"She Said She Touch Dead People"
History class smelled like sweat, old textbooks, and burnt coffee — the teacher’s, not theirs.
The windows were cracked, the radiator hissed like it was trying to warn somebody, and the sunlight outside hit the grime on the glass like it was too good to be in Varnell Heights.
“Y’all ever heard of a sarcophagus?”
Mr. Larkins stood in front of the smartboard, stylus in one hand, his cheap navy suit two creases away from being pajamas. “It’s what ancient Egyptians used to bury their dead. Think of it like a luxury casket... for pharaohs. Royalty only.”
Essie Monroe didn’t blink.
She sat in the second-to-last row, chin in palm, black nails tapping against her cheek. Hoodie half-zipped, burgundy braids twisted into a crown like she ran the whole classroom in silence.
Jinx nudged her from behind.
“Yo,” he whispered, grinning, “why he say that like you don’t already know where they keep King Tut’s bones.”
Essie didn’t turn. Just smirked.
“King Tut been dead so long, I could still make him look good.”
Q chuckled low.
“Make him look good how, though? Like, open-casket good or Halloween prop good?”
Bish, across the aisle, didn’t laugh.
He just glanced over with his usual stone face and said, “You weird, Essie. Straight weird.”
Essie turned now. Slow.
“You the one who passed out that time I showed you the prosthetic jaw with the maggot in it.”
“That jaw had teeth still in it,” Bish muttered. “Ain’t nobody expect all that.”
“You talkin’ about that last semester?” Jinx said. “Yo, I remember. She had her lil’ horror show in the back of Ms. Rogers class.”
Essie leaned into it now.
Voice low, eyes lit with that Essie mischief. “Yeah. That was before I learned how to keep the eyes from sinkin’ in. You gotta massage the lids just right, you feel me? Warm ’em with your thumbs. Real gentle. Otherwise they cave in and the whole face look sunken.”
Q looked mildly horrified.
“You touchin’ they eyes?”
“Touchin’ everything,” she said proudly. “Noses. Lips. Cheeks. Chins. I got a whole drawer of sculpting putty for mouths that got shot up. You gotta build the smile back.”
“Ewww,” Jinx said, grinning. “Yo, you sick.”
Mr. Larkins cleared his throat.
Essie spun back around just in time to avoid detention. Mr. Larkins moved on to mummification, but the back of the class wasn’t letting up.
“Wait, hold up,” Jinx whispered. “So you just... be in there with dead bodies and sh—stuff?”
Essie shrugged.
“Every day after school. Mr. Jenkins lets me do the faces. Says I got ‘soft hands and good eyes.’”
Q raised an eyebrow. “He pay you for that?”
“Not much. But it’s quiet. Peaceful. Plus, I like it. People don’t talk when they dead. They don’t lie neither.”
Bish gave her a look. “You talk like a villain.”
Essie smiled, deadpan. “Or maybe I’m just honest.”
Bell rang.
Chairs scraped. Backpacks zipped. And as the class emptied out into the graffiti-tagged hallway of PS 841, the conversation followed them like a ghost.
“You think he’d let y’all work too?” Jinx asked, tossing his hoodie over his shoulder, white T-shirt crisp underneath. “I mean, y’all broke, right?”
“I ain’t broke,” Bish muttered. “I’m money-conscious.”
“You live in the same tower as me,” Jinx said. “Your faucet drip rust and your elevator moan like a demon. We broke.”
Q slid his laptop into his backpack. “I’m broke adjacent.”
Essie rolled her eyes. “Look, he probably would let y’all on. He’s old, tired, and cheap. Been runnin’ the place alone for like twenty years. That’s why it’s slow. Half the time he noddin’ off in the embalming room.”
“Word?” Jinx said. “So what, we just walk in there and be like ‘yo, lemme wash some bodies’?”
Essie waved him off. “Nah, you gotta show respect. Talk soft. He don’t like loud kids. And don’t say nothin’ dumb.”
“Like what?”
“Like ‘yo, lemme wash some bodies.’”
They laughed, walking down the cracked stairwell, past lockers with peeled stickers and old Sharpie tags from kids who’d either graduated or disappeared.
Outside, the city slapped them.
Varnell Heights in late fall had a wind like it owed you something — sharp, sideways, and laced with the piss of alleyways and the steam of underground trains. The sky was an ashy bruise. Buildings loomed like concrete judges.
They zipped up, hoods up. Backpacks slung.
They walked in a line, four deep, past the corner store with the bulletproof glass, past the Chinese takeout with the dusty “A” rating in the window, past a man screaming at pigeons and a woman curled under a red blanket that barely covered her legs.
