The Perfect Management of Perpetual Flowers

"You only pay for the funeral, the wooden coat is on us."
Mr. Fisher, the owner of Perpetual Flowers Funeral Home had just displayed the new advertising poster on the window and retired in his office to shed the rest of his humanity.
The dehumanization process, much needed to be able to do his job efficiently, was simple: he would stand in front of the mirror and repeat the personal mantra Ikiritik Ikiritok Gombikok Pirvanatok he had invented a long time ago to endure his new life among the dead. If he repeated it enough times, he felt transformed in spirit, hardened, and ready to bury anyone without a trace of remorse.
You see, Mr. Fisher disliked his job. He grew up among animals in a farm, his parents were breeding horses. He used to have other plans for himself but after his grandfather's death, he had put on hold his dream of becoming a circus horse trainer and took over the family business. However, he intended to sell it some day and start his own circus.
In the meantime, life, death and business had to go on. Thus, he cut a small piece of dried, twisted tobacco and tossed it in his mouth then he pushed the green button under his desk to summon the three undertakers on duty. As soon as they walked in, he cracked a little leather whip which he kept handy and used jokingly pretty often for his delight. But the trio had learned to associate that silly gesture to his desire to see their hands so he could check their fingernails. So they complied to make him happy.
He checked thoroughly to ensure the nails were cut very short to avoid the risk of piercing the gloves. Being a miser, a pair of gloves had to last weeks. When he finished the inspection he spat the brown, nicotine-laced sludge into the sand of a metal spittoon he kept next to his desk, scratched his neck with the long nail of his right pinky, and opened the Mortuary Register. Three bodies were brought in the night before. He assigned one to each of the undertakers to prepare for a dignified funeral and turned his back on them, faking busyness with some papers.
The trio understood the meeting was over and left.

Once in the preparation room, the three began performing various procedures and maneuvers on the corpses.
The male undertaker, Fabrice, had been assigned the corpse of an old man named Leonard Bonaparte, whose tired, mothball breath had been carried away by the Reaper right after blowing out the candles on his birthday cake, the night before.
The two female morticians were entrusted with the lifeless bodies of two women: Estelle had on her hands a 70-year-old woman named Leena Fervolizzi, who had drowned in her bathtub, while Meghan had to deal with an octogenarian who, strangely, still retained a fairly healthy glow on her bony, wrinkled cheeks.
Meghan raised the corpse's arm to test its malleability. It was still soft and not as cold as expected; the woman was declared dead about ten hours earlier, but she wasn't affected by the usual rigor mortis.
She lowered the arm and checked her card.

Name: W. B.
Time of death: 11:55 PM
Date: January 13, 2026
Cause of death: Heart attack

