I deal in death, that’s how I earn my bread and butter. Wallowing in the financial implications of suffering and demise, I shuffle the sheaves of paper, both tactile and electronic, that rustle the real-life certainty of not existing anymore. Working under a thick armor of mental self-preservation which expands with the continual observation of someone else’s misery, I muddle through and keep an even tone in my voice. I work in an emotional freezer for survival’s sake.
However, the armor that thickens around my mental processes will crack. When there is a breakdown in my defenses there is also a will to wallow in whatever brings me momentary happiness; a flirtation that I know I won’t pursue, boxed wine (the entire box), a German film (earth and water let’s talk mercenary!) or (and most recently) a drive to an advertised haunted hotel.
The haunted hotel reservation resulted from a messy car accident. While sunk in the sorting out of death benefits for my fellow and now dead human beings, I thought little of consequence. I am aware and fully cognizant that my endeavours to forget are a willful attempt to separate my natural tendency to sympathize from my analytical attempt to just get the damn job done. Hell’s bells don’t go too fast on icy roads when your three minor children are in the car – if you want to kill yourself fine, don’t take them with you. Judgemental yes, but after the sixth such incident one shouts and scream mentally and judges freely.
So I try to separate my sympathizing self from my analytical self because I’m not sure sympathizing over every tragedy I have to deal with isn’t a way to deaden the pain of it all. That’s what I tell myself in defence of myself. Why should I feel guilt over a near-pornographic film, a brief encounter that boils down to using someone or testing the realms of the supernatural? Aren’t I allowed a distraction? I’m fully human and a fully human person should not have to separate her desires between right and wrong. The misery in life proves there is no wrong in trying to live a little.
All that sounds justifiable at the moment, but less so when the guy sends flowers, the rank film mentally pops up during a business conversation or the accusatory face wakes you from a deep sleep. Consequences don’t go away proving that most justifications are self-deception. I digress.
My room, in the supposed haunted hotel was swept and sterile. The four walls welcomed me into a familiar silence and I shuddered at the thought of staying in a place that would not distract me after the recent exposure to the gruesome automobile accident and subsequent paperwork. “I hear this every day when I come home from work – nothing.”
My words knocked about the walls and did not reply to me. I shrugged and stripped down to nothing, bare as the day I started breathing, and pirouetted around the room. I looked horrible and laughed out loud. Breathless, I said, “I just want you to know, that if you are here and need any help in unfinished death benefits or unpaid medical claims, I’m your girl. That’s what I do in the light of day.”
Silence.
“Of course not, because when you’re dead, you’re dead.”
I bathed, feeling raw and wondering if what’s his name would join me in my rented haunted room and make any ghosts jealous of our sexual inhibitions. I ran the tub water hot and allowed steam to arise and push against the mirror in useless and inept waves. I didn’t want to see my middle-aged self naked any longer so there was a reason behind my want for a steamy bath. I thought about turning on some music for atmosphere, but I allowed the silence to continue, that’s what the grave is like I reasoned. When finished bathing I dried and powdered and contemplated putting my clothes back on and going home, calling what’s his name and asking if he had a free evening but I didn’t want to take that back into the confessional; a priest has only so much patience with fornicating parishioners. So I crawled in between the sheets and summoned winter.
I summon winter whenever I want to sleep: I need a cold room, fully dark. The double bed was firm, the room cool to the brink of cold and dark. I fell asleep almost immediately. I have no recollection at what time I awoke, but I was fully awake, and aware that there was a weight on the bed beside me. For a split second I had the cowardly sense to not open my eyes, but the thought became a conscious a moment too late – I opened my eyes.
If her face had remained immobile, if it had remained dead-looking I may have come out of the experience in a less baffled and babbling state of mind. It was her expression of snarling hate that haunts me. Her expression didn’t change immediately, no, she waited until I fully knew of her presence and then her dead lips slipped back off her teeth and gums, pushing her eyes into slits of rage and the flaring her nostrils inches away from my arrogant living flesh.
I’m not sure I touched her. I know I slammed my head hard against the nightstand table because when I awoke, the sun streaming in I wanted to puke on the floor as I tenderly felt the goose egg on the back of my skull. I was some time driving home.
“So did you think it was some joke?”
“I was just in one of those moods. I…”
“Certainly, certainly. All those times you are heartily sorry after a self-consumed tirade that culminates in some guilty pleasure and another’s hurts. Have you thought about another job, waiting tables I’m told is lucrative.”
I discovered in my Saturday confessional that my usually patient and far-seeing priest had a real impatience with those who dabble in the supernatural.
“Memento Mori; pray your life ends in grace unlike that poor girl’s but until then show some respect.”
My penitence continues.
Photo by Leon Seibert on Unsplash