Even in death

I was a little bit concerned, Rob hasn't come to work in five days and he hasn't called neither reported to the office in order to let us know of any issues within his family,so naturally we went a little bit worried about him. Is not that we have tons of work you see, we work in a funerary agency and he was regularly in charge of the crematory services, and even if we know how to do the job, well… he was the one that usually asked for the task.

    We tried to reach him over his cellphone, I was at the moment with my coworker Adam, but could not reach any connection as it seemed the number was out of service and his house number just ringed eternally and no one picked up which was strange because we knew he was living with his girlfriend. Unfortunately while we were wondering the whereabouts of Rob a police car parked just at the front door and a couple of officers came out and straight to the counter.

-Good day, I am officer Martinez- The most round of them kindly declared -We came in order to confirm if Mr, Robert Paleman worked here- This, as much as a coincides as it was, was very intriguing. Robert has never missed a single day of work, and the first time he does, he gets involved in something… -Yes officer- I pointed quickly offering my hand to him - I am Chris, is there something wrong with Rob?- I quickly identified as the person in charge at the moment, and the officer asked me some questions about the schedule that was followed by Rob activities, in which I had to explain that he was actually the one in turn of the night shift yesterday, and as we did not found him in the morning we got concerned.-Are you sure he was here- The officer asked - Because we have a report filled in over the phone by one of Rob’s neighbours letting us know that he was involved in a domestic violence case but when the officers arrived to his apartment he was nowhere to be found.

-That is very normal- I told the guy - Usually he works night shifts so he spends most of the time here at the office or at the crematory site… And still we did not found him today. - The officer looked at me  with a confused expression in his face, so I hurried up to answer his non verbal question - Well you see officer, as my partner Adam here and I came up today morning about 6 or 6:30 am Robert was nowhere to be found, we tough that it was a joke from his part, but we could not found him at all, so naturally we got worried about him - I figured out his next question, so I decided to anticipate to him - We have not checked the recordings which would be our next step, if you want to stay in order to assist us on the task you are more than welcome- I knew it was better if we cooperated as best as we can, and after that the officer smiled quickly and signed to his companion to get closer. - My colleague here, officer Lidia Hurt will be assisting you in that task, I will go back to the department in order to fill a couple of forms so you can also lend us a copy of your findings- We agreed to the terms and went to the back office accompanied by officer Hurt in order to check the video feed. Our security system is somewhat ancient, so we need to check the feed since the beginning of the month and then fast forward it, it was a pain, but the owner did not wanted to change the freaking system for a brand new one… He is kind of cheap.

After explaining this to officer Hurt, we started searching for the feed of the current month and started playing it, we fast forward it a bit while we saw Rob doping his regular chores, cleaning the isle, verifying the materials, checking for any gas leak or any weird thing that could affect the business. And then we saw something very strange, he started moving a couple of corpses that were received on January the 6th, and instead of preparing them to be cremated, he dressed them up, with some carnival clothes that he took out of a bag and after that, he started recording all of the deed with his cellphone… That has beyond creepy, because we could see him laughing and talking as if he were mounting a macabre theater play. And after about 20 minutes, he stopped, stripped the corpses from their carnival clothes and finished his job. We stared at the screen, dumbfounded, and after a few seconds, officer Hurt broke the silence asking - Is he this weird on a daily basis?- We answered that we did not knew that he did shit like this, -as soon as he gets captured we are going to fire his fucking ass out of here- I claimed. We kept going and, unfortunately for us, similar shows went on and on and on, getting weirder every time. For another corpse, a black male, that came on the 8th he placed a tuxedo and danced around with him, then, with the help of some metal bars, made him stand perfectly still while he practiced some kind of boxing against the corpse and after 30 or 35 minutes, he stopped, and finished his job.

Then I recalled, some days after that, we assisted in a traffic accident, it was bad, and we had a huge service for 5 adults and 12 kids… it was a horrible accident, and surely, just to confirm my fears, he moved all the corpses, and for what we could tell on the soundless recording, he was beaming with joy, I was sickened by this, but then I saw he went away for about 40 minutes and came back with a huge black bag and started drawing out a huge variety of clothes out of it… Very carefully he selected different kinds of clothes for each one of the already broken bodies. It was more than just disturbing watching how carefully he was picking up the clothes, and in some of them even placing some makeup to make them look more… alive.

After his grey crew was ready, he started placing them in chairs and used contraptions to make some of them stand, and when we has finally satisfied with his new creation, he started yelling at some of the cold figures, then snapped and puched others on the fly, minutes before that rage, he was hugging some of the little kids and stabbing others with the crematory utensils, it was a mad festival for him, and when he finally ended that, as a finale he place the bodies on the ground and lay with them for a few minutes after which, he stood up as if nothing have happened,  and started his regular activities within the building. I could not believe that he was as crazy as this, playing with dead corpses, using them as mere marionetes… It was sickening how naturally he could manipulate them, the scenes that he recreated or acted were just a little part of the horrible show that we were watching.

Then, after a couple more of death corpses dancing and being manipulated as puppets by a macabre hand, we came to the day before, the one that we were searching. All seemed quite normal, Rob was just cleaning the crematori as usual, trying to find something to do on a calm night, when we saw him reach for his cellphone, and while the minutes passed we could assume that we were growing mad by the second, and then, he finally snapped, ran out of the crematory and that was the last of him that we saw… 

-That Motherfucker…- Adam started - He has left the place every now and again, without even- I cut him out - It’s not the biggest concern right now man- we fast forwarded the recording again, and according to the timestamp he was out about one hour, and suddenly, he came back, with a girl by his side. -The time matches with the report we had issues - Officer Hurt said in a stern voice. We kept on watching just to discover that the girl by his side was barely moving her feet, and as soon as he made it into the crematory, he left her almost immobile over a dissection table… this was the confirmation that officer Hurt required, that bastard was bringing his victim here, to dispose of the body, this was simply unbelievable… And then… he started with his sick dressup game again, this was beyond insanity, he killed his girl and brought her here to act a bullshit sick play that he created in his mind, this was to much to take.

And sure enough, he took a white wedding dress, some makeup, strings and pieces of metal, and with very pristine time, he had her ready and all dolled up to stand still aside of him, he also dolled himself up, and after some time of stillness, he took her and started dancing around the place, and while officer Hurt was shouting orders at her com, Adam and I screamed in horror, we were watching how the body was moving by herself, slowly, almost robotically, and Robert was trying to run from her grasp, at that instant, officer Hurt came back to the screen we were watching and stared at it in disbelief, the corpse was taking Robert by his neck, then, embraced it and step by step, got closer to the crematory gate, with her seemly powerful gaze, she took him just in one arm and fly open the door to the fire room… what came next was horrifying, she carried him into the room, and then, the only thing we saw was the light and shadows generated by the flame.

We could not believe what we saw, as far as we can, we ran into the crematory room, and even when we were praying for all to be just a huge joke, sure enough, in the fire room, there were the remaining ashes of bodies, a couple of cloth rags on the door, and disturbingly enough, a cell phone, just below the autopsy room...