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My Mummy's Dead
By Dan R. Arman
John Lemmon had a day off from his secretarial position in downtown Cleveland and, it being a bleak rainy March afternoon, he spent it in his living room, watching Spock and Mccoy go at it for 700th time on the tube with his roommate Paul. Paul had spilled some unsalted peanuts on their hand-me-dow couch when John noticed a faint rapping on the front door. When he answered the door, to his surprise, he found a shriveled old man, quite dead, dirtying the welcome mat. That was the day John’s mummy first appeared.
The little shriveled man said nothing, but keeping his empty sockets locked on the floor before John, he stepped through the doorway, passed the speechless youth and walked until he banged senseless against the closet door in the foyer.
“Who is it?” Paul called from the other room, his eyes never leaving the pointed Vulcan ears on the screen.
John regained his composure and took a step away from the corpse before him. “It’s your date.” “Huh? Audrey wasn’t to call until- yuck,” said Paul, when he emerged from the living room and bumped into the mummy. “Who- what is this?”
“I don’t know. He just walked in. Hasn’t peeped a word since, said John, then to the mummy. “Sir, can I help you?”
The man uttered a low, but discernible, whisper in a tongue neither of the roommates had ever heard. His legs were still going through the motions of walking even though he was clearly blocked by the wall in front of him. The mummy lifted a frail arm to his skeletal face and moaned again, slightly louder than before. His entire body, caked in some thick, black paste which was flaking and peeling profusely onto the shag carpet. Otherwise, the mummy was adorned simply with a gold necklace and a Toronto Blue Jays cap, tilted strangely, as if someone else had placed it there as some sort of joke.
“Sir, do you know your name? Do you know who you are?” Paul tried with no avail.
Then, the mummy somehow unstuck himself from the wall and clumped into the living room with John and Paul following his trail of sooty debris.
“What are we going to do? Call the police?” said John, panicked. “My band s going to be here in a half an hour. I can have-have that roaming the house all night.”
“No,” Paul said, biting his lip. “Let’s keep him. It’s not every day a mummy walks in your house.”
“A mummy?”
“Yeah, I’ve seen one just like him in the last National Geographic,” Paul rushed upstairs to his room to rummage through his piles junk, his “collection of collections,” as he called them. There, buried underneath his Elvis ashtray collection was the cover of the Geographic displaying a portrait of the mummy mugging a toothy grin for the camera. Paul showed it to John, who scratched his head in disbelief.
“That’s not a mummy. Mummies are supposed to have bandages and curses, stuff like that, aren’t they?” said John.
“Not necessarily in his case, though I’m not sure about the cursing and all,” Paul said, flipping past the glossy pages of naked African women and diagrams of the latest Titanic excavation. “This one isn’t from Egypt, I bet, but from South America.”
The mummy sat down on the couch. A look of eternal relief was on his masked face as his decaying tear hit the cushioned seats.
“Oh no, not the couch. It isn’t stain resistant,” moaned John. “Look, we’ve got to call someone in here that would know how to exorcise a mummy from a house before he does any more damage.
Paul shrugged, his thin lips pressed into an expression that signified some sort of thought process, though John was not sure what kind. “My father knows of a museum curator in Toledo who might be able to help us. Maybe I could give him a call.”
“The sooner the better,” John said. “And don’t think that this is any excuse for you to start a collection of dead peoplE You’ve done enough collecting, at least in this house.”
John plopped himself down on the couch, then, realizing the mummy was there, stood again. This was the last straw for him, he felt. Out of convenience, he had agreed to share rent on the lower half of a house with his accountant friend Paul and now he was finding it quite inconvenient. John liked his private space, and ever since the two moved in together, he had found himself swimming through a sea of junk, all of it part of Paul’s “collection of collections.” Paul had bottlecaps Brady Bunch lunchboxes, dead fruit bats held in stasis in the freezer, Star Wars collector plates, and even a shrunken head which dwelled in a sealed box near his underwear. And the list went on. John could almost swear that Paul was trying to build himself a Noah’s Ark for every piece of trash, every vestige of forgotten pop culture to ever hit a garbage can.
By this time, the mummy’s sockets were fixed upon the last few minutes of Star Trek. He seemed especially fascinated, if he could actually see without eyeballs, by Spock’s body, which after being stripped of its brain was laying on a table while Mccoy quipped that he was a doctor not a... whatever.
Paul emerged from the kitchen. “Dad got a hold of the curator in Toledo and he’s heading straight over.”
“Good,” said John, just as the doorbell rang. “That must be the band. Keep an eye on our visitor.”
