Embalming 101 Who: Evan, Erin and NPC vampire, When: Early Morning Where: The Forsythe Funeral home
Evan was back into the swing of things and those things included work. It'd been nice to get a break and get away from Scarlet Oak for a while after his crashed and burned relationship, but now that he was home, he couldn't even figure out why he'd left in the first place. It wasn't worth it, she wasn't worth it, not losing his family and friends and his job over. He'd missed working which might have been strange to some given the fact that he was an embalmer, but Evan did miss actually having a purpose. He still refused to stay at his own home so he'd taken to sleeping at his parents still, but bright and early in the morning, he headed down to check on his first job of the day. A pretty little blonde.
Too bad she was dead.
It was sort of depressing sometimes to see the people that came through the funeral home. She looked young and he sort of felt bad that she'd had her life cut short, but there wasn't exactly anything he could do about it so he tried to push the fact that she was lying there on a slab dead and looked younger than him out of his head. It wasn't good to think about the dead when you were about to embalm them. So setting up the equipment he was so skilled with, he moved to read the name off the tag on the girl.
Gwen Martin.
It suited her, he supposed. Or used to suit her since she was dead now. Letting out a breath and reaching over to let his fingertips find the pulse point in her neck, he checked to make sure the chick was dead at all, though the coolness of her skin told him she was before he even got to her pulse and found not a single thump against his fingers. Step one was done and since all of her clothing and other articles of personal effects had been removed previous to his coming in, he went ahead with the cleaning of the body. It was sort of gross to do this part, cleaning up a dead person, letting the disinfectant be rubbed over their body and it always made Evan feel sort of like a perv.
"At least you're a chick." he said to the corpse. "No dicks to clean."
Erin... was hiding in the storage closet, camera in hand. As early as Evan had got up and gone to work, Erin had beat him to it. And she had decided to welcome back her little brother in style. She'd put an ad on the local Craigslist, and was quite pleased to find someone with what she wanted, and a similar sense of humor. She'd met with the woman late in the night (or early in the morning, depending on ones perspective), set things up, and promptly set herself up in the closet, camera in hand. As soon as Evan entered, she started filming.
How else to welcome the emo little brother back than with a practical joke of fucking epic proportions?
Evan, completely oblivious to his sister's joke or her presence in the storage closet, went head with the prep work and setting the woman's face, cleaning her up and then went to make the incision at her jugular for the drainage of her bodily fluids. Being an embalmer wasn't exactly a job for people who got sick to their stomach and thankfully, Evan wasn't one of them. Scalpel in hand, he began the cut, eyes fixed on the flesh as the blade slowly began to slice.
The moment she felt the blade cut into her flesh, Gwen's eyes snapped open, her lips parting on a loud scream of (mock) horror. She'd laid silent and still through the impersonal, and not at all lovely smelling, bath of hers, but the knife was definitely her cue to speak up. The woman who had set this up seemed like quite the hilariously cruel bitch, and it had amused the vampire to play along on the nasty prank, all for scaring the living daylights out of some embalmer. Feigning death, after all, wasn't exactly a difficult role to slip into, and she hadn't had anything particularly important planned for the night and morning anyway.
Evan very nearly pissed himself. If he hadn't just gone before coming downstairs, he just might have. Thankfully, however, his bladder was empty so all that the scream got was a scream of his own. At least at first. Having someone wake up on the table was not something that Evan wanted to ever experience ever but apparently his awesome track record had faltered now. Backing up, he dropped the scalpel on the floor with a little clank, eyes wide as he stumbled back towards the wall. All arms and legs and not the most coordinated person in the world, one wrong step had the man tripping over his own feet and falling flat on his ass.
His backward motions didn't stop, however, as he continued to slide backwards towards the nearest corner, face pale in horror. "Holy shit." he muttered to himself, his heart racing and his pulse pounding in his ears. This seriously could not be happening. The bitch was cold. She was dead. No pulse motherfucker. How the hell could she be screaming?
And that was when Erin could no longer contain her own laughter. It burst out all at once, and she fell against the closet door. It opened and sent her tumbling to the floor, but she didn't particularly mind. She managed to hold the camera up and keep it pointed at Evan while she screamed in laughter, clutching her stomach with her free hand. "OH MY GOD!" she cried, still laughing hysterically. "You should see your face!"
Gwen's amusement was masked with a thin layer of false horror, as she bolted up into a sitting position on the table, slapping a hand over where he'd cut her throat. Her scream was cut off purposefully mid note, and it took her a second to remember to fake panicked breathing, as she pointedly looked down at her nude state and then back at the truly horrified man. An accusation was splashed clear on her face, as she looked at him as if he was someone they'd pulled aside on that show she loved, Dateline.
It didn't last, as the woman, Erin, who had set it all up, fell out of the closet laughing, and Gwen could no longer hold up her mask, dissolving into laughter of her own.
He was horrified. Absolutely, utterly horrified. He'd just cut an apparently living woman and she was sitting up and screaming and naked and accusingly looking at him like he'd just sprouted a tail and devil horns and picked up a pitchfork or something. But then it all became a lot more clear when his sister fell out of the closet, camera in hand and laughter rolling through her body. Still, it was a long moment before Evan could get his face to stop looking so absolutely shocked and dismayed. Erin? What the hell was she doing here and was the not dead, dead chick really laughing too?
What. The. Fuck?
"Erin?" Evan gasped out, blinking a little at the woman on the table and then letting his eyes flick to his sister as she lay there on the floor videotaping the entire situation. She was recording this? She'd obviously constructed the whole damn thing and the dead bitch was in on it. "You? You did this?" he asked, though he knew she had as his eyes flicked to the woman and he slowly collected himself from the floor. "You're in on it?" he asked her. Once more his eyes moved to his sister. "You're a whore." he told her simply. "God, I hate you."
That only made Erin laugh a hell of a lot harder. "Oh, stop!" she shouted, rolling onto her side. "Oh, it hurts!" She had to set the camera on the table to clutch her sides, as she was laughing so hard she almost peed herself. Fuck, I really outdid myself this time.
Gwen dropped her hand from her throat, the small wound already healed, although a streak of blood was now on her throat and had dripped down to her shoulder, as well as smears of it on her fingers. When addressed, she simply nodded, before she smiled, baring her fangs quite prettily in the process. The pretense of being overly conscious of her own nudity was abandoned, as she hopped off the other side of the table and retrieved the stack of her clothing from a nearby cabinet. She took a moment to wash her hand, and her neck in the small sink there, before she started pulling on her clothes without rush.
Evan didn't share the amusement with the situation. Still slightly shaken and a little ticked off, he glared at his sister and walked over to snatch up the camera. "Bitch." he muttered as he flicked off the damn thing. "Just wait. It's war now. And to think I actually thought you'd be glad that I came back but you do this instead? Yeah, thanks, Erin. Love you too."
"Oh, but I do love you!" Erin replied, still trying to calm herself down. "I thought a good family prank would make you feel right back at home! Just like old times!" Hey, it might not have been normal logic, but it was Forsythe logic, dammit! "Welcome back, baby bro!"
As charming as the family reunion was, or whatever it was, Gwen's part was done now, and after she zipped up her jacket over her shirt, she was ready to leave. "Well, this has been fun, but I have to go and wash off this horrendous smell now," her nose wrinkled in disgust as she took in the scent of the wash on her skin. "I was, however, glad to be of service." It certainly had been quite hilarious, especially when the man screamed back at her. With one last, sarcastic little wave of her fingers at him, and a nod at the woman, she turned and left, letting herself out.
Watching the woman as she left the room, Evan just stood there open mouthed and tried to think of what he could possibly say. "Let me guess," he began. "She's a vampire?" That was really the only thing he could think of for the cool skin and the lack of a pulse. "God you're evil, you know that?" he said, shaking his head and popping the tape out of the camera. Keeping said tape, he gave her back her camera and let out a breath. "Alright, I'll admit that shit was fucking epic, but you're still a bitch." he told her, a tiny little smile finally allowed to play on the corners of his lips.
Oh, he didn't really think he was keeping that tape, did he? Oh no, Erin would get it back. "My bitch status has never been pulled into question," Erin answered, taking her camera and getting to her feet. She was still grinning widely. "I love vampires. They're so much fucking fun. Your real work for the day is on the back table." And she was already wondering if he'd ever cut into another body the same way again.
Evan rolled his eyes at his sister and he watched her as she walked out of the room and once she'd left entirely, he took a look at that other body. Swallowing down a lump in his throat, he tucked the video away in his pocket and took a few slow steps towards the corpse. It wasn't a good thing for an embalmer to be afraid of a dead body, but Evan wasn't sure he even wanted to touch the thing at present. What if she had gotten two vampires? She was entirely capable of it, after all. This was Erin Forsythe they were talking about. With Erin, anything was possible. He'd definitely have to do more than check for a pulse, that was for sure.
Apparently opening the mouth to look for fangs would be the new step one.