The Death of Saema: Chapter 5, Play & Preparation

The wake went about as well as could be expected, and given the size of Mr. Simmons’s extended family, it was a very nice turnout. Things had quieted down by around 6:30 that evening and Mr. Kim wheeled the coffin containing the elderly man’s body out of the chapel of rest once the last family member had departed and brought it into a viewing parlor where three other deceased lay in their coffins waiting for their funerals. As he was preparing to leave the room, a familiar voice piped in.

“Hey, Mr. Kim. How’s the family?” It was James, a tall, 29-year-old good-looking black male that had been working for the funeral home for around two years as their regular night-shift guy.

“Oh, hey Jimmy,” he replied politely. “They’re doing just fine. In fact, we’re going to dinner with her parents at that new seafood place off of Whitaker. So, I’ve got to get home and get ready.”

“No worries, man. You guys get out of here whenever. I’ve got a couple shows I’m going to watch on the laptop, so it should be an easy night. Anything new I need to know?”

“Nope, not really. We got a couple new clients in, but I don’t think the boss needs anything particular. Enjoy the shows. Are you still trying to catch up on Game of Thrones.”

“Of course. I love me some Daenerys, man.” James smiled at Mr. Kim and waved as he walked down the hall to the small office the night-shifters usually hung out in and got his Acer laptop out of his backpack and got it plugged in. He logged in and messed around with his Netflix account until he was sure that he heard both the director and Kim get their stuff, go out the back door, and lock up. He waited another five or so minutes for them to drive away so that he was certain he was alone.

James may very well have enjoyed Game of Thrones, but he had another passion too, and Game of Thrones certainly wasn’t going anywhere.

Certain that he was now alone in the quiet funeral home, he shut the lid on his laptop and walked out in the main hallway, looking around out of instinct and then shaking his head. He turned and went down the hall, making a right and reaching the double doors that led into the viewing parlor. In his hurry, Mr. Kim had left the doors unlocked, which would save James the effort of going back to get the key out from the funeral director’s desk. He entered through the doors and shut them behind him, flicking on one of the nearby light switches and turning on a bright lamp on a table near the corner. Three caskets lay in the middle of the room, the top half of each open. A couple other caskets lined the far wall, presumably to be used in the next day or two.

The tall man walked up to the white oak casket that was closest to the door and peered in. Laying at rest inside was a middle-aged hispanic woman with long, black hair, gentle features, and bright red lipstick. She was wearing an elegant, blue velour sweater and her recently-manicured hands with cherry red nail polish were folded carefully across her breasts. James reached along the edge of the lower lid, feeling for the clasps that held it down, his fingers carefully searching until at last they found it. With a quick tug, the clasps came out of place and he lifted the white lid so he could get a better look at her lower half. The woman’s family had chosen some soft, silky black dress pants that tapered off at her mocha-toned ankles, leaving her soft, lightly-wrinkled bare feet pressed against the pink inner-lining of her burial vessel. A plastic, bar-coded anklet was affixed to her right ankle, presumably put there by the hospital morgue, while a blue toe-tag was tied around her left big toe, the tag itself resting on the top of her foot.

James walked to the foot of her casket and reached in, his hands going under her ankles and carefully lifting her feet up so that they rested on the edge of the wooden box. He noticed that the toes of both of the woman’s feet were curled, her big toes kept straight and pointing up towards the ceiling. Getting a closer look at the toe tag the funeral home had given her, he saw that she was 49-years-old and had died of a cocaine overdose five days ago. He stared at her wrinkled, caramel soles thinking of the lucky pathologist that had gotten to share the intimate experience of her autopsy with her, examining the contents of her last meal, weighing each and every one of her organs, removing her brain, all while examining her head to toe. He thought about the woman at the time of her overdose, wondering if as she experienced those final moments she had wet her panties or if her sphincter had released warm turds into her intimates.

