This is a short story I wrote about a year or two ago, and is one of the first pieces I finished completely. It went through several rounds of edits and some beta readers before it was done, and I learned a lot in the process.
It’s a bit niche, however, and I’ve not had any luck submitting it to competitions and magazines, so here it is in all its melancholic glory.
Dad died two weeks after Mum left, when the ashes still fell and the lines of body bags stretched all the way to the road.
I carried his bag to the front of the queue, into the crematorium he’d spent his life running. He lay alone in the charred bed of the oven, resting… waiting. I pushed and pulled life into the flames until my calloused fingers split, spitting blood upon the bellow handles. By then Dad was a ghostly mark upon blackened steel.
The next hundred bags weighed heavy in my arms.
There was never enough time to learn their names. We remembered instead their figures. The tall, the small, the wide or slim. The uniqueness of people’s lives barely remembered through a plastic bag. There was no time for pleasantries, no ashes to ashes, no dust to dust; we’d stack them four deep in the oven, squeezing the smallest and most delicate around the sides.
And then they were gone, death certificates discarded in a corner.
The pile stretched nearly as tall as me, scrawled names reaching from the paper, grabbing my attention in fits and starts. My eyes focused on a name and then pulled away to another. That was all that was left of these people. A name, an age, last known address, and a cause of death people knew before you told them.
As I dusted off ashen hands at the end of the day, Dad’s certificate pulled at me from the corner of my eye. I wiped away fresh tear marks before pressing it into my breast pocket.
Each morning the ghostly pile stared at me from across the room. With every pull of the bellow handles, with every bag stuffed into the oven, every shovelful of ash, the certificates of the dead called to me. Each day I took a few more. First only those that burned in my mind clearest — the ones with crisp names and flowing handwriting — but soon a careless handful left with me each day to fill drawers and cupboards in the lonely home of my parents.
By the time I’d relocated the pile, the steady stream of bodies had dried to nothing. Certificates from entire families fell into morbid order — generations up in smoke. If Dad had died alone, his certificate would’ve rotted at the bottom of the pile, forgotten like the many names scattered across my carpet.
Who amongst those names would want to end their days cluttering my house? It was a far cry from the darkness of the crematorium, but there was no way I could leave them there. The least I could do is reunite families with each other.
I found Michael Parish and his wife, Rachel, first. They’d died within a week of each other. It took me only a few days to find their children. Where Michael and Rachel’s certificates were clean, their children’s were worn, dogeared. Sitting at the bottom of the pile for over a year. Three children dead over the course of a month.
Jonathan, the eldest, died last. His twin sisters, Sam and Sarah, died on opposite Tuesdays. He must have helped his parents carry the girls’ bodies to the queues before he finally succumbed himself.
#
The door frame creaked and the glass panes rattled, but no one came when I knocked. I held in my grasp the last documents of the Parish family: Father, Mother, Son and Daughters, each name scrawled on white card.
The door was unlocked. Inside, still air was stale, unwelcome to guests and crematorium workers alike. I called out to the stillness of the house, hoping the knots in my stomach would untie themselves at the sound of another. But nothing greeted me except the eerie silence of an empty home.
Around me the room was an echo of the chaos of normal life— unwashed dishes in the sink, cereal packets left out on the side, and tea rings staining the worktop. Ears of unfinished homework on the kitchen table flickered in the new breeze.
In a small corner of my mind I hoped someone would accept these papers, pat me on the back, and tell me, “Thank you.” But the family was gone, and only their death certificates remained. The spidery handwriting screamed at me and all I could do was stand in their doorway like I was delivering post.
Back out in the cool morning air was a quiet still alien to me. Where my ears needed cars or planes or even the inane chatter of people in the street, there was nothing except low rush of wind and the constant smoke in the air from the chimneys on the horizon.
In the crematorium the process felt distant, industrial. A conveyor belt of necessity, endlessly disposing of the wounds of this awful place. If this family could be laid to rest in the comfort and familiarity of their own home, then I would do it.
Soon the papers smouldered and burned in a cracked terracotta plant pot I’d scavenged from the Parish’s garden. The smoke drifted about in the breeze. It was comfortable, familiar. Not the blackened bitter smoke from the crematorium, but earthy and clean. At least some part of these people, no matter how small, would rest amongst their mess and their home and the echoes of the lives they once lived.
Burning became my little ritual for each house and each family. I revelled in the rhythm of it, like the familiar swoosh fwump of the bellows. It gave my idle hands a purpose while the world crumbled around me. I was the man who laid them to rest.
#
The Savage family’s house barely stood, with a gaping hole in one wall and creeping ivy crawling up around the door, gradually reclaiming the home back to nature. All the paint on the window frames peeled back revealing the parasite-infested wood underneath.