There was no full name. Meghan shrugged and started to wash the body.
She was only halfway through her occupation when Mr. Fisher burst into the room and, from the doorway, thundered at them with his usual lack of grace:
"How long will it take you to powder the faces of these mummies and dress them up? The old man's sons have come to see how we've fixed their father."
Fabrice, who was massaging the old man's flesh to loosen the rigor mortis and make it easier to handle and dress him, rolled his eyes to the ceiling, vexed.
Mr. Fisher looked at Estelle who was carefully combing the hair of the deceased.
"Good Lord! You're giving me hives with your slow movements," he snapped at her, while scratching his reddened neck with the long nail.
The hives were actually caused by the coarse, prickly wool sweater knitted by his grandmother on her deathbed, that he wore everyday under his black jacket. He was too sensitive to the cold to take it off, be it summer or wintertime, and too stingy to buy a new one made of a more delicate fabric.
Estelle, used to his barkings, continued her job nonchalantly.
He turned toward Meghan to investigate her performance.
"I see you're pretty far ahead with your task. You've already done her makeup!"
Meghan grimaced slightly for the sudden cadaverous stench coming out of his mouth as he spoke.
He clapped his hands slowly.
"A round of applause for Meghan, who's the only one here to do the job well and fast!"
She tried to tell him she hadn't done her makeup yet but he grinned and cracked the whip in the air to enforce his compliment and silence her.
He headed to the door when, suddenly, the sound of a blowing razz was heard.
"Is there anything else?" he asked, the mask of feigned concern on his face.
None of the three had said a word or made a sound.
Estelle suggested that it had come from one of the corpses due to cadaveric flatulence.
Mr. Fisher couldn't stand anyone lecturing him about organic decomposition and its effects. He had managed, coordinated, and supervised that work for seventeen years and was convinced he knew more than anyone else. He spoke fast lest he fell into aphonia before he could get the last word out:
"Estelle, you better just do your job, okay?"
She nodded and turned her back on him.
At that moment a faint groan was barely audible. Meghan looked at her octogenarian; from her parted lips arose a guttural moan which felt like it was coming from beyond the grave. Then, to her astonishment, she saw the woman slowly open her eyes.
"This woman is alive!" she shrieked.
Everyone left their dead and rushed to the side of the Resurrected.
In no time the pure Chaos took a seat on the throne at Perpetual Flowers and started to reign royally.
Fabrice, who was a fervent catholic, started to praise God by reciting a prayer, while Estelle checked the woman's vital parameters.
Mr. Fisher started to pace nervously back and forth, mumbling his mantra.
Meghan covered the woman's naked body with a sheet and said:
"Mr. Fisher, I'll try to keep her warm while you call the ambulance."
He halted. His eyes widened in disbelief at Meghan's audacity to tell him what to do.
"I'm the one who decides how we proceed in here!" he said sharply, already annoyed that, given the new circumstances, there would be one less funeral.
"Mr. Fisher," Meghan dared continue, "in this situation there are no choices or decisions to make other than calling an ambulance."
Mr. Fisher, his voice choked with anger, bellowed:
"In the 17 years I've run this place, no one has ever discredited me in front of anyone, dead or alive, by telling me what to do!"
"I'm sorry, it wasn't my intention to discredit you," Meghan said. Then, while looking him in the eyes added resolutely: "Will you call the ambulance or shall I do it myself? There's no time to waste!"
He sunk his brown molars into the mushy tobacco and stormed out.
Once in his office, he locked himself in and began kicking and punching the air, raging. Then he ripped off the jacket and the woolen sweater and began scratching his torso and neck as if he had stepped onto an anthill.
Once he was dressed again and fully calm and composed, instead of making the lifesaving phone call, he checked the Mortuary Register again.
His eyes fell on the initials W.B.
He checked her file.
Time of death: 11:55 PM.
It was strange that her full name was missing. The death certificate was missing as well.
He cursed in his mind the two morticians on the night shift for their incompetence.
He called the morgue of the hospital from which the body was sent.
"Hello, this is Mr. Fisher of the Perpetual Flowers funeral home. I'm calling regarding the woman who died last night at 11:55 PM. Unfortunately, I only have her initials in addition to her body."
On the other end, a kind woman's voice gave him all the clarification the situation required. Thus, he learned that Mrs. W. B. was Mr. Bonaparte's wife, Wilma, who had suffered a fatal stroke right after having been hospitalized for a malaise following her husband's death.
Thus, they decided to send her body along with her husband's to the funeral home, and send via email all documents, death certificate included, delegating Perpetual Flowers to deliver the sad news to the family the next day.
Mr. Fisher realized that he was dealing with a case of clinical death, but he also understood he still could gain from it. Therefore, he took care not to disclose that the woman was alive.
He thanked and hung up, then checked the email and downloaded all the documents related to W.B.
He did the math again. The Bonaparte family would have to pay not for one, but two funerals.
Business had to continue as scheduled. And then he'd have to fire Meghan. She'd become too impertinent.
He spat the tobacco in the spittoon, shoved a new piece of it in his craterous, stinky mouth and rubbed his hands together, pleased with the decisions he'd made with such quick wit. He recited Ikiritik Ikiritok Gombikok Pirvanatok seven times to get all the strength he needed and then went into the hall to speak with the sons of the late Bonaparte.
He let them know that in about two hours they could see their father. But the hard part was yet to come: he now had to verbally formalize Mrs. Wilma's lifeless condition. He coughed into his fist, scratched his neck and spoke:
"As for your dear mother…"
"Yes, poor mama, now we'll go to see her," said one of the two men.
Mr. Fisher felt there was no reason to delay the sad news.
He placed a hand on his shoulder and, in a calm, respectful tone, said:
"There's no easy way to tell you this… Unfortunately, your mother has passed away."
The two men looked at him baffled.
"No, no, our mother isn't… dead. She felt unwell and now she's in the hospital."
Mr. Fisher had to be convincing. His voice and arguments weren't allowed to leave room for doubts.
"The report in my office shows that as soon as your mother arrived at the hospital, the doctors pronounced her dead."
He felt a knot in his throat and gulped. His initial zeal waned and a wave of nausea came upon him. He paused to catch his breath. He perused their faces while mentally reciting quickly three times Ikiritik Ikiritok Gombikok Pirvanatok. He needed all the strength he could get to continue his little show.
"Your mother is already here and will have a dignified funeral with full honors, you can rest assured. In fact, there are some aspects we need to consider and decide together. I'll wait for you in my office… let's say, at…," he looked at his hand watch, "…at noon?"
The Bonapartes began to sob while hugging each other upon learning that they had lost both their parents overnight.
"Can we see her?"
Mr. Fisher panicked for a moment. He just wanted them gone, damn it! The wool was pricking his neck. He felt the urge to scratch but refrained from it.
"Sure," he said with a voice he felt was coming from beyond himself. "Not right now, though."
"Why not?"
"Well, because uhm… for technical reasons. She is being prepared at the moment. But in two hours you'll see them both. There's no happier couple in the entire universe, I assure you!" the undertaker said passionately, at the limit of his vocal capacity.
They nodded with understanding.
He offered them tissues to dab their tears and escorted them to the door while cold sweat was showering his spine under his wool sweater. And on top of that, he'd forgotten to put his belt back on, having taken it off just minutes earlier during his solitary outburst, so his trousers were having serious trouble staying up. So, when the two men exited, he rushed panting into his office with the grace of an old elephant retired from the circus, risking to stumble at every step.
He had two hours to apply on the woman's mouth the seal of eternal silence and to endow her with marmoreal immobility to be apt for her sons' last goodbye.
He spat out the piece of tobacco and considered for a moment standing in front of the mirror and reciting his mantra seven times to regain his strength but there was no time. He looked around for his belt and not finding it, he passed through the belt loops a black and white ribbon intertwined together, that was usually used to adorn the coffins and went to the preparation room where he barked at everyone to get out. He sent them to perform new and more pressing tasks, such as taking out and decorating the caskets, carrying in the candles, and so on. He would now assume personal charge of embalming the bodies.
Meghan asked if the ambulance had been called.
"Yes, yes!" he said briskly, closing the door behind her.
He approached Mrs. Bonaparte, who, in addition to being wrapped in the green sheet, had been covered with a blanket and moved to a bed on wheels where, eyes closed, she was gasping.
While the three undertakers were carrying out their new tasks, the woman's sons, confused about the news and for having been rushed out like that, had stopped in front of the agency to discuss the matter. They felt something was off.
Suddenly, it all seemed so absurd and unethical.
So, they went back inside, determined to see their mother immediately. Meghan happened to be in the lobby at the time.
Upon telling her their mother's name, which she promptly associated to the W. B. initials, they learned the good, yet shocking news that she was alive. She invited them to sit down and wait for the ambulance and not worry because Mr. Fisher was in there with their mother.
"That Mr. Fisher of yours just told us that our mother is resting in peace next to our father! He was lying, then! What kind of bastard runs this place?"
Meghan was just as puzzled as they were. She never expected her boss to tell such a horrific lie.

