The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Her Name was Rose
by Jaime Johnesee

Her plump lips were frozen forever in a well-sutured smile. She’d once been my cleaning lady, until she found me playing with another of my treasures in my basement cold room.

Thank God she was just some homeless waif who cleaned houses in order to get the money to drink. She had no family to speak of and a lamp to the back of her skull meant I would easily be able to visit her in my basement until I grew tired of seeing her.

I keep them in cold storage because I like to look upon them. So many of you pay me to bury your dead, and I do, most of them. Is it really so bad I keep a couple of the more interesting ones around a touch longer instead of burying them immediately?

Sometimes, if I can convince the family to do a closed casket, I’ll leave the scalp refracted; the face peeled back like the mask that person wore in life. I think there’s a sort of justice in that.

Sometimes, I bury a casket with someone else inside. I mean, some of them are awful pretty so, sometimes I switch them out for ones that aren’t so attractive anymore.

I keep a couple of, um, handmade bodies here among the others, like my cleaning lady. Nobody ever suspects; I’m the owner of a funeral home, after all. Bound to have a few bodies hanging around in this mess.

I am really going to miss the way Rose got the grout back to white in my shower. Hard water stains are super difficult to remove from white grout and she always kept it sparkling clean.

I sighed and slid her back into the cooling drawer, my fingers trailed lovingly along one beautiful cold cheek as I locked away my newest horrible secret.

Fiction © Copyright Jaime Johnesee
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Jaime Johnesee:

Shifters: A Samantha Reece Mystery

When a serial killer begins leaving remains of victims in hotel bathtubs all over town FBI Agent Samantha Reece makes it her business to stop him.

This detective’s got an ace up her sleeve in the form of her ability to shift into the guise of a were panther. As she tracks down the cold-hearted murderer she also has to contend with an anti-shifter group determined to destroy her.

Not to mention the black jaguar who turned her decides to come sauntering back into her life.

Available on Amazon!