Harlequin no.7
My town has gained some notoriety in recent weeks. Maybe you’ve heard about the strange electrical storm that showed up in Charlottesville, N.C. overnight and then disappeared just as quick, or maybe you’ve read in the paper about the sudden outbreak of mental illness and cerebral aneurysms. Don’t worry though if you haven’t been keeping up with the crackpot news outlets, I’ll fill you in. How do I know so much about this? Well, let’s just say I was there.
For starters, the only reason I moved to this God awful backwater hell in the first place was because my career choice made employment somewhat difficult to find. You see, most funeral homes are family owned, so naturally the laws of nepotism apply. It didn’t matter that I had a degree in mortuary science, or that I had already completed my apprenticeship and directors certification by age 24, the fact that my daddy didn’t own a crematorium meant I would be facing an endless hallway of closed doors until who knows when. That was of course, until a visit to Bailey Meadows (my birth town.) prompted enough boredom to look up an old friend, Terry Liddell.
I met Terry around the summer of ’05, at this cruddy little bar called “The Broken Window,” where bands would sometimes play shows if they couldn’t find anywhere decent. He and I hit it off in a totally-not-homosexual way and we spent a huge chunk of time around each other because Bailey Meadows was the most boring fucking place in all of North Carolina. That, and the Window was the only place within a twenty miles drive of my house that would serve minors.
So, after wrapping up my apprenticeship in Raleigh, I moved back in with my parents due to the unemployment thing (Apprenticeships do pay, but the position was considered temporary at best.), e-mailed my résumé along the entire East Coast, started going stir crazy, and finally worked up enough motivation to drive my Charger west along Highway 42.
Having spent the last 4 years in Raleigh made me forget what a shit hole Charlottesville truly was. It’s the kind of place where people don’t mow their lawns because of all the scrap metal hiding under the weeds. The folks here were a strange breed of redneck, a cross between the Appalachian variety and the lower dwellers of the marshland. The town itself is just as terrible. There’s the strip mall where all the stoners hang out, a library that smells like piss, a trailer park, the Trinity Baptist church, a hospital, and the downtown area.(includes the Broken Window, a couple of family-run business, the post office, and the courthouse.) The rest of Charlottesville is nothing but a series of abandoned farm houses for about a five mile radius and the ruins of an old paper mill that blew up in ’88.
I found Terry at the Window, behind the counter wearing a Sonic Youth t-shirt and wiping off the mugs. Turns out he and some dude named Franklin bought the place three years back and had pretty much kept things the same since. “Don’t fix what ain’t broke.” Terry said.
After catching up on recent news and laughing about the time we spray painted Mrs. Patterson’s dog over a few shots of Wild Turkey, finally Terry mentioned that the Burnswick funeral parlor needed a new embalmer because the old one went crazy and hung himself or something. Just like Terry to get me good and drunk before telling me something of actual importance. I called him an asshole and we both laughed so hard that I fell of the barstool. That was when Terry made me hand over my car keys.
I woke up the next morning feeling the way I imagined a corpse would feel if it were to be dug up and smacked across the face with a shovel. Numb, but somehow still in pain. The next thing I noticed was that I was not in my parent’s house. I was on Terry’s sofa, or at least I hoped Terry’s. Dragging myself to the kitchen, I drank at least a gallon of water straight from the tap before puking it all back up. The sound of me retching out my innards must have been loud, because the next thing I knew there was an unfamiliar voice coming from behind, a girls voice.
“You must be Stephan. Terry said you were a lightweight.” I turned around to match the voice to a face. She was about a head shorter than me, pale skinned, skinny as a twig and with one of those asymmetrical haircuts that have grown quite popular. Also she was wearing a black t-shirt two sizes too small and no pants. Just a pair of pink panties with a zipper down the front.
“Call me Harris, and Terry’s a dick. He should know to keep me off the firewater, ever
since I hurled all over his drum kit.” I said, wiping barf off my lips while trying not to stare at her crotch. Naturally I assumed that this chick was either Terry’s girl, or at the very least someone not to be caught with while pitching a tent.
“Well Harris, I’m glad you made room for breakfast, ‘cause I’m making waffles.”
Fuck yeah, waffles. During breakfast I found out that her name was Billie-Joe Kimble, and yes, she was Terry’s girl. Fiancé in fact. They met each other at The Broken Window three years ago. Billie was the bassist for a band called “Chop the Willow”, which she joined after moving here from Jacksonville. Why she would willingly relocate to this cesspool was beyond me, but she seemed to like it here. “It’s got something you can’t find in the city,” She said. “This place has mystery.” Looking back on things, Billie was probably right.
Here’s a bit of a historical mystery to keep you from getting bored. As I mentioned earlier, there was a paper mill just outside of town that caught fire in 1988. Some sort of industrial accident or some such. Anyways, a lot of people died in the resulting explosion and it pretty much crippled the town economy. That’s not the strange part. The topic of interest here was that the police couldn’t figure out what caused the fire in the first place. No signs of arson or failed equipment, just a bunch of confused head scratches and rumors. What were these rumors you ask? Well, from the witness testimonials, several floor workers reported that they heard laughter just before the fire started. Maniacal laughter, like someone was in on some sick joke.
After breakfast I took a shower and got ready to head over to Burnswick. Lucky for me I was already wearing a suit, so I didn’t feel underdressed. I thanked Terry and Billie for letting me crash on their couch and they wished me luck. Actually, Terry wished me luck AND offered to give me a ride. I declined, on account of Charlottesville being so damn small that the only reason anyone living here should need a car would be so that they could drive the hell away. Seriously, it took me about fifteen minutes to get to the funeral parlor on foot. I would have gotten there sooner if I hadn’t stopped at the Fill-U station for a pack of Camel. (I cannot stress this enough, smoking is a terrible habit. It eats up all your money and limits your ability to run for extended periods of time.)
When I walked into Burnswick Funerals, the first thing I noticed was the complete lack of reception. Normally there should be someone to oversee the front room, usually from a desk or nearby office. True, it’s often better to call in advance to make funeral arrangements, but there really needs to be some sort of oversight for the possible walk in. The second thing I noticed were the dead nightshade flowers on the coffee table. Rather unprofessional in my opinion. White lilies or orchids would have been better, and preferably not old ones. In any case, I decided to wait for someone to show up, and in the meantime I walked around the viewing room, looking over the black and white photographs framed about the walls. Fairly standard display: Trees, sleeping animals, churches, old Victorian portraits, other vaguely mournful images. Appropriate décor if I ever saw it. Interesting thing about 19th century portraits and why they often seem somewhat creepy; most of the people you’ll see in them are actually dead. Old school photography was a time consuming process, meaning subjects would have to remain still for a few hours while the silver nitrate imprinted the light. Also it was very expensive and therefore only used on special occasions, funerals being one of them. And since the person/persons getting their picture taken were post-mortem, there would be no need to worry about fidgeting. I was pondering this knowledge while viewing a picture of a little girl with dead eyes propped up in a chair when I heard a door close somewhere in the lobby. Turning around, I saw a confused looking man staring at me.
“Can I help you sir?” He finally asked after a few awkward moments. He was an older gentleman, somewhere in his mid to late fifties. He wore a pair of wire framed glasses and showed signs of unwanted balding, but no signs to immediately raise the question of whether or not he liked to sodomize the dead. Trust me, necrophilia is not a desirable employer trait.
“Yes you can, actually, I heard that you’re in need of a new embalmer,” I extended my hand for approval “I think I might just be the man for the job. I’m Stephan D. Harris, a pleasure to meet you Mr…”
“Burnswick,” He replied, shaking my hand. “Alfred Burnswick. And yes actually, I lost my main undertaker a few weeks back, a real shame too what happened.” He sighed in frustration before going on. “It’s just been me and Lenard running this place since. Let’s talk. First of all, have you done any apprenticing?”
About an hour later the deal was sealed, I’d finally broken into my target occupation. So what if it was in Charlottesville? I could always relocate after a few years, but for now, it was my time to shine. It didn’t take long for me to get used to things under Mr. Burnswick, in fact, after the first embalming he pretty much left me to my own thing. After all, I’d been training my entire adult life for this line of work. Whenever I had a question as to where a particular wound filler or sanitizer was kept, I’d just ask Lenard. (Lenny ran the cremation end of Burnswick, but would also fill in as an embalmer from time to time) but for the most part it was the same basic procedure that I’d been doing in Raleigh. First I’d scrub down the cadaver, then I’d massage the limbs to relieve rigor mortis. Following that I’d plug up the orifices, seal up any open wounds, begin the arterial embalming, wire the mouth and eyelids shut, finish up the hypodermic embalming, dress the cadaver, apply makeup, and deliver the body to the viewing room. I didn’t even have to deal with any of the surviving family members or review any death certificates, Mr. Burnswick as the lead funeral director would take care of all that noise. The only other regular of the funeral home was the flower girl/receptionist/grief counselor, Madelyn Wade. Now, before I move on, I would like to say that business at Burnswick Funeral was moderately steady, but this was not because people in Charlottesville were dying all of the time. Most of our clients came from a wide group of people in Pitt County who chose us based mainly on our comparatively modest fees.
So after about a month I had saved up enough money to straight-up buy my own house in Charlottesville for the price of a used car. It was an okay little place on Milton Street about two blocks away from The Broken Window. Things were alright for the most part. I hated the town and all those confederate flags but getting back into the groove with Terry made it tolerable. After work most nights I’d just walk over to the Window, drink a few glasses of Wild Turkey, and argue with Terry about which actors from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” were actually dead. Other nights I’d stop by to listen to Chop the Willow practice their set in Terry’s garage before turning in for the night. Billie’s band was surprisingly decent, I must admit. They had that kind of outlaw sound of The Black Angels or Murder by Death that went over well with a mostly southern blue-collar audience. To sum it all up, life was getting comfortable. Until the day I found the thing in a jar.
At first I didn’t know what the hell it was I was looking at. Actually, I still have no freakin’ clue, but I mean I REALLY didn’t know what it was. I found it on a shelf in the storage closet one day at work when our embalming machine busted a tube and I had to look around for a possible replacement. Up on the top shelf shoved into the far back was a cardboard box labeled ‘miscellaneous’ that at first seemed promising. I got on a step stool, and just like any other day I pulled something off a shelf. What I found inside the box… didn’t actually startle me. Not at first, but it did peak my interest. Surrounded by random pieces of newspaper and spare calipers was an average sized mason jar coated in a layer of dust and grime. It was definitely full of some sort of fluid. (Dark green, so it wasn’t formaldehyde.) Also it had a label on the side that read “Harlequin No.7,” which seemed cryptic to say the least. The layer of dirt on the outside and the dark liquid inside made it almost impossible to see what sat in there, so of course I cleaned it off with damp rag and held the jar up to the florescent light for a better look. Whatever that thing was, it was ostensibly organic, based off of the pale flesh tone color. It looked like some sort of mutated potato, but that’s a stupid comparison. If I had to guess I’d say that it was an extracted tumor, or maybe a diseased pancreas. The top half was bulbous, with little protruding bumps here and there. The bottom half had a curved tail similar to the spine of a mammal fetus. Also along the midsection were several thick tendrils that corkscrewed off in every direction. It was an odd thing, but not so odd as to alarm me. True, it was uncommon to find such things in a mortuary, but on the other hand, coroners would often keep certain specimens of interest when discovered, usually out of scientific curiosity. Who’s to say what sort of things Lenard or my predecessor or even Mr. Burnswick have found while poking around inside of people. I’d have kept it if I were the one to find it, only I wouldn’t have hidden it away in a box.
