Saint Ormando’s Occupation
Alfredo’s career as a mortician began with his grandmother’s death. It was deemed the unfortunate result of an electrical malfunction, and the hospital staff lied to the family in saying “she felt very little pain.” All that had been left of the frail woman was a thin outline of burnt bedsheet and a pile of ashes in her place. Alfredo had been eating breakfast in the kitchen when the incident occurred only feet away, in the guest room. The whooshing-crackling sound of his grandmother’s immolation kept Alfredo awake for days.
In his freshman year of college, his roommate’s fish had been reduced to ash in the night, and the water in its tank turned a murky shade of gray. Stephen, the fish’s ward, couldn’t parse why Alfredo had been so disturbed. Stephen believed that the fish, a long-finned betta of considerable stateliness, had died peacefully overnight, and had its corpse pulverized and distributed throughout the tank by some error of filtration. Alfredo wanted to argue that Stephen was both incorrect and oddly desensitized to the desecration of a fish corpse, but he found that he couldn’t speak. He spent the rest of the day outside in an attempt to forget the immolated betta fish. He couldn’t.
For several years, Alfredo managed to escape the specter of fiery death. He found a job driving trucks for a wholesale food distributor. Originally, he had been disappointed in himself for taking such an unglamorous job outside of his field of study, but he enjoyed the pay and relative ease of his work and came to find it tolerable. One night, on a secluded Montana highway, a swerving truck struck a compact car just ahead of him. The two rolled to the shoulder of the road, and Alfredo pulled over to inspect the damage. As he stepped out of his truck, the compact car driver erupted in flames, and, quickly as he caught, crumbled into a pile of ashes in the driver’s seat. Alfredo called the police and drove away into the dark.
Alfredo quit his job the next day and spent the following weeks sulking in his apartment. He was woken one late morning by a knock at his door, which he answered with considerable hesitation. A man in a long coat took him by the shoulders and explained that he was sorely needed by a nearby hospital. Alfredo followed him to the parking lot and entered his car. He wasn’t sure in what way he was needed, but the urgency in the man’s voice was persuasive enough. The two walked into the hospital in a haste, and the coated man delivered Alfredo to a man in scrubs, who shooed him into an elevator, a hallway, and then to a large room bordered by beds. Alfredo examined their occupants from the center of the room, where he had been ordered to stand. One bed-bound man towards the corner burst into flames. Alfredo lurched towards him but was stilled by the man in scrubs. He was informed that immolation of those fated for death was a valuable skill. Alfredo countered that all humans were fated for death, and the man in scrubs handed him a check. The next day, Alfredo was bidden to return by the coated man. He was initially hesitant, but, persuaded by his visitor, he accompanied him to the hospital. He arrived in the same room and was met by a chair in the center, with three magazines to the side of it. He sat and read daily, and was paid handsomely to do so, and was titled In-House Mortician. Alfredo’s reservations about lighting the elderly and terminally ill on fire were eventually replaced by the notion that to incinerate any other doomed soul would be a sore waste of talent, and he remained in the position until his self-cremation at the age of ninety-two.
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