When John opened the door, he found his two friends, the other two-thirds of the band known as the Violent Phlegms, arguing over a Joe Don Baker movie in the stale drizzle.
“You don’t understand,” said George, the scraggly-haired goateed college drop-out. “Baker’s character Mitchell is meant to be the antithesis of the traditional American hero.”
Rick, eyes droopy, caught halfway between sobriety and drunkenness as usual, shook his head lazily. His mouth was full Junior Mints, his cure for chronic halitosis. “Face it. The movie sucked. Joe Don Baker is a fat slob. Oh, hi, John. I brought the synth.”
Rick deposited John’s keyboard into the young man’s arms and the two Phlegms strolled through the door. In one corner of the living room, John had set up a little makeshift recording studio for the group, consisting of a used four-track, drum set, and a beat-up Stratocaster, hopelessly out of tune. George whose tongue recently healed after he practiced scales on the guitar with it, toyed with the Stratocaster, while John and Rick tried to plug in the synth.
“Hey, I didn’t know you had company,” George said. “Friend of Paul’s?”
“I don’t know who he is,” John said, as the keyboard let a wail of electronic bassoon noise. “Paul says he’s a mummy, some dead guy. What he’s doing here I’ll never know.”
“Can he play?” Rick poked a finger towards the mummy.
“Can you?” said John, to which Rick shook his head and smiled casually. Of course, none of them could play, really. They were a punk band in the great tradition of local heroes the Germ Police and Spam is Not Meat, and that meant they didn’t have to know a lick. The Phlegms biggest hit came when Scene magazine reviewed the band’s latest independent release, “Bring Me Your Dreams( Or I’ll Kill You and Your Family).” George had it framed and mounted on his bedroom wall. It read, “The Violent Phlegms live up to their name, they are violent-sounding and probably the cause of much of the phlegm that plagues our nation They can be considered innovative if only that they are the first to use scratching carpet remnants as an instrument.”
After that, there wasn’t much future for the band. They were now confined to playing on their free time at John’s or paying the police department to allow them the use of a condemned warehouse as a venue. John really wanted to quit his secretarial job and become a full-time musician or roadie, whatever kind of living he made or didn’t make, but he felt obliged to his parents and himself to make a clean living, to make something respectable of himself despite his punk leanings.
Rick sauntered up to the mummy, who was still on the couch glued to the tube. It was the Wild, Wild West. Jim West and his sidekick Artemis Gordon were swaggering about in their train caboose talking about how they saved President Hayes from the evil midget scientist when a monogrammed matchbox planted by the little devil himself began spraying a noxious green gas throughout the room. Gordon and West went down like logs. “We’re going to be playing some... music. Will that bother you?”
The mummy grunted.
“Oh hey, I think you’ve lost your finger, sir,” George said picking up one of the decayed digits from the seat cushion He tried to reattach it but the finger was too brittle and wound up crumbling away under the pressure of the guitarist’s grip.
“Don’t worry about him,” Paul said, emerging from the bathroom. “We’ve got someone coming in to take care of the mummy.”
Paul watched disdainfully from the kitchen, as the band warmed up. A wall of dissonant noise began thumping up against his chest, making him want to cough. He suddenly remembered that their landlord, who lived in the house next door, might be coming home from his hunting party, a bunch of NRA buddies unloading their semi-automatics into a woods full of helpless animals. “Hey, could you tone it down a bit. You know what old Mr. Winter would do if he heard that noise, er, art.”
“Is he back already?” John whined, as he noticed an amp begin[‘t6’ smoke.
“Maybe.”
“Alright, then,” John said. “Guys, let’s take five.”
The Phlegms dropped their instruments and circled the mummy on the couch, watching the little decaying man for some form of movement. The mummy never stirred, but gave a painful grunt when Geraldo suddenly appeared on the TV, flanked by two cannibal transvestites who had just eaten their brothers’ wives.
“Why do you think he came here?” George said lazily. “And who gave him that silly hat?”
“How should I know?” John complained. “If I knew that-”
“What’s his name?” Rich said.
“What do you mean, what’s his name? The thing just sits there and grunts. His name could be Ugh for all I know.”
“Maybe we should give him a name,” Paul said, tossing a Coke to each of the Phlegms.
“No,” John said. “Naming brings emotional attachment, and that-”
“How about Ed?” Rich said, ignoring John’s protests.
“Ed. Ed the mummy, George said, taking a swig of pop and leaning casually against a stack of crates containing Paul’s Beatles record collection. “What kind of name is that?”
“Why don’t we ask him?” Paul said. “What do you think, mummy?”
The mummy gave the group a look of indifference then continued to watch Geraldo being punched in the nose by the transvestites. The mummy S nose fell into his lap.
