Dear Sir or Madam,

The Mortal Arts are something of a hobby of mine. Before I was even born, I would spend countless hours tinkering away at my stillborn identical twin’s corpse. I came into this world clutching him, contorted into a perfect Dremont’s Body Cube, like a wee briefcase. In my later years, I would study the finer skills of mummying. At age fifteen, I could pull the pulp out of a blood orange like the brains of a Pharaoh through a small incision, without damaging the rind. Sometimes I forwent the hooked rod in favour of my mouth. I was quite popular with the girls in my class at this time.

I had all but forgotten how much I enjoyed the rituals of preserving the dead, until a startling event the other day. I was in the parlor of Mr. Brolin Potemkin, the well to do butcher from whom I purchase my quail and long-pig, enjoying tea and conversation around his rather unique coffee table. You see, being a suspicious fellow by nature — the man does handle meat — he decided not to have his wife buried when she died of candy cholera the previous year. Instead, my friend decided to seal her in her obsidian casket, sit her up in the home she maintained for many a year, and be done with it.

The butcher was in the middle of explaining to me how tiger tenderloin sells very well due to its side effect of tumescence (although any connoisseur can tell you the stiffness remains in the abdomen and goes no further south), when there was a bump from under the table. After the second bump, it became clear the tremors were coming from within the table, from within the coffin rather. Being also your standard egotistical evangelical, Brolin began to weep with joy, and scampered out of the room to retrieve his sturdiest cleaver, that he might free his resurrected wife.

It was when the butcher returned with the blade that I suddenly remembered what happens to decomposing flesh in an airtight environment and therefore the true cause of the commotion, but Brolly shoved me as he strode over to the box, so I remained vindictively silent. After a few strong blows, Mrs. Potemkin happily leapt up to meet her stunned husband, however in a more putrid and liquefied form than he remembered. The look on his face was well worth the smell and soiled loafers.

I hear he’s a vegan now, or a sociopath. Ah well, in my experience these two are far from mutually exclusive. Lately, I’ve been practicing my old skills on a neighbour cat. She’s doing fine so far, thus I’ve failed. You may be wondering whether or not I intend to be mummified once I am gone. Well, dear reader, that is entirely dependent on whether or not I intend on dying.

Yours Faithfully, The Gentleman of the Site