Here's our first stab at a multi-author fiction contribution. Only the currently assigned author can add the next section of the story.

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We have a problem

“Uncle Bennie?” a quiet voice asked, accompanied by a small tug on the sleeve of his suit jacket. “We have a problem in back.”

Benjamin Petros, Bennie to his friends and family, ignored his niece for the moment, choosing instead to greet and hand out a program to the elderly couple entering the chapel. As soon as the two were safely out of earshot, he turned to his niece while maintaining the somber but kind face that the better funeral directors were known for. “Can it wait?” he asked. “The service is about to start.”

Alice looked up at her uncle, trying to keep her face and manner as calm as his. Appearances were everything in their business. She touched her own suit jacket, unfashionable over her blue jeans but infinitely better than her working clothes from the embalming room that included a rubber apron. “I don't think so.” she replied in her lowest voice. “It's Mrs. Walton.”

Bennie placed the remaining programs on a walnut flower stand and slowly exited the chapel with his apprentice in tow. As they crossed through the empty lobby, his curiosity was raised far more than actual concern.

He had known Mrs. Walton personally as had most of the people in town. She had taught grammar and music for over forty years and had been a respected pillar of the community before the small cell carcinoma had taken her. Bennie had seen her when she had been brought into the embalming room. The cancer had taken away the strong minded woman who had dragged him into learning sheet music in the eighth grade and had left a withered husk behind. With no signs of decay, visible trauma, nor one of the notoriously bad autopsies that the hacks at county often performed, what could be an issue worth reporting in the middle of a service?

Alice thumbed the combination lock on the door that was in place to keep the guests from walking in on the often unpleasant work that the morticians did to make their loved ones presentable for an open casket ceremony. Benny walked with his niece, closing the door behind them.

As the door locked itself, Benny turned to Alice. “What's wrong with Mrs. Walton?”

Alice opened the door to the embalming room, urging Bennie to enter. “I think she's still alive!” she said in a normal but strained voice now that they would not be overheard.

“Are you sure it's not just gas or rigor setting in?” Bennie asked as they entered the antiseptic confines of the room.

“I don't know. I've seen gas and rigor before. This isn't that.” She replied. “Just take a look.”

Mrs. Walton lay supine on the embalming table, a modesty cloth covering her nether regions leaving her chest bare and exposing her final surgery. Bennie examined an arm first, noting that rigor mortis had set in as he tried to bend it at the elbow. Rigor was the first and easiest thing to check for and was a good sign of death.

Bennie motioned towards the cabinet in the corner of the small room. Alice dutifully retrieved a stethoscope from it and handed to him. Avoiding the raised lines of sutures, he first checked various points on the chest and finally checked the ulnar artery where it crossed the joint at her elbow. No detectable heartbeat. Two solid checks down, one to go.

Bennie next moved to Mrs. Walton's poor withered face and used a thumb and index finger to gently lift an eyelid and to hold it open. The glazed and clouded cornea of the rolled up eye was just visible under the upper eyelid. Using the corner of one of the many clean rags on the work bench by the autopsy table, he touched the surface of the cornea. No response. Three checks and no signs of life.

Using the rag, Bennie closed the eye and turned to his niece with a quizzical look on his face. “She doesn't show any signs of life. Did you do your checks when you picked her up?”

“Yes, Uncle Bennie. I did. No heartbeat, no respiration, and no corneal reflex. Her surgeon also signed off on the death certificate so he had to have checked them also.” Alice replied indignantly. “Watch.”

Alice stood by Mrs. Walton's side and stroked her forehead. “Mrs. Walton?” She asked quietly.

Mrs. Walton's response was slight but easily noticeable. Her forehead and eyebrows knotted up slightly then relaxed.

Bennie watched curiously for a moment. “That's just nerves, Alice. We have both seen that before.”

Mrs. Walton's eyes slowly opened. They tracked the room and locked onto Bennie's face momentarily and then closed.

“Is that just nerves? I've seen bodies twitch before. I've even seen a body sit up once. I've never seen that before.” Alice said.

Bennie was already using his cell phone to call for an ambulance.

“Uncle Bennie?” Alice asked. “I finished both the arterial and the cavity last night. She's already been embalmed.”