...looking at the back of the man working at the table. He was about five feet, ten inches tall, and medium weight with a slight belly sticking out of his dirty denim coveralls. I couldn't see his face yet, just the back of his head, short black hair around the back and balding on top. He was humming to himself. It was nothing coherent, just a deep "hum dum duh dum..." as he fussed with something near the body's shoulder.
I couldn't see its face, but the uniform looked tight and I wondered where they got one so quick. It looked like it could fit me, a strange thought.
"Make sure you get the right medals," I said. He just continued working a minute or two more, then he turned and I caught his name tag. It was one of those sew on patches, a red oval and white letters. Pete was his name and his face was pale, with dark eyes and a medium length beard to match the hair. He turned back to the body and kept humming, then said "Don't worry, everything is going to be taken care of..."
I looked around the room. It was large, about forty by sixty feet, with white walls and a gray painted cement floor. It had three rows of gurneys, spread out around six feet apart from side to side and head to toe, filling it with about thirty total. Each one had a shrouded body except for the one Pete was working on. It lie exposed to the harsh fluorescent light, dressed to the hilt in Army dress blues, the colors standing out in bright contrast to the surroundings. Pete didn't cover the body, but started packing things up like he was getting ready to leave.
I wondered if the will was being followed like it had been discussed prior to the deployment. It would probably be a regular burial with full honors, but had there been a change of heart? Was it cremation? A green funeral without embalming? I seemed to remember a wish for something low key, in a pasture, under the stars of the Milky Way and storms of the Midwest, with a gentle wind blowing on lazy summer days. As an atheist, the Indian prayer seemed appropriate. I couldn't be sure or that it was even decided either way. Did it matter now?
Pete walked to the front of the building. The back was largely open to the rest, divided in the middle by what appeared to be a weight bearing wall twenty feet long, but with openings about ten feet wide on both sides. Shouldn't there have been doors? The front had large windows, a small door on one side and a garage door on the other. A large desk sat near the man-sized door with a TV on top of it. The only sound was the low electrical sound of the fluorescent lights until Pete opened the garage door. We stepped outside and I looked at him as he glanced back inside with something like pity on his face. Then he got in a rusty old tow truck, backed out of the garage and left.
Where was I? The building was off an old dirt road in the midst of pines and looked like it had been an old gas station at one time. That explained the garage, but not how it got turned into a morgue later. The nearest city was visible through a break in the trees to the left of the building. It looked like it had a population of around ten thousand and city lights blurred the skyline as it reached the stars. The air was cool and I wondered how I'd gotten here.
Fifteen-hundred miles away, she sat huddled over a laptop, checking for an email or waiting for a call. Her back was hunched and tense between her shoulder blades. Where was he? Why hadn't he written? He didn't call very often, about once every one to two weeks, but he always emailed or chatted daily, sometimes up to around five-hundred lines. She entered her password and hoped for a message finally...nothing. "What the fuck?" she thought, a little angry now, but only because she was worried. It had been three days.
I wondered when I would get home. I couldn't remember the night before, but I stood looking into a small mirror on the dividing wall facing the doors. I heard a woman asking an old couple what they had donated and turned just long enough to get a quick look before turning my attention to the mirror again. The lady who was speaking and the older couple all looked approximately the same age, sixty maybe? She was wearing a long dress, covering her ample body all the way to the ankles, and wearing flats. I didn't really get a close look at them, but I remember the man had on a pinstripe suit and talked with a heavy southern accent. Apparently he donated the mirror and it was supposedly worth five-hundred dollars, enough to get a gasp from the lady who asked. They looked oddly out of place, almost like they had an ethereal glow about them, but they ignored me. The mirror was neat. It had several switches on the top and right side that turned on different little lights. The bottom had a little slide switch that popped a tiny mirror out beneath the lower edge, perpendicular to the main mirror. I had never seen anything like it and it appeared old, faded, like vintage 1940's or such. I opened my mouth and scrunched my upper and lower lips away from my teeth, seeing if there was a reflection in the smaller mirror. I didn't see anything so I gave up and assumed it was for makeup or something.
I looked up and the old people were gone. I hadn't heard them leave, odd. Instead, a young man was sitting in the chair at the desk. He looked like a high school kid, possibly a senior and was built like a football player. He must have been six foot four or so and weighed around two-hundred fifty pounds, but he had a baby face and short crew cut. He was leaning back in the chair, feet propped up on the desk, white t-shirt tucked into bell bottoms flaring over black leather boots. Bell bottoms? He looked like he just stepped out of the movie Grease.
I'd had enough. I ached to see my wife and wanted to get out of there. I still wasn't sure how I'd gotten there. I should have been back with my unit. "What the hell was taking so long?" I wondered. I looked down and saw a laptop I hadn't noticed before and sat down to type in a website, but it didn't work. It was like my fingers went through the keys.
Suddenly I panicked. I hadn't seen Pete in a while. I wondered what was going on? I looked at the kid who had lain down the paper and yelled "What's going on here?" He just looked at me and said "I don't know, I just work here." Perfect. At least somebody was talking to me finally. I looked at the paper, an Omaha World Herald, and tried to pick it up. It slipped through my fingers. "Open it up!" I demanded of him. He did and thumbed through the pages. I peered over his shoulder and scanned. No, no, no, I didn't see what I was looking for. Where the hell was the news? It all looked like advertisements. There! Finally, something in the margin about casualties, but it wasn't the format I was used to. There, four names, but no ages or ranks, not even the units. But wait, the third name down, just a first initial and last name, then something about a problem with an arm.
I looked up and the kid was gone. Eh? I looked back down at the name again and thought something was wrong, too coincidental. Hmm, could it be a typo? Change the first letter of the last name and...my breath caught in a sudden moment of realization. It couldn't be, but what else would explain it!? No! My mind thought what the fuck, but my heart lurched. What was Pete working on that I couldn't see for the uniform? Was there something wrong with the arm? Why hadn't Pete ever really looked at me? Who was laying back there? Who were these other people and why had they seemed out of time? Why haven't I talked to my wife since I've been here? What the fuck was going on? What the fuck was going on? WHAT THE FUCK WAS GOING ON???
I was catatonic, but in my mind's eye I flew some thousand miles distant and watched as a nondescript sedan pulled up into my drive. Two men got out, the car doors closing in a "thunk, thunk." My wife peered out the window, tears already beginning to well up, then headed for the door as they walked up. I watched in horror as she opened the door and one began to speak. I started to scream...