He knelt down at the base of the casket, leaning forward until his nose was pressed into the base of the toes of her left, toe-tagged foot. Her foot smelled of antiseptic with a light aromatic mixture of feet, pheromones, and death. He let his lips press into the ball of her foot, his tongue lightly laving at the soft wrinkles of her delicate soles. He began to lick upwards, over the ball of the foot and along the length of her big toe, his lips finally drawing the cherry red-nailed digit within his mouth so that he could savor the flavor. His cock throbbing stiffly within his pants, he stood up and unbuckled his jeans, allowing them to fall down around his ankles.

The young man pulled his long, pulsating member out, letting it hang out between the corpse’s caramel bare feet. He cups one of her feet in each hand and bends them inwards until her soles are pressed firmly against his stiffened shaft, her curled toes forced down along the top of his penis. Her soles tight around his member, he begins to thrust himself in and out, in and out, the cool, gently-wrinkled flesh of her feet stimulating him and greatly exciting him. Her curled toes bend slightly as he thrusts more vigorously, and as her feet move rhythmically to accommodate his arousal, her toe-tag flaps audibly against the top of her left foot.

Suddenly, James stopped. He looked down at the full-figured corpse in repose in the coffin, her eyes closed in blissful ignorance of what he had been doing with her. Her hands remained silently folded over her breasts. He wondered if she would have enjoyed this had she still been alive. James put his excitement back in his pants and, not bothering to zip, he left the hispanic woman in her undignified position and walked out into the main hallway, heading down towards the embalming and preparation room.

Immediately upon entering the preparation room, James’s nostrils were struck with the aroma of death, however, upon flicking on the light, he didn’t see any bodies left laying out. Must be one of the stiffs in the freezer, he thought to himself, walking across the room and undoing the latch on the stainless steel door. The walk-in was cold and dimly-lit, the lights being obscured a bit by the haze of the coolant being pumped consistently into the room through ducts in the ceiling and down near the floor. Several bodies were being stored here because, despite being in a small town, the funeral home got more business than one might think. Often, bodies that were unclaimed or needed to be stored for longer periods of time would end up here since the director had agreed to take some of the burden of long-term storage away from the city and county morgues.

Parked along the wall directly to his left was the stiff corpse of an emaciated elderly woman, her pale feet contorted and hanging out into the cold room. Behind her was a black body bag lying on a stretcher, nothing identifiable exposed to the room except for hospital and receiving tags tied around one of the bag’s handles. That body was obviously being stored here for a while. James’s eyes drifted directly ahead, where the body of a well-endowed African American man lay under a clear plastic tarp on a stretcher, flanked on both sides by corpses he could only assume to be feminine. On the left a pair of pale, toe-tagged feet stuck out from under a clear cover, the feet belonging to what appeared to be a young woman wearing pajamas. Her long, dark hair was cascading off of the stretcher and hanging down a bit towards the tiled floor. On the dead guy’s right another woman lay, her body covered with a black plastic tarp of sorts.

The night attendant walked over to that second gurney and looked closely at what he could see of the body laying beneath the plastic cover. The corpse was obviously female, simply based on what he could see of her curves, and her feet had well-defined arches and a softer look. Peeking around at the tips of her toes, he saw that she had blue nail polish on. Yet, her flesh had a very pale, almost marbled look to it, and he could quickly tell that this was where the pungent scent from the other room had come from. He coughed for a moment to regain his composure and then took a couple steps forward to check one of her toe-tags. Dead for eight days, he thought to himself. It looked like she had been found a few days after her death, though thankfully she had spent time in the morgue in refrigeration or otherwise she’d be even worse off than this.

He began to tug at the plastic tarp, dragging it down and slowly revealing her face in the pale light of the refrigeration room. Her features were soft and feminine, her face a bit plump . Her once-bright green eyes had hazed over and were barely a faded pea soup color now, her greyish lips parted as if in shock of her days-old death. Long, dry wisps of black hair rested on her face and draped somewhat off to the side. James kept pulling on the black cover until it went past her large breasts and bloated stomach, finally letting it bunch up and fall down onto the tiled floor, leaving her thick, hairy sex exposed to the room.

