“Please, my son… we’ve been to two other funeral homes and both said they would have to do a closed casket. We just want to see his face one more time.”

The woman’s look of desperation couldn’t shift the reality of the situation. Her son had drowned and spent nearly a day in frigid seawater, a nasty accelerant for decomposition that most funeral directors knew meant a closed casket. Adi Gomez took stock of the damage the sea had wrought. Bloating, discoloration, some skin slippage, though none in the face, which she deemed a good sign. It was a tall task, but she couldn’t help but to consider her approach; which chemicals to use, the preferred drainage and injection sites, how she would set the features. It would be hard, but in a short window of time, Adi had already made the calculations and felt it was possible. She assured the woman that they could have an open casket, to which the woman reacted with an amount of gratitude Adi was used to.

In a decade and a half of practice, Adi Gomez had become one of the best morticians in the world. And having worked for most of that time in a sleepy seaside town not known for much, it was particularly impressive that she had gained some renown in the field, specifically for her work on drowning victims. But renown in the field of mortuary science and embalming was not something that accrued praise or adoration, except by some of her peers and those loved ones whose cadavers benefitted from her talents. So Adi Gomez lived a rather solitary and undistinguished life that centered on her work.

Adi spent the following morning wrapped in a blanket, sipping hot coffee on her porch, overlooking the ocean. As steam from her coffee drifted into the cold air, she gazed out at the endless beauty of the sea. She loved it so much that while not focused on corpses and chemicals, she kept and maintained salt water fish tanks filled with as much colorful sea life as she could fit. After her morning coffee, she went to work on inspecting the water, cleaning the sides, and feeding the fish in the two tanks she kept in her well-ordered but sparsely decorated one-bedroom apartment. One larger aquarium in the living room took most of her time, while a smaller one in her bedroom was done much quicker. She even had a tank in her prep room at work, which her coworker had at first discouraged, but then acceded to after a particularly impressive case which required spot surface embalming so precise and delicate he was sure it was impossible. Adi proved him wrong and thereafter her prep room fish tank was not discussed again.

After finishing with the tanks and leaving everything in its proper place, Adi locked her door and went off to work. She was profoundly unaware however, that through the eyes of a single fish, a perceptive little Coral Beauty colored deep purple and shimmery orange, someone was watching her, and had been watching her for a long while.

***

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