Song of an Inferno

This story was inspired by the Lamb Funeral Home scandal, in which owner David Sconce cremated bodies en masse instead of individually, in order to boost profits quickly. The story is written from the point of view of seven recently deceased, whose bodies have been crammed into the Lamb crematorium and are awaiting burning.

We are seven. We were not meant to be burned together. Not like this. Not in this oven. Not in this place. Not stacked like refuse. Not shoved in haste, as if death were a shipment, a quota, a monthly target. And yet, here we are: pressed shoulder to jaw, pelvis to ribcage, cheek to calcifying spine. Bodies robbed of the rituals meant to separate us from meat. No solitude. No dignity. Only crowding in fire. And in the fire, something terrible happens: we wake.

#

Gladys Ingert, 82

In life, Gladys was a florist who believed in the small mercies of ritual. Corsages for high school dances. Wreaths for funerals. Tulips, not lilies—those were too funereal for her taste, though she arranged them with grace when clients asked. She believed in soft scents, fine music, and written instructions.

Now, Gladys’s ribs crack against the hard surface of another body. A teenage girl’s knee pushes against her hip. That scoundrel Kontz, or Chonce, whatever his name was, packing them in here all together in a pitiful, mammon-chasing midden! She smells burning scalp, and something more primal—betrayal.

Within the fire, Gladys does not scream. She remembers. Memories shimmer, bubble, evaporate—flower petals curling black, one by one. And then she feels the others. She feels them all.

#

DuShan James, 29

He was a poet who wore gold grills and sagged his jeans to piss off the gatekeepers. He made mixtapes in a garage studio and had almost—almost—signed with a label. He had words, raw and furious, torn from the belly of the city: lyrics about red lines, court fines, cop lies, and long drives home to nowhere. When he died—gunned down by a man who once called him brother—his mother screamed. Her grief was raw. Real. She took out a loan to pay for a cremation. And now here he is.

A stranger’s stiff hand is jammed into his armpit. His cheek burns against the steel wall of the retort. There are others here, and it’s hot—not just the fire, but the fury. He feels Gladys’s outraged indignation. Felice’s stunned confusion. Father Cox’s pulsing shame. And somewhere deeper, deeper still, he feels something that makes even his fury pause: the presence of the unclaimed. The voiceless. The forgotten.

In this choir of the scorched, DuShan’s anger finds rhythm. He begins to chant. Not in words—they’re long gone now—but in pulses of defiance that shimmer through bone. He spits rage into the furnace walls, and they vibrate.

#

Father Jed DeVries, 67

His collar had once been crisp, white as absolution. He had laid hands on the dying, whispered to the suicidal, prayed with those whose eyes could no longer hold hope. But he was not clean. No priest ever is, not entirely. Secrets, small and large, nested in his chest like termites behind painted wood. He was dismissed, eventually. Quietly. A "reassignment," they called it. Then exile. Then death, alone.

Now. A boot on his shoulder. The snap of cartilage. The roar of flames louder than any church organ. And in the furnace, he recognizes the weight of justice. “Forgive me,” he whispers. Not to God, who no longer answers. But to the others. He feels DuShan’s fury lash his memories like a whip. Gladys’s anger seeps into his bones. Honor’s confusion is a cold wind in the inferno. And still, he repents.

#

Felice Dinh, 41

Wanting to cry while burning. It was a strange feeling. In her mind’s eye she sees her husband emptying her urn over that little cliff they’d picked out, the Pacific waves crashing in the cove below. Now her ashes would float on the breeze along with that of all of these people here. No dignified solo flight over the ocean, she would skitter in the air in crowded economy. The heat reaches her pelvis. Her skin fuses to another body’s back. The stench is unbearable, not because it is gruesome, but because it is indifferent.  Now, she merges. Not with fire—with them. Their memories wrap around hers like silk soaked in blood. She feels Father DeVries’ disgrace, Gladys’s crushed floral heart, and Honor’s pure bewilderment.

#

Andre Vicario, 75

He could carve a cow into fifty precise cuts without pausing for breath. He taught his son how to use a cleaver, how to sharpen a knife until it could shave arm hair. He respected death. He fed his family with it. When he died, his son—a banker now, clean hands—paid for the cremation in cash. No questions asked. “Just get it done,” he said, checking his watch.

But Andre knows when meat is treated wrong. The way they’d folded him to compact his form—disrespectful. The way they’d broken his bones cramming him—inhuman. The way that crematorium owner had joked while doing it—unpardonable. His rage is silent. It does not chant or scream. It seethes. A butcher knows what fire does to flesh. He feels every tendon part like pulled pork. He counts bones as they crack and surrender to the heat. And then—he hears her.

The girl.

#

Honor Stimson, 16

She took a pill to stop feeling for a while. That’s all! She didn’t want to die! Her body lies small and bent, her spine warped by the oven’s pressure. Her soul—if such a thing survives—trembles like a candle in a hurricane. She doesn't understand this place.She doesn't understand why a priest is inside her mind. Why a florist is whispering about lilies. Why a butcher sees her face and weeps.

“I was just trying to disappear for a little while.”

And the others hear her. Their shame becomes grief. Their anger becomes vigil. They circle her in spirit, protect her as she had never been protected in life. She is the center of the flame. Its youngest voice. And its purest injustice.

#

The Seventh

No name. No history. Like every other homeless bum in L.A. The fire claims him, but cannot consume him. He died alone. His death was quiet. His life was not. He’d roared at the sky a lot, almost as much as he’d roared at those that hadn’t tossed money in his tin. Now he is rage before words. He is a wound the world never acknowledged. In the furnace, he erupts. Not with sound, but with presence. The others bend toward him. Not in worship. In recognition. They see him like he has never been seen! Becoming visible while his physical form is being destroyed, what irony! His thoughts are not sentences, but weather. A pressure drop. A crack in the earth. A storm coalescing. He is the first to sing. The song is not melody. It is memory and mourning.

END

John Leahy has had three novels published - Harvest, CROGIAN, and Unity. His story The Tale In The Attic attained an honorable mention in L Ron Hubbard's Writers Of The Future Contest. His short story Singers has been included in Flame Tree Publishing's 2017 Pirates and Ghosts anthology, alongside tales by literary greats such as Homer, Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, H.P. Lovecraft, and H.G. Wells. His story "Do You Dream Of Oil?" has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He lives in Killarney, Ireland.

For more like this, check out: