A sign on the front desk, twin to a sign on the gate, stated “No Children.” Stubby fingers, every nail chewed down to the quick, materialized to ring the bell. Kurt Jumped. The funeral home was closed. The fingers appeared again to grab at a business card but only succeeded in pushing them out of reach. Kurt frowned. He straightened the cards before peering over the top of the desk. There, the top of her head coming just below the desktop, stood a skinny little girl with mousey hair pulled back into a ponytail with a pale green scrunchie. She looked around ten-years-old. Kurt made up nicknames in his limited German. He dubbed her Maus.
“Hello, mister,” Maus said. She jumped up to look at the business cards. “Mr. Ger… hardt. And son? Are you Mr. Gerhardt or the son?”
He grabbed the appointment calendar from under the desk and flipped through it. Only one name graced the page for that day, “Rose,” penned in his father’s neat script.
“I’m pleased to welcome any Rose family member to this establishment. I was… am the son. I’ll be handling your grandmother’s funeral instead. Where are your parents?” Kurt asked.
Five complementary sewing kits sat in a basket alongside the business cards. He caught her eyeing the basket for a moment before jumping up and snatching a sewing kit.
“No sir. I live in the neighborhood, just across the street—”
He closed the appointment calendar.
“If you need to use the restroom, it’s down the hall to the left.”
“No. Mr. Gerhardt’s son, sir. I was wondering…” She fidgeted, fingering the sewing kit, looking for the latch to get it open.
“What do you want mouse or Maus?”
She took a deep breath. “I’m not a mouse. See, I really want to ride my bike more often, but my mom doesn’t like me riding in the road. My house… half-a-house doesn’t have a driveway. I’ve been spy… watching this place. Well, you have a big driveway, and it’s always empty.”
She sucked in air. He glared at her, but she just shrugged. The youth mistook bodily movements for communication.
“No. My father said no children.” Thick-rimmed black glasses glided on sweat down the bridge of his nose. He pushed them back up, squinting at her. Particles of dust floated around her. Dust caked her clothing. His hand itched to grab the vacuum.
“But you’re the son.”
She looked up at him, brown eyes dilating in the darkness of the room until the black of her pupil nearly consumed her iris, making her transformation into a mouse complete.
Kurt took down the “No Children” sign.
“Alright, but only if there aren’t any customers here. If you see cars parked, you go home.”
“Thanks, mister!” Maus put her helmet back on and scampered off, throwing her entire body against the right half of the double door to open it a crack.
“And tell your parents what you’re doing. Ask them if it’s alright.”
The door fell shut, shaking the glass. He flinched, catching a glimpse through the window of her pedaling off on a forest-green bike with green and white tassels. The circular drive wound down from the one-story funeral home, around a grassy island with a weeping willow a bit younger than his fifty years. Barren, the willow looked as though it belonged in the dead of winter not the middle of summer. Her bike wheel slammed into a root. The willow’s shallow roots broke through the driveway’s pavement in multiple places. She fell. A white van drove around her.
He marched through the “Employees Only” door behind the desk. His father’s assistants. No. His two assistants returned from the morgue. He dubbed them Ein and Zwei. He heard laughter. Jokesters. The location of the funeral home, far north next to Lake Michigan, made finding decent help exceptionally difficult. No one wanted to live or work so far from the city. The lack of public transportation made matters worse.
All sound ceased as Kurt entered the storage room. He nodded to himself in satisfaction. Zwei handed him three release forms, tucked firmly under the clamp on a clipboard. Either Ein or Zwei had taken it upon himself to sign for him. They signed in a sloppy manner, only the “G” legible. He signed crisp and neat, every letter legible, just like his father. He clucked.
Three unclaimed corpses rested on gurneys. He checked their identification cards one at a time. There were two male adults, both middle-aged, and one male child, twelve-years-old. All had died unnatural deaths, suicide. The adults didn’t have families, and the child’s family wouldn’t claim him for reasons unknown to Kurt. All three of them would be cremated and thrown into a mass grave without his intervention. He told his assistants to take the two adults. He would deal with the boy.
Zwei shrugged at Ein. They communicated in nods and shrugs with him around. They each took a gurney, in proper protective gear, and wheeled them to the crematorium.
Kurt transferred the boy from the gurney onto a metal table and unzipped the black bag, pulling his body out. A large wishbone shaped incision crossed the front of his torso. Another incision went from ear to ear behind the skull. Everything was sewn neatly back into place, but something was off. The organs, including the brain, were removed during the autopsy only to be put in plastic bags and stuffed back inside the body, but they couldn’t be reconnected properly to the positions they held in life. The pieces remained disconnected.
He grabbed the boy’s hand to pull him onto a freezer tray. His hand dwarfed the boy’s. It was cold. Her hand felt that way. The day his father took her from him.
As a child he had held on tight to two large fingers with his entire fist as his father wheeled the gurney down the hall to the crematorium. They were cold. He could just make out the wrist, a line of red cut through pale flesh. With his stubby legs, he took two steps for every one of his father’s. The gurney halted suddenly, and he nearly lost his grip, swaying forward.
His father pried at his fingers.
“No,” Kurt said. He tightened his grip on his sister.
His father motioned for his assistant and bent to pick him up, ripping her from his grasp, nearly dislocating Kurt’s fingers.
The assistant put her hand back on the gurney, under the sheet. His father had carried him away from the door marked “Employees Only.” A bell rang. Kurt shook his head, let go of the hand, and pushed the boy into the freezer. He opened the “Employees Only” door.
The two Rose siblings, twins, paced around the showroom, accompanied by a child. They looked identical down to their short haircuts. But one wore an immaculate white suit while the other sported a baggy purple sweater with matching sweatpants.
Kurt sat on a stool and opened a German dictionary on his lap. Finely crafted caskets of various metals and wood lined the walls around him beneath the glow of fluorescent lights, resplendent with silver, copper, and bronze furnishings. A rainbow of flowers, scattered about the room, rested atop the caskets and in simple glass vases. He hid the plain caskets beneath the more expensive set.
The male twin, a doctor, opened the lid of one of the most expensive caskets on offer, a solid bronze affair with white velvet lining. The female twin, a caregiver for their late mother, bent down to look at an unadorned pine casket. He dubbed them Herr Doktor and Frau Purple People Eater or Frau Violett Menschen Fresser.
Herr Doktor produced a folded piece of paper from his suit pocket. The will. Frau Violett Menschen Fresser snatched at it, but Herr Doktor held it out of her reach. And so began their little familial spat. Kurt sighed at the usual claptrap. She bemoaned that her brother got the house, and that she couldn’t move until her son finished school for the year. Herr Doktor made a dismissive gesture toward her son, Snot or Rotz. Kurt grimaced as the little boy wiped his nose on his shirt.
Kurt watched Herr Doktor twist a gold ring on his finger.
“You have good taste sir. It has a luxurious white velvet lining, it’s rustproof, and the lid comes with a rubber seal that stops any outside elements from entering,” Kurt said.
Frau Violett Menschen Fresser marched up to Kurt. He backed up, knocking a price tag off a casket. No young soul moved to pick it up, so Kurt bent over slowly, back aching, carefully, putting the price tag in its rightful place before hobbling back over to the stool.
Herr Doktor chose the expensive casket option at Kurt’s advice. Frau Violett Menschen Fresser walked to the front door, pulling her waterlogged son behind her. She slammed it open.
“Ouch,” Maus said. She staggered backward.
Frau Violett Menschen Fresser turned to look at Kurt.
“I’m not responsible,” Kurt said.
Maus entered the showroom after the last of the Rose family exited, rubbing her forehead.
“You don’t like them, do you?” Maus asked.
“I’m a businessman. My job entails serving the customer’s needs not liking them,” Kurt said.
“That sounds like something a used car salesman says. I went to one with my mother once.” Maus walked up to a bouquet of white roses in a glass vase and sniffed. She took one.
“Don’t compare me to those hustlers. Hey—”
“Why don’t they smell?” She put the flower back and sniffed the air. “It just smells like wood in here.”
“They aren’t real.” Kurt reopened the dictionary.
“What are you reading? What is this? I can’t read it.” She pointed at the words in the book that were not in English.
“It’s a German dictionary.”
“You know German?”
“I thought I told you not to come here when customers are present.”
“How?”
Kurt looked at her for a long moment, looked her straight in the eye. Her eyes were bright and inquisitive like a mouse seeking treats during an experiment in some lab or other. She seemed genuinely curious.
“My family moved here from Germany when I was young. I was a few years younger than you. I don’t remember much of it—”
“So, you learned German as a kid?”
“I suppose I must have. Do you like books?”
“Yes.”
He looked up the word “inquisitive.” She stared at him.
“I have to get back to work.” He stammered and got up, turning off the lights as he left the showroom. Maus followed at his heels. “Keep out of this room.” He pointed at the “Employees Only” door.
He turned to look at her. She’d disappeared.