I put the Harlequin on the counter next to the hand sink and went about looking for a replacement tube. I found one eventually, thank God, so the rest of the day went on as normally as ever, save for the occasional glance at the green jar. I resolved to ask Mr. Burnswick if he knew anything about the thing-in-a-jar after the viewing service upstairs was over. I really didn’t want to pester him, but I couldn’t leave an enigma like that unanswered, it was just too nagging to ignore.
When I finally got a chance to show him the strange thing, he took a close look into the cloudy green jar after reading the label, but in the end he just shrugged and said it was probably just a gaffe, or a weird prank set up by the previous mortician Ryan Wilcox. Not a huge stretch, the name “Harlequin” kind of made it seem plausible that the whole thing was a joke. Still, I wanted to be sure. I kept a dissection kit at home in my medicine cabinet, and being licensed as both an embalmer and as a funeral director I was legally allowed to handle and transport human remains, if that was indeed what the Harlequin was. Seeing no qualms about bringing it home for further study, I cleaned up the “undercroft” and headed home with the mysterious jar. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to inspect it more closely until the following night. I had Sunday off and I had planned to go out to the open field gun range with Terry and Billie-Joe while the rest of the town wasted their time in Church. More space for us.
I had a good time blowing apart teddy bears and tacky lamps at the range. Billie kept shouting, “It’s coming right for us!” right before unloading a round from her 12-gauge into one of the stuffed bears, and Terry was and always has been such a terrible shot that he eventually became so irate that he threw down his handgun and proceeded to smash apart a lamp with a tire iron he got out of his trunk. I even managed to get a few good shots off myself, of course I would have done better if Terry hadn’t been shouting things like, “score one for the corpse fucker” and other such distracting remarks. Eventually Billie joined in on the mocking and asked me if it was true that morticians go around killing people to promote business.
“No, that’s Burnswick’s job actually, I just set up the marionette strings for the puppet shows.” I responded, jokingly of course.
“Hey, do what you gotta do,” chimed in Terry, “just don’t go crazy like the last one.”
“Yeah, hey I’ve been meaning to ask about that. Why’d Wilcox off himself anyway?” I asked.
“You don’t know? It was in his obituary. Apparently, Ryan Wilcox’s wife died in the paper mill fire, and he started to get more and more depressed and withdrawn over the years. It sorta makes sense, he had to deal with all the funerals of nearly everyone who died there, his wife, her coworkers and friends and all that. He just couldn’t live with it anymore. Said so in the note he left.” Billie kicked the dirt with one of her chunky motorcycle boots, clearly getting bored with the conversation. “You think we can talk about something a bit less depressing? We’re here to have fun and ignore gun safety, not get all emo ‘n shit.”
“I didn’t mean to be such a downer,” I said while loading up my revolver. “I just wanted to know why. I found something at work yesterday that might have been his.” Terry started to giggle. “No, it wasn’t porn Terry, you ass. It was some weird thing in a jar, like a maybe a mutant organ or something. I was planning on slicing it up today, actually.”
“Can we watch?” Asked Terry and Billie in unison. *sigh. Some people are really into the macabre I guess.
We got back to my place a few hours later after the gun range shenanigans and a late lunch at the local greasy spoon. The sun had already started to set, basking the early autumn sky in an orange glow. Terry sat in the passenger seat of my Charger, Billie-Joe in the back with her shotgun lain across her lap. Pulling into the gravel pit that constituted a driveway I delegated the camcorder to Terry and requested that Billie refrain from poking things. I don’t have a copy of the home video we made, I destroyed the original after mailing a couple of copies to various news outlets a few days after Billie and I had finished hunting down the surviving cultists, but I remember enough of it to cobble together a transcript.
Video Recording: The scene starts with a shot of Mr. Harris walking out of his bathroom. He is wearing a black apron over his suit and a pair of latex gloves. His face is partially obscured by a surgical mask.
Terry:(Behind the camera) Are you ready to win the Nobel Prize for Incredibly Fucked up Pseudo-Science?
Harris: Absolutely! Those morons hunting for Bigfoot won’t stand a chance this year.
Billie-Joe:(Outside of view) Hey guys, let’s get this over with. I wanna use the afterbirth to make soup. Chuckles.
Terry follows Mr. Harris into the living room, where he has set up a few card tables to organize his equipment. On it we can see several empty mason jars, one jar full of what appears to be formaldehyde, a discectomy kit (includes two scalpels, a pair of tweezers, tissue scissors, a curved probing tool, a hypodermic needle, and a clamp)a microscope, and a copy of The Physician’s Desk Reference Vol. 29. Last, in the center on a metal cooking tray sits the Harlequin.
Harris: (Holding Harlequin No.7 up for the camera.) This sick little puppy here is something I found in a mortuary yesterday. We’re not yet sure what it is exactly, but my working hypothesis is that it’s an alien fetus. Either that or a times ten scale model of Terry’s penis.
The frame is briefly blocked by Terry’s extended middle finger.
Terry: Fuck you Stephan!
Harris: Right then, move over here. I am now about to open the jar.
Terry moves to a better angle and zooms the camera into focus over the Harlequin.
Harris: (Twisting the lid off with a slow hiss followed by a loud pop.) Holy hell it stinks. (Grimacing) Nurse, please note that the subject smells like someone barfed into a diaper.
Billie-Joe:(Now in frame)I’m not the nurse damn it, I’m just in charge of soup.
Harris:(Returning to frame) Alright, I am about to remove the specimen from its protective jar. (Mr. Harris inserts a pair of salad tongs into the jar and removes the Harlequin proper. Note here that a minor distortion affects the shot.) Well, it’s definitely organic, judging by how squishy it is. (Carefully placing the subject onto the cooking tray) Oh wow, this might actually be an alien after all. Check out these veins wrapping around the head bubbles. And… Jesus is that an eye?
Terry directs the camera for a closer inspection. From what we can see, there does appear to be an orb that closely resembles the likeness of an eye. Also during the close-up, another line of distortion moves across the length of the screen.
Terry: Dude, you should poke it with something.
Harris: Science is more than just poking shit you know. But yes, I should take a look under these flaps here.
Mr. Harris tentatively prods the strange orb with the blunt end of his probing tool. Unfortunately, the screen pixelates slightly so we do not get a chance to view this maneuver. Also during this scene the camera begins to pick up audio feedback, despite there being no reason for it to do so.
Harris: (Jerking his hand back) The fuck?
Billie-Joe: What’s wrong?
Harris: (Looking startled into the camera) Shit, did you catch that Terry?
Terry: I didn’t catch anything man. Your camera is acting all stupid.
Billie-Joe: What’s going on? What happened?
Harris: I thought I saw it twitch a little. I probably just bumped the table or something.
Billie-Joe: Are you fucking with us?
Terry: (To Billie) Yeah, he’s fucking with us.
Harris: (waving his hands in frustration) Forget it. Terry, move back a little, you’re crowding me. I’ll start over.
Mr. Harris resumes his attempt to investigate Harlequin No.7. He lifts one of the supposed eye lids with his probing tool, and as before the camera pixelates slightly and picks up feedback, but the overall video quality is decent enough to grasp the situation. A minute goes by with Mr. Harris handling several tools before the light above the card tables begins to flicker. At first, only Billie notices this effect.
Billie-Joe: Hey guys, um… (Points to the light)
Terry: (Directing the camera between Billie, the light bulb, and Mr. Harris) Okay, hey, I’m getting kinda creeped out now.
Harris: (In center frame) Right, okay, let’s do this later. (Mr. Harris attempts to handle Harlequin No.7 with the salad tongs.) Holy shit, it’s moving!
Billie-Joe: Get ride rid of it! Get it out of here!
At this point the audio drops and the screen becomes highly distorted. From the few images that remain somewhat clear, we can infer that Mr. Harris is struggling to reinsert the Harlequin into its original container. The camera also manages to capture several yellow-green pulses of light, but it is unknown whether or not this effect can be contributed to the near constant visual distortions. This portion lasted for approximately forty three seconds, ending when audio is restored with a loud gunshot. When the visuals stabilize, we can see that Billie is pointing her shotgun at the splattered remains of the Harlequin. We can also see that her nose is bleeding.
Harris: (Nose also bleeding) Thanks for that.
Billie-Joe: (Breathing heavily) Yeah, no problem.
Terry: (Yelling) What the fuck was that?!
Harris: (To Terry) How much of that did you manage to film?
Terry: I don’t know man, the goddamn video kept going out! If I coul… Oh… I don’t feel so… (The camera becomes shaky and we can hear the sound of Terry vomiting.)
Billie-Joe: (Running to Terry’s side.) It’s alright, we’re all alright. Just calm down.
Terry: Don’t tell me to fucking calm down! Or did you forget that the room almost exploded just now? What were those noises?
Mr. Harris appears to try to say something, but stops himself when a thunderclap shakes the living room. No one says anything for several seconds, until a flash of yellow-green is seen coming from the nearby window, followed by a second thunderclap.
Harris: Outside. Now.
Terry follows Billie and Mr. Harris outside onto his front lawn. Billie and Harris are looking directly overhead, followed by the camera doing a sweep over the night sky. What we see is a massive thunderhead approaching from the East, and several flashes of chartreuse lightening entangling the dark clouds.
Harris: Terry, Billie… get back inside.
The video ends there.
So yes, we did manage to film the previous events, all the way up to our view of the approaching storm. Unfortunately a good deal of what was recorded ended up being completely unwatchable, so I’ll have to fill in the damaged bits.
First of all, when I was attempting to remove the part that looked like an eye, the Harlequin started writhing and squirming around, which was highly unexpected, to say the least. The next thing I knew, the lights in my house began to pulse and the air in my living room started to shimmer like hot asphalt in June. I panicked and tried to put the Harlequin back into its jar, hoping that would make it stop doing whatever it was that was making the high-pitched screaming that seemed to be coming from all around us. It didn’t, even after I secured the lid. In fact, after I shoved it back into the fluid the damn thing started flashing this blinding green light that made my head feel like it was about to explode. I still have a hard time remembering at what point Billie returned with her shotgun, but after she blew the Harlequin into little giblets everything stopped. Except for the storm.
On September 23rd, 2009, fifty six men, women, and children claimed to have seen the bizarre electrical storm that passed over Charlottesville beginning at approximately 9:13 p.m. EST. These eyewitnesses were the only apparent claims of any weather phenomena, as not a single meteorological study supported such accusations. The storm in question lasted only a few minutes, but because of the witness statements, phone calls, and the complete disregard of the professional news outlets, people in town referred to it as a sign of the End Days. The most vocal of these statements came out of the Trinity Baptist Church, which is a whole separate story in itself. More on that some other time.
Now, after cleaning up my living room and storing what little of the Harlequin remained into sample jars, Billie and Terry went home for the evening. I didn’t sleep that night. I had too much to reflect upon from had transpired.
I was exhausted the next day at work. Exhausted and nervous. Some part of my brain had been switched to panic mode and it refused to shut down. I tried to just move along in my work, hoping that it would help take my mind off that horrible otherworldly screeching. Looking for any excuse to preoccupy myself, I volunteered to pick up a body from the Charlottesville General Hospital. Madelyn got a message from earlier in the morning and had arranged to fulfill a preneed tomorrow afternoon for a Mr. Havenbrook, who had died sometime last night. I didn’t bother asking for any details, I just fired up the hearse and left.
I got to the hospital about ten minutes after filing the paperwork at the courthouse. I didn’t get a chance to talk to Dr. Sarah Liddell (Terry’s aunt and the Pitt County Coroner) which was a bit of a disappointment, but I did have an interesting conversation with her assistant, Robert.
“So how’d this guy kick it?” I asked Rob while he helped me load Mr. Havenbrook into the hearse.
“Well, from what I heard from Sarah, he and his wife were checking out that freaky lightning storm last night, when all of a sudden this guy drops to the ground and starts having a seizure. By the time the ambulance arrived he was already gone.”
“Weird,” I said out loud, “What did the autopsy show?”
“Aneurysm,” said Rob, pulling out the MRI shots of Mr. Havenbrook’s head. “Probably brought on by the seizure. See that blotch right there at the base of his brain stem? That’s a popped artery.”
I shut the back of the hearse and thanked Robert. From his point of view, everything seemed fine. Flashing lights are known to cause seizures, so big deal right? I however regretted ever leaving the mortuary. I was looking for a way to forget about the events of last night, instead I found out that I may have inadvertently caused the death of a perfectly innocent man. It was a very unwelcoming feeling, like an omen of doom.
I got Havenbrook’s body back to the mortuary not long after. Lenny was off that day and Mr. Burnswick was busy with a client, so I had move the cadaver downstairs myself. The funeral home had an elevator installed for just this purpose, and while the stretcher helped, Mr. Havenbrook weighed at least three hundred pounds, so it took a good deal of effort on my part to move his fat ass onto the slab. Once I got him up onto the embalming table I took a few minutes to catch my breath before proceeding with my work, all while trying not to think about who this man was.
Step one was to wash the body in antibacterial soap and water. I always hated this part due to the fact that there’s always fecal matter residue caked around the ass cheeks and upper thighs, but at least it’s far less disturbing than the second step. Ever give a full body massage to a dead guy? Well I have. The embalming process requires that a body’s circulatory system be un-constricted, and for that the muscles need to be relieved of rigor-mortis (The stiffening of muscle tissue due to an interruption in the ATP cycle.) Interestingly enough, Mr. Havenbrook had hardly any stiffness to him, something that I had not noticed until this point. Rigor mortis sets in at around three hours after death, peaking at around twelve hours before dissipating between forty eight to sixty hours. Havenbrook had been dead for a little over thirteen hours. His back was red and purple from livor mortis (Internal body fluids succumbing to the forces of gravity.), so clearly his heart muscles had ceased functioning. The only rational explanation would be extremely rapid decomposition, a hypothesis that I was capable of testing myself by simply jamming a cooking thermometer into his gut. (Yes, I was obligated to investigate this issue, as it may be health-safety related .Think bio-hazard C.D.C. guys lining the mortuary in yards of yellow tape.) I gave the thermometer a couple of minutes to warn up while I got myself into a haz-mat suit, just in case. The internal body temperature of the post-mortem lowers quite rapidly after death, but will eventually elevate as microbes multiply from within. Mr. Havenbrook had spent most of the night in a cooler, so if he was any warmer than the air conditioned room temperature then I would have to call in the cavalry. Also Dr. Liddell would probably be fired for not taking a proper blood test.
And the internal heat index was… sixty four point three degrees Fahrenheit. One degree lower than the room. He was fine, and I felt like an asshole in a scuba suit. That and now I had to patch up the hole I had put in his intestinal wall. Good job Harris, now you won’t get to have a lunch break. I didn’t bother taking off the hazard suit while I rushed to make up the lost time. Probably a good thing too, in retrospect.
After I had sealed up the hole and plugged up the anus with cotton swabs, I began the long process of embalming. I started the same way I always had: By making a small incision into the right common carotid artery, the other into the jugular vein. The embalming fluid would be pumped into the carotid artery, which pushes the “displacement,” out through the jugular and down a drain. For a man the size of Mr. Havenbrook, the whole thing would take about an hour and a half to complete, so I started up the pumps while I prepped for the hypodermic stage. As I walked towards the sink to wash off my gloves, I noticed that the lights were beginning to flicker. I stopped walking mid stride, my heart dropped into my stomach as I began to hear a wet smacking noise coming from the supposedly lifeless cadaver of Mr. Havenbrook. What I saw when I turned around made me drop the surgical tray to the ground.
His eyes were open. And they were staring directly into mine. His mouth was opening and closing as though he were trying to say something, but no noise was being made, save for his right arm limply slapping at the tubing in his neck. I didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what to think. All I could do was stand there, motionless with my back pressed against the sink. For the first time in my life, I wished that I had gone to law school.
It wasn’t until the air started to shimmer that I realized what was happening, when I finally understood why the Harlequin was numbered. Twenty four years ago, Ryan Wilcox found himself in this exact same situation. The storm, the aneurysm, the blotch at the base of Havenbrook’s brain: There was more than one Harlequin, at least six others, and they were parasites. They lived inside of people, lying dormant until the time came to awaken. Something else also came to mind. Just before it burst out from the back of his skull, Havenbrook began to smile. Just before the squirming thing slithered down the drain, I heard the sound of laughter.
Maniacal laughter, like someone was in on some sick joke.
Credit To: Stephan D. Harris
Source : http://www.creepypasta.com/harlequin-no-7/
Posted by : Admin-ST-Rex
For starters, the only reason I moved to this God awful backwater hell in the first place was because my career choice made employment somewhat difficult to find. You see, most funeral homes are family owned, so naturally the laws of nepotism apply. It didn’t matter that I had a degree in mortuary science, or that I had already completed my apprenticeship and directors certification by age 24, the fact that my daddy didn’t own a crematorium meant I would be facing an endless hallway of closed doors until who knows when. That was of course, until a visit to Bailey Meadows (my birth town.) prompted enough boredom to look up an old friend, Terry Liddell.
I met Terry around the summer of ’05, at this cruddy little bar called “The Broken Window,” where bands would sometimes play shows if they couldn’t find anywhere decent. He and I hit it off in a totally-not-homosexual way and we spent a huge chunk of time around each other because Bailey Meadows was the most boring fucking place in all of North Carolina. That, and the Window was the only place within a twenty miles drive of my house that would serve minors.
So, after wrapping up my apprenticeship in Raleigh, I moved back in with my parents due to the unemployment thing (Apprenticeships do pay, but the position was considered temporary at best.), e-mailed my résumé along the entire East Coast, started going stir crazy, and finally worked up enough motivation to drive my Charger west along Highway 42.
Having spent the last 4 years in Raleigh made me forget what a shit hole Charlottesville truly was. It’s the kind of place where people don’t mow their lawns because of all the scrap metal hiding under the weeds. The folks here were a strange breed of redneck, a cross between the Appalachian variety and the lower dwellers of the marshland. The town itself is just as terrible. There’s the strip mall where all the stoners hang out, a library that smells like piss, a trailer park, the Trinity Baptist church, a hospital, and the downtown area.(includes the Broken Window, a couple of family-run business, the post office, and the courthouse.) The rest of Charlottesville is nothing but a series of abandoned farm houses for about a five mile radius and the ruins of an old paper mill that blew up in ’88.
I found Terry at the Window, behind the counter wearing a Sonic Youth t-shirt and wiping off the mugs. Turns out he and some dude named Franklin bought the place three years back and had pretty much kept things the same since. “Don’t fix what ain’t broke.” Terry said.
After catching up on recent news and laughing about the time we spray painted Mrs. Patterson’s dog over a few shots of Wild Turkey, finally Terry mentioned that the Burnswick funeral parlor needed a new embalmer because the old one went crazy and hung himself or something. Just like Terry to get me good and drunk before telling me something of actual importance. I called him an asshole and we both laughed so hard that I fell of the barstool. That was when Terry made me hand over my car keys.
I woke up the next morning feeling the way I imagined a corpse would feel if it were to be dug up and smacked across the face with a shovel. Numb, but somehow still in pain. The next thing I noticed was that I was not in my parent’s house. I was on Terry’s sofa, or at least I hoped Terry’s. Dragging myself to the kitchen, I drank at least a gallon of water straight from the tap before puking it all back up. The sound of me retching out my innards must have been loud, because the next thing I knew there was an unfamiliar voice coming from behind, a girls voice.
“You must be Stephan. Terry said you were a lightweight.” I turned around to match the voice to a face. She was about a head shorter than me, pale skinned, skinny as a twig and with one of those asymmetrical haircuts that have grown quite popular. Also she was wearing a black t-shirt two sizes too small and no pants. Just a pair of pink panties with a zipper down the front.
“Call me Harris, and Terry’s a dick. He should know to keep me off the firewater, ever
since I hurled all over his drum kit.” I said, wiping barf off my lips while trying not to stare at her crotch. Naturally I assumed that this chick was either Terry’s girl, or at the very least someone not to be caught with while pitching a tent.
“Well Harris, I’m glad you made room for breakfast, ‘cause I’m making waffles.”
Fuck yeah, waffles. During breakfast I found out that her name was Billie-Joe Kimble, and yes, she was Terry’s girl. Fiancé in fact. They met each other at The Broken Window three years ago. Billie was the bassist for a band called “Chop the Willow”, which she joined after moving here from Jacksonville. Why she would willingly relocate to this cesspool was beyond me, but she seemed to like it here. “It’s got something you can’t find in the city,” She said. “This place has mystery.” Looking back on things, Billie was probably right.