Walking along the side of the gurney, he approached her head and ran his fingers through her dry jet-black hair, letting it flow off to the side. James leaned in and put his nose to her lips, smelling her inner putrefaction slowly wafting up into her mouth. He parted her lips with his fingers and then pulled on her tongue until it hung out of her agape mouth. Leaving her just like that, he walked back along the gurney, letting his fingers dance along her icy greying flesh, over the hard bud of her left nipple, down her bloated belly, and letting them brush through her scraggly pubic area. He came back to the foot of the gurney and knelt down on the hard tiled floor, pressing his nose into the base of the toes on her right foot. To many, the smell wafting into his nostrils would be revolting. Her feet downright stunk. Yet, the attendant cupped her foot in his hands and began kissing the ball of her foot and her sole, moving upwards so that he could kiss the pads of each toe in succession, reveling in the putrid flesh. His hand drifted down into his jeans as he brought his lips around her toe-tagged big toe, sucking on it so vigorously that a popping noise was heard in the room as he finally released it.

Quickly, he stood, went to the side of the gurney once more and grabbed her by the far shoulder and her hips, and in a smooth, quick motion rolled the 43-year-old’s bloated corpse onto its stomach. A gurgling sound started somewhere deep within her gut from the change in bodily pressure, and knowing exactly what to expect, James quickly moved to the end of the stretcher, pulled her until her ass was right at the end and her toe-tagged feet dangled close to the floor, and put his nose right near her loose sphincter. A few seconds later her anus separated and a horrifying odor of rotten eggs and putrified fecal matter escaped from her asshole and into his waiting nose. He quietly rimmed her ass to get the juices that had seeped out before finally having enough.

The young man unbuttoned and pulled his loose jeans right down to the floor, grabbing the middle-aged stiff by the hips and sliding his rock hard shaft deep into her stinky asshole. With her loosened muscles and the fact that she had been dead for some time, she wasn’t as tight as he might have hoped, but the eroticism of the act itself was enough to keep him hard and interested in slamming himself in and out as he bit his lip and savored the experience. He gripped hard at her ass cheeks as he penetrated deeply within her, closing in quickly on an orgasm.

Finally, after a lot of foreplay and some quick, vigorous penetration, his body stiffened up and he experienced a powerful climax, his member ejaculating deep within the dead woman’s bowels. Finally, his cock began to slowly relax and withdraw itself, and when the feelings changed to more of a ticklish sensation, he knew that the moment had passed. He sighed and pulled himself out, breathing heavily and taking a moment to reflect on what he had just done.

Little did he know that a few minutes later he would find himself violently ill, perhaps as a result of having licked a corpse’s pungent asshole.

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The next morning, the funeral director arrived at the funeral home only to find that the casket of one of his clients was fully opened, her stiff toe-tagged feet propped up on the edge of the vessel. Given the position of the body, it was evident that something improper had happened. And, given that James had been the only one on site the night before, it was obvious that he at least had something to do with it.

Naturally, he was immediately fired over the phone and told that he should expect charges to possibly be lodged against him. The truth, however, was that the funeral director didn’t want to bring shame onto his establishment, so he likely would simply let the matter go so long as James never spoke of it again and stayed far, far away from this place of business.

A quick examination of the other bodies did not immediately show signs of foul play. James at least was careful to put the middle-aged woman’s body as carefully as he could back into its original position, and having wiped her down after recovering from his bout of illness, he was at least moderately sure that whatever evidence was left of his adventures would be flushed down the drain when they cleaned her insides out during the embalming process, so most likely he would be in the clear in that regard.

With Saema’s wake scheduled for 6:00 PM that evening, the director and Mr. Kim would be focusing most of the day’s attention on getting her and everything else involved ready for her viewing. By the time he had finally settled things with his now-former employee over the phone and had made his way into the main preparation room, Kim had already brought Saema’s body out of the refrigeration room, uncovered her, and slid her onto one of the slabs. There she rested on the slab in her P.J.’s, her feet bare and toe-tagged, until they were ready for her. About an hour after the place had opened, her mother had come by and dropped off a nice blouse, a skirt, and some shoes for her to be buried in, though she was told that the shoes might not be necessary depending on the final decision that would be made regarding whether the lower half of the casket would remain open or not. She had said that she’d leave the matter up to them and had left, still stricken with grief over the whole ordeal.

The pair sat the dead girl up and unbuttoned the top of her pajamas, pulling her arms out of the shirt and then pulling it away behind her. In case the family might later want it, the put it in a box along with a few other personal effects that wouldn’t need to be buried with her. Raising her hips, they slid the soft pants down past her thighs, over her knees, and down over her toe-tagged feet, putting them away in the same box. Now, she lay naked and exposed in the cool, tiled room. The large scar and stitch-work from her autopsy was now clearly visible, and while sometimes they would use makeup to cover something like this up, her chosen style of dress made this effectively unnecessary.

Saema was sat up once more and the director got out a simple black bra that was the perfect size for her pert breasts and began fitting it in place and getting it clasped. Her cold, autopsied corpse was like nothing more than a doll that they were manipulating to be put on display, and as he finished clasping the bra in place, Kim began working an adult diaper past her tagged feet, ankles, and slowly up her legs, wiggling it into place and then double-checking the adhesive. This was followed in due course by a simple white pair of panties.

“While we’ve got her sat up like this, let’s get her top on,” the funeral director said dryly.

The blouse her mother had chosen for her was simple, but elegant - a black, silky fabric with dark-red rose vine-like floral pattern to it. While Kim carefully lifted her arms up over her head, the other man began working the top in place, past her arms and long brown hair, and then letting it fall around her pale figure. The medium-length red skirt the mother had chosen would fit perfectly with this, and after lowering her back down onto the cold slab, they were soon to find out. Her srt was pulled out from the box her mom had dropped off and slid past her cool, bare feet, past her ankles and up her smooth legs and thighs, and then snuggly fit around her hips.

“Cora should be here around 11:20, so she can touch up any makeup she thinks needs doing.”

“Right,” Mr. Kim replied. “She looks good. We’ve got it pretty easy with her compared to a few of our other clients.”

Cora was the beautician that they used for most all of their clients (unless the client or their family had a specific person in mind) and no one ever doubted that she did fantastic work. However, this was a small town and Cora also ran a small salon, so they found themselves at her mercy schedule-wise. In any event, they would leave Saema laying on the slab for a little while as they went to see to a few other matters, waiting for Cora to return and finish the job on preparing her for her wake.

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Cora was running a few minutes late when she flew into one of the spaces out back and put her red Jetta in park. She fired off a text to a friend of hers to let her know that she might be a few minutes late to do her hair because of a fender-bender down near Main Street and then dropped her smartphone in her purse. “Alright, let’s get this over with,” she muttered to herself, obviously not in the best of moods, as she got out, locked up her car, and came up the back steps.

As was typical, the funeral home had sent her some photos of the body (nothing indecent, of course, for legal reasons) as well as basic instructions left by her family so that she could make preparations and come with what she would need to prepare the decedent for her wake and funeral service. This was important because there were many shades of makeup, concealer, eye-liner, and more that she had available, but toting all of it around was largely unnecessary. Cora, therefore, had a small hand-bag with what she had decided she would need, and she didn’t estimate that getting Saema ready would be all that much of a challenge.