A grandfather clock, his father’s grandfather clock, chimed next to the front desk like church bells. As a child he had sat next to his father in a pew lined with gold trim, his stubby legs dangling off the floor. He fought against the urge to swing them. He looked at his father’s feet planted firmly on the ground, quiet as a corpse. The seat next to him was empty. Instead of listening intently to the pastor, Kurt imagined the seams in the room where everything connected falling apart, from pews to ceiling fans to Bibles. The whole building and everything in it had fallen apart around the humans, leaving them sitting in an empty field, Bible pages picked up by the wind, taken to God knew where. The clock chimed again. He shook his fist at it, an empty threat.
The clock stopped chiming as if properly cowed, reverting back to a soft ticking he could barely hear. Perhaps, he couldn’t hear it. His hearing wasn’t great anymore. Perhaps, he only heard a memory of the clock. He grabbed wood polish from behind the desk. He wiped the desk over and over. The action numbed his mind. A scream as loud as those chimes practically smote him with all of God’s wrath.
A brown backpack rested on the bench, and the showroom lights were back on. He ran into the showroom. At first, he didn’t notice anything amiss, but upon further investigation, he saw a few price tags off-center, and a handful of flowers scattered across the floor, dislodged from their proper places. He’d left the room spotless. Standing still, he listened.
He heard pounding. The sound emanated from the lovely bronze casket. He opened it and found Maus, fist clenched and poised to hit the lid.
“I couldn’t get it open. It was too heavy, and…” Maus said. Her entire body shook, grasping at his hand to steady herself.
“What are you doing?” Kurt asked. He held her hand, wet with sweat.
“I was just playing, and it fell shut.”
“This isn’t a playpen. Go outside.” He pried her fingers off.
Her cheeks turned red. Maus jumped up, grabbed her backpack, and ran out the door. She was just a kid after all, same as Rotz. Kids were messy. His father had hated messy things. He looked down, inspecting the casket for damage, finding none to his relief, but spotted a light gray object. It was a portable game system of some sort. Kurt picked it up and hurried after her. She’d disappeared.
He looked down at the game system in his hands and turned it over. A piece of duct tape covered the back. In black sharpie, it read “Molly Myszka.” Kurt went to the front desk and pulled out his father’s old phone book. He flipped through it and found a “Margaret Myszka,” circling the number with his pen before picking up the phone. No answer. He left a message before walking into his office and carefully placing the game system in a desk drawer.
Maus ran back into the funeral home, holding her backpack. It was stuffed full of God knew what, dripping wet.
“I thought I told you to stay outside,” Kurt said.
“I know. It’s raining,” Maus said. She didn’t move, but she dripped.
“Go home.”
“But it’s raining…”
“Once it stops, you go home.”
Maus grinned like a mouse who had just gotten a treat.
“Yes.”
“Immediately.”
She trudged over to the bench, leaving a trail of muddy footprints on the carpet behind her. She dropped her backpack onto it, shaking the water off and wringing out her hair before putting it back up into its usual ponytail, pale green scrunchie and all. Kurt grabbed a roll of paper towels from behind the desk, and after handing a bunch to her and pointing at the mess, he got down on his hands and knees to clean. Maus, slightly drier, took the roll from him and started wiping up both carpet and bench.
He groaned, crawling over to the bench for the support needed to pull himself to his feet. He sat down, breathing hard. She looked at the clock.
“A new episode of my favorite show…” she paused in her wiping to gesture at him, “no, the best show in the world is on.”
Maus, having used the entire roll, carried the remaining mountain of used paper towels to the trash. She kept the empty roll, for some nefarious purpose he had no doubt.
“What?”
“You’ve never heard of it? How?”
“If it’s a cartoon, I don’t have any kids.”
“It isn’t just for kids. It has everything awesome: daring sword fights, heroic mice, a castle, and even a giant evil snake!” She looked at him, smiling, waiting.
It sounded exactly like it was made for kids.
“Sure. Why don’t you go home and watch it then?”
She sucked in air. “Well, I watch it every day after school, but lately there haven’t been any new episodes, only reruns. I hate reruns. But I overheard some kids in my class say there’s a new book out. The show is based on a book series you see and—”
“Go home and read that.”
She deflated, popped like a balloon.
“I don’t have anyone to take me to the library. It’s too far away. If you haven’t noticed, this is the middle of nowhere.”
“Ask a friend.”
Her smile faded, and she didn’t reply. She turned away from him and walked back to the bench to grab her backpack.
“I’m sorry. I don’t have any children’s books,” Kurt said.