Sirens groaned in the distance. Not urgent. Just present. Like a soundtrack.
They cut left past Meridian Houses — one of the biggest projects in the Heights.
Concrete slabs stacked on top of hopelessness. Laundry swinging like prayers from windows. The ghost of yesterday’s gunfire still whispering in the stairwells.
On the corner, police tape fluttered like birthday streamers.
A chalk outline was half-faded in the rain. Two cops stood mid-convo, one drinking Dunkin. Behind them, a body bag zipped into an ambulance.
They walked past like it was nothing. Because it was.
Jinx didn’t even pause. “Damn, that was probably Taveon. I heard he got clipped last night.”
“Heard the same,” Bish said.
“Another one from 4B gone,” Q muttered.
Essie looked once, then kept walking. “Y’all talkin’ like it’s a school roster.”
Jinx shrugged. “It is.”
Back to banter.
“You think they let us wear gloves or we gotta touch ’em raw?” Jinx asked.
“I’m bringin’ my own gloves,” Q said. “And a mask. Y’all not finna have me in there inhalin’ ghost breath.”
“Y’all soft,” Essie said. “They ain’t gon’ bite.”
“They better not,” Bish muttered.
As they walked, the buildings changed.
Still gray, still tall, but older. Brickwork instead of concrete. Iron fences. Funeral banners faded in the windows. Finally, they hit Jenkins & Monroe Funeral Services — a two-story stone house squeezed between a church and a liquor store.
The windows were frosted.
The front porch had a wooden bench with chipped paint. A lantern above the door swayed in the wind. One side of the sign flickered. Looked like Jenkins & Mo__e.
Essie stepped up first.
“Y’all chill,” she said. “Don’t talk fast. Don’t joke. He don’t do all that.”
They nodded, suddenly quieter.
Jinx tucked his chain. Q turned down his AirPods. Bish just stood tall, arms folded, expression blank.
Essie knocked.
Silence.
Then footsteps.
The door creaked open and Mr. Jenkins appeared — tall, thin, Black, and leathery like an old prayer book. Eyes yellowed with time. Hands still strong, even in stillness.
He looked them over.
Essie smiled faintly. “Hey, Mr. Jenkins.”
His eyes narrowed. “You bringin’ trouble with you today, girl?”
Essie shook her head. “Nah. Just friends.”
Jenkins stared at each of them — long and slow — like he could smell who they were beneath their skin.
Then he stepped back. Just enough to let them in.
“Don’t touch nothin’,” he said. “And don’t lie to me.”
The door shut behind them with a heavy ka-chunk that made the wood groan.
Inside was silence.
Not the kind you get in libraries or school offices. This was heavier. Like the walls remembered sorrow. Like the air carried the last breath of a thousand bodies.
The four teens stood still, the warmth of the outside world peeling off them like smoke. The scent hit first — faint formaldehyde, lavender, and floor wax. Somewhere, a radio played an old soul tune low enough to sound like a ghost humming.
The front room stretched long and narrow, dimly lit.
Caskets lined the walls in polished rows — cherrywood, pine, onyx-black, all of them closed, waiting. Thick burgundy carpet. A chandelier above, missing two bulbs. Velvet curtains heavy as secrets.
“Y’all take your shoes off when you walk in somebody’s mama house?” Mr. Jenkins barked, without turning.
They froze.
“No, sir,” Bish said, quick.
“Then don’t track no outside filth in here. This ain’t no damn bus stop. This is where we respect the dead.”
They shuffled awkwardly, wiping shoes on the mat.
Essie stepped up. “Mr. Jenkins, these my friends. They was wonderin’ if maybe you could use some help around here. I told them you—”
He cut her off with a raised hand.
“You told them what?” he asked, voice cool but coiled.
She tilted her chin, steady. “Told them you runnin’ this place by yourself. Said they could learn. Maybe work. You know, part-time.”
He turned now — slow — eyes sharper than the knife he probably had in his waistband.
“You lookin’ to learn?” he said, eyeing Jinx.
“Yeah. I mean... I don’t mind hard work,” Jinx offered. “Ain’t tryna be broke forever.”
Jenkins pointed at him with a bony finger. “You talk slick.”
He turned to Q.
“You look like you scared of your own shadow.”
Q squinted. “I ain’t scared.”
“Yeah, you are,” Jenkins said flat. “You the type that cry when a bird die.”
Then to Bish.
“And you. You look like you think you tougher than you is. That quiet sh*t ain’t foolin’ nobody. You see a body laid out, chest cut open, jaw wired shut — you gon’ piss down your leg.”