Here’s a bit of a historical mystery to keep you from getting bored. As I mentioned earlier, there was a paper mill just outside of town that caught fire in 1988. Some sort of industrial accident or some such. Anyways, a lot of people died in the resulting explosion and it pretty much crippled the town economy. That’s not the strange part. The topic of interest here was that the police couldn’t figure out what caused the fire in the first place. No signs of arson or failed equipment, just a bunch of confused head scratches and rumors. What were these rumors you ask? Well, from the witness testimonials, several floor workers reported that they heard laughter just before the fire started. Maniacal laughter, like someone was in on some sick joke.
After breakfast I took a shower and got ready to head over to Burnswick. Lucky for me I was already wearing a suit, so I didn’t feel underdressed. I thanked Terry and Billie for letting me crash on their couch and they wished me luck. Actually, Terry wished me luck AND offered to give me a ride. I declined, on account of Charlottesville being so damn small that the only reason anyone living here should need a car would be so that they could drive the hell away. Seriously, it took me about fifteen minutes to get to the funeral parlor on foot. I would have gotten there sooner if I hadn’t stopped at the Fill-U station for a pack of Camel. (I cannot stress this enough, smoking is a terrible habit. It eats up all your money and limits your ability to run for extended periods of time.)
When I walked into Burnswick Funerals, the first thing I noticed was the complete lack of reception. Normally there should be someone to oversee the front room, usually from a desk or nearby office. True, it’s often better to call in advance to make funeral arrangements, but there really needs to be some sort of oversight for the possible walk in. The second thing I noticed were the dead nightshade flowers on the coffee table. Rather unprofessional in my opinion. White lilies or orchids would have been better, and preferably not old ones. In any case, I decided to wait for someone to show up, and in the meantime I walked around the viewing room, looking over the black and white photographs framed about the walls. Fairly standard display: Trees, sleeping animals, churches, old Victorian portraits, other vaguely mournful images. Appropriate décor if I ever saw it. Interesting thing about 19th century portraits and why they often seem somewhat creepy; most of the people you’ll see in them are actually dead. Old school photography was a time consuming process, meaning subjects would have to remain still for a few hours while the silver nitrate imprinted the light. Also it was very expensive and therefore only used on special occasions, funerals being one of them. And since the person/persons getting their picture taken were post-mortem, there would be no need to worry about fidgeting. I was pondering this knowledge while viewing a picture of a little girl with dead eyes propped up in a chair when I heard a door close somewhere in the lobby. Turning around, I saw a confused looking man staring at me.
“Can I help you sir?” He finally asked after a few awkward moments. He was an older gentleman, somewhere in his mid to late fifties. He wore a pair of wire framed glasses and showed signs of unwanted balding, but no signs to immediately raise the question of whether or not he liked to sodomize the dead. Trust me, necrophilia is not a desirable employer trait.
“Yes you can, actually, I heard that you’re in need of a new embalmer,” I extended my hand for approval “I think I might just be the man for the job. I’m Stephan D. Harris, a pleasure to meet you Mr…”
“Burnswick,” He replied, shaking my hand. “Alfred Burnswick. And yes actually, I lost my main undertaker a few weeks back, a real shame too what happened.” He sighed in frustration before going on. “It’s just been me and Lenard running this place since. Let’s talk. First of all, have you done any apprenticing?”
About an hour later the deal was sealed, I’d finally broken into my target occupation. So what if it was in Charlottesville? I could always relocate after a few years, but for now, it was my time to shine. It didn’t take long for me to get used to things under Mr. Burnswick, in fact, after the first embalming he pretty much left me to my own thing. After all, I’d been training my entire adult life for this line of work. Whenever I had a question as to where a particular wound filler or sanitizer was kept, I’d just ask Lenard. (Lenny ran the cremation end of Burnswick, but would also fill in as an embalmer from time to time) but for the most part it was the same basic procedure that I’d been doing in Raleigh. First I’d scrub down the cadaver, then I’d massage the limbs to relieve rigor mortis. Following that I’d plug up the orifices, seal up any open wounds, begin the arterial embalming, wire the mouth and eyelids shut, finish up the hypodermic embalming, dress the cadaver, apply makeup, and deliver the body to the viewing room. I didn’t even have to deal with any of the surviving family members or review any death certificates, Mr. Burnswick as the lead funeral director would take care of all that noise. The only other regular of the funeral home was the flower girl/receptionist/grief counselor, Madelyn Wade. Now, before I move on, I would like to say that business at Burnswick Funeral was moderately steady, but this was not because people in Charlottesville were dying all of the time. Most of our clients came from a wide group of people in Pitt County who chose us based mainly on our comparatively modest fees.
So after about a month I had saved up enough money to straight-up buy my own house in Charlottesville for the price of a used car. It was an okay little place on Milton Street about two blocks away from The Broken Window. Things were alright for the most part. I hated the town and all those confederate flags but getting back into the groove with Terry made it tolerable. After work most nights I’d just walk over to the Window, drink a few glasses of Wild Turkey, and argue with Terry about which actors from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” were actually dead. Other nights I’d stop by to listen to Chop the Willow practice their set in Terry’s garage before turning in for the night. Billie’s band was surprisingly decent, I must admit. They had that kind of outlaw sound of The Black Angels or Murder by Death that went over well with a mostly southern blue-collar audience. To sum it all up, life was getting comfortable. Until the day I found the thing in a jar.
At first I didn’t know what the hell it was I was looking at. Actually, I still have no freakin’ clue, but I mean I REALLY didn’t know what it was. I found it on a shelf in the storage closet one day at work when our embalming machine busted a tube and I had to look around for a possible replacement. Up on the top shelf shoved into the far back was a cardboard box labeled ‘miscellaneous’ that at first seemed promising. I got on a step stool, and just like any other day I pulled something off a shelf. What I found inside the box… didn’t actually startle me. Not at first, but it did peak my interest. Surrounded by random pieces of newspaper and spare calipers was an average sized mason jar coated in a layer of dust and grime. It was definitely full of some sort of fluid. (Dark green, so it wasn’t formaldehyde.) Also it had a label on the side that read “Harlequin No.7,” which seemed cryptic to say the least. The layer of dirt on the outside and the dark liquid inside made it almost impossible to see what sat in there, so of course I cleaned it off with damp rag and held the jar up to the florescent light for a better look. Whatever that thing was, it was ostensibly organic, based off of the pale flesh tone color. It looked like some sort of mutated potato, but that’s a stupid comparison. If I had to guess I’d say that it was an extracted tumor, or maybe a diseased pancreas. The top half was bulbous, with little protruding bumps here and there. The bottom half had a curved tail similar to the spine of a mammal fetus. Also along the midsection were several thick tendrils that corkscrewed off in every direction. It was an odd thing, but not so odd as to alarm me. True, it was uncommon to find such things in a mortuary, but on the other hand, coroners would often keep certain specimens of interest when discovered, usually out of scientific curiosity. Who’s to say what sort of things Lenard or my predecessor or even Mr. Burnswick have found while poking around inside of people. I’d have kept it if I were the one to find it, only I wouldn’t have hidden it away in a box.
I put the Harlequin on the counter next to the hand sink and went about looking for a replacement tube. I found one eventually, thank God, so the rest of the day went on as normally as ever, save for the occasional glance at the green jar. I resolved to ask Mr. Burnswick if he knew anything about the thing-in-a-jar after the viewing service upstairs was over. I really didn’t want to pester him, but I couldn’t leave an enigma like that unanswered, it was just too nagging to ignore.
When I finally got a chance to show him the strange thing, he took a close look into the cloudy green jar after reading the label, but in the end he just shrugged and said it was probably just a gaffe, or a weird prank set up by the previous mortician Ryan Wilcox. Not a huge stretch, the name “Harlequin” kind of made it seem plausible that the whole thing was a joke. Still, I wanted to be sure. I kept a dissection kit at home in my medicine cabinet, and being licensed as both an embalmer and as a funeral director I was legally allowed to handle and transport human remains, if that was indeed what the Harlequin was. Seeing no qualms about bringing it home for further study, I cleaned up the “undercroft” and headed home with the mysterious jar. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to inspect it more closely until the following night. I had Sunday off and I had planned to go out to the open field gun range with Terry and Billie-Joe while the rest of the town wasted their time in Church. More space for us.
I had a good time blowing apart teddy bears and tacky lamps at the range. Billie kept shouting, “It’s coming right for us!” right before unloading a round from her 12-gauge into one of the stuffed bears, and Terry was and always has been such a terrible shot that he eventually became so irate that he threw down his handgun and proceeded to smash apart a lamp with a tire iron he got out of his trunk. I even managed to get a few good shots off myself, of course I would have done better if Terry hadn’t been shouting things like, “score one for the corpse fucker” and other such distracting remarks. Eventually Billie joined in on the mocking and asked me if it was true that morticians go around killing people to promote business.
“No, that’s Burnswick’s job actually, I just set up the marionette strings for the puppet shows.” I responded, jokingly of course.
“Hey, do what you gotta do,” chimed in Terry, “just don’t go crazy like the last one.”
“Yeah, hey I’ve been meaning to ask about that. Why’d Wilcox off himself anyway?” I asked.
“You don’t know? It was in his obituary. Apparently, Ryan Wilcox’s wife died in the paper mill fire, and he started to get more and more depressed and withdrawn over the years. It sorta makes sense, he had to deal with all the funerals of nearly everyone who died there, his wife, her coworkers and friends and all that. He just couldn’t live with it anymore. Said so in the note he left.” Billie kicked the dirt with one of her chunky motorcycle boots, clearly getting bored with the conversation. “You think we can talk about something a bit less depressing? We’re here to have fun and ignore gun safety, not get all emo ‘n shit.”
“I didn’t mean to be such a downer,” I said while loading up my revolver. “I just wanted to know why. I found something at work yesterday that might have been his.” Terry started to giggle. “No, it wasn’t porn Terry, you ass. It was some weird thing in a jar, like a maybe a mutant organ or something. I was planning on slicing it up today, actually.”
“Can we watch?” Asked Terry and Billie in unison. *sigh. Some people are really into the macabre I guess.
We got back to my place a few hours later after the gun range shenanigans and a late lunch at the local greasy spoon. The sun had already started to set, basking the early autumn sky in an orange glow. Terry sat in the passenger seat of my Charger, Billie-Joe in the back with her shotgun lain across her lap. Pulling into the gravel pit that constituted a driveway I delegated the camcorder to Terry and requested that Billie refrain from poking things. I don’t have a copy of the home video we made, I destroyed the original after mailing a couple of copies to various news outlets a few days after Billie and I had finished hunting down the surviving cultists, but I remember enough of it to cobble together a transcript.
