Diener: A Novella

Regular ole' just plain dead folks can sometimes perform more complex acts than you would think possible. For instance, in 1818 the Scottish physician Andrew Ure electrically jumpstarted the neural system of one Matthew Clydesdale, an executed killer. The dead man's face danced like the legs of a galvanized frog, expressing the full gamut of human emotions, including rage, horror, and despair, topped by a ghastly smile. The dead slayer's eyes carefully watched the proceedings, astonished that his soul was so abruptly recalled to pull the wires of the fleshy puppet's mask it had so recently shed. If you don't believe me, just read Roseanne Montillo's book The Lady and Her Monsters (HarperCollins, 2013), the lady in question being Mary Shelly, the author of (the original) Frankenstein.

Of course the piece de resistance occurred last week in Arlington, Texas at the funeral of "Wild Bob" Hitchcock, who had been a gun-totin' used car TV salesman in his prime. At the end of the service, the stem-cell enhanced cadaver of Robert E. Lee "Wild Bob" Hitchcock sat straight up in his coffin (which is one more sit-up than the blubbery used car dealer did during his entire terrestrial life) and regaled the congregation with Porky Pig's standard farewell: "Bee a blee a blee, that's all folks!"

Before it could make a final pitch for that special used car, the corpse of the portly ersatz gunslinger and one-time automobile magnate collapsed back in the coffin, despite wide applause from the assembled multitude and enthusiastic cries for an encore.

Well that's all the background you need before you hear the tale of Jack and Dianne that I am about to tell you. Check that, a quick internet search suggests that this title has already been copyrighted by one John Cougar Mellencamp. So much for anonymity then. I'll use our real names.

THE TALE OF IGOR AND PERSEPHONE

But when we are going to get to the pornography, you ask. Here it comes.

For all intents and purposes, my personal voyage began the night they wheeled Persephone Jones into the deluxe corpse suite at Shady Pine's Funeral Parlor for a little rest before the big show at ten o'clock the next morning. Persephone was riding in the very same super-deluxe teak coffin that had previously hosted the despicable acts of fornication by two unknown mourners at Mrs. Pearl Rabinowitz' Halloween-themed funeral, as described earlier in these letters.

It was a very nice coffin. I can't tell you how many times I have lain in its welcoming bed and pictured myself lying next to one of the loved ones, stoking the soft silk of the pillow and sheets, not to mention my own joystick. I also can't tell you how much love I bestowed on these honored guests, at least not if these letters are to be published and sent by regular mail to repressed countries like Iran and Texas and to a too a lesser degree China. Hell, I wouldn't even kick the lone-ranger masked Mrs. Pearl Rabinowitz out of the coffin, and I know what lies behind that mask. I'm getting a boner just thinking about it.

But Persephone was a world apart from ordinary mortals. She was the only person I could ever talk to about my feelings about technically deceased people. She would hang on my every word about my emotions and the final acts of kindness that I wished to perform on the loved ones before their big send-off to the inferno of the crematorium or the infinite coldness of the grave.

And now here she was, delivered at last to my humble little chamber at Shady Pines. I listened to the sounds of the night cleaners, the last people remaining in our little house of horrors. Soon they too would be gone. But I could wait no longer. Something fierce pulled me to the resting bed of Seph Jones, just as though I were a Romulan Bird-of-Prey trapped in one of Kirk's diabolical tractor beams.

They had already cleaned the basement floor. Hadn't they?

I popped the lid on Seph's coffin and threw it open. There, splayed before my hungry eyes were the delicious mortal remains of Persephone Jones. How I had dreamed of this moment. The dead cannot refuse our love, and Seph and I were about to enter a new phase of our relationship.

I ran my fingers through her scarlet hair and bent down to kiss her lips. They were definitely not as cold as you would expect for a person already 12 hours into whatever passes for an afterlife in this shithole universe. In fact, they kissed back a little.

Somewhat emboldened by the unexpected ardor of her kiss, I took the liberty of slipping my trembling hand beneath her dress and bra. Her breast, like her lips, was warmer than I expected and softer, showing no signs of rigor mortis, which should be well underway at this stage. Her nipple was erect, and I teased it with my hand. Suddenly she gasped and she opened her beautiful blue eyes.