“Ed it is then,” Paul said.
“For chrissakes,” John said, shaking his head disdainfully.
Just then, the doorbell rang. Muttering angrily to himself John opened the door, to a man nearly as short as the mummy polishing his shoes on the doormat. The man, sporting baggy pants, a cheap suit and bushy mustache, stood erect, placing a buffing rag in his pocket and withdrawing a fat Cuban cigar from his mouth.
“You called about the mummy,” he said. “I’m Professor Cornblow from the Toledo Museum of Natural Curiosities. Are you curious?”
“Yes, you see, about getting rid of this mummy we have,” John said.
“Well, that’s just natural,” Cornblow said. “Just show me to the mummy, lad.”
John brought the professor to the living room, where the mummy remained, unmoving on the couch. Cornblow, who was toting a little black bag, opened it and brought out a variety of instruments which he used to examine Ed. After a few minutes of poking it with his forceps and asking the mummy to stick out his tongue, Cornblow stuffed all his instruments back into the back and headed for the door.
“I can’t do anything for this man,” he said. “He’s dead.”
John jumped in front of Cornblow. “No, we know that and we don’t want to revive him. We want to know where he comes from, why he’s here, and, most of all, how to get rid of him.”
“Well, that’s something entirely different,” the professor said, dropping his bag, “but why an important crap game had to be interrupted for this, I’ll never know.”
“Please, sir,” said John, already at the end of his rope. “It’s very important to us.”
Cornblow returned to the mummy, again carefully considering its rags and the black flakes that were beginning to cover the sofa like dandruff, examining each piece under a monocle Then, he tapped the mummy on the head, with no response other than ‘;’ hollow echo of sound passing through an empty cavity.
“Barring an Ethiopian with a dry skin disorder, I’d say this man arrived here from South America,” Cornblow said.
“See, I told you so,” Paul said.
“Chile, to be exact,” the professor interjected, apparently annoyed by Paul’s interruption. “This 7,000-year-old male was mummified by a fellow member of his tribe, the Chinchorro, a fanatically religious bunch who tried to preserve everything for posterity, even their own posteriors. How he got here is anybody’s guess, but I suspect TWA’s got a special on airfare from Lima to Cleveland.”
“What about curses, bad omens?” John said. “Do you think these mummies carry bad luck with them?”
“That’s just an idle rumor,” Cornblow chuckled a while, then became deathly serious. He removed a cigar from his pocket and inserted it into his mouth without lighting it. “And if I ever catch that rumor slacking off again, I’ll dock him a week’s pay.”
The band members gave the professor a strange look, then turned towards Paul. John pulled his roommate aside and whisper into his ear. “Is this guy on the level? He seems a bit, you know, fruity.”
Paul shrugged. “My father always said he was a bit eccentric, but entirely knowledgeable and trustworthy when it came to matters of science.”
Somehow, John didn’t believe him, but at the moment he had no better ideas than to further interrogate Professor Cornblow on how to remove the mummy and his mess from the apartment.
“Why on earth would a mummy want to come here even if he could?” George asked the professor, who had become distracted by a shelf-load of Paul’s Horatio Hornblower novels, their covE sporting the British hero posing imperiously amid cannon smoke with his sword and eyeglass.
The professor picked up a lava lamp from the garden of them that Paul had growing on the window sill. “If he was looking for a place where he would fit in, he found it. I’ve never seer such a collection of useless junk in my entire life, not even in my museum.”
Cornblow sauntered over to the makeshift bandstand in the corner of the room. He picked up the Stratocaster and fiddled with its strings. “Do you play these instruments?”
“Yes,” said Rich. “We’re known across the state as the Violent Phlegms.”
“Are you music lovers?”
“Yes, of course,” said John.
“Then stop playing.”
Rich threw up his hands in disgust. He pointed his finger accusingly at George and John. “Well, that does it. That concludes my day. First, I have to debate horrible cop movies from the ‘70s, and now Groucho Marx here makes a crack on my muSicianship’. I could have stayed home with a can of Pepsi and some leftover pizza.”
“Well, we are one of the worst bands around,” George reminded his bandmate9
“But I get tired of hearing about it.”
John’s patience was growing extremely thin. He leapt out in front of the meandering professor, upsetting a box full of liberty-head nickels and spraying the coins over a tray of Starsky-and-Hutch collector pins.
“How do we get rid of it?” he said urgently.
“Well, have you asked it to leave?” Cornblow said, his foul, heavy stogie breath belting its way into John’s nasal cavity.
“What good is that going to do,” John shouted. “So far, it hasn’t listened to us one bit. It’s just done whatever it felt like. There aren’t any chants, incantations, exorcisms we can do?”
Professor Cornblow shrugged. “My only advice to you is: enjoy your new mummy.”
John let the professor go this time. Cornblow tiptoed to the door, tripping over the “Hello Goodbye” Beatles doormat on his way out.
John sat down on the floor in front of the mummy and sighed. This time, Paul was flipping through the pages of the Nation Geographic for answers. George and Rich went back to strumming their instruments. The mummy, Ed, was still watching TV. This time, Homer Simpson was choking his son Bart, which was exactly what John wished he had the guts to do to the mummy. Angrily, he turned the television off. The screen turned pale grey, except for the tiny bright dot burning in the middle.
Suddenly, the mummy stood from the couch. Slowly, he raise his hand and took a step forward. He leaned over John, who scurried out of the way before a cascade of black soot fell from Ed’s uplifted arm. The mummy turned the TV back on.
“Did you see that?” John shrieked. “I got him to do something.”
“He sure knows what he wants,” Paul said. “And he’s demonstrated that he has independent intelligence. That’s remarkable for a man with no brain.”
“Huh?” Rich said, dropping his drum sticks. “How can you tell he has no brain?”
“It says here that the Chinchorro removed all the brains from their corpses before preserving them,” Paul said. “Hey, maybe we shouldn’t think about getting rid of him.”
“I told you-” John protested.
“No, I think Paul’s got something here,” George said. “I mean, think of the marketing potential. We could keep him here and charge people to come see the world’s only living mummified person.”
John’s lips bunched up in an angry knot. He didn’t care about making money. All he wanted to do was what made him feel good, his music. He had thought his friends, Rich and George had felt the same way. But as the two Phlegms’ eyes glazed over with greed, John realized he was quite wrong. The Violent Phlegms had just sold their souls to the devil Capitalism.
“Fine,” he said. “I see I’m outnumbered here, so I’ll just go along. Could we get back to practice now?”
“Not on your life,” Rich said. “We have to get the word out on the street. Cash in on this thing before the mummy decided to leave or something.”
John growled, but was ignored. The doorbell rang again, but was followed by a series of urgent raps on the door.
“Don’t move, I’ll get it,” John said as the three prattled on about Ticketmaster deals and t-shirt logos.
On the other side of the front door, the landlord, Mr. Cal Winter, stood impatiently, his nostrils flaring and flaking the camouflage_he had used to fool a wild boar he had nearly pumped 12 rounds into just this afternoon.
“The neighbors informed me of an unsavory visitor,” he said as soon as the door opened. His blocky features seemed cut from stone and his mouth was drawn up into a tight frown. John had to peer up to see the base of the balding man’s jaw. “I told you what I’d do if another one of your deadhead rock-and-roll fans came around again.”
“I know, I know,” John said, backing away and checking to make sure Winter wasn’t packing heat. “And I said that we’d never again invite that guy who chewed on the roofing tiles to the house again.”
“Then, who is it?” he said, bolting into the room.
“It’s Ed,” Paul said. “He’s a Chinchorro mummy.”
“Huh?” Winter said, stepping up to the mummy, still on the couch. “Ugh, he looks worse off than my dead grandmother.”
The landlord bent over, sticking his face right in front of Ed’s. The mummy’s left ear slid down to his chin, then fell into his lap. It leaned over slightly, as if Winter was blocking its view of the television, which was just then airing an interesting segment of celebrity Family Feud.
“Well, I don’t care what it is, I just want to know what you plan to do with it,” he said, sniffing the air suspiciously “If he’s staying, he’ll have to pay rent like the rest of you, and clean up his smell, too.”
Paul glanced at John and gave him a sly. John groaned. Paul had a plan and that was never a good sign.
“I’m sure he’ll do more than just pay rent, sir,” Paul said. “What if I were to make you a business proposal, say, one in which Ed here became a money-making attraction? Think of how many people would pay to see the world’s only living mummy.”
“Well, I don’t know..9” Winter said, but John could already see the landlord counting his stacks of imaginary money and taking them to the nearest gun shop to purchase the latest in armor-piercing technology. “Alright, but I get half of the receipts.”
“Twenty percent.”
“Thirty five and I’ll forget that you still owe me this month’s rent,” said Winter.
“Deal,” said Paul and the two shook on it.
John wanted to open his mouth and say something rude, but he knew it was no use. Paul had his mind set and there was no turning back. Not only were they now stuck with a living corpse but now they had to market it to the public. Oh, wasn’t showbiz lovely!
Mr. Winter swaggered out their front door, apparently feeling that he accomplished his good deed for the day. