Frankie & Formaldehyde

Chapter Three: Family Is Forever

Then, just as quickly, her rage morphed into an expression of such naked sorrow it felt cruel to look on her. Larry turned his head away and Frankie averted her eyes. Only Shirley glared on, unwavering in her stance.

"We've had this conversation before," Shirley said. "I know that's what you want, and I know that's what they promised you, but frankly, it's all lies. He's going to get torn at, he's going to be banged around and what the others don't do to him he'll end up doing to himself."

He was a good man," Mrs. Crone sniffled. A lacy handkerchief was pulled out of her pocket and held tight against her face, holding in the lingering horror of what she had done to him. "I don't understand any of this. When they told me he could still be here, with me, that I could still see him as he was, I didn't think this is what they meant. I thought he'd be my husband, I thought he'd by my Jerry, forever." Her eyes focused on Larry and Frankie who were shrinking behind Shirley. "You people are incompetent fools! I'm going to make a formal complaint!"

"That's not going to fix him," Shirley firmly stated.

A furious, bony finger was pointed at her. "This is about our legacy. Our family! Jerry was all about family. It's all he ever talked about, how family is forever! That's what this is supposed to be, Jerry's wish to stay a family—Forever and forever!"

Mrs. Crone broke down, then, her twisted, grieving face howling in grief, her bent, thin back doubled over more than usual. The handkerchief swiped at the mascara that now melted in globs along the wrinkles around her eyes. Shirley took her gently by the shoulders and guided her to the front door, and out of the reception. "Nothing is forever on this earth, Mrs. Crone. You said it yourself. You were lied to."

Mrs. Crone's head shakily bobbed up and down, whether in agreement or weakness, Frankie couldn't rightly tell. "We'll call you a cab," she heard Shirley say. "You just have a seat, right over there. I'll go and get you a cup of tea while you're waiting."

Larry's voice was dark at Frankie's shoulder. "I tell you, it was easier working the meat packing plant, and I don't say that shit lightly. You pulled something off the line that used to be alive and you didn't have to worry about it jumping off and beating you. Those slabs of meat served something in life then they was lucky enough to serve a proper one in death, too. I hate this place with everything I got in me. From what I can see, the only thing those groaners in there serve is to keep the grieving going. It ain't right, Frankie, profiting off people's sorrow like this. Those Osmosis execs can go to hell, that is if Hell isn't too pissed off to have them."

***

Family is forever. That phrase had never been a part of her and George's reality. Her life had been punctuated by a curse of fatal absenteeism by those who she held close to her heart. First was her father, when she was only twenty-one and in her first year of college. He'd suffered a massive stroke while at the insurance firm he worked at for most of his adult life, his face pressed tight against the keys of his typewriter. Her mother followed not long after, her battle with cancer valiantly fought but inevitably lost. Her brother, long estranged from her, died when Frankie was in her fifties, his body decimated from decades of self abuse with alcohol and drugs.

Before this entire tally, there had been a young Frankie, at the tender age of nineteen, marrying George, wearing white at the altar even though she was swollen with the fourth month of pregnancy. They lost their baby when she was only six months old, the mysteries of crib death still hovering like a spiked needle above her heart, where even now just the right arrangement of emotion could plunge its cruel tip painfully deep into that relentlessly working muscle.

"Have some potatoes, dear," she said, and inched a spoonful of mashed goodness onto George's dinner plate. He ignored them and poked his finger into a slice of tomato she'd used as a garnish next to his raw sausages, which he had almost finished gorging himself on. He twirled the red vegetable in circles on his plate, seemingly fascinated that the colour was right, but there was no -soaked sustenance within.

Frankie's fork was paused over her plate as she watched him, unsure of how to bring up the topic. "I just don't get it, George. She was so distraught, so miserable. What was the point of it all? When was it death became such a dirty word?" She tucked into her potatoes, enjoying their creamy texture. "There's no shame in it, no impoliteness. Everything's born and everything dies. Seems to me there's no room for making it fashionable to hate the inevitable. There's nothing more simple than death."

And it had been simple, especially for George—At least, from what Frankie could piece together. He'd rolled over on his side in bed, farted, and died. Then, while she was crying and frying up some bacon in the morning, too much in shock to start making calls, he'd walked out of the bedroom, shuffling past the wheelchair he used to use and aimed directly for the freezer. He ate an entire bass he'd caught two months ago, its body rock solid, fins, gills, scales and all. He even swallowed some of the paper packaging.

Blood had settled, blue and purple, into old injuries and pressure points, the outline of his medic-alert diabetic bracelet in a visible ring on the surface flesh of his wrist. Before she knew he was heading for the bass, that bruise was how she knew for certain he was dead and gone and yet still here.

Frankie sighed, looking on her husband with a mixture of pity and disgust. She kept her coat on since she'd had to push the air conditioner past its limit, her breath visible within the house. Sure, she kept the place as spotlessly clean as she could to keep out the bacteria, but it was a losing battle. Nature was going to have its way no matter what she did, short of having him embalmed which was doubly illegal. Poisoning flesh was a federal offence. The need for meat, any kind of meat, had destroyed the funeral industry. You couldn't find an embalming machine anywhere and even if you did you would be fined $50,000 just for looking at one. Osmosis Inc now owned the rights to all preserving agents and methods for reanimated longetivity. Embalming equipment violated their patents.

She didn't like the idea of George rotting away before her eyes, but the Osmosis 37 infection didn't give her any choice.

Life and death weren't meant to be this complicated, Frankie thought. Somehow, greed had crept in insidiously, infecting even this most basic of human experiences. With Oprah interviews and spotlights on Larry King, that enigmatic pioneer of the future, Dr. Osmosis himself, had promised life everlasting. Death could be eradicated, for a price. With a propaganda machine that was both transparent and hypnotic he had lulled the world into the understanding that death was simply unnecessary. It was backward, unfashionable. Death was uncool.

Death is a five letter word.

George snatched Frankie's uneaten, cooked, sausage off of her plate and tore into it, his hands greasy with raw meat and caramelized BBQ sauce. When he was finished, the tomato he'd popped into his mouth as an experiment popped out from between his lips in a long, slimy line.

Frankie frowned. No, she wasn't like those who tucked their loved ones away to rot at the Happy Restful, thinking eternal life was some kind of favour. All they kept alive were misplaced feelings of guilt and painful memories that were being slowly eroded away with images of monsters. George was going to die, she just had to figure out how to do it to make it permanent. It meant resorting to murder, and the how of it was a constant puzzle she couldn't quite solve. Chopping him up wouldn't do it, he'd simply be laying in twitchy, animated pieces, and there was no point scattering him around. The flame thrower would have to be used, but to do so discreetly would be difficult, especially with her nosey neighbour Dolores poking around. Screams of murder would be shouted down their quiet street the second she singed the back of George's head.

The details of the law were too cumbersome for Frankie to properly interpret. Technically, could you be a murderer if you killed a man already dead?

"It's all so damned complicated," Frankie muttered as she gathered up the dishes and took them to the kitchen sink. George seemed to groan his assent. He shuffled into the living room, and as per usual, there was the gentle click of a remote and the TV flickered into life in that dark recess.

Exhausted, Frankie pressed the back of her hand against her forehead, warding off a feverish feeling and a brewing headache. Ten o'clock at night. A migraine was starting to creep nastily along the base of her skull.

"I'll get some sleep after this," she promised herself, her hands sinking into lemon scented dish soap suds and hot water. "I'll sleep, and sleep, and sleep."