Drastic
Stories
Chapter One
Trespassing
Lucy fingered the strands of the dead man's hair before she sealed the envelope, sticking the prickly ends up her nose to see what the dead man must have smelled like, but the hair smelled mostly like formaldehyde and shampoo.
The program didn't return the ashes of the donor; the cremains were scattered at sea with the cremains of hundreds of other donors. Lucy was supposed to use this word - cremains - whenever she spoke to potential donors or their next of kin. Her boss, Mildred, insisted. Mildred was the sort of woman who was always insisting. So far, in the month Lucy'd been at this job, she'd used the word in conversations with cousins, grandsons, granddaughters, husbands, wives, sons, and brothers. "You do understand that we are unable to return the cremains to the family," Lucy would say as earnestly as she could. She practiced saying it to her reflection in the sleeping computer. Cremains was a word Lucy imagined had been invented by the same clever ad guy who came up with Craisins, the snack food combination ... read full excerpt from Drastic ebook