Video Recording: The scene starts with a shot of Mr. Harris walking out of his bathroom. He is wearing a black apron over his suit and a pair of latex gloves. His face is partially obscured by a surgical mask.
Terry:(Behind the camera) Are you ready to win the Nobel Prize for Incredibly Fucked up Pseudo-Science?
Harris: Absolutely! Those morons hunting for Bigfoot won’t stand a chance this year.
Billie-Joe:(Outside of view) Hey guys, let’s get this over with. I wanna use the afterbirth to make soup. Chuckles.
Terry follows Mr. Harris into the living room, where he has set up a few card tables to organize his equipment. On it we can see several empty mason jars, one jar full of what appears to be formaldehyde, a discectomy kit (includes two scalpels, a pair of tweezers, tissue scissors, a curved probing tool, a hypodermic needle, and a clamp)a microscope, and a copy of The Physician’s Desk Reference Vol. 29. Last, in the center on a metal cooking tray sits the Harlequin.
Harris: (Holding Harlequin No.7 up for the camera.) This sick little puppy here is something I found in a mortuary yesterday. We’re not yet sure what it is exactly, but my working hypothesis is that it’s an alien fetus. Either that or a times ten scale model of Terry’s penis.
The frame is briefly blocked by Terry’s extended middle finger.
Terry: Fuck you Stephan!
Harris: Right then, move over here. I am now about to open the jar.
Terry moves to a better angle and zooms the camera into focus over the Harlequin.
Harris: (Twisting the lid off with a slow hiss followed by a loud pop.) Holy hell it stinks. (Grimacing) Nurse, please note that the subject smells like someone barfed into a diaper.
Billie-Joe:(Now in frame)I’m not the nurse damn it, I’m just in charge of soup.
Harris:(Returning to frame) Alright, I am about to remove the specimen from its protective jar. (Mr. Harris inserts a pair of salad tongs into the jar and removes the Harlequin proper. Note here that a minor distortion affects the shot.) Well, it’s definitely organic, judging by how squishy it is. (Carefully placing the subject onto the cooking tray) Oh wow, this might actually be an alien after all. Check out these veins wrapping around the head bubbles. And… Jesus is that an eye?
Terry directs the camera for a closer inspection. From what we can see, there does appear to be an orb that closely resembles the likeness of an eye. Also during the close-up, another line of distortion moves across the length of the screen.
Terry: Dude, you should poke it with something.
Harris: Science is more than just poking shit you know. But yes, I should take a look under these flaps here.
Mr. Harris tentatively prods the strange orb with the blunt end of his probing tool. Unfortunately, the screen pixelates slightly so we do not get a chance to view this maneuver. Also during this scene the camera begins to pick up audio feedback, despite there being no reason for it to do so.
Harris: (Jerking his hand back) The fuck?
Billie-Joe: What’s wrong?
Harris: (Looking startled into the camera) Shit, did you catch that Terry?
Terry: I didn’t catch anything man. Your camera is acting all stupid.
Billie-Joe: What’s going on? What happened?
Harris: I thought I saw it twitch a little. I probably just bumped the table or something.
Billie-Joe: Are you fucking with us?
Terry: (To Billie) Yeah, he’s fucking with us.
Harris: (waving his hands in frustration) Forget it. Terry, move back a little, you’re crowding me. I’ll start over.
Mr. Harris resumes his attempt to investigate Harlequin No.7. He lifts one of the supposed eye lids with his probing tool, and as before the camera pixelates slightly and picks up feedback, but the overall video quality is decent enough to grasp the situation. A minute goes by with Mr. Harris handling several tools before the light above the card tables begins to flicker. At first, only Billie notices this effect.
Billie-Joe: Hey guys, um… (Points to the light)
Terry: (Directing the camera between Billie, the light bulb, and Mr. Harris) Okay, hey, I’m getting kinda creeped out now.
Harris: (In center frame) Right, okay, let’s do this later. (Mr. Harris attempts to handle Harlequin No.7 with the salad tongs.) Holy shit, it’s moving!
Billie-Joe: Get ride rid of it! Get it out of here!
At this point the audio drops and the screen becomes highly distorted. From the few images that remain somewhat clear, we can infer that Mr. Harris is struggling to reinsert the Harlequin into its original container. The camera also manages to capture several yellow-green pulses of light, but it is unknown whether or not this effect can be contributed to the near constant visual distortions. This portion lasted for approximately forty three seconds, ending when audio is restored with a loud gunshot. When the visuals stabilize, we can see that Billie is pointing her shotgun at the splattered remains of the Harlequin. We can also see that her nose is bleeding.
Harris: (Nose also bleeding) Thanks for that.
Billie-Joe: (Breathing heavily) Yeah, no problem.
Terry: (Yelling) What the fuck was that?!
Harris: (To Terry) How much of that did you manage to film?
Terry: I don’t know man, the goddamn video kept going out! If I coul… Oh… I don’t feel so… (The camera becomes shaky and we can hear the sound of Terry vomiting.)
Billie-Joe: (Running to Terry’s side.) It’s alright, we’re all alright. Just calm down.
Terry: Don’t tell me to fucking calm down! Or did you forget that the room almost exploded just now? What were those noises?
Mr. Harris appears to try to say something, but stops himself when a thunderclap shakes the living room. No one says anything for several seconds, until a flash of yellow-green is seen coming from the nearby window, followed by a second thunderclap.
Harris: Outside. Now.
Terry follows Billie and Mr. Harris outside onto his front lawn. Billie and Harris are looking directly overhead, followed by the camera doing a sweep over the night sky. What we see is a massive thunderhead approaching from the East, and several flashes of chartreuse lightening entangling the dark clouds.
Harris: Terry, Billie… get back inside.
The video ends there.
So yes, we did manage to film the previous events, all the way up to our view of the approaching storm. Unfortunately a good deal of what was recorded ended up being completely unwatchable, so I’ll have to fill in the damaged bits.
First of all, when I was attempting to remove the part that looked like an eye, the Harlequin started writhing and squirming around, which was highly unexpected, to say the least. The next thing I knew, the lights in my house began to pulse and the air in my living room started to shimmer like hot asphalt in June. I panicked and tried to put the Harlequin back into its jar, hoping that would make it stop doing whatever it was that was making the high-pitched screaming that seemed to be coming from all around us. It didn’t, even after I secured the lid. In fact, after I shoved it back into the fluid the damn thing started flashing this blinding green light that made my head feel like it was about to explode. I still have a hard time remembering at what point Billie returned with her shotgun, but after she blew the Harlequin into little giblets everything stopped. Except for the storm.
On September 23rd, 2009, fifty six men, women, and children claimed to have seen the bizarre electrical storm that passed over Charlottesville beginning at approximately 9:13 p.m. EST. These eyewitnesses were the only apparent claims of any weather phenomena, as not a single meteorological study supported such accusations. The storm in question lasted only a few minutes, but because of the witness statements, phone calls, and the complete disregard of the professional news outlets, people in town referred to it as a sign of the End Days. The most vocal of these statements came out of the Trinity Baptist Church, which is a whole separate story in itself. More on that some other time.
Now, after cleaning up my living room and storing what little of the Harlequin remained into sample jars, Billie and Terry went home for the evening. I didn’t sleep that night. I had too much to reflect upon from had transpired.
I was exhausted the next day at work. Exhausted and nervous. Some part of my brain had been switched to panic mode and it refused to shut down. I tried to just move along in my work, hoping that it would help take my mind off that horrible otherworldly screeching. Looking for any excuse to preoccupy myself, I volunteered to pick up a body from the Charlottesville General Hospital. Madelyn got a message from earlier in the morning and had arranged to fulfill a preneed tomorrow afternoon for a Mr. Havenbrook, who had died sometime last night. I didn’t bother asking for any details, I just fired up the hearse and left.
I got to the hospital about ten minutes after filing the paperwork at the courthouse. I didn’t get a chance to talk to Dr. Sarah Liddell (Terry’s aunt and the Pitt County Coroner) which was a bit of a disappointment, but I did have an interesting conversation with her assistant, Robert.
“So how’d this guy kick it?” I asked Rob while he helped me load Mr. Havenbrook into the hearse.
“Well, from what I heard from Sarah, he and his wife were checking out that freaky lightning storm last night, when all of a sudden this guy drops to the ground and starts having a seizure. By the time the ambulance arrived he was already gone.”
“Weird,” I said out loud, “What did the autopsy show?”
“Aneurysm,” said Rob, pulling out the MRI shots of Mr. Havenbrook’s head. “Probably brought on by the seizure. See that blotch right there at the base of his brain stem? That’s a popped artery.”
I shut the back of the hearse and thanked Robert. From his point of view, everything seemed fine. Flashing lights are known to cause seizures, so big deal right? I however regretted ever leaving the mortuary. I was looking for a way to forget about the events of last night, instead I found out that I may have inadvertently caused the death of a perfectly innocent man. It was a very unwelcoming feeling, like an omen of doom.
I got Havenbrook’s body back to the mortuary not long after. Lenny was off that day and Mr. Burnswick was busy with a client, so I had move the cadaver downstairs myself. The funeral home had an elevator installed for just this purpose, and while the stretcher helped, Mr. Havenbrook weighed at least three hundred pounds, so it took a good deal of effort on my part to move his fat ass onto the slab. Once I got him up onto the embalming table I took a few minutes to catch my breath before proceeding with my work, all while trying not to think about who this man was.
Step one was to wash the body in antibacterial soap and water. I always hated this part due to the fact that there’s always fecal matter residue caked around the ass cheeks and upper thighs, but at least it’s far less disturbing than the second step. Ever give a full body massage to a dead guy? Well I have. The embalming process requires that a body’s circulatory system be un-constricted, and for that the muscles need to be relieved of rigor-mortis (The stiffening of muscle tissue due to an interruption in the ATP cycle.) Interestingly enough, Mr. Havenbrook had hardly any stiffness to him, something that I had not noticed until this point. Rigor mortis sets in at around three hours after death, peaking at around twelve hours before dissipating between forty eight to sixty hours. Havenbrook had been dead for a little over thirteen hours. His back was red and purple from livor mortis (Internal body fluids succumbing to the forces of gravity.), so clearly his heart muscles had ceased functioning. The only rational explanation would be extremely rapid decomposition, a hypothesis that I was capable of testing myself by simply jamming a cooking thermometer into his gut. (Yes, I was obligated to investigate this issue, as it may be health-safety related .Think bio-hazard C.D.C. guys lining the mortuary in yards of yellow tape.) I gave the thermometer a couple of minutes to warn up while I got myself into a haz-mat suit, just in case. The internal body temperature of the post-mortem lowers quite rapidly after death, but will eventually elevate as microbes multiply from within. Mr. Havenbrook had spent most of the night in a cooler, so if he was any warmer than the air conditioned room temperature then I would have to call in the cavalry. Also Dr. Liddell would probably be fired for not taking a proper blood test.