Gripping the bench, Kurt got up and hobbled back behind the front desk, pulling out his appointment calendar. He put an ad online. A few more appointments scheduled. He reached for a pen that rolled to the edge of the desk, coming to rest next to the basket of complimentary sewing kits. The empty basket of complimentary sewing kits.
He looked down at Maus who was gingerly removing from her backpack and placing various stuffed toy bean mice, rabbits, otters, foxes, and snakes on the dry parts of the bench. Kurt noticed that each bean animal had its own belt made of multicolored braided thread with sewing needles sheathed at their waists like, well, like swords.
He looked back at the empty basket. As a child his sister had sat on a low branch of the willow, a stick shoved through her leafy belt. She pulled three vines down, braiding them into another belt. His father ran over, ripping the belt into pieces, claiming she would damage the tree. The tree he planted, claiming this spot in this new country as his own as sure as planting a flag in the dirt. He shouted at her. She looked at Kurt, begging him silently to come to her rescue. He had covered his ears and closed his eyes, wishing it all away. His eyes refocused on the empty basket, and, grabbing the pen, he sighed.
“You know my sister liked to do that,” Kurt said.
“What?” Maus asked.
“Play knights and such. She was always making things, shields from cardboard, sticks became swords. I think she just liked to hit me.”
“Must have been fun having someone to play with. I wish I had a sibling.”
“Not really. I was too busy following my father around like a dog before—”
“Before what?”
“Never mind. It’s nothing. She was annoying. It’s Gerhardt and son not Gerhardt and daughter. I had responsibilities. She didn’t,” his voice dropped to a whisper, “but I wish I had followed her now.”
Maus didn’t respond and proceeded to embark upon the command of an epic campaign of mock battles, pitting the mice, rabbits, and otters against the foxes and snakes. The paper towel roll, now ripped to pieces, transformed into various small rocks and fortifications. It stopped raining, but Kurt didn’t say anything until the clock chimed. The Rose funeral commenced.
Kurt walked to the back of the funeral home. While the furnishings gave the room the appearance of a little replica chapel, it was devoid of any crosses on the walls or Bibles tucked away in little wooden slots on the pews by his own design. He’d had Ein and Zwei get rid of them all. His one change. His one conceit. He knew better than his father. Kurt sat at the back with the dictionary on his lap.
Rose family and guests huddled around the table laden with food at the back of the chapel, clutching and nibbling cakes and cookies. Frau Violett Menschen Fresser pulled Rotz down the center aisle, past row after row of white wooden pews on either side, and together, they sat down in the front row. Rotz was uncharacteristically dry.
Herr Doktor, tie loose, a red stain running down the front of his white suit, stood before a small wooden podium at the front. Next to the podium sat a single bronze casket covered in a spray of flowers, white roses interspersed with a few sprigs of lavender. The customary piano stood behind the casket, next to the wall, keys covered. Herr Doktor grabbed the casket’s lid with both hands, dislodging two roses, and heaved it open. He sat down on a chair and bent to kiss the corpse. Frau Violett Menschen Fresser covered Rotz’s eyes.
Kurt took off his glasses and rubbed his face. He felt a poke. He put his glasses back on and saw Maus standing next to him in the aisle. She squeezed past him and sat next to him, plate filled to the brim with little strawberry cakes and chocolate chip cookies.
Maus set her plate down on the pew and went up the aisle and over to the casket, Kurt following. Herr Doktor vacated the chair, and she climbed onto it to reach the casket. Kurt looked at the woman’s pale face. The Rose matriarch, very noticeably dead as it wasn’t supposed to be open casket, rested dressed in purple velvet, a small bouquet of the same flowers that graced the exterior of the casket tucked beneath her folded hands.
“What’s that?” Maus asked. She pointed at the old woman’s nose.
“Cotton,” Kurt said.
“What’s it doing in her nose?”
“It’s so she doesn’t leak.” Maus looked more inquisitive than disgusted as usual and jumped off the chair. She bent over and picked up a rose, sniffing it.
“It’s real.”
“Of course.”
Herr Doktor, tears falling down his face, stumbled over to the piano, uncovered the keys, and began to play some undecipherable music. He was no Beethoven.
Kurt returned to his seat, pulled out a pen, and opened the dictionary. He turned the pages, looking up “fool” in German. Maus sat next to him, picked up her plate, and looked at the page.
“Why do you do this work when you don’t like it?”
She pointed at the word he was busy underlining.
Kurt shut the dictionary. “My father bought… actually, bought the land and built this place. It’s mine now. Death is good money.”
“Your sister.”
“The money is good.”
“Well, a building isn’t a family. I know that much.” She looked down at her plate. He watched her, but she didn’t eat anything else.