Bish’s jaw twitched. “Nah.”
“Yeah,” Jenkins snapped. “You will. You all think death is a TikTok filter. Something spooky for October. But death ain’t spooky. Death is work. And work is ugly.”
He stepped toward them, his voice dropping into something darker.
“Let me explain somethin’ before y’all start gettin’ any bright ideas about jobs or money.”
They went still.
“I’ve buried more men than you got followers. I’ve stitched up heads that was damn near in pieces. Had brains leaking through bullet holes while the mama sat right in the front row. You think you ready for that?”
None of them spoke.
He narrowed his eyes. Then smirked.
“Didn’t think so.”
Essie opened her mouth, but he waved her off again.
“You know what?” he said suddenly. “F*ck it. Come on.”
He turned and walked off fast — not limping, not slow, just steady. The back of his work coat flared as he pushed through the heavy curtain behind the casket display.
They followed, unsure.
The hallway behind the curtain was colder, tighter. Pictures on the walls — Black families dressed in funeral wear from the ’80s, some smiling, some hollow-eyed. A photo of Jenkins as a young man in uniform — Navy. Another with him and a few white men in suits beside a hearse, smiling like they’d just buried a senator.
The floor creaked under their steps.
He led them to the back room.
The room.
The embalming room.
It smelled worse here — not rotting, just real. Sharp chemicals, steel tables, cold tile. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Cabinets filled with labeled tools. A metal sink with brown stains. A radio on the counter played Otis Redding.
And on the table...
A body.
Black male. Mid-thirties. Shirtless. Pale now. Skin like wax. Lips stitched. Eyes taped shut.
Jenkins slapped on rubber gloves. Snap-snap.
“This here is the last stop,” he said. “You come through these doors, you ain’t goin’ nowhere else.”
Q stared too long and looked away. Bish held still, eyes locked. Jinx rubbed the back of his neck.
Essie? She watched like it was Tuesday.
Jenkins grabbed a metal tool and began talking — half to himself, half to them.
“This man got clipped at close range. Gun under the chin. Whole bottom jaw damn near shattered. I already reconstructed it. Used bone filler and a mandible mold. Took me two hours. You see that?”
He lifted the chin and pointed with the tool.
They nodded slowly.
“Now I’m runnin’ cavity fluid,” Jenkins said, almost musical. “Gotta make sure the body don’t leak in the casket. You ever seen a leak at a funeral?”
They shook their heads.
“You don’t want to. Look like somethin’ from a horror movie. Mama pass out. Cousin throw up. Ruin the whole damn day.”
He hooked up the tubes and pressed a pedal.
A low hum.
From the body’s side, red fluid began to swirl through the clear tubing, disappearing into the cavity. He moved with clinical rhythm, narrating the whole thing.
“This part here is the final flush. We push the preservatives into the organs. Get the stink out. Keep ’em from ballooning up in the casket.”
Q gagged a little.
Jenkins noticed.
He grinned. “That’s your stomach talkin’ to you. Tellin’ you to go be a librarian.”
He walked toward them with the blood-covered tool, waving it like a wand.
“Any y’all feel like leavin’, now’s the time. Ain’t no shame.”
Nobody moved.
He turned to Bish.
“You. What’s your name?”
“Bishop.”
Jenkins raised an eyebrow. “Like the chess piece?”
“Like the position in church.”
Jenkins smirked. “You gon’ need prayer. That’s a promise.”
He looked at Jinx. “And you? You look like trouble.”
Jinx grinned. “Only when I gotta be.”
Jenkins turned to Q. “And you? What’s your skill?”
“I build stuff. Code. Fix systems.”
“Mmm.” Jenkins nodded slowly. “Good. I might need a new firewall. Got too many ghosts in this place.”
Finally, he looked at Essie.
“You sure about this?”
She nodded. “Yeah. They solid.”
He peeled off the gloves and tossed them in the bin.
“Well... I ain’t runnin’ a damn daycare. And if any of y’all ever steal, slack, or speak over me — I’mma bury you so deep, the devil gotta knock twice just to find you.”
Silence.
Then he turned and opened the back door.
The cold hit again.
“You show up tomorrow, after school. I’ll have you shadow Essie and scrub the drains.”
Q winced. “Scrub?”
Jenkins looked back. “With a brush. And bleach. And your soul.”
He slammed the door behind him and disappeared into the shadows.
They stood there, eyes still wide, staring at the body on the table.
Jinx broke the silence first.
“...Yo.”
Essie grinned. “Told y’all.”
