Please Take a Number

Stacey Hileman Iannazzo

Please Take A Number

 364 days out of the year, Dave Murphy's job was mostly shuffling paperwork and light maintenance. His office was a sparse barren room in the basement of Hileman and Sons Funeral Parlor. They were a popular establishment for grieving families and Dave had landed the jobs because he had gone to high school with one of the ‘and sons’. He’d been employed by the Hilemans for 3 years and for a job that only really required him to show up, he was paid a very generous salary. He worked the literal graveyard shift, arriving at 9 and leaving at 6 am the next day. He spent a lot of time playing XBox and smoking grass. His only responsibilities were to print out prayer cards and vacuum the viewing rooms upstairs. He emptied ashtrays and refilled the water dispensers. He flushed out the enormous percolators, ensuring there would be fresh coffee for the next ‘service’. It was a good job, despite Halloween, he was glad to laze around and collect a fat paycheck every week. Dave didn’t make an exorbitant amount of money for making coffee, the money he earned was for keeping his mouth shut and handling October 31st professionally and most importantly, discreetly. This would be his fourth Halloween on duty, the first one had been terrifying, he hadn’t been sure he would make it til dawn. But he did. And the next year, with a little time under his belt, he was only slightly spooked. Last year had been hectic, but no longer frightening. He knew this Halloween would be no different than those before it, and having experienced it he was more anxious about the crowds than the ‘other things’.    

A human being can acclimate to any situation given enough time, and this was true for Dave Murphy.  

As usual, the mortuary closed early, and luckily there had been no calling hours that day. There were two bodies in the ‘make up’ room, where, tomorrow, Sheila would dress and poke and pin the body of someone’s loved one until it faintly resembled the ultimate goal of “he looks so peaceful” or the ever popular “she looks like she’s sleeping”. Dave did not envy Sheila, in fact he applauded her efforts, and her balls. Have you ever seen a cadaver whose hair has been cleverly arranged to hide the gaping hole of a self inflicted gunshot wound? With the right amount of foundation and blush, Sheila could make dear old granny’s emaciated body look serene and unravaged by cancer. Sheila knew her shit, but she didn’t know what Dave did once a year. Only the senior Hileman knew Dave's true expertise. 

On Halloween, in New England, it gets dark very early. By five o’clock the streets are littered with trick or treaters carrying sacks of free candy. By eight o’clock, those same little ghouls are home in their pajamas watching Hocus Pocus and crashing from a sugar rush. 

When Dave clocked in at nine, he shut all but the porch light off. He sat at his desk, with a thermos of coffee and waited.  

At exactly 9:04 pm, his first clients arrived. Mr. Mark Wesley, escorted and sponsored by his wife, Deidre. Dave invited the couple to sit down while he pulled up their information on his computer screen. He paused long enough to dab some Vicks vapor rub under his nose, as this helped with the smell. Deidre had died 11 years ago, from a quiet little cancer that killed her quickly. She looked fantastic, and Dave wondered if Sheila had once worked her magic on this long deceased woman. Her husband, on the other hand, didn’t look so hot. He wore an ill fitting suit, his hair was stiff and stapled down. His skin was grey and his fingernails were black. “Can I see your essentials please?” Dave asked. Mr. Wesley had died in a motorcycle accident four months earlier. Cause of death? His head had been severed from his shoulders, and although the emts tried in vain to reattach it, Mr. Wisely died in the rain on the side of the highway. Dave entered the intel into his laptop, and pushed the enter key. While the system buffered he asked the required interview questions. Name, age, family history, a quick covid screening just for funsies, and reason for prior refusal. 

On Halloween, the lines between the here and now are blurred with those who’ve passed on into the ‘afterlife’. Usually, upon one's demise, they are given a funeral and their soul is released to a promised kingdom, or whatever one believes comes next. It is not something Dave put a lot of thought into, he wasn’t getting paid to judge a life, just to process the paperwork. Sometimes, a soul, like Mr. Wesley is denied entry, and remains in limbo indefinitely. But on Halloween, the dead take advantage of the blurry afterlife loophole and can reapply for the release of their soul. There are exceptions and rules.

Rule number one is you have to be recently dead, no skeletal applicants will be considered as they give St. Peter the willies. Dave wasn’t allowed to specifically mention God, but most of his clients knew the score. Or they had learned the hard way while lingering between two worlds. Rule two is you have to confess your ‘sins’ and ask forgiveness, in writing, by filing an HS27 form in triplicate.

 Dave found it surprising the false idols some of these dead folks revered. Last year he had a lady who worshipped house plants. She had aced the interview and her HS27 was in perfect order, so he had to let her pass. His job was never boring and he had grown to love it, he even enjoyed the weirdos.   

The third, and only rule that can not be bent is sponsorship. If you’re dead and looking to escape Limbo you had better have someone on the other side ready to show up and vouch for your character. Mr. Wesley’s wife was still prattling on about the time he’d saved all the livestock from their burning barn when the page flashed green. 

Part of being good at his job meant Dave had to conduct himself like a gentleman, hence he wasn’t able to ask the ghostly big mouth to shut her trap. He waited her out, handed her mangled husband a green tag and without wasting a moment, he yelled “NEXT!” Mr and Mrs Wesley evaporated through the cement wall, having no use for the heavy metal door available. 

When his next customer sat down in the chair across his desk, Dave saw that the waiting room was now jammed tightly. The gentleman who now sat in the proverbial hot seat was a Mr. Joseph M. Rosencrantz. Cause of death? Massive stroke while waiting in line at the pharmacy. Dave averted his eyes in an effort to squelch the laughter he felt bubbling up as he entered Josephs ‘essentials’ into the computer. I mean really he thought to himself, what are the odds? 

While Dave went through the motions of processing the cadavers paperwork, he rattled off the interview questions and it wasn’t until he looked up that he realized Mr. Rosencrantz would not be leaving Limbo this Halloween. His sponsor was his very much alive daughter, a clear breach of rule three as she was quite obviously not from the other side. Dave started to politely explain that the deceased had to be sponsored by someone who had passed before him, something he usually had to do at least a dozen times yearly. “I’m sorry your father has made a menace of himself and refuses to stop haunting your family home, but it’s against procedure” He explained patiently. “But no one on the other side will vouch for him and he’s a real pain in the ass” the young woman replied, her voice raised. Dave had seen this before, a not so beloved loved one failing to obtain a proper sponsor. Families became desperate to be rid of them, they’d try anything from begging to bribery. “Well gee whiz Miss I’m sorry but I don’t make the rules, I simply process the dead” The younger, alive Rosencrantz began to shout obscenities at Dave, something he was also quite used to, while his computer screen glowed red. He shoved the rejection tag into her hand and she was calling his mother a plethora of terrible names while she shoved her cantankerous father out the door. “If he’s still got some flesh to him next year, you can try again!” Dave shouted. He was ignored, and turned his attention back to his work.  

“NEXT” He shouted. Fuck he thought, a kid. No more than ten or eleven, he was an innocent. Dave began to read the file, not wanting to know how or why this child died, he skipped the interview entirely and punched in the code for a manual override. With a heavy heart he handed the boy and his long dead grandmother a green tag. Dave never rejected children. Ever. 

Throughout the rest of the night, client after client went through the screening process. Dave drank at least a gallon of black coffee and snacked on sugary donuts. Most were green lighted, and those individuals were very appreciative, filling out the “How’d I Do?” comment cards with kind words and compliments. Some even dropped a few bucks into the tip jar on Dave’s desk. 

One guy dropped a cool hundred into the jar after asking Dave to look the other way while he ‘smuggled’ his dog over. Dave gladly took the hundred, not bothering to tell the dude that animals got a free pass. “Enjoy chasing them bunnies” Dave said with a smile as he patted the elderly dog on the head and handed his master a green tag. 

By morning that ‘tip jar’ was overfilled, and Dave was exhausted. His last client was a middle aged woman who literally fell off a cliff and died. She was so confused by the fatality that she missed her own funeral and spent weeks walking the shores of the beach. Finally a sponsor from her list located her on Halloween and brought her to see Dave. Jesus, Dave thought, she was a real mess, and he’d seen it all. He was still thinking about her when the sun rose and he punched his time card. He wondered if they’d give her a new left arm when she got to heaven or if she wouldn’t need one there. He locked up and sprawled on one of the upstairs couches, knowing it would be hours before Mr. Hileman or Sheila the make up lady were due in. He fell asleep, priding himself in another successful Halloween.  

Fin.