Swoosh. I didn’t even bother knocking.
Fwump. My oft-rehearsed greeting-call died against the mouldy damp walls. Even then I waited the usual few seconds to see if anyone lived. Silence greeted my calling like an old friend.
Swoosh. The certificates were in one hand, my flint and steel in the other. I twisted the paper into a little bundle, taking care to keep the names unsmudged. My ritual was lost if the names didn’t burn.
Fwump. I squatted over the front step and struck down hard on the flint. Sparks flew and the paper ignited, its small flames fighting the low breeze.
Swoosh. I left them to burn, returning to the empty house. Any help I could gather from their belongings would be a welcome gift. It was a payment of sorts, unwillingly given. Perhaps I was a better recipient than another, and I hoped that each family would look upon me as the reluctant scavenger that I felt.
In their living room, amongst a pile of magazines and rotting newspapers, a waxy face stared sightlessly out at me.
His was the first body I saw outside a body bag. Every blemish was on display, every imperfection from a life cut short. Laughter lines and freckles, moles and scars, his hair was drawn carefully into a side parting, and he smiled serenely at nothing. If the world had ended differently, he and I may have been good friends. He might have liked to cook, or read, or hike, but in this world I could only stare.
The man’s last thoughts were scrawled across the front of a newspaper. He’d signed his name at the bottom, in clumsy uneven handwriting. Jacob came looking for his sister—for a final farewell before he passed—but instead he found them gone and their home abandoned.
When the crematoriums finally fell silent, the remaining fringes of society left the dead where they lay, never to be burned or buried or dealt with. Instead they were discarded, sometimes with fond thoughts, but more often than not without a second glance. For Jacob, though, I tried to do better.
His last words joined the burning certificates of his family.
#
As my journey continued, and my travels pushed me farther and farther from the familiar streets of my home town, so too did my reputation push beyond that of a lowly drifter with a satchel full of death certificates.
In one little settlement an elderly man propositioned me with a grubby letter written in thick black marker on the backside of an envelope. Could be that he mistook my satchel full of death certificates for a real postbag, or maybe he wanted simply to write that letter and let it go into the world, away from his thoughts and anxieties.
As I did in all of these small settlements, my first questions were about my Mum. I’d deliver a letter to the moon if it meant I could reunite her with Dad. But, of course, I heard nothing.
For payment the old boy offered a mug of their home brewed wheat mash and a warm place to sleep, but I resisted. He didn’t even know if his daughter was alive, and my travels had taught me that in all likelihood she wasn’t.
The promise of a friendly fire and alcohol was not lost on me however, and after he twisted my arm with additional payment, I swiped up his make-shift letter, cramming it into my overstuffed satchel.
There was no hope within me that I’d find her. Death certificates were easy, last known address was written right there in black and white. Chances were that in my stash of certificates there was the same name now scrawled across the back of the envelop, another soul lost to the darkness of the crematorium.
But for the sake of the old man I searched, I asked, and I probed, until eventually I found her.
She’d held out on her own in the basement of an old fishmonger. The smell alone would have kept away any opportunistic looters. When she snatched the letter from behind her blood-streaked filleting knife and read the name at the bottom, her whole body shook in waves of silent relief.
No one had friends or relatives until they saw or heard from them again for the first time. Everyone assumed the worst, and often they were correct. This time, though, a simple letter and my rough directions were enough to reunite father and daughter across the ruins of the world.
From burning to posting, my purpose shifted. I still laid families to rest in the comfort of their former homes, but now I sought people. Sometimes the letters joined the small bundles of burning certificates, when the recipient could not be found, but occasionally my work brought me to the right end of a thread, bringing those living back together.
In the intervening years, the ebb and flow of post became an omen for the quality of my travels. More letters in one place meant prosperity and stability, the people optimistic. There is a vulnerability in releasing your thoughts into a letter, especially when its delivery is dependent on the success of drifter, who carried the certificates of the dead.
#
When I came to that final village it was to satisfy both of my purposes. I held the last certificates of that batch—Ellen Peters and her husband Paul—and a single hopeful letter addressed to Clare Morris.
The sender was a middle aged man called Derek. He had written it in front of me the moment he heard the services I could provide. His directions were clear too; there was no searching like usual. His description of the route was precise and clear, like he had walked it a hundred times himself, or longed to follow his footsteps once again.
Ellen and Paul were a happy coincidence. A journey felt more complete when there was something to burn alongside something to deliver. But there was no knowing the kinds of people they were. In my years of travels I had laid to rest killers and thieves, abusers and vandals. For every one whose name garnered spittle and derision, a dozen others were met only with quiet longing, a tear-streaked cheek, or a warm smile.
