Blush, I think, is the most important component when making up a corpse. I could not effectively do my job without it, I think as I apply the tiniest amount to the face of an eighty-year-old man who died of a heart attack. He must have been a drinker. I’ve been given a picture of him from when he was alive and he had ruddy cheeks.

A dead bear was sprawled on the floor between the sofa and the fireplace.  Standing outside in the garden, Philip could see it through the sliding glass doors.  He wondered whether the bear was dead or quietly sleeping, stretched out drunkenly, with one of its paws draped over an ottoman. 

Mom took off on Fridays. Left behind twenty bucks, enough white bread, ham and cheese, and chips to last the weekend. Sometimes she left enough money to buy a new game for the Nintendo.

Mark started his day with exactly what he hadn’t been hoping to start with. For the past ten months most of his mornings had started his way, with medication, a newspaper, breakfast, and two avian voices that he was equally fond and sick of hearing, because they had always given him the same excuses and reasons for coming back without the letters. He had started the mail service with these birds years ago, but age hadn’t served them well and they came home day after day with complaints or letters they forgot to actually leave at the door.