Kurt grabbed Herr Doktor’s arm, gingerly as it was covered in snot, and helped the good doctor’s sister lead him out to their car. He passed Maus and Rotz playing with her toys on the bench. Rotz attempted to rip one of her toys in half. She hit him on the hand to make him drop it, and he cried.
He watched as she gathered all her toys, shoving them into her backpack. A pin prick of blood welled up on her thumb. One of her improvised swords poked her. She glared at the bean mouse that dared attack her and threw it in with its companions. Kurt saw her creep around behind the front desk and look up at the “Employees Only” door before Herr Doktor pulled him out the front door.
He stepped back inside the funeral home, entered the preparation room, and saw Maus on the table placing sprigs of lavender stolen from the Rose funeral on a casket.
He had picked out a small pine casket for the boy, lined it with cotton, and painted waves and ships in blue on the outside. It was crudely done as he was no artist, but he thought the boy deserved something more than being thrown into a mass grave.
“Stop,” Kurt said.
Maus turned, knocking the casket off the table. It hit the ground with a snap. A large crack ran through the wood, splitting a ship in half.
He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to her feet.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to… the flowers—” Maus said. She whimpered as he pulled her along behind him.
“Don’t come here anymore.”
“Not even on the driveway? But I can’t—”
“No. You aren’t allowed anywhere on the property. I don’t care what you can or can’t do.” He pushed her out the front door, locking it shut behind her.
He watched her from the window almost ready to call her back. She had just been trying to do something for the boy as he had. His resolve hardened. This was no place for a child to be playing.
She stood there for a moment, hiccupping, before pulling her bike out of the bushes, grabbing her helmet, and putting it on with a snap. She mounted, zigzagging down the driveway, deftly avoiding every root, and rode out past the gate.
Kurt turned his back on the window and beckoned Ein and Zwei.
“Keep the gate locked,” Kurt said.
He went back to the boy, removed the flowers, put the casket on a gurney, and wheeled it to the crematorium. The room contained a crematory, the ramp leading up to it, and a machine that smashed the bones, left over from the cremation process, into a fine powder.
Kurt turned the crematory on and placed the casket on the ramp. Once it was at the right temperature, he turned on the conveyor belt. He dragged a chair into the room from his office and waited to put the boy’s ashes in a biodegradable urn.
Kurt leaned back in his chair and stretched before opening the desk drawer to grab the appointment calendar. He fumbled about in the dark and paused as his hand hit a solid, very non-calendar-like object. He turned a lamp on and looked back in the drawer. The game system.
He looked out the window and wondered if she might be out there, riding in the dark. He stuffed the calendar in his pocket, grabbed his keys, and got up. He stopped at the answering machine and pressed the bright red button to check the messages again.
A mechanical female voice rang out. Zero.
He picked up the phone. He put the phone down. It wasn’t his responsibility. He grabbed the boy’s urn.
He walked over to the island, shovel and urn in hand. The grass was yellow and patchy. He looked around. Patchwork fields, empty but for wild grasses peppered with cattails that came up to his shoulder, stretched out as far as he could see, parted only by the two roads, the funeral home. The setting sun made it seem like the grass was on fire.
He stepped over the cracked pavement and walked up to the tree. A placard at the willow’s base read “here lies a loving sister.” He dug a hole next to it and lowered the urn in.
Kurt started up the car’s engine. He stopped at the gate to unlock it and put the “No Children” sign back up. Three duplexes, rather young, sat across from the funeral home, a half-a-house among them. No lights were on. To his right, the paved road ended in fifteen yards, morphed into an unpaved dirt road, and rose to form a large hill.
Turning left at the gate, he pulled out onto the side road and headed for the main road that ran perpendicular to this little side street. He saw lights as he hit the main road. Red and blue. Two police cars and an ambulance sat at the intersection. He put the car in park and got out.
The police car’s headlights illuminated a mangled shape resting on the road. Squinting into the light, he could just make out that the tortured metal had once been a bike, forest-green with green and white tassels.
Kurt, abandoning his car with engine still humming, ran over to the bike and stood staring at it for a moment. A police officer shouted something at him, but his attention was drawn to a brown backpack resting off on the side of the road. It had a hole in its bottom. Its former occupants were scattered about, covered in dirt. He walked over and bent down to pick up a mouse, but his knee gave out. He knelt there in the dirt holding the torn bean mouse, its needle bent, beans and stuffing spilling out of its head. He reached into his pocket, pulling out the appointment calendar. He ripped it apart piece by piece. The wind picked up the pieces and carried them God knew where.
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