The village itself was a collage of metal and wood. Edges of structure blurred together with the ruins beyond and then snapped into focus once I knew what my eyes saw. A few dozen people sat upon logs and stones around a fire my father would have been proud of. My nose pulled me ever closer to the small spit roasting a slab of meat over the flames.
Like all these places, my approach was a well rehearsed dance between me and the sentries and the people within. Their scrutiny was understandable, but the moment they saw death certificates clutched in my raised hands, they let me through with a solemn nod.
Their matriarch approached me. She wore a thick wax jacket and wellington boots. Her shotgun remained cracked over one arm as she took the certificates from me. She read each one in turn, her eyes lingering on the names as if she spoke directly to Ellen and Paul through the fading ink of their final testament.
“There’s none of them left here,” she said. “Not a brother or sister, or even a distant cousin.”
“That’s how it tends to be.”
“You’ll burn them, then?”
With a nod, I gestured to the proud fire that danced in the twilight. Better than the small embers I made on my own, and this time built by the community to which the family would return. A more fitting end, perhaps.
Many eyes followed us across the broken concrete, until we stood mere inches from the fire. Its heat clawed at my face. I made the twisted bundles under that watchful stare, taking care with the names, as always.
With a nod from the matriarch, I cast the family into the flames. We watched in a silence punctuated only by the crack and pop of the fire. Blackened paper curled inwards, the ink melting away onto the flames, and soon, they were gone.
“I have a letter.” I let my words break the deep silence and heads turned once more. “Clare Morris?”
A small voice spoke up from near the back, as a young girl pushed her way forward through the crowd. She took the letter from my outstretched hand and I tried to ignore the tears welling in her eyes. She slowly sounded out the words under her breath while she read.
“Thank you,” she said. “What can we do to repay you?”
I didn’t even hesitate. “I am looking for my mother, Lucy Watson. She was a doctor. I’m not sure if she came through here, but…” everyone had a story like mine, and most never found their answers.
The hung heads and mournful faces told me everything, but Clare Morris simply nodded, tears tickling the corners of her smile.
#
“Real graves?” It had been years since I’d last seen one. Even the old yards had fallen to disarray. When there’s no relatives left to leave flowers and scrub off the creeping moss, the wind and the rain will take care of the memories of people.
But these graves were crisp, clean, tidy. No master mason cut them, the engravings were uneven and chipped, but the words were clear. Dozens of them.
“We’ve always buried them,” Clare Morris said. She was young enough that she had grown up in this world. Where my eyes caught on the jagged edges of the ruins I learned as a young man, her eyes seemed to drift over the collapsed buildings and the barren landscape beyond, as if content with the only world she had ever known.
“We used to burn them. I used to burn them.”
“Why would a postman burn bodies?”
“We had to.”
I ran a hand over the smooth facets of a gravestone. Cold fingers met cold stone as I read the names upon its face. Jane and Bertie.
“Why is there no date?” My finger traced the rough outline of their names.
Clare didn’t answer but looked at me the way one would look at a drunk uncle around an evening fire. The wisdom of youth teasing a relic from a harsher time.
“The one I wanted to show you is over there.” She pointed to a far corner of the graveyard. We treaded carefully between the plots, and I couldn’t help but read names as we passed. None had dates, none had ages. The quality of the carving grew rougher the further back in the graveyard we went, until we came to the final stone.
It wasn’t even carved. Whoever planted it had pulled a concrete slab from a ruined building and scratched the words upon its surface. They must have used a rock, or a flint, or a knife; certainly not a chisel. But it was no less clean than any of the others, and no less clear.
Lucy Watson.
Mum.
Deep in those quiet corners of my heart, where my mind dare not tread except on dark nights where wolves howled and thunder crashed, I hoped I would find her this way. Not as a discarded certificate on a crematorium floor, not even in the ashes of that certificate, but with the sun on her face and her memory protected.
Dad’s certificate weighed heavy in my chest pocket.
“She was the founder of this village,” Clare said, keeping her distance while I knelt down on the rocky ground. “She died when I was young, but she saved my Mum’s leg, and many others besides. You should be very proud.”
And proud I was. But what would she make of me? I drew my post satchel closer. It was half full of hopeful letters and half full of yet more certificates from history’s ghosts. We knew each other for but a snapshot of our lives, and a compulsion bubbled in my throat to fill Mum in with everything. She went to her grave not knowing whether Dad or I survived.
I fumbled around in the recesses of my satchel until my fingers felt cold metal. I withdrew my flint and steel, and placed Dad against Mum’s stone.