"Oh, shit, not this", she exclaimed. "Sorry, no offense Iggy. If I'm going to have a Prince Charming, I am so glad that you're the one. I have always longed for your kiss. But your timing could be a little better."

I could be hallucinating again, I thought. As an experiment in existential cosmology I had not taken any Haldol for the past few days. But then I felt her sweet hand on my cheek, and I felt her love taking over my brain. Such a passion could not be an illusion.

"Iggy, I'm so cold. I need your warm body next to me, surrounding me."

I started to climb into the coffin, but she said, "Not like that. You must first take off our clothes. I need your heat skin-to-skin."

I obliged the little lady. I will not describe the process, but on a good day I can get a stiff in and out of a funerary gown in under ten seconds. If you're a funeral cosmetician, you have to. You wouldn't believe some of these mourning moms. Sometimes they will ask you to try ten different dresses on their precious Pammy Sue in the last fifteen minutes before the funeral. I only put up with this because many of these moms are going to be silfs someday (you know, sort of like milfs, but with stiffs).

I must have been in a hurry, for when I ripped the gown from Seph's body, her boobs bounced back and forth for a good five seconds. I yanked her gown and underwear down off her lovely white flesh. I unhooked her bra, slipped one strap down her shoulder, and drew it out from under her body.

She took my head in her icy white fingers and raised herself to give me a prolonged kiss. She fell back upon the bed of the coffin, her corpus delecti seductively splayed before me. I can rip the clothes off my body faster than those of any stiff. In the diener and funeral cosmetician businesses, you have to work fast to avoid discovery.

My heart was racing in both fear and excitement as I leapfrogged into the coffin, being careful not to hurt Seph. I don't know if the dead feel any pain, but I expect they do.

She threw her arms around my neck and I looked deeply into her blue eyes. Those coquettish peepers compelled me, despite the fact that I knew some diener had probably played paddle ball with them using her optic nerves in lieu of rubber bands).

My scepter was rock hard and was seized by the grasping lips of her cunt, which drew it deeply into her groove. Her lips met mine, her tongue slithering into and out of her mouth. She arched her back and I somehow slipped a little lower on her body. I pushed upward, my cock violating her perfectly made-up body (right down to her combed pubes). She grabbed my head and forced it down on her pulsating and gyrating tongue, throwing her arms about me as I began to ride her. I could feel the beating of her heart, her skin warmer now as her arms squeezed me more tightly against her skin, as though she were trying to prevent my escape from the silky spider's web of the coffin in which we were both now trapped. The tightness of her grip suggested that for her it was a matter of life and death that I shoot my hot seed into the coldness of her corpse.

Her body undulated beneath mine, her stomach rolling in time with my thrusts. I was driven to pound her harder and harder, my body no longer under my own control. Her flickering tongue licked my eyes and cheeks before darting in and out of my mouth.

I could feel her suddenly warm breath against my neck as she took my ear between her lips. Her still icy hands slide down the skin over my ribs and wildly-beating heart, then over my naked hips to grab the cheeks of my ass. She shoved me inside her harder and harder, and then dropped her hands down to my balls, squeezing them cruelly as I pounded my way in and out of her. She tightened her grip on those orbs, and emptied every last sperm that lurked in those twin worlds into her cold, cold body, the walls of her cunt milking me ruthlessly until I was just an empty sack craving more and more.

When I looked into her eyes to show my appreciation for her kindness to this humble diener, I was shocked to see that her formerly azure irises were now silver and seemed to be strangely whirling around her deep black pupils. I somehow knew that those silver eyes owned me now. I was now just a slave to do her bidding.

I heard someone walking down the stairs, and my heart began to beat faster and faster with each of their steps. I quickly pulled the lid of the coffin over our bodies. You never knew when some newly-employed, whistle-blowing, do-gooder prig was going to make an appearance.

I heard the noise as the coffin lid was opened, throwing harsh fluorescent light into the perfect blackness of our paradise. This was not going to be good.

When I saw who it was, I breathed a sigh of relief. It was just Jesus (pronounced "Hesus"), a member of the Shady Pines cleaning crew who shared my proclivity to provide the dead with some small degree of comfort before they embarked upon their final journeys.

THREE-WAY WITH STILL LIFE

"Jesus, Hesus, you almost gave me a heart attack." I said. "Do you remember what a pile of clothes on the floor next to a coffin means?"

"Si, boss. It is the secret signal that you are humping one of the guests."

"That's right. What else?"

Jesus recited the credo of the Shady Pines night shift, which I had myself composed. "If there's thumping, there's humping," he said with a chastised look on his face.

"Are these two principles too difficult to understand? These truths should be self-evident," I said, shamelessly plagiarizing the Declaration of Independence.

"Si, boss. Sorry, boss. It's just that she is so beautiful. I think she pull me down here. I wasn't theenking. It was as if the chica was dragging me down here."

"OK, Hesus. I understand." I too had been drawn to Seph's corpse and was now mesmerized by her glowing silver eyes. I could feel her hunger rising again. Too soon for me. Hesus was going to have to answer this call.

"OK, Hesus. I get it. You need a ride on the cadaver train. I understand. Go ahead and knock yourself out. But hurry. There are only six hours before the big show, and the beloved's family will probably get here two hours before that."

"I understand boss," Hesus said, as he rapidly shed his clothes, revealing an "El Toro" tattoo on his back. Where were those picadors when you actually need one?

For some reason, I was not jealous, although I had come to love Seph with all my heart. I sensed that she needed this, that her hunger was deep.

The naked would-be Mexican ghost rider climbed up into the coffin, with a little help from yours truly. The guy definitely needed to go to the gym more often, or at least cut down on the burritos. He lowered himself upon Seph's willing corpse. Hesus stared at her dazzling silver eyes and bent down to kiss her. He was shocked when her tongue slithered between his lips and she threw her arms around him. "Vampiresa! Bruja!" he screamed as he jumped off Seph's body, and ran off to get the large wooden stake that he stored in the corner of the prep room for just such occasions.

He ran like a berserker at the Seph's coffin holding the stake above his head like a javelin. I caught his teak spear before he could thrust it into Seph's naked, trembling and willing body.

"Look into her eyes, you beaner moron."

Hesus did just that.

"What do you see?" I asked Shady Pines' undocumented janitor. I forced his head closer to hers. "What do you see?"

"Diosa," he said, "La diosa hermosa." A goddess. A beautiful goddess.

"What must you do?" I asked him, as I drove the point of his exquisitely crafted teak stake a millimeter into the flabby tissue of his neck.

"Serve her, boss."

"Do you feel her hunger?

"Si, boss."

"I want you to get out of that coffin and stand against the wall."

Hesus did exactly that, although I had to give him a hand up as usual. His boner was impressive, but I guess Seph just has that kind of effect on people.

I marched him up to the wall. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Seph stick the landing on a double somersault dismount from the prison of her silky coffin. Her silver eyes were all awhirl, and Hesus' boner grew even larger. She rushed over to the mesmerized undocumented janitor and knelt before him like a vassal before her king. Her mouth took in his throbbing cock up to the hilt on the very first gulp. She looked up at him with those dazzling silver eyes and smiled as she began to nurse on him harder and harder.

Watching the flames of her fiery red hair dancing on the whiteness of her pale back, my own scepter most improbably began to rise again. I quickly took the umpire position with respect to Seph's catcher's crouch. I grabbed her crimson hair, pulling her head back and almost off my undocumented janitor's throbbing schlong. I took her ear in my mouth and rammed my strangely ascendant organ into her bizarrely warm and eager cunt. She began to milk me with that nether mouth of love, even as she sucked on Hesus' tool like a Mayan priestess accepting the plunge of a conquistador's sword.

I stroked the sides of her pale, dangling and undulating tits. Soon Hesus' and my thrusts became synchronized, driven by Seph's gasps and screams. She grabbed Hesus' balls tightly, rolling them and squeezing them as though they were a pair of Chinese baoding exercise balls as he continued to fuck her face.

As I drove into Seph harder and harder, I pulled her head sideways, again using the reins of her silky crimson hair. Her mouth found mine and our tongues found their mates. Then she returned to the task of extracting every last drop of Hesus' sperm. I grabbed her massive pale hooters and began squeezing them brutally with each thrust into her cooz, as her head bounced up and down feverously on Hesus' Mayan / Aztec / conquistador's root. Sweat dripped off her violators' bodies, but her skin remained pure, cool and dry, maybe because she was technically dead, maybe because she was dehydrated.

