Page 48 - Demo

48Author%u2019s declaration: please be aware that I am not endorsing any of the exaggerated acts in this tale. All are not the things humanbeings should do to each other. I wanted to write something which most horror stories fail to achieve: to horrify and sicken. But it is more than that: I mean none of the story to be taken seriously; in many ways, it is my reflection upon the human subconscious and the absurdity of us all. Only a lunatic would desire to receive or carry out such acts in real life. A darkly comic tale.MolJohn Tucker had learnt the trade initially from his father, but here in this world of university degrees, most of which never led to a high salary, he had been obliged to gain qualifications in mortuary science and biology%u2014none of which added any additional knowledge to what he had already learnt in the past thirty years. Now aged forty-eight and a year after his wife ran off with a younger man, he was struggling with the meaning of life; often contemplating suicide as a way to end his depression.Most of all, he is lonely. Few women wished to date a funeral director despite the fact it earned very good money as a business. It was only just being recognised by the medical profession that loneliness was a terrible agony. He was up that morning making sure the front office was clean and tiny. His long-term employee, a young, smart woman was polite to him, but of course, she was not interested in a relationship. Fourteen years younger. Why would she be?She was due in to %u2018man%u2019 the front office in thirty minutes and he had a potentially important client coming in soon%u2014the mother of a rising and famous pop singer was considering his business to carry out the funeral for her. She had died through something so stupid%u2014a sting from a bee. No one had known she was super-allergic to the venom until she was stung and went into anaphylactic shock, causing death in just over two minutes of being stung, and her death secured by the failure of the paramedics to revive her. At twenty-two years of age and Chapter 1: Dead Or AliveThe Undertaker