And the internal heat index was… sixty four point three degrees Fahrenheit. One degree lower than the room. He was fine, and I felt like an asshole in a scuba suit. That and now I had to patch up the hole I had put in his intestinal wall. Good job Harris, now you won’t get to have a lunch break. I didn’t bother taking off the hazard suit while I rushed to make up the lost time. Probably a good thing too, in retrospect.
After I had sealed up the hole and plugged up the anus with cotton swabs, I began the long process of embalming. I started the same way I always had: By making a small incision into the right common carotid artery, the other into the jugular vein. The embalming fluid would be pumped into the carotid artery, which pushes the “displacement,” out through the jugular and down a drain. For a man the size of Mr. Havenbrook, the whole thing would take about an hour and a half to complete, so I started up the pumps while I prepped for the hypodermic stage. As I walked towards the sink to wash off my gloves, I noticed that the lights were beginning to flicker. I stopped walking mid stride, my heart dropped into my stomach as I began to hear a wet smacking noise coming from the supposedly lifeless cadaver of Mr. Havenbrook. What I saw when I turned around made me drop the surgical tray to the ground.
His eyes were open. And they were staring directly into mine. His mouth was opening and closing as though he were trying to say something, but no noise was being made, save for his right arm limply slapping at the tubing in his neck. I didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what to think. All I could do was stand there, motionless with my back pressed against the sink. For the first time in my life, I wished that I had gone to law school.
It wasn’t until the air started to shimmer that I realized what was happening, when I finally understood why the Harlequin was numbered. Twenty four years ago, Ryan Wilcox found himself in this exact same situation. The storm, the aneurysm, the blotch at the base of Havenbrook’s brain: There was more than one Harlequin, at least six others, and they were parasites. They lived inside of people, lying dormant until the time came to awaken. Something else also came to mind. Just before it burst out from the back of his skull, Havenbrook began to smile. Just before the squirming thing slithered down the drain, I heard the sound of laughter.
Maniacal laughter, like someone was in on some sick joke.
Credit To: Stephan D. Harris
Source : http://www.creepypasta.com/harlequin-no-7/
Posted by : Admin-ST-Rex
Tag :
Cerpen,
Frankestein
Frankenstein is written in the form of a frame story that starts with Captain Robert Walton writing letters to his sister.
Captain Walton's introductory frame narrative
The novel Frankenstein is written in epistolary form, documenting a correspondence between Captain Robert Walton and his sister, Margaret Walton Saville. Walton is a failed writer who sets out to explore the North Pole and expand his scientific knowledge in hopes of achieving fame. During the voyage the crew spots a dog sled mastered by a gigantic figure. A few hours later, the crew rescues a nearly frozen and emaciated man named Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein has been in pursuit of the gigantic man observed by Walton's crew. Frankenstein starts to recover from his exertion; he sees in Walton the same over-ambitiousness and recounts a story of his life's miseries to Walton as a warning.
Victor Frankenstein's narrative
Victor begins by telling of his childhood. Born into a wealthy family in Geneva, he is encouraged to seek a greater understanding of the world around him through science. He grows up in a safe environment, surrounded by loving family and friends. When he is four years old, his parents adopt Elizabeth Lavenza, an orphan whose mother has just died. Victor has a possessive infatuation with Elizabeth. Much of the story focuses on this infatuation and the rise and fall of their interactions. He has two younger brothers: Ernest and William.
As a young boy, Victor is obsessed with studying outdated theories of science that focus on achieving natural wonders. When he witnesses lightning strike an oak tree, splitting it in two, he is inspired to harness the power of lightning. His mother dies of scarlet fever weeks before he leaves for the University of Ingolstadt in Germany. At university, he excels at chemistry and other sciences, and develops a secret technique to imbue inanimate bodies with life. Victor constructs a reanimated creature.
The details of the monster's construction are left ambiguous, but Frankenstein is forced to make the creature roughly eight feet tall because of the difficulty in replicating the minute parts of the human body. His creation, which he has hoped would be beautiful, is instead hideous, with watery yellow eyes, and a withered, translucent, yellowish skin that barely conceals the muscular system and blood vessels. The creature has perfect, white teeth, black lips and long black hair. After bringing his creation to life, Victor is repulsed by his work: he flees the room, leaving the monster. Hopeless and saddened from rejection, the monster disappears.
Victor becomes ill from the experience. He is nursed back to health by his childhood friend, Henry Clerval. After a four-month recovery, he decides to return home when his brother William is found murdered. Upon arriving in Geneva, he sees the monster near the site of the murder, and becomes certain the creature is the killer. William's nanny, Justine, is hanged for the murder based on the discovery of William's locket in her pocket. Victor, though certain the monster is responsible, doubts anyone would believe him and is unable to stop the hanging.
Ravaged by his grief and self-reproach, Victor retreats into the mountains to find peace. The monster approaches him, ignoring his threats and pleading with Victor to hear his own tale. Intelligent and articulate, The Creature tells Victor of his own encounters with people, and how he had become afraid of them and spent a year living near a cottage, observing the DeLacey family living there and growing fond of them. The monster learned to speak by listening to the DeLaceys. He also discovered a lost satchel of books and taught himself to read. When he saw his reflection in a pool, he realised that his physical appearance is hideous compared to the humans he observed. Though he eventually approached the family with hope of becoming their friend, they were frightened by his appearance and drove him away, and then left the residence permanently. The creature, in a fit of rage, burned the cottage and left.
The monster concludes his story with a demand that Frankenstein create for him a female companion like himself. He argues that as a living thing, he has a right to happiness. He promises that if Victor grants his request, he and his mate will vanish into the wilderness of South America uninhabited by man, never to reappear.
Fearing for his family, Victor reluctantly agrees and travels to England to do his work. He is accompanied by Clerval, but they separate in Scotland. Through their travels, Victor suspects that the monster is following him. Working on a second being on the Orkney Islands, he is plagued by premonitions of what his work might wreak, particularly the idea that creating a mate for the creature might lead to the breeding of an entire race of creatures that could plague mankind. He destroys the unfinished female creature after he sees his first creation looking through the window. The monster witnesses this and, confronting Victor, vows to be with Victor on his upcoming wedding night. The monster murders Clerval and leaves the corpse on an Irish beach, where Victor lands upon leaving the island. Victor is imprisoned for the murder of Clerval, and becomes seriously ill, suffering another mental breakdown in prison. After being acquitted, and with his health renewed, he returns home with his father.
Once home Victor marries Elizabeth and prepares for a fight with the monster. Wrongly believing the monster's vowed revenge was for his own life, Victor asks Elizabeth to retire to her room for the night while he goes looking for "the fiend". While Victor searches the house and grounds, the creature murders Elizabeth. Victor sees the monster at the window, and the monster taunts Victor by pointing at Elizabeth's corpse. Grief-stricken by the deaths of William, Justine, Clerval, and now Elizabeth, Victor's father dies. Victor pursues the monster to the North Pole, but he does not kill his creation.
Captain Walton's concluding frame narrative
At the end of Victor's narrative, Captain Walton resumes the telling of the story. A few days after the creature vanishes, the ship becomes entombed in ice and Walton's crew insists on returning south once they are freed. In spite of a passionate speech from Frankenstein, encouraging the crew to push further north, Walton realises that he must relent to his men's demands and agrees to head for home. Frankenstein dies shortly thereafter.
Walton discovers the creature on his ship, mourning over Frankenstein's body. Walton hears the creature's misguided reasons for his vengeance and expressions of remorse. Frankenstein's death has not brought him peace. Rather, his crimes have increased his misery and alienation, and his words are almost exactly identical to Victor's own in describing himself. He vows to kill himself on his own funeral pyre so that no others will ever know of his existence. Walton watches as he drifts away on an ice raft that is soon lost in darkness.
Source. : http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein
Author : Mary Shelley
Posted by : admin -ST-Rex
Tag :
Novel,
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
In London, Gabriel John Utterson, a prosecutor, is on his weekly walk with his relative Richard Enfield, who proceeds to tell him of an encounter he had seen some months ago while coming home late at night from Cavendish Place. The tale describes a sinister figure named Edward Hyde who tramples a young girl, disappears into a door on the street, and re-emerges to pay off her relatives with 10 pounds in gold and a cheque signed by respectable gentleman Dr. Henry Jekyll (a client and friend of Utterson's) for 90 pounds. Jekyll had recently and suddenly changed his will to make Hyde the sole beneficiary. This development concerns and disturbs Utterson, who makes an effort to seek out Hyde. Utterson fears that Hyde is blackmailing Jekyll for his money. Upon finally managing to encounter Hyde, Hyde's ugliness, as if deformed, amazes Utterson. Although Utterson cannot say exactly how or why, Hyde provokes an instinctive feeling of revulsion in him. Much to Utterson's surprise, Hyde willingly offers Utterson his address. After one of Jekyll's dinner parties, Utterson stays behind to discuss the matter of Hyde with Jekyll. Utterson notices Jekyll turning pale, yet he assures Utterson that everything involving Hyde is in order and that he is to be left alone.
A year passes uneventfully. One night, a servant girl witnesses Hyde beat a man to death with a heavy cane. The victim was MP Sir Danvers Carew, who was also Utterson's client. The police, who suspect Hyde, contact Utterson. He leads the officers to Hyde's apartment, feeling a sense of foreboding amid the eerie weather (the morning is dark and wreathed in fog). When they arrive at the apartment, the murderer has vanished, but they find half of the cane (described as being made of a strong wood but broken due to the beating) left behind a door. It is revealed to have been given to Jekyll by Utterson. Shortly thereafter, Utterson again visits Jekyll, who now claims to have ended all relations with Hyde. Jekyll shows Utterson a note, allegedly written to Jekyll by Hyde, apologizing for the trouble that he has caused him and saying goodbye. That night, however, Utterson's clerk points out that Hyde’s handwriting bears a remarkable similarity to Jekyll's own.
For a few months, Jekyll reverts to his former friendly and sociable manner, as if a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. Later, Jekyll suddenly starts refusing visitors, and Dr. Hastie Lanyon, a mutual acquaintance of Jekyll and Utterson, dies suddenly of shock after receiving information relating to Jekyll. Before his death, Lanyon gives Utterson a letter, with instructions that he not open it until after Jekyll's death or disappearance. Utterson goes out walking with Enfield, and they see Jekyll at a window of his laboratory. The three men start conversing, but a look of horror suddenly comes over Jekyll's face, and he slams the window and disappears. Soon afterward, Jekyll's butler, Mr. Poole, visits Utterson in a state of desperation and explains that Jekyll has secluded himself in his laboratory for several weeks. Utterson and Poole travel to Jekyll's house through empty, windswept, sinister streets. Once there, they find the servants huddled together in fear. They go to see the laboratory where they hear that the voice coming from inside is not the voice of Jekyll and the footsteps are light and not the heavy footsteps of the doctor. After arguing for a time, the two of them resolve to break into Jekyll's laboratory.
Inside, they find the body of Hyde wearing Jekyll's clothes and apparently dead from suicide. They find also a letter from Jekyll to Utterson promising to explain the entire mystery. Utterson takes the document home, where he first reads Lanyon’s letter and then Jekyll's. The first reveals that Lanyon’s deterioration and eventual death resulted from the shock of seeing Hyde drink a serum, or potion, and as a result of doing so, turn into Dr. Jekyll. The second letter explains that Jekyll, seeking to separate his good side from his darker impulses, discovered a way to transform himself periodically into a creature free of conscience, this being Hyde. The transformation was incomplete, however, in that it created a second, evil identity, but did not make the first identity purely good. At first, Jekyll reports that he delighted in becoming Hyde and rejoiced in the moral freedom that the creature possessed. Eventually, however, he found that he was turning into Hyde involuntarily in his sleep, even without taking the potion.
At this point, Jekyll resolved to cease becoming Hyde. One night, however, the urge gripped him too strongly, and after the transformation he immediately rushed out and violently killed Sir Danvers Carew. Horrified, Jekyll tried more adamantly to stop the transformations, and for a time he proved successful by engaging in philanthropic work. One day, at a park, he considered how good a person that he had become as a result of his deeds (in comparison to others), believing himself redeemed. However, before he completed his line of thought, he looked down at his hands and realized that he had suddenly transformed once again into Hyde. This was the first time that an involuntary metamorphosis had happened in waking hours. Far from his laboratory and hunted by the police as a murderer, Hyde needed Lanyon's help to get his potions and become Jekyll again, undertaking the transformation in Lanyon's presence, the shock of the sight instigated Lanyon's deterioration and death. Meanwhile, Jekyll returned to his home, only to find himself ever more helpless and trapped as the transformations increased in frequency and necessitated even larger doses of potion in order to reverse them. It was the onset of one of these spontaneous metamorphoses that caused Jekyll to slam his laboratory window shut in the middle of his conversation with Enfield and Utterson.
Eventually, the stock of ingredients from which Jekyll had been preparing the potion ran low, and subsequent batches prepared by Jekyll from renewed stocks of the ingredients failed to produce the transformation effected by the original potion. Jekyll speculated that the one essential ingredient that made the original potion work must have been a trace contaminant that was absent from the ingredients he had subsequently purchased. After sending his butler Poole to one chemist after another, to purchase the salt that was running low, only to find it wouldn't work, he assumed that subsequent supplies all lacked the essential ingredient that made the potion successful for his experiments. His ability to change back from Hyde into Jekyll had slowly vanished in consequence. Jekyll wrote that even as he composed his letter, he knew that he would soon become Hyde permanently, having used the last of this salt and he wondered if Hyde would face execution for his crimes or choose to kill himself. Jekyll noted that, in either case, the end of his letter marked the end of the life of Dr. Jekyll. He ended the letter saying "I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end". With these words, both the document and the novella come to a close.
Source : http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Case_of_Dr_Jekyll_and_Mr_Hyde
Author : Robert Louis Stevenson
Posted by : admin -ST-Rex
Tag :
Novel,
Wings
"Darkness ascend, sound of storm heard,
When a reflection reflected not on the mirror, their twisted future decided to clash each other.
Unheard spells casted, spreading chaos,
Returning everything dust to dust, earth to earth,
Holding their breath fighting for their loved one...
Cold stare meet...
They, who share the same fate now engaged to decide their own future
Filling wrath, honestly reveal their unfulfilled desire,
Breaking each other hands, they parted with a clashing sword shedding each other blood,
Filling anger in wrath, they will never stop
Until the start become the end.
Raindrop is our tears, as our blood shed
Our wings soar, we keep dancing with swords in hand, sparking flares lighten our sight,
Remind me of the past, no remorse.
Fate decided, no more tears, forgetting kindness, no more happiness, forgetting their memories of emotions not knowing friends nor enemies.
The times sealed in the freezing throne of time.
Deceived by fate, they become a pawn and servant of their own fate, leaving every single thing they called friends.
Tortured by their own feeling.
Betrayed by their own sword...
No matter what, they have no regret to look behind.
They keep singing a cold song of farewell.
'Their destination destined'
Their truth lies hidden, covered by the dawn of beginning
The melody of despair, flow in instrument of sorrow
Revealing the shadow in their heart
And again, with their remaining will of win
They clash...
Break through everything...
Shatter the glasses..
Given the last light of hope, together they see it
Together they tried to reach it
Together...
They break their oath...
The white angel fallen, the black one stand...
.......
Knowing his mistake, the black angel awaken from his delusion
Releasing all his anger, wrath, envy, and everything else.
The black kneel... "Protect her..."
He broke his bond with his fate...
Letting himself died in the hands of..
'The better future'
A fragment of pure memories remain in him
Revealing every truth, he realized...
A tears of regret drops
"Sorry..."
In the end, the white stand...
Anger left in his eyes...
Closing the stage with the curtain of dusk..."
------------------------------------------------------------------
By : admin - leo
Tag :
Self-made Story,
Malam Jahanam
MALAM JAHANAM
BY MOTINGGO BOESJE
Ringkasan cerita....
Di sebuah perkampungan nelayan, tinggallah Mat Kontan beserta istri (Paijah) dan anaknya (Mat Kontan Kecil). Soleman, teman dekat Mat Kontan, tinggal di seberang rumah mereka. Suatu malam, Paijah menunggu suaminya yang belum juga pulang. Ia mengkhawatirkan anaknya yang sedang sakit. Akhirnya, Mat Kontan pulang membawa seekor burung. Saat mengobrol dengan Soleman di teras rumahnya, dia menyombongkan burung perkututnya yang baru, juga istri dan anaknya. Soleman yang tidak tahan mendengarnya mengungkit-ungkit ketakutan Mat Kontan ketika nyawanya hampir melayang karena terperosok ke dalam pasir. Mat Kontan yang ketakutan rahasianya dibongkar langsung berbaik-baik pada Soleman.
Tak lama kemudian, Mat Kontan mulai menyombongkan diri lagi. Dia juga menuduh Soleman iri karena dia mempunyai istri yang cantik dan seorang anak. Soleman bahkan dianggap takut menyentuh perempuan karena sampai sekarang belum juga beristri.
Mat Kontan masuk untuk melihat burung beo kesayangannya tapi tidak menemukannya. Utai, seorang warga kampung itu yang setengah pandir, mengaku pernah melihat bangkai burung tersebut di dekat sumur dengan leher tergorok. Mat Kontan yang jadi marah besar mengajak Utai menemaninya ke tukang nujum untuk mengetahui siapa pembunuhnya.
Paijah yang ketakutan bertanya pada Soleman apa yang sebaiknya ia katakan bila ditanya oleh Mat Kontan nanti. Ternyata, Solemanlah yang membunuh burung beo kesayangan Mat Kontan agar perselingkuhannya dengan Paijah tidak ketahuan. Soleman berjanji akan melindungi Paijah.
Mat Kontan segera pulang karena tukang nujum yang hendak ditemuinya sudah meninggal. Dia pun marah-marah pada Paijah, bertanya siapa yang membunuh burung beonya. Paijah balas mengungkapkan kekesalannya pada Mat Kontan yang tidak pernah memikirkan dan menyayangi dirinya dan anaknya tapi selalu membangga-banggakan mereka pada semua orang.
Awalnya, Soleman membela Paijah dari amarah Mat Kontan. Lama-lama Soleman diam saja. Paijah kecewa pada Soleman dan mengaku sebagai pembunuh burung beo Mat Kontan. Soleman pun mengaku bahwa dialah pembunuh burung beo Mat Kontan dan bahwa dialah ayah dari anak Paijah, anak yang selama ini Mat Kontan bangga-banggakan sebagai anaknya.
Mat Kontan marah dan mengangkat goloknya. Soleman membuat Mat Kontan takut lagi dengan mengingatkannya tentang saat dia terperosok ke dalam pasir. Mat Kontan pergi dan menyerahkan Paijah serta anaknya pada Soleman.
Soleman menyusul Mat Kontan yang dikiranya hendak bunuh diri. Ternyata, Mat Kontan dan Utai sudah menunggu untuk membunuhnya. Soleman berhasil meloloskan diri dan pergi ke stasiun kereta api. Utai mati karena ditendang oleh Soleman.
Mat Kontan kembali ke rumahnya dan masih mau hidup dengan Paijah serta anak Soleman. Dia bahkan mulai memerhatikan anak itu dan pergi memanggil dukun untuk mengobati penyakitnya. Sayangnya, malam itu juga si bayi meninggal dunia.
by: admin-Frexan
sumber :
http://nyanyianbahasa.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/drama-malam-jahanam-suatu-pendekatan-objektif-2/
download full text : http://bandarnaskah.blogspot.com/2010/04/naskah-malam-jahanam.html
sumber :
http://nyanyianbahasa.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/drama-malam-jahanam-suatu-pendekatan-objektif-2/
download full text : http://bandarnaskah.blogspot.com/2010/04/naskah-malam-jahanam.html
Tag :
Novel,
Pertemuan Jodoh
Ketika perjalanan menuju Bandung dengan menggunakan kereta api. Secara tidak sengaja, seorang pemuda mempersilahkan tempat duduknya kepada Ratna karena tempat duduk yang lain telah penuh. Pemuda itu bernama Suparta, seorang pelajar dari STOVIA Jakarta. Ratna sendiri kini bersekolah di Frobelkweeschool. Mereka pun berkenalan satu sama lain. Ternyata, perkenalan itu membuat mereka saling menanam benih- benih cinta diantara masing- masing.
Liburan tiba, Suparta mengajak Ratna untuk pergi mengunjungi rumahnya di Sumedang. Ternyata, Suparta ingin memperkenalkan Ratna pada kedua orang tuanya. Akan tetapi, Nyai Raden Tedja Ningrum tidak begitu bersahabat terhadap Ratna setelah tahu bahwa Ratna berasal dari keturunan orang biasa dan bukan seorang bangsawan. Selama disana, Ratna selalu disinggung oleh Ibu Suparta tentang calon istri Suparta yaitu Nyai Raden Siti Halimah yang tidak lain ialah teman sekelasnya di Frobelkweeschool. Mendengar hal itu, Ratna merasa sakit hati.
Sejak saat itu, Ratna tersinggung dan kecewa terhadap Suparta. ia pun mencoba untuk melupakannya. Sayang, kesedihannya tidak berhenti disitu, ia pun harus putus sekolah karena usaha pembakaran kapal milik ayahnya , Tuan Atmaja bangkrut. Ia pun berusaha untuk mencari pekerjaan. Akhirnya, ia diterima menjadi pramusaji di sebuah toko. Disamping gajinya untuk memenuhi kebutuhan sehari- hari, juga ia pergunakan untuk membiayai sekolah adiknya. Malang bagi Ratna, belum lama bekerja di toko tersebut. Ia pun harus di PHK, begitupun dengan para pekerja yang lain. Toko itu harus ditutup atas perintah pengadilan sebab ada suatu hal yang belum terpenuhi.
Namun, Ratna tidak putus asa. Ia mencoba untuk tetap tabah dan mencari pekerjaan yang lain. Pernah, ia melamar pekerjaan ke kantor advokat, namun tidak berhasil dikarenakan pimpinan advokatnya itu selalu menggodanya. Tanpa disengaja, Ratna lewat di depan rumah mewah milik Nyonya dan Tuan Kornel. Ia pun mencoba melamar pekerjaan dan akhirnya ia diterima sebagai pembantu rumah tangga.
Nasib malang harus diterima Ratna lagi, salah seorang pembantu lain, Jene memfitnah bahwa Ratna telah mencuri perhiasan milik Nyonya Kornel. Ratna pun dilaporkan ke Polisi oleh Nyonya Kornel, sehingga ia ditangkap. Ratna yang merasa tidak melakukannya, bergegas melarikan diri ketika polisi yang menjaganya tertidur lelap. Ia melarikan diri dengan cara terjun ke Sungai Kwitang. Untung saja, nyawanya berhasil diselamatkan dan langsung dilarikan ke rumah sakit.
Beruntung bagi Ratna, sebab tepat waktu itu ia dirawat oleh kekasihnya sendiri, Suparta. Kini, Suparta telah berprofesi menjadi dokter tetap di rumah sakit itu. Betapa gembiranya Suparta bertemu dengan Ratna di rumah sakit. Sebab sampai saat ini, dia sudah mencari Ratna kemana- mana namun tidak berhasil. Kini, Ibu Suparta sudah menerima keadaan Ratna apa adanya. Sayang, Ratna sendiri hilang bagai ditelan bumi. Beberapa tempat telah dicari oleh Suparta. Bahkan dia pergi ke Togoapu, rumah orang tua Ratna tapi Ratna tidak ada di sana. Kemudian, Suparta pergi ke Kebon Sirih atas saran orang tua Ratna yang memberitakan kalau Ratna tinggal disana. Ternyata, kedatangan Suparta telah terlambat sebab saat itu Ratna dan adiknya sudah berangkat ke Jakarta. Suparta pun sampai putus asa mencari kesana- sini. Beruntung baginya, tiba- tiba saja ia bertemu Ratna yang sedang terluka di rumah sakit.
Ratna menceritakan semua kejadian yang terjadi, sehingga ia bisa sampai di rumah sakit. Dokter Suparta pun berusaha keras menolong kekasihnya itu. Dia mencari seorang pengacara guna menemani Ratna di pengadilan atas tuduhan pencurian perhiasaan milik Nyonya Kornel. Setelah diadili, ternyata Ratna tidak bersalah melainkan Amat yang mencuri perhiasan itu. Amat adalah kekasih Jene. Jene tidak dihukum melainkan Amat yang dihukum. Pengadilan itu juga telah mempertemukan Ratna dengan adiknya, Sudarma. Kini Sudarma menjadi schatter pegadaian di Purwakarta yang saat itu bertindak sebagai saksi mata atas kejadian itu. Oleh Suparta dan adiknya, Ratna disuruh beristirahat di paviliun yang bernama Bidara Cina. Hanya Suparta dan Sudarma yang diperkenankan memeriksa kesehatan Ratna.
Setelah Ratna sehat, Dokter Suparta melamar Ratna. Akhirnya, mereka pun menikah namun pestanya dilaksanakan di rumah Sudarma. Setelah menikah, mereka berdua kembali ke Togoapu untuk tinggal di rumah tuan atmaja. Rumah itu dibangun atas bantuan Suparta sebagai hadiah perkawinan mereka.
Sumber : http://kedairomanindonesia.blogspot.com/2010/12/pertemuan-jodoh.html
Karya : Abdul Muis
By : admin-Trainer-K
Tag :
Novel,
Kepastian yang akan Datang Cepat atau Lambat
Semua hal didunia ini tidak dapat dipastikan,
Takdir seseorang tidaklah dapat dipastikan,
Dan dapat ditentukan sesuai tempat kita dilahirkan,
Seorang akan menjadi pangeran dan putri,
Apabila mereka dilahirkan disebuah kerajaan,
Seorang akan menjadi pengemis,
Apabila mereka dilahirkan dilingkungan pengemis,
Setiap takdir seseorang tidaklah dapat dipastikan,
Itu benar,
Namun ada satu hal yang pasti,
Hal tersebut tidak memandang usia, jabatan, kekayaan serta apapun yang kau miliki,
Kematian pasti akan dialami setiap orang,
Bisa orang muda atau orang tua,
Orang kaya maupun miskin,
Orang berkelebihan maupun berkekurangan,
Bahkan orang baik ataupun jahat,
Kematian adalah sesuatu yang tak terelakkan,
Datang bagaikan hembusan angin yang pergi begitu saja,
Dan sering kali tidak dapat diprediksi,
Cepat atau lambat kitapun akan menghadapinya,
Menghadapinya dalam kondisi siap maupun tak siap,
Kematian membawa air mata bagi orang yang dicintai,
Air mata akan menetes,
Tetes demi tetes membasahi bumi,
Saat hewan peliharaanku,
Atau temanku meninggalkanku dan pergi menghadap bapa,
Aku akan merasa sangat kehilangan dan sangat sedih,
Air mata pun pasti akan bercucuran,
Aku tak bisa membayangkan,
Membayangkan ketika aku akan dipisahkan dengan orang-orang yang aku cintai,
Dipisahkan dengan takdir yang bernama "kematian"
Pasti akan terasa Berat,
Berat menjadi orang yang ditinggalkan,
Dan suatu saat nanti,
Cepat atau lambat,
Saat tiba giliranku yang meninggalkan dunia ini serta semua orang,
Semua orang yang kucintai dan berharga bagiku,
Aku berharap tak ada air mata yang keluar,
Aku tidak ingin ada kesedihan,
Dan aku ingin berkata,
"Berat bagiku meninggalkan orang yang kucintai, namun sudah tiba saatnya, ini giliranku menghadap Bapa, Bapa telah memanggilku, doakanlah aku"
Made by : Erwin
Sumber : http://erwin-pojokkarangan.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2013-03-05T08:43:00-08:00&max-results=7
By : admin-Trainer-K
Tag :
Poem,
Nyanyi
Suatu hari disebuah warteg yang rame pengunjung...
Tiba-tiba anak dari pemilik warteg
tersebut yg masih berumur sekitar 4 tahun keluar
dari dalam sambil teriak-teriak..
Anak : ibu..aku mo E'E..
terus langsung buru-buru diantar ibunya ke
belakang..
Ibu : besok lagi kalo mo E'E bilang ja mo
"NYANYI"..kan gk enak kalo didenger orang yg lagi
makan..
Anak : iya bu..
Ke'esokan hari anaknya teriak-teriak lagi..
Anak : ibu..mo"NYANYI"..
Ibu : mbak..tolong anak saya dianter
kebelakang..dia mo"NYANYI".
Ibunya langsung membawanyake WC..
Suatu malam si anak tidur sama bapaknya..
Anak : pak..pak..dede mo"NYANYI"..
Bapak : ah..macam-macam aja kamu..dah malam tidur..
"NYANYI"nya besok aja..
Anak : tapi pak..
Bapak : gak ada tapi2an.. gk enak sama
tetangga..masa malam-malam mo "NYANYI"..ntar
mereka pada ribut
Anak : penginnya sekarang pak..
Bapak : ah ni anak dibilangin susahnya minta
ampun..cepet tidur!!!!
Bnak : cepetan pak..dah gk tahan nie..
akhirnya si bapak nurutin permintaan anaknya..
Bapak : ok..ok..tapi "NYANYI"nya di kuping bapak
aja..jangan keras-keras dah malam, takut berisik..
Anak: bener pak..??
Bapak : IYA!!!..bawel bgt sih km..dah cepetan
"NYANYI"..gk pake lama.
Si anak langsung beraksi..
Bapak : @$&*&$..
Sumber : http://d-copy.blogspot.com/2013/05/kumpulan-cerita-lucu-gokil-2013.html
By : admin-Trainer-K
Tag :
Jokes,
Kaya dan Miskin
Setelah kembali dari perjalanan mereka, si ayah menanyai anaknya :
“Bagaimana perjalanannya nak?”.
“Perjalanan yang hebat, yah”.
“Sudahkah kamu melihat betapa miskinnya orang-orang hidup?,” Si bapak bertanya.
“O tentu saja,” jawab si anak.
“Sekarang ceritakan, apa yang kamu pelajari dari perjalanan itu,” kata si bapak.
Si anak menjawab :
Saya melihat bahwa kita punya satu anjing, tapi mereka punya empat anjing.
Kita punya kolam renang yang panjangnya sampai pertengahan taman kita, tapi mereka punya anak sungai yang tidak ada ujungnya.
Kita mendatangkan lampu-lampu untuk taman kita, tapi mereka memiliki cahaya bintang di malam hari.
Teras tempat kita duduk-duduk membentang hingga halaman depan, sedang teras mereka adalah horizon yang luas.
Kita punya tanah sempit untuk tinggal, tapi mereka punya ladang sejauh mata memandang.
Kita beli makanan kita, tapi mereka menumbuhkan makanan sendiri.
Kita punya tembok disekeliling rumah untuk melindungi kita, sedangkan mereka punya teman-teman untuk melindungi mereka.
Ayah si anak hanya bisa bungkam.
Lalu si anak menambahkan kata-katanya : “Ayah, terima kasih sudah menunjukkan betapa MISKIN-nya kita”.
Amanat :
- Kaya dan Miskin tergantung pada persepsi kita sendiri, bukan pada penilaian orang lain.
- Orang lain yang tampak miskin bagi kita, boleh jadi termasuk kaya menurut orang lain, atau bahkan mereka sendiri
- Kisah diatas mendorong kita untuk selalu melihat perspektif lain...
Sumber : http://www.kisahinspirasi.com/2012/08/kisah-inspirasi-tentang-kaya-dan-miskin.html
By : admin-Trainer-K
Tag :
Kisah Inspiratif,
