by JAMIE O’BRIEN | 2nd Place, student short prose contest

A dead body was nothing. The stench of decomposition, a cracked cranium, hair caked with viscera. Did you know that eyes deflated like grapes after death? Eden had become insensitive to the characteristics of rot, learned to pocket these feelings at the back of her mind. Naturally, these things must be familiar to her. The mortuary was a place of work, not a graveyard.

Out of respect for the deceased and mourning, her clothes were black beneath the scrubs. The air was dry with cold and sterility as she snapped her gloves on, peeling the sheet from her third project of that day. Isla Sampson, aspirin poisoning. Her parents requested an embalming.

“Could you make her look perky?” the father had asked.

“Supple,”the mother had said. “That’s the wordyou’re looking for.”

“She needs to look good for the pictures,” he insisted.

“You look a bit like her, actually.” She leaned over the table, her necklace swinging across her chest like a pendulum. “Do you see it, hon? She looks just like her.”

Eden supposed she could see it. Birthmarks, a hooked nose with freckles stippling the bridge, slightly longer middle toes. On the table was a woman she had never seen before but recognized in every mirror. She tried to avoid looking for more similarities. Steeling herself, she unclasped the dog-tag necklace from around Isla’s neck and shoved it into her breast pocket. The engraving was faded beyond legibility, and the chain was this ridiculous plastic beaded thing. Nobody would miss it.

Eden stole most of her clothes from dead people. Rarely full outfits, of course. Families typically wanted something to remember, to bury their noses into or fold back into their drawers untouched. So, she stuck to forgettable things: scarves, jewelry, gloves. She dissected these curiosities into perfect little categories: outfits that reminded her of people she knew, strangers distinct enough to make an impression, personalities she had made up or read in books. Her closet was littered with crumbs of mortality.

Every day, she would part the racks like two Broadway curtains. Every day was a stage dependent on who she wanted to be. On Friday, it was the angsty protagonist of a TV show she had seen recently. Saturday, the barista downtown. Sunday, Molly Montgomery, death by asphyxiation. Today, she would have to endure being herself for a few hours.

Eden could only remember one time an embalming unsettled her this much. It was quite a sad memory; the boy had been beaten to death walking home from school. Her mother wanted an open casket to set an example. Gang violence, she said. His face had been concave, and she ran out of the room to vomit. That night, she went home with his class ring, an ugly, bulky band with the school mascot on proud display. Hard to tell which animal it was meant to represent. No matter.

It was almost out-of-body, the act of restoring this Eden-like woman. The overhead lights hummed to interrupt the silence as she sponged the geometries and caverns of her limbs. Pumped her with embalming fluid, blinked away tears she hadn’t noticed budding. The illusion of life laid before her wearing a face that was hers.

***

The same night, she googled several variations of Isla Sampson’s name and palmed the necklace in her pocket until she finally found some semblance of a digital footprint. An Instagram page she had probably forgotten the password to, forced to live with the evidence of her digital footprint after trying so, so hard to remember her 10th grade email address. The whiteness of the classroom illuminated her room, her silhouette a projection on the ceiling. She lassoed the necklace around her neck and played a video of Isla and her high school friends until she could mouth the words by memory.

Stop touching my desk, Isla said. Dude, you’re so unfunny. The camera flipped and her freckled face, distinctly younger, stuck her tongue at someone beyond the screen. I’m ending now. You can stop being annoying. Bye, vlog!

A dark, gross part of Eden slinked into the bathroom like a maggot. A grosser part dotted freckles across her face in front of the mirror. She put on a lower cut shirt, so Isla’s necklace was visible. Her mother had probably begged her to get rid of this thing for years. You’re too old for this, she might have said. Why don’t you wear something more becoming? Eden scoffed like a teenager and drank up how natural it looked with the desperation of a drain. She thumbed creases into her cheeks to make herself smile and tried to wipe away the acne scars Isla didn’t have.

“My name is Isla,” she parroted to herself.

It was so ridiculous and so perfect that she could cry. And she did, the tears creating a constellation of dew in the sink, the makeup parting her cheeks like a marionette mask. Isla’s video played on repeat behind her, her phone face-up on the bed. Bye, vlog! Bye, vlog!

***

At work, she paid closer attention to her reflection on the stainless-steel table than the intricacies of making a body look loved. A cry was enveloped behind her teeth, the sound of a name notched in her throat. Isla Sampson. Eden Eliot. Isla Sampson. Later, a receptionist caught her leaving with a coat and a wristwatch that didn’t belong to her.

***

Eden, drinking apple juice and nourishing herself with a breakfast sandwich, watched the casket recede into the ground. She was dressed like a celebrity this time, umbrellaed by a wide-brimmed hat and an old blazer. Her legs were crossed beneath the bench top in practiced elegance. She had seen this ensemble in a magazine about Hollywood adultery once, the latest scoop, something to dampen feeling like an intruder in her own body.

It was typical: Isla’s mother crumpled over the edge of the hole as if she dropped something there. Isla’s father kneeled next to her, stroking her back. If this was her stage, Isla’s funeral was theirs. Eden imagined herself in that box, felt the cushion of soil blanket her, the air let go of her lungs, the acidity of a pain killer on her tongue. The muffled sobs of a mother who loved her like a prized show pony. And as her parents turned their backs to take photos of themselves next to the grave, Isla’s mother a regal, expensively distraught sort of thing, Eden kind of understood why she did it.

When she drove home that day, she stopped by the pharmacy.

***

Aspirin tasted distinctly of bile. Growing up, Eden had never swallowed fast enough to avoid its aftertaste, and it would usually end up splattered on the bathroom floor with whatever else she had eaten that day. She would rather endure the pain. Isla couldn’t.

Emptying the second bottle was like packing baking soda into her mouth. And when she lost patience and emptied the rest with harsh, trembling chews, she pictured Isla as the one chewing. That while Eden went through the motions, Isla was the one being filled. She allowed Isla to look through her like a soul in a vessel. Eden receded deep into her mind.

Eden closed her eyes; Isla opened them.

When they refocused onto the blistering light of the hospital, her head a pounding mess, she sunk into the bed. God, she thought, rubbing life into her face. What a waste.

Ω

Beginning from the first time she read Bill Wallace’s Buffalo Gal in elementary school, Jamie O’Brien has always known her love for writing. Outside of the literary world, she loves music and fashion and is often seen wearing long skirts and different variations of Mary Jane shoes.

Mickey Bertram Jeppesen Jensen is a Danish furniture designer and trained cabinetmaker. His work blends Nordic heritage with a modern sculptural language, inspired by generations of craftsmanship in his family. Through MadeBySatelite—Rooted in Legacy, he creates expressive wooden pieces that bridge design, art, and storytelling. His work has been featured in international magazines and selected for multiple art and design publications worldwide.