Since Saema’s body had already been prepared and refrigerated several times over, the main challenge Cora had with her was restoring a more life-like color to her. Thankfully, her death hadn’t been incredibly traumatic, and the main area that would need special attention was her neckline. After a brief conversation with Mr. Kim, she was left alone with Saema’s body, laying on the mortuary slab, and she quickly got to work. Several different types of makeups, concealers, and tone eveners were brushed on and worked into the skin of her hands and arms, which would be visible during her viewing. A coral-toned lip gloss was applied to her lips, giving them a more subtle look that didn’t scream “Dead body!” A light rouge was added to flush out her cheeks a little and a very small bit of mascara and eye-liner was done to bring a bit of color back. Her neck, of course, required several different layers of caking and evening to cover up the red marks that were telltale signs of her strangulation, but when she stepped back to look Saema over, she thought she had done a fine job.

No indication was provided as to what nail color the girl should wear during her viewing and funeral service, but Cora had decided that since her hands would be visible while she was on display, she would simply go with the approximate color that she had been wearing at the time of her death. While she wasn’t exactly positive as to the exact tone Saema was wearing, she had narrowed it down between a couple dark chocolate tones and had brought them with her. Inspecting her hands a bit closer here in person, she finally settled on one called “Mignight Mocha.” She used a two-coat system to touch-up the nails of both of her hands so that they shimmered in the light once she had finished.

Yet, though her work would normally have been considered finished, she gazed down at Saema’s toe-tagged feet. Even if they won’t be seen during the viewing, she thought to herself, I’d be leaving my work half-finished if I just quit now without doing a quick pedicure.

Mr. Kim returned right as she was finishing up the last of Saema’s toes and nodded at her work. “Excellent as always, Ms. Jennings,” he stated with a nod of approval. “I believe her family will be pleased.”

“Thanks. She was a pretty girl,” she replied, already having turned back to a nearby counter and started to put her supplies back in their bag.

“Mr. Davenforth should have your money transferred over by Tuesday.”

“No worries. Like I said before, I know I’m doing good stuff here, that’s all.” Mr. Kim nodded at her. She zipped up her bag. “Anyway, gotta run. I’m supposed to meet a friend here in…” she pressed the home key on her phone, “Oh, shit. Yeah, like ten minutes ago!”

With Cora leaving and everything else involved having finally been completed, all that was left was for the funeral home to get Saema laid out in her casket and then wheel her into the small chapel that the family had reserved for her 6:00 viewing that evening. It was only a few minutes before Davenforth came into the preparation room wheeling in a white, hardwood casket that Saema’s family had ***********ed for her. Sometimes, the staff would load a body up with a lift they had in order to help move it to the casket, but this was generally done for larger bodies or those that they were worried might have an incident of some sort if they attempted to lift them by hand, but in Saema’s case, she was petite enough that the two men would simply transfer her to the casket by hand.

“Ready?” the director asked, going to the head of the slab and preparing to lift her by her shoulders. Mr. Kim simply nodded as he grabbed her by her ankles. In a rather quick, fluid motion, the pair lifted Saema’s body off of the cold slab, side-stepped to the casket which had been placed to the head of the slab’s right, and carefully lowered her down into the silvery lining, her toe tags waving all the while until her head finally came to rest on the casket’s silky pillow. Her hands had fallen to her side, but Davenforth reached down and carefully arranged them so that the were folded just below her breasts.

Reaching behind him, the funeral director grabbed the black viscera bag that had been shipped with her corpse from out in California and made sure that it was completely sealed so that there was no chance for any embarrassing accidents. He then walked around the side to the foot of her casket and placed it inside, next to her right foot. Davenforth also took a moment to adjust her feet, placing the toe tags on each foot such that they were pressed between the girl’s stiff toes and the foot of the casket before he finally stepped back and closed the casket’s lower half.

“That about does it,” he said, leaning his head to the side and popping his neck. “Go ahead and wheel her on out to the chapel. The family should be here within the hour.”