What Remains

Mary hadn’t selected the funeral home. She never would have. It was tackier than her taste, filled to the brim with chachkis and housing ten shrieking parakeets in the front. The life insurance her father had taken out had been very explicit that the policy provider would get to choose a facility within a fifteen mile radius of the deceased’s home, at no cost to the insured’s family. With no logical reason to look for a competitor, which would be expensive, she settled for what was offered.

The mini-mall that housed the funeral home was nondescript, and also leased space to a pool supply store and a pet store, the owners of which were very friendly with the undertaker Phil. They had never required his services, and therefore regularly proclaimed him their best customer out of guilt and moral obligation. He was a very good customer though, if a little odd.

Mary drove past the strip mall outpost twice before realizing her GPS hadn’t been lying to her. The funeral parlor was indeed in a strip mall. How Floridian! She wondered how it could be possible to fit a crematorium into such a small space.

As she pulled in, she got her first look at Phil, stepping out of the pet store with a large metal dog collar in his left hand. Big enough for a human, she thought, unable to resist her own morbid thoughts.

“Your father’s insurance policy only seems to cover our most basic package, the ‘green’ cremation. He won’t be embalmed, there won’t be a casket, but he’ll get a shroud. You and up to nine other family members will be permitted fifteen minutes of viewing time. State law forbids longer viewings for unembalmed corpses since they can be vectors for disease.”

“We don’t have any family,” Mary said. “It was just the two of us.”

“I’m so very sorry.”

“I don’t think I’ll need a viewing. They already had me identify his body at the morgue. I don’t want to go through that again.”

“I completely understand. In that case, all you’ll need is to notify the coroner to release his body to me and I’ll take care of the rest. I’ll do the cremation off-site and you’ll be able to claim his ashes within 72 hours after I receive his body. If you don’t claim the ashes within thirty days, we’ll scatter them in an undisclosed location. Will you need an urn?”

Phil went over some other details with Mary: how many death certificates she would need (just one, short-form) and what kind of obituary she would like (the bare minimum, at no additional charge if under twenty-five words, written herself). After she signed a consent form, she was free to go.

“Oh, one last thing,” she said. “What happens to my father’s wedding band?”

“Any jewelry or personal affects should still be in the possession of the coroner. You should have been given an inventory form by the medical examiner detailing any belongings that were removed from his body before or after his death.”

Now finished, Mary made her way back to her car and drove to the motel she was staying at. She regretted not having keys to her father’s place to spare her the expense, but figured it was better than breaking into a dead man’s home and attracting the ire of his neighbors. She wasn’t sure if she’d be comfortable sleeping in the same house he died in anyway. The only bed there was the one where he’d breathed his last breath.

From her motel bed, Mary called the Polk County Medical Examiner to inquire about her father’s ring. After consenting to release the body, two transfers, and thirty minutes on hold, the voice on the other end apologized.

“This is really weird, we should really have the paperwork here. Is it possible that your father’s ring was taken by one of the police officers or medical technicians who responded to his death?”

“How am I supposed to know?”

“I know, I’m sorry ma’am, I don’t know what to tell you. These things happen sometimes?”

“Well thanks for nothing,” she sneered, hanging up the phone.

She wondered, perhaps, if the ring was still on her father’s decomposing body. Maybe it would arrive to the funeral home with the rest of him. She would ask Phil tomorrow after the transfer was complete.

Mary reached into the minibar and cracked one of the White Claw tallboys she’d bought at the Walgreens across the street. She was beginning to question if all of this had been worth it.

###

Her father had answered the door in a frail state, rolling his oxygen tank behind him and letting out a cough to punctuate each of his sentences. The COPD was only the latest diagnosis. He’d already suffered from diabetes for as long as she could remember, and began sleeping with a CPAP machine when she was seventeen.

“Isn’t it a little late to be showing up unannounced?” he asked her.

Mary pulled out her cell phone to check the time. “It’s only 9:30.”

“I’m not a young man anymore, Mary.”

“I’m sorry. Well can I come in?”

“Let me guess: you’re here to ask for money.”

Mary’s pride took over. Unable to admit he was right, she thought of a lie on the spot.

“Actually, I had a job interview over in Lakeland.”

“Oh really,” her father said incredulously.

“Yeah, paralegal gig.”

Her father let out a chuckle between two coughs. “Sure. I’ll believe that.”

He gestured for her to come inside and she stepped in with a defensive shrug. Ever since Mary’s heroin addiction had derailed her senior year of high school, her father refused to trust her with money. When she finally got clean and secured her GED, he wouldn’t even help her with college tuition payments. Now she was twelve years off the horse, drowning in student loans, recently dumped, and itching to use harder than she had when she first quit.