All three of us exploded at the same time. Hesus and I cried out when we came, pouring our life into the beautiful, reanimated yet nevertheless certifiably dead corpse of Persephone Jones. In her throes, Seph let out a terrifying scream of hunger and loss, the likes of which I had never heard before in my mortal life and never want to hear again.

THE PLAN

All three of us were spent and just sat against the wall trying to recover our breath.

"Anybody got a smoke?" Seph asked.

Neither Hesus nor I did.

"You really should drop that habit," Hesus said. "I you don't, you're going to wind up... Never mind."

Seph was a suicide and thus by no means averse to death, but our faithful mortuary cleaner had no way of knowing that.

I broached the question that was the unspoken elephant in the roof: "OK what we going to do now?"

"We gotta clean all this mess up and get ready for the big show at 10:00."

"Hesus, my man, you are still thinking as a custodian. If I thought like that, I would never have ascended to the ranks of senior assistant diener and mortuary cosmetologist."

"So what do you want to do, amigo?"

"We'll need to clean this up. Make sure our DNA is not all over the floor, then get her back in her dress. We'll need to put her back in the coffin before her relatives start arriving for the big show. If she's dead by then, we'll just have to go on with the show. Otherwise, we'll proclaim her resurrection as a miracle. Maybe get her a spot on Conan or Colbert, the PTL club for sure."

"But what if she is a vampiresa? We should stake her, boss. If we don't, there could be beeg trouble."

"Hello, I'm sitting right here!" Seph said. "You guys don't have a clue about what's going on, do you? Don't you ever watch TV?"

"I mostly read," I told her.

"And what is it that you read, genius?"

"I mostly read professional journals like American Cadaver. But I only get it for the articles, I swear. I hardly ever look at the pictures."

"You must be behind in your reading, handsome. At least two months behind."

"OK I'll admit that several of the pages in the September issue are kind of stuck together. But I've ordered some Hustler Anti-Stick. Works on paper, underwear, sheets, you name it."

"Those stuck pages wouldn't by any chance be the foldout of the Anna Nicole Smith autopsy, would they?"

"Maybe."

"I thought so, you necrophiliac pervert. Just like all the others. But I don't hold it against you. In fact if you two guys are ready to go again, so am I. But first we need to develop some kind of plan. Your idea that I will simply fall asleep will never work."

"OK boss," said Hesus, rising to his feet with some difficulty. He bent down to retrieve his finely crafted wooden stake. "This will be a perfect sleeping pill."

"It won't even kill me, you moron. I am not a vampire or a bruja, a witch. You stick that thing through me, and I'll just be walking around with a stake through my body. It might also look like a wooden penis. You wouldn't want to be fucking somebody with a literal woody sticking out from between her legs, now would you? Besides, you couldn't kill me if you tried. In fact, you can't even try."

Hesus tried to try, but it was no use. Like me, he was a slave to those whirling silver eyes.

"Then what are you?" Hesus asked. "A chica lobo, a werewolf? Or a zombie?"

"I am what they are calling a silver meat walker, but we like to call ourselves the twice-born. I say "we," although I have just joined the ranks of the twice-born this very night and have not yet met my compatriots. But I have been reading and hearing about them for weeks. I hoped that I would not become one of their numbers, as I had grown very weary of life. That's why I killed myself at a remote location, inside a culvert pipe. But they still found my corpse through the GPS function on my phone, the sons of bitches."

She turned her head my way and asked "Iggy, how do you think I got to be this way? Come on smart boy, tell me."

I shook my head to show that I had no clue.

"It's all the stem cells you assholes have been pumping into our dead bodies to make our organs fresh for transplantation. It's what maximizes profits for the great medical-funereal establishment, or the Lords of Death as we call them.

"But you guys didn't exactly perfect the process, and our bodies start to fall apart once the stem cells lose their tails, or flagella for those of you scientifically literate enough to read the International Journal of Molecular Dienerology."

I couldn't count myself among the readers of that august journal. I am strictly an American Cadaver guy, as my interests are more refined, eclectic and aesthetic than those of the typical techno-geeks that get so hot and bothered about the biochemistry of whatever embalming technique that is currently in vogue.

Remind me to get the Anna Nicole Smith autopsy picture unstuck, framed and mounted on my office wall. The picture's not the only piece of Anna Nicole Smith memorabilia that I want to mount, if you know what I mean and I hope you don't (although I am about to tell you).