In the meantime, Mr. Fisher, standing next to the widow Bonaparte, was filling a syringe with formaldehyde solution.
This substance was usually used to preserve the corpse for a longer time, but, if injected into the body of a living person, it was lethal within moments.

In the hall the two men asked Meghan to show them the way to their mother. She couldn't refuse and led them to the preparation room.
As soon as she opened the door, she saw Mr. Fisher ready to inject the solution into the woman's arm and realized what he was trying to do.
"No! Don't do it!" she shouted.
She ran toward him and snatched the syringe from his hand.
"It's standard procedure!" he yelled. "Anyone brought in here is entitled to this treatment!"
Hearing those screams, the old woman grew startled and her already challenged heart skipped a beat or two. She lost her senses.
Her sons rushed to her bedside. Pale and still as she was, she seemed to be lifeless.
"See?" Mr. Fisher shouted hysterically. "She's dead!"
"Mr. Fisher, the woman was alive a moment ago, and you know it well," said Meghan.
"She might have been alive before but she's dead now!" he shouted frantically, his beady eyes shifting quickly from one face to the other sporting the stare of madness.
"Look at her!" he continued. "She's at peace. Besides, there's a death certificate in my office. I'll show it to you!"
Meghan took the woman's arm and checked her pulse. Although faint, there was a pulse.
"She's alive!" she screamed.
"Someone call an ambulance!"

While Estelle was on the emergency line, one of the two sons jumped on Mr. Fisher and beat him up with all his might for trying to kill their mother. The other son at this point doubted of every word Mr. Fisher had uttered. He checked on his father to see his real condition. But right in that moment, one of the corpse's arms that was positioned on the abdomen, fell alongside the body. The man, whose nerves were too tensed to think clearly, thought that his father, just like his mother, was alive and held captive by the undertaker of horrors. In that chaos and out of himself he started to perform mouth to mouth on his father's corpse attempting to resuscitate him while Meghan and Fabrice were doing their best to separate the two.
Only when the ambulance and the police arrived the turmoil subsided.
Mr. Fisher, he had to be carried away on a stretcher after being crushed like pine nuts by the kick-boxer son of the dead man.
Now, with Mr. Fisher behind bars, the world is a better and safer place. And it will be like this for a while, at least until he finishes his sentence. In the meantime, he fills the prison's air endlessly with his mantra, Ikiritik, Ikiritok Gombikok Pirvanatok, night and day, and this triggers the other prisoners' rage. Thus, they regularly teach him an anatomy lesson for disturbing their rest.