After accidentally enabling automatic payments on her lender’s website, Mary was left in a bind. A thousand dollars evaporated from her account overnight. Overdraft fees began piling up. Unable to use her debit card anymore, she resorted to credit. Unaware that thirty-percent compounding interest charges were automatic on cash advances, her financial hole grew deeper. She would need at least three grand to get back to square zero.

“Listen, Mary,” her father said, “Your mom’s cancer treatments rang me dry and it was all for nothing. I’m barely scraping by with what’s left of the pension payments. Not that I would loan you anything if I did have it, but I don’t, so I really don’t know why you’re here.”

With her mother on her mind, Mary’s eyes moved briefly to her father’s wedding ring, overlapped on both sides with bloated flesh.

“You don’t know why I’m here? Is that your way of saying you still don’t want a relationship with me?”

“Mary, you’re my daughter. I love you and I’ll always love you. But I learned my lesson. I gave you too much growing up. You got any Christmas present you wanted. New shoes every two months. I gave you the world and you still started shooting up. Fuckin’ affluenza. Now we both have less than we used to.”

“Affluenza? You act like we were rich.”

“I treated you like we were.”

Mary’s eyes narrowed with righteous indignation.

“I know that look,” her father said. “Started making it before you could even walk. That’s your bratty look. That’s the look you make when you know you can’t have your way.”

“Goddammit, Dad, I’m all you fucking have. Why do you have to be this way?”

Her father’s eyes shot her a glimmer of compassion.

“Look,” he said, “I know it’s a long-as-shit drive back up to Gainesville. I’m not gonna kick you out or anything. You can stay for a night or two.”

“Well thanks, at least you’ll give me that.”

“Listen here, Mary May. I don’t appreciate that kind of attitude after I’ve just shown you the generosity of opening up my home to you.”

“Our home, dad! I grew up here.”

“Calm that tight little pussy you call a mouth, Mary.” Her father’s proclivity for profanity knew no bounds, even when the remarks bordered on incestuous.

“Gross, Dad.”

Her father explained to her that her bedroom had long ago been converted into a crafting room for her mother, but she could take the La-Z-Boy he was sitting on for the night—once he got up, that was. Mary accepted the invitation begrudgingly, fully aware that it was too late to drive back home.

Mary tried to sleep on the recliner, but her frame didn’t line up with the permanent impression her father’s body had put in the cushions. After an hour of tossing and turning, she gave up hope and returned the footrest to its base.

The house was a typical single-storey Florida bungalow. The previous owner had annexed part of the back yard into a second living room, giving the place an open-concept feel that made the still-extant sliding doors an awkward presence. Even when you closed them, sound still echoed through the original structure.

Mary made her way from the original living room to the adjacent kitchen. Bills and junk mail were piled haphazard on the counter next to the dish rack. The envelope at the top of the stack caught her eye: American Dream Life Insurance. She lifted the envelope, tempted to reach inside. For a brief second, a beep from her father’s CPAP machine interrupted her meddling like an alarm.

She put the envelope down before she could open it, instead reaching for the plastic handle of vodka on the other side of the dish rack. After extracting a coffee mug from the cabinet, she looked in the fridge for mixers. Nothing but milk and a Brita pitcher. She kicked herself for expecting more. Her father never drank juice, preferring glucose tablets to boost his blood sugar—he always went overboard with the juice and soda when he had it around.

The CPAP machine beeped again. Awfully soon, Mary thought.

She made her way through the adjoined foyer towards her parents’ bedroom. The door, to her surprise, was wide open, allowing the beeps of the CPAP machine to resonate in a way they never had when her mother was still alive.

Mary questioned herself before stepping into the bedroom. She wasn’t sure what had compelled her to be there, but there she was: at the foot of her father’s bed, taking stock of his surroundings; the CPAP mask and ancient monstrosity of a ventilator it was attached to, the wedding photo of her parents on the wall at the head of the bed, the stack of Penthouse magazines on the desk.

Do they even still print those? she asked herself. Her brief failed stint as a stripper had taught her a wealth of information on pornographic media.

She looked back at her father, amazed that he was able to sleep at all over the loud revving and beeping emanating from the CPAP machine. She hadn’t slept that well in months. She was almost jealous.

Mary took another sip from the oversized mug of ice and vodka clenched in her fist. Her eyes narrowed yet again into her “bratty face” as her father had called it. She thought about their conversation earlier. Her resentments welled up and a single tear fell from her right eye. She wiped it away defiantly and returned to her glaring.

The time seemed to pass faster as Mary marinated in her own resentments. Eventually she realized she’d been standing immobile at the foot of her father’s bed for over an hour. She wondered yet again why she was even there.

Over on the wall, she noticed the plug of the CPAP machine dangling halfway out of its outlet. She took another sip from her mug of vodka.

After a few too many glasses of Sauvignon Blanc five years earlier, Mary’s mother had admitted to her that her father wasn’t immune to the occasional instance of spousal rape. Disgusted, Mary had promised herself she’d never talk to her father again; yet here she was. Every bitter feeling she had toward him bubbled back at once.

It was an almost out-of-body experience. She didn’t feel like she was in control, rather that fate was guiding her. Using her big toe, Mary gently nudged the CPAP machine’s plug out of its socket. The device whirred to a silent halt.

Afraid that her father would wake up any second and catch her, Mary reflexively shuffled out of the room and back to the La-Z-Boy, draping the bedsheet he’d given her back over her body. She lied on her side, facing in the opposite direction of her father’s room, and listened.

The sound was harder to distinguish than she expected at first, her father’s snoring still muffled by the mask strapped to his face. She honed in on the distinct rhythm of his breathing, which was getting increasingly loud and intermittent. It became clearer. Each snort was followed by a progressively longer pause. After several minutes, the snoring stopped.

The silence became deafening, replaced by a barrage of intrusive thoughts.

Murderer. Patricidal leech. You killed him. You actually killed him. If you don’t rot in prison, you’re still going to rot in hell. Maybe both. You killed him. You’re a bad person. You’re a bad daughter.

Unable to cope with her own inner-monologue, which was growing increasingly schizophrenic in nature, Mary bolted up and grabbed a paper towel from the kitchen. She made her way back to her father’s room and used the disposable rag to return the CPAP plug to its socket, lest she leave fingerprints. Next, she used it to lift the mask off her father’s face and checked for breathing under his nostrils with her index finger. Even with the CPAP back on, he was no longer breathing.

Eager to get out as soon as possible, Mary grabbed the bill from the life insurance company and made a b-line for the door, allowing the knob to lock itself behind her. She drove all the way back to Gainesville that night fueled by adrenaline and vodka, determined to act as if none of this had ever happened.

###

Mary woke up face-down, still dressed in the previous day’s clothes. At some point, she had passed out with a half-full tallboy in her hand, creating a small puddle on the motel carpet. At least it doesn’t stain, she thought.

She found her phone under the pillow with the final remnants of its charge remaining. The notification of a new voicemail flashed. She wondered who even left voicemails anymore. Probably another bill collector.

“Hi Miss Cole, this is Phil from Next Life Funeral Services. I was just calling to let you know that your father’s cremains are now available. I’ll be around between three and six this evening if you’d like to come collect them today. God bless.”

She’d really expected a longer wait. Mary looked at the time: 9:30am. She had half an hour to check out before she would be charged for another day. She grabbed a towel from the bathroom and sopped up as much of of the spiked seltzer from the carpet as she could. After a cursory inspection to make sure she’d gathered all her devices and undergarments from the floor, she made her exit.

At the front desk, Mary was notified that her card had been declined—not a surprise, she had intentionally chosen a canceled one. She procured three twenty dollar bills from her purse and handed them over to the desk person.

“Will this cover it?”

“Sure, why not?” he said, shrugging. The charge was seventy, but he’d seen Mary’s type before and knew the deal. Take the cash now or get nothing from the credit card company when he filed the claim. Ten extra dollars wasn’t worth an hour on the phone with MasterCard.

With several hours to kill, Mary decided to enjoy a her day in Clearwater Beach. Going to a public beach, she told herself, was all she could afford to do right now anyway.

###

Mary got the call about her father’s passing four days after she ended his life. His death was discovered by the paperboy, who’d grown concerned when he saw the Sunday edition still resting on the stoop, soaked through from three days of rain. Her father used to slip the kid a twenty here or there to assist him with small things around the house. Knowing that the back door was never locked, he let himself in. He knew from the smell. His benefactor was dead. He called the police without even looking for the body.

Ashamed but desperate, Mary didn’t hesitate. After getting the request from the coroner to come in and identify the body, the first call she made was to her father’s life insurance company. The representative explained to her that her father’s policy was their most bare-bone package, covering nothing more than cremation services and legal paperwork. There was no cash payout to survivors. Her crime had yielded her nothing.

