ETCETERA

Edet had soon become inured to the last moan that escaped a dying man’s breath that sooner than he had expected, he secretly wished he could be entertained by the haunting melody of his patient’s last breath. All of a sudden, he wished the doctor’s patients would gasp for breath as he watched them struggle to live. 

He was just the mortician after all. A very good one! He took care of their lifeless bodies as if they mattered. He washed, powdered and clothed them as he would do for a paralyzed relative, although he was never appreciated by them.     

Today, he laid half dead on the doctor’s table with needles and knives surging through his anesthetic body; there was no way he could survive this. Life escaped his nostrils at every ounce of time. His boss must be so happy that today his number one competition was fading gradually. It had always been his dictum that dead men don’t bite but he promised himself that on the occasion of his death, he would not just bite but cut into pieces the flesh of the new mortician who was likewise praying that he would breathe his last.     

 The images of the dead bodies he’d taken care of began displaying across his face like a motion picture. Soon, he could see himself lying there in the ice cold morgue being attended to by the guy who had just taken his place treating him with so much envy towards his inability to accumulate the experiences that he had. The mortician would be more jealous at how endowed he had been below his abdomen and might detect the evidence of his heavenly escapades with the fairer sex. He feared that the new guy would treat him with disdain and refuse to wash him well as karma for what he did to Martin, his last corpse. It is a wonder that we come into this world with just ourselves and a name our parents decide for us, and we leave with just ourselves and that name tied to our toes at the mortuary. From all indications, Martin had enjoyed life and as an addition to his name, he possessed the largest deflated crotch any human was allowed to have.      

What really happens at after life? He envisioned that Martin would flaunt himself before all the girls who died as virgins because they feared the Christian Hell. But he was sure that by now, they had realized that the only thing death has is darkness and void. What if Martin came to fight him? The thought sickened him the more. Martin was muscular, had brawns and would easily climb hierarchy since he died first.      

What happens to those beautiful women he had cursed on for being so spotless, so rich yet so dead? And Amina, the young lass who had married a man her grandfather’s age and conceived for him.  She had become a bitter woman who died in child birth because her small body couldn’t carry the burden of producing another life.  Will she forgive him for running away with her corpse the day she was to be buried by her husband or will she be happy that she saved her a second time from that manipulating child trafficker?      

He cackled mischievously so much so that the Doctor treating him got scared. He remembered Pastor Titus who kept smiling in naivety at the mention of death and constantly repeated, “I am going to meet my creator”. The man was ignorantly convinced that he would make heaven where he would never suffer again as he did in this ‘terrible world of sin’.      

It was the one thing he loved about his death. He would meet all the Christians and render them a rapturous ‘I told you so’ speech. He dreamt of a humanist association where all Christians would beg to be members of. The females would be raped to gain entry and the males will be flogged severely. Flogged? No! Dead men don’t feel pains. He sulked in deep regret at the boring life he will lead in death. Raping or flogging will not affect his victims as they should in real life.      And what happens to the foetus he had helped his lovers to abort? Had they grown up? He would never walk the children section! He reckoned there’ll be more children with his DNA than the Biblical Abraham would ever have. He had been so happy in life that he knew he’ll be happier in death. But what if his happiness is short lived by the realization that every dead person was happy? He didn’t want every dead person to be happy. Unfulfilled people, accident and murder victims, suicide victims, and top of the list, victims of religion are not permitted to be happy.     

Do people who die due to diseases stay in one section? He didn’t want to stay with those cancer patients. It was enough that he had shared every hospital room with them, endured their pains and tears like they endured his and now, about to die the same way they died. And how did he contact breast cancer? The doctor claimed that every man has breast cells and he began to develop lumps in them, just like his mother and her mother before her.      

As if joggled back to life, he let his thoughts rest because slowly, the life rushed out of his nostrils as he struggled with his breath only to find the Doctor smiling at him sheepishly, “Jesus Loves You”. He shook his head in disbelief, “He would have been disappointed in you”. 

And closed his eyes to an unknown realm.