Lewie the Hero

It was a dark and stormy night. It was so dark, and so stormy, that from his hiding spot underneath the coffin, he couldn’t even see the glow from his Indiglo watch. The light was sucked right out of the air, like a furball going into a Dyson vacuum cleaner. As he lay there waiting, he heard a faint noise coming from above.

The sound so startled him, and was so close, that he jumped and struck his head on the mahogany of the 350-pound coffin. That left a mark. On the coffin, too. At least now he could lie still, between the pounding in his head and the fear that threatened to liquefy his bowels, he was afraid to move.

He heard it again… a tiny, scratching sound. It seemed louder, but maybe that was amplification from his hearing aid being pressed against the coffin. He hoped. He hoped it was a mouse in the wall, but that’s not what it sounded like. It was definitely a creature trying to scratch through something. He decided to ignore the noise and finish his job. When you worked in funeral parlors, there were lots of creepy things about, and you just had to ignore them and carry on. Or you would never get any work done. You might not get too much sleep either.

Lewie Potts crawled out from under the casket. His hearing aid didn’t come with him. He realized that he was running very late and had to get to work so he could get home. Working alone at the funeral home, he didn’t really need his hearing aid anyway, as there was no one talking to him here. He fished the device out and stuffed it in his pocket.

Lewie took inventory. Four caskets to clear. That shouldn’t take too long. Three of them were sealed, those take the longest. He checked his watch under the light of the flashlight and saw how far behind he was.

The scratching was growing louder, more insistent. And there were ghostly vocalizations also. If Lewie could have heard them, he would have run for the door, but lost in his silent reverie of the previous evening’s dinner (crab- he loved crab), he was oblivious. In fact, he was salivating, just picturing the three sticks of melted butter and the mound of Alaska king crab legs.

Lewie pulled out his tools and got to work. It was the sealed caskets that interested him the most. Opening them after being sealed was truly an art and he was a master. It’s a tough skill to call out on a resume, however.

It was almost like finding buried treasure. Lewie never got over the thrill of discovery, even though he came up empty, or nearly so, at least half of the time. But the other half…well, it usually wasn’t that exciting, but it was the promise of the unknown that gave him that thrill again and again. Lewie truly felt badly for the rest of the schmucks of the world who didn’t love their jobs.

The first coffin yielded easily. He was in and out in thirty seconds. He thought that she looked good. Good for being dead and all. He now had a mental image to go with the phrase “death-warmed-over.” It changed with every coffin that he looted, however. She was old, maybe eighty-five, and likely wouldn’t have done her own makeup quite so heavily. At least he hoped not. There was no way that she would have chosen the mint green eyeshadow. In the light of the indiglo, Lewie decided that she was probably a looker once. Fifty years and about a million heartbeats ago, anyway.

There were eyeglasses, dentures, cheap rings (a family member must have swiped the good ones already), and a pair of mittens for reasons he couldn’t fathom. Lewie could write a book on the stuff people put in caskets. Maybe he would someday. But they all had some kind of value. To Lewie- not to the coffin resident. Well, they might have had value to them once too, but probably not anymore. Probably, because he didn’t know for sure what came next, and if they were still aware of what was happening on earth.

The scraping and crying from the coffin intensified. It was very hard to miss. Unless you were clinically deaf. Then you could probably miss it. It was loud enough that it seemed that the resident must be alive and that they heard Lewie moving around and were trying to get his attention.

It didn’t work. Lewie was oblivious to the fact that one of the coffins was livelier than the others, and was making all sorts of racket.

He moved on to his second coffin, running extremely late now. He froze for a few moments, picturing that pile of crab legs. However, he was a hard worker, and despite the distraction, he shook it off and unsealed the next coffin. This one was better sealed, and he had to work a lot harder to break the seal. He hated that. The blowtorch always lit the funeral parlor up like a Christmas tree. And left singe marks all around the coffin if he moved too slow. He was afraid that he had scratched the wood…no one would ever notice that- after tomorrow- that is. Damn!

He was peering at the scratch, trying to figure out how he could fix it when the coffin lid came flying up and a youngish woman rocketed out of the coffin screaming, with blood running down her arms and face. She smelled like burnt polyester.

Lewie stared at her. She seemed to be yelling at him, but he couldn’t understand a word. He realized that the hearing aid might come in handy, so he inserted it and then was able to fully understand her, excepting the hysteria.

Gloria was so grateful that he had set her free. She was convinced that he heard her from outside and came in to rescue her. He didn’t go out of his way to set the record straight, but did ask, ”Do you want to go to the hospital?”

Gloria said “No…I just want to get some food- I haven’t eaten for days in that box.”

Lewie said “Don’t you want to call your family to tell them you’re okay?”

She said “No, those bastards are the ones who put me in the box to begin with. Can you seal it back up? They’ll think I’m gone for good and I can finally be free. Hurry up and seal it so we can go get something to eat. I have to think about my future. I hope you have some money.”

Copyright Antigone Lett, 2007