Iced - Sara Crowley

Freya stretches her arm through the gap, gripping the needle so hard that her fingers ache. It’s better than risking dropping it. She’s inside the head, can feel the hard ching of enamel and the soft jelly of lip. She begins to sew, careful stitches that won’t be seen by the mourners. Closing the mouth gape, ensuring fluids stay inside. She has seen corpses with tear drops forming, and thinks there is not a more mournful sight in the world.  It’s the chemical mix she uses, but even so it changes everything. The body becomes a person. A person who weeps at their own demise.

 

The stitching done she can relax a little, let her mind wander as she begins to massage cream into dry patches of skin on the dead woman’s body.

 

She smears colours onto the face, trying to recreate a lifelike appearance for the sake of the family. She does the job to help the left behinds, to fool them into thinking that death isn’t messy, mucky and ugly. Freya knows how the bodies leak and stink, how the colours drain away with the life. She is adept at hiding the bruises and rips, the stains and dehydration. She grooms the dead, combs their hair, lipsticks their mouths, and she takes pride in it.

 

Freya won’t wear make-up. She is a wash and go gal whose naturally curly hair bushes around her head, and whose skincare routine consists only of soap and water. She avoids ointments, unction’s, salves, potions and any other goop that people try to enhance their appearance with.  Being alive is the most beautifying treatment of all.

 

She shaves the deceased, tidies them and trims their nails. She varnishes them a pale ‘lifelike’ pink. She doesn’t cut her own nails but files them into points. She won’t shave her bodily hair. People assume it is a feminist statement but she only wants to see growth. The hard scratch of her nails, the fur of her vagina, the long dank hair of her armpits, all reassure her.

 

Tonight in a bar some guy will gesture expansively.

‘Champagne? Red? White? Whatever you prefer.’

‘A glass of iced water please.’

‘Water?’

Freya will gulp the drink, feeling it rinse through her, so cold. Exhilarated by the chill sensation she will shine a smile, watch him melt.

 

Later, she’ll push two fingers into his mouth, skating across teeth, touching warm, wet tongue, thrilling to the pull of him sucking hard on her. Her blood pulsing, hot.