Afraid to attract suspicion, she agreed as the sole survivor to handle further communications with the funeral home selected by the company.

###

As she decompressed on the beach, Mary lost track of the time. It was already half past four when she noticed. The drive back to Polk County would be at least an hour under the most ideal conditions, but she knew that there was no way to avoid Tampa rush hour traffic once she crossed the bay.

A mile into the Courtney Campbell Causeway, Mary hit gridlock traffic. A Pasco local had decided that day to drunkenly ride his ATV across the bridge, accidentally ramming into the barricade. To the astonishment of witnesses, his vehicle didn’t penetrate the barricade, instead projecting the driver directly over his handlebars. His neck snapped on impact with the water.

Mary reached for her phone, hoping she could still catch Phil. It was dead.

When the traffic cleared and the causeway started moving again, it was already after 6pm. With nowhere to stay, and no reason to remain in Polk County, she decided to see if Phil was still at the funeral home. Working the graveyard shift, she chuckled to herself.

Upon first glance, Mary didn’t have much cause for optimism. The exterior lights were shut off and the front windows were dark. On closer inspection, she saw that a light was still on in the back. Maybe he was still there. She reached for the door handle and pulled. It wasn’t locked.

The parakeets squeaked incessantly, but no more than they had when she’d been there yesterday. From the still-lit area in the back, Mary heard a humming noise emanating, and took it upon herself to investigate. The light turned out to be coming from a single unsheathed bulb at the top of a staircase to the basement. Given that it was Florida, she was surprised to see that there was a basement at all.

“Hello?” she called out, to no response. The buzzing was louder at the top of the stairs. It was coming from the basement.

“Hell-oo?” she called out again to no response.

As Mary descended the staircase, a sense of impending dread took over her. She felt unsafe, and couldn’t tell why. Perhaps it had been Phil’s nonchalance when they’d met. She’d chalked it up to Asperger Syndrome at the time.

At the bottom of the stairs was a heavy door with a metal latch and a small bathroom with no door to its left. The same out-of-body sensation took over Mary that had when she’d unplugged her father’s ventilator. She couldn’t help herself. She reached for the latch and pulled.

Inside, she saw Phil’s back facing her. He was leaning over a steel examination table with an electric bone saw. He was far from the first thing she noticed, though. That would have to have been the 500-pound alligator chained to the wall, wearing the same dog collar she’d seen Phil carrying the day prior. The third and final thing she noticed before Phil turned around was her father’s body on the table—what was left of it anyway. His internal organs had been removed, leaving a gaping cavity in his torso. Also missing were his left leg from the knee down and right arm up to the shoulder, cleanly sawed away. The bone saw was currently spewing gore from above his right knee.

Mary looked at her father’s mangled corpse, then back to the alligator. She was able to draw her own conclusions.

Phil was genuinely startled when he noticed Mary behind him. He’d never been caught in the act of dismembering a body before.

“Oh no no no,” he said. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Mary, stunned by the scene before her, felt paralyzed. If not for the adrenaline coursing through her veins, she would have collapsed.

“I really wish you hadn’t come down here,” Phil said, approaching her with the bone saw.

The last thing Mary saw while she was still alive was the wedding band on her father’s bloated finger, dangling from the edge of the table.

###

Next Life hadn’t always been this gruesome of an operation. Before the crematorium got ravaged by a trifecta of hurricanes, you could even have said it was quite legitimate.

After the hurricanes, Phil’s services were needed, but the furnace was busted and the chimney had partially collapsed, meaning the place would need to be rebuilt from scratch. The insurance payout wouldn’t come close to covering the expenses. In an act of desperation, Phil began burning newspapers and cardboard in a metal drum behind his house so he’d have something to give to the families.

It had been a few months since Phil had resorted to his old methods of body disposal. His pet alligator, Horace, was usually able to handle any of the “green” cremation contracts handed to him by various cheap life insurance companies. It typically took three days of feeding, however, for Horace to develop enough appetite to devour an entire human body.

Before Horace had reached full size, Phil would drive any remaining limbs and viscera down to a gator-infested cove off the coast of Lake Hancock. Despite their impressive jaws, alligators aren’t fond of pulling apart their food before they eat it, making the dismemberment mandatory.

He would begin by baiting the water with internal organs. When the gators came, he would launch the chopped-up limbs with an oversized pool skimmer, retrieving and re-launching any parts they had missed.

Phil saved some of Mary for Horace, her meat being fresher, but brought the rest of her body and what remained of her father down to the cove. The gators had missed him.

© 2021 by Robert de la Teja