Alarmingly Strange Stories
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He punched in at precisely 8:30, the tedious time clock embossing his promptness on a small yellow card. The clock itself seemed almost a fixture, so long had it rested on the shelf above the cabinet where Gustave housed the tools of his particular trade. His tools. If he could call them such. They were merely simple implements any custodian would expect to wield, (a meager collection by popular standards) a weathered, soiled pair of gloves, a small trowel and other assorted cleaning and gardening accouterment, and finally a dust pan, used most frequently to aid in the disposal of the ashes of a cremated corpse. Leaning in the corner was its associate the broom. Gustave filed his card with the others, pushing it to the back out of habit more than anything. He grabbed his broom and strode quickly and silently through the parlor, paused in the chapel (he always hesitated at the sight of a lifeless body, not a recommendable trait for his line) then moved into the garage slash crematorium. He glanced at the newspaper lying opened on the counter adjacent to the sink. There is something slightly disquieting about eulogies and Gustave always felt uneasy when he perused the obituary section. Nonetheless, here he was. A whirl of movement and a thin gurgling vein of soundfrom the hulking cremation oven shifted his attention from one morbid thought to another, this new idea the more tangible. Quick, furtive glances to assure himself that he was alone and he crossed the floor in a few stalling heartbeats. Then he was face to face with the instrument responsible for so many ashes and charred bones stripped of flesh. Normally he would have shied away, and continued about his menial labor, but it only seemed right that he explore the workings of the machines before he left. Dials were turned and switches were flipped as Gustave brought the heat to a bearable level and he pulled the massively heavy door. He failed to move it and due to his proximity, he was seared by the intense convective heat needed to evaporate human skin and organs in a bare twenty minutes. Footsteps echoed down the hallway (which led to the "embalming room", he wasn't allowed there) and he let his hand fall away from the door. Then he returned to work, but he could feel the air growing thicker to breathe by the second, he felt like he was on mescaline in a room with a cloyingly thick atmosphere. Red. Red was the first thing recognizable, followed slowly by a thin soprano shrieking, like that of the proverbial banshee. Gustave incautiously let his thoughts wander but they recoiled sharply when images less appealing worked their way past his defensive barrier. From nowhere he conjured up a peaceful scene, one of rising dawn in an isolated copse of redwood trees. Suddenly the vision changed yet he could feel that it was a gradual evolution; the once magnificent trees lay scattered around their crude stumps and the sun was now blood red, and hanging lazily in the sky as if the world was tired of fighting for a heartbeat. But it did retain some small piece of emotion. The sun laughed at its fate. Gustave was awakened from the horrifying vision by an almost inaudible but conspicuous scratching coming from the direction of the simmering heat-chamber.

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