Inside Joke

Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer

Purple waves gently lap at an azure beach. Our footprints quickly wash away in the encroaching tide. The setting twin suns of Rijos, the red giant aptly named Rojo, and her blue companion Danube cast an eerily beautiful violet light on the endless expanse of beach.

We walk hand in hand, her flowing red hair reflecting a dazzling colour for which I have no name.

“It’s so beautiful,” she whispers, almost too low to hear, “I wish we could stay here forever.”

“We can,” I replied, stroking her cheek, casually pushing back a loose strand of hair, “we will.”

We sit down to watch Danube make his death plunge into the smooth waters of the sea. We lay down to sleep

In a shabby, cramped yet somehow immaculate room the bodies of two elderly people lay on a cold, brushed stainless steel table. A technician in a coffee stained lab coat watches as his colleague removes the electrodes from their shaven pates and wipes away the conductive saline gel.

The bodies are those of a man and woman well into their centenary years, ravaged by time, hands locked tightly to one another, inseparable even in death.

As the technician carefully cleans and replaces the electrodes in their foam lined drawer and prepares the bodies for further processing, his companion stares intently at the flickering glow of the readouts on his iPadd.

“Marbling good, protein quality high, lipids fine…,” he mumbles as he checks off a box on his list.

“Hey Arnie,” he calls to his friend wheeling the bodies through battered double doors, “I’ll bet Edward G. Robinson would get one hell of a laugh out of this.”