For the Angels

The night was silent, save for the crickets. The barn door was closed, as it always was when work was to be done; otherwise it was open so air could circulate. Jakob worked feverishly by lamplight, his ears straining for any sign that his wife was home.

Jakob Trevor was a large man, easily six foot tall, beginning to bald, but handsome otherwise. His breathing squeaked occasionally through the gap in his teeth, as he tried to remember the next steps of his ritual. On the table before him was a body, a young man likely in his twenties, facedown on the clean blue tablecloth. He was unclothed, and his wrists were cut, the arms dangling over the edge of the table, blood draining into plastic tubs.

His left arm was heavily desiccated, the skin carefully parted by the sharp instrument in Jakob’s hand. The flickering dimness illuminated many more metal instruments on a nurse’s gurney, though many were unused. Jakob didn’t dare to use some of them...they confused him too much.

By the closed wooden door of the barn was a coat rack with two hooks, one empty, the other holding an apron matching the one Jakob wore. Lying on the floor next to the coatrack was a heavily carved dummy, covered in lacerations and crude symbols, a surgeon’s knife stabbed into its chest. A metal cabinet radiated heat from the far side of the room, next to a sink. The air hung heavy with the smell of sweat and blood, moisture blooming on his head as he worked.

Carefully, Jakob inched the apparatus that looked vaguely like a potato peeler under the skin of the man’s arm, parting and lifting the wedge of his skin upwards off his shoulder, the wound barely bleeding. He wouldn’t have much blood left at this point, as most of it was drained. Symbols were scored into his flesh around the shoulders and back, and his other arm already resembled a moist pinecone, the flaps of skin laying limp.

He didn’t want to try using the tar, as he wasn’t experienced with it, but he had to try…right? He opened the metal cabinet against the far wall, bringing out a silver tin filled with at least a gallon of melted tar. The heat had been keeping it pliable and sticky, and he dipped a ladle within. He poured the tar messily over the arm he had just filleted, and pushed the scales of skin upward like spines, hoping they would freeze in place like he wanted them to. He was disappointed to find they weren’t behaving.

He applied another layer of tar, and tried again, running his fingers through the split flesh, but his hands began to become unwieldy, scraps of skin pulling away from the cadaver, and he froze, not wanting to cause any more damage. He eyed the nurse’s gurney, where he knew a solvent could be found in one of the drawers to unstick him, but he didn;t know how to get to it. He was reaching a leg to try and hook it closer when he heard gravel crunch from the front of the house, and a truck’s engine whining down.

He froze. They’re home.

He redoubled his efforts to reach the solvent, but the added panic made him clumsy, pulling the body off the table and making more of a mess of the sticky skin than it already was. Feeling heat flush to his face, he tried to pick up the body to put it back onto its perch, before the barn door swung open.

Penelope stood in the doorway, her smile frozen on her face. Heidi, their daughter, stood next to her, holding onto her mother with one hand while chewing the nails of the other. His wife saw the mess on the operating table, and her smile immediately transformed to a scowl.

“Really, Jakob? Why would you even think to start without me?” She crossed the room in a few strides, grabbing the solvent from the nurses gurney, pouring it over both the body and Jakob’s hands. She turned on the faucet of the sink.

He flushed, an embarrassed grin revealing the gap in his teeth. “I’m sorry, Penny, I wanted to impress you, show you what I learned. The tar’s harder to work with than I thought, though…” The solvent was doing its work, allowing Jakob to remove his hands from the body. He washed his hands in the sink while Penelope scrubbed the tar off the cadaver, leaving black suds in the tar’s place.

Jakob scrubbed at the tar on his hands. “Since you been so busy with Heidi’s schoolin’, I thought if I could make this part of your day easier, it’d be a good help.”

Penelope’s scowl softened, but didn’t disappear. “You didn’t think to ask me how I do my work? Where were you going to get the words and runes from, you silly man.” She shook her head, the last remnants of her annoyance softening to a gentle smile. “You’re such a fool, you know that?”

She nodded to Heidi, who took her usual position next to the practice dummy, pulling out the knife to add more stabs and cuts to it.

Jakob giggled, relieved. “I’m glad you ain’t mad at me...could you teach me later?” Penelope nodded, and he clapped excitedly. “I love workin’ with you, but I wanna know more about it...the angels sure sound pretty. I want to be able to see ‘em like you.”

“Of course, dear. For now, however,” she said, “let’s make sure we do this one right. It would not be proper to leave this one bare before the angels.”

With a swift motion, she grabbed the other apron from the coatrack by the door, and swung it over her day clothes, fully covering her front. She selected a fine knife, and set about fixing the angles of the triangles of flesh, cutting with one hand and brushing tar on each scale so they stood off the flesh underneath at a 45 degree angle, so that the fullness of the flesh could be seen under the skin.

A half hour passed, while she flared the skin on each of the limbs. Then she went to the podium, lifting the book off its pedestal, opening to the bookmarked page, and began carving more runes into swirling sentences across the man’s shoulders and sides. The words inched across his lower back, linking back with where the runes began, to protect him from the judging gaze of the angels.

With Jakob’s help, she lifted the body and swathed him in cotton cloth, before brushing more symbols on the outside with the blood they had drained.

At least I did that right, he thought.

When the ritual was complete, the two stood back to admire her handiwork. The man was covered head to toe in swaddling, but the spines of his skin were still easily visible through the sheer cloth; they would recognize her work. Jakob’s breathing was fast, and Penny smiled.

“Thank you again, for your help, my sweet Jakob. Your heart is in the right place, if your head isn’t always.” He blushed, giggling again.

She turned to their daughter. “Come, Heidi, time for bed. Your father and I need to place the token back near where he died, so the angels can find him. Can you tuck yourself in for mommy, tonight?”

The little girl nodded, with a cheerful smile. She stabbed her practice knife into the dummy’s torso, and ran out the door to the house.

The happy couple shared a kiss, then lifted each end of the swaddled corpse, carrying it carefully out the door into the night. A car engine roared, then there was a crunch of gravel.

Then the night was silent, save for the crickets.