"Fifty percent off. Call it a going away special,” Mitch declared. “Hell, I’ll even throw in the suit.”
“Keep the suit,” the widow replied, as she callously closed the lid of the pine box that lay between them. Into the flames the rustic, wooden, box slid, and Mitch muttered to himself, “Forty-five minutes outta do it.”
His work done for the time-being, and seizing the opportunity to rest his aching feet, Mitch retired to an antique, leather, swivel chair, removed the battered fedora from his desk, and placing it lightly atop his head, pulled the brim down just low enough to hide his drooping eyelids. As Mitch leaned back, the squeaking springs of his chair drew the widow’s gaze for a moment, but her curious attention quickly returned to the voluminous brick oven, grateful that it was finally beginning to beat away the chill in that cavernous, cement room.
Outside, thick black smoke could be seen spewing from one of three derelict chimneys atop the crematorium’s decrepit roof. The other two chimneys stood vacant: their furnaces rarely lit. Business was slow these days.
An hour slipped by in near-silence, until startled awake by his own snoring, Mitch roused from his slumber, and as adroitly as a baker leaping into action at the ding of the timer to retrieve his latest confection, Mitch procured the cauterized corpse from the oven. Now reduced to mere handfuls of drab, sooty ash, the remains were delicately poured into a dilapidated, begrimed, brass urn.
Nearby stood the widow, anxious to claim the meager fortune that pitious jar in Mitch’s trembling grasp represented, all the while making eyes at him, her smile illuminated by the flickering glow of the dying furnace.
Laying hold of the urn and stuffing it into a faux-designer handbag, the widow pivoted on her heels, and with a calculated flip of her peroxide hair, nonchalantly began to saunter away.
“Oh, and about that suit you promised,” the widow self-assuredly called to Mitch over her shoulder with a coquettish wink, “wear it when I pick you up on Friday.”
credits
from Wunderkünk,
track released April 15, 2020
Vocals and guitar by Colin Botts
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