When I was eight, everyone I ever loved and ever loved me, died, their lives dissolved into ash and smoke.

  At the time I didn’t fully grip terms like “arson,” “accident,” or “smoke inhalation.” All I knew was I had burns over more than half my body and I wanted my family.

  The little rituals I have keep me from having worse problems. There’s one for burning myself when handling objects that make fire, one that keeps the RV from burning down while I’m out, and I need to check the stove three times before I leave, or the RV ritual won’t work.

  It took years, but eventually, with these little rituals, I was able to enjoy the smell of burning leaves in the fall again.

  But during some dark nights, the memories creep into my sleep, and once more I am in my princess bed and it’s on fire.

  The flames lick my pink and white bedding, which crackles and blackens, ghastly black and orange like the autumn tastes I wrapped myself in when I took the RV. The ceiling boils, the glowing stars on my walls melt and peel away.

  The first time this happened, I wrapped my blanket around myself and ran for the door. The darn thing caught and took my hair and the skin off my back with it, but I made it out alive, which is more than the rest of my family could say.

  This time, the flames are a wall too high for me to escape and I’m trapped in a black of blinding smoke and choking ash roughly the size of a coffin, kicking desperately at a square hatch on the wall that never existed.

  The metal hatch bursts open and a pair of hands in heavy leather gloves grabs the foot of my bed and pulls it free, dragging me out of a storage coffin and into a morgue.

  I’m flat on my back, a white sheet over me, up to my neck. I can see the stains in the ceiling, smell decay and chemicals, and hear the humming.

  Spooky closes the hatch, his perfect frame elegant in a black dressy shirt and waistcoat, under a very heavy leather apron and matching gloves. The waistcoat emphasizes his broad shoulders and narrow waist, the work leathers showing hard work and dedication. Everything about him is professional, poised, and perfect. His delicate hands conduct the music in his head as he moves about the cold, metal table, taking it by the push-handle.

  “Spooky?” I ask, sitting up just a little.

  “Sshh, lay back down,” he replies as he turns the cart down the hallway.

  “Where are we? What’s happening?”

  “Nothing, liebchen, nothing. You were having a nightmare. I relieved you from it, a task I do not perform often.”

  There’s something distant and unfocused in his eyes, not entirely like his post-poison delirium in the RV.

  He wheels the cart into something like an operation theater, but without the antebellum-era spectator seats. There’s bottles of chemicals and a device with large, glass jars and a foot peddle like an antique sewing machine.

  “Spooky, where are we?” I ask nervously.

  “You’re still in your bed, lieb. Now just lay back and relax.”

  “This doesn’t look like the RV,” I protest.

  “Of course it doesn’t,” he answers, setting the needle on a victrola.

  The crackling sound that emanates from the horn is Within You by David Bowie, the same tune he was humming when he took me out of the morgue. He hums it while he tends to his instruments, all gleaming metal, spotless and sharp.

  “Spooky, what are you doing?” I ask, more insistent.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Getting ready to make the first incision,” he replies matter-of-factly. “Now lay down and be still or I’ll have to make another.”

  Gently, he turns my head to one side. His gloves smell like cowhide, thick and stiff, made for working with noxious chemicals and not the fine, soft things he wears in public.

  “Spooky! Don’t!” I protest, feeling how gentle but firm he is with my chin.

  “Sshh,” he replies. “This is delicate work.”

  I feel the scalpel, cold against my skin, and my skin come apart layer by layer as he works down to the vessels he needs. There isn’t pain, not really, but a kind of familiarity, like remembering pain.

  Or experiencing pain in a dream.

  Once he has his incision, he places the tubes where he needs them, humming all the while. He is relaxed, content, the look of a man engrossed in a favorite hobby. His foot works the peddle on the device and the fluid forcing its way into my body is cold, like fresh saline.

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask, tilting my head to see him work.

  “Don’t move, mein liebchen,” he advises, fluid pooling around me like cool river water. “You’ll jostle the tubes.”

  “Spooky, embalming a living person kills them.”

  “Nonsense, my girl,” he purrs. “Dreams don’t kill people. That is a myth.”

  I give a moment to let his words sink in. To let it all sink in, the reduced sensation, the distant look in his eyes, the melancholy love song he sings along with in German.

  “Spooky…are you dreaming?” I ask, letting him continue.

  “I must be,” he replies vacantly. “I am usually making more lucid.”

  “You’re dreaming about embalming me.”

  “Ja, mein spuk,” he replies, shining a with a white cloth. “It is the sincerest form of affection.”

  “Affection?” I laugh, getting a dirty look when the tubes bounce.

  “Ja, the way the body is tended to after death. You would have put someone you cared for out for the birds, would you?”

  Maybe it’s the embalming fluid hitting my brain, but I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. Spooky cares about me—loves me—and this, of course, is how a nineteenth century boogeyman who haunted a family-run mortuary would show it.

  “How did I get here?” I ask.

  “You are not here,” he replies evenly, approaching me with the trochar and pulling the sheet away. “You are in your bed.”

  “I mean, if you’re dreaming, how am I here?”

  “Oh, ja. When I pulled you from your nightmare, I must have brought you into my dream. You’re lucid dreaming, my love. Now relax. You may feel some discomfort.”

  He lines the trochar against my belly and, as gentle as a caring lover, slides it deeply in, eliciting a small gasp of pleasure from me.

  “I’m still having a nightmare?” I ask, feeling the not-too-unpleasant metal moving around in my guts.

  “Nein, my girl, you are in my dream. I don’t have nightmares, I am nightmares.”

  “And you’re dreaming about embalming me.”

  “Nein, I was dreaming about playing the zither, but you wanted to be out of the fire.”

  “For someone like you, the practice of embalming seems…uncomfortably intimate.”

  “The purest form of love, liebchen,” he smiles.