but unlike his first primal scream so many years prior, this one would never end. She had cursed him, Rita realised. She had cursed him to live, to fill the halls of their home forever with screams of agony.

Realising what she had done, Rita sat on their small sofa watching her husband’s torment through tears which now flooded her eyes. A spasm of pain and Estan’s leg kicked out, hitting the bookcase and jarring it so that one of the taxidermied rabbits fell to the floor and lost an ear. Rita wept as she watched her beloved writhe and scream in pain, a pain that she had prepared for him with love and dedication, and one that would never cease. Not for him at least, in time, she would succumb to death’s call and be released by his sweet embrace of numb ignorance. No such hope awaited Estan. His life eternal had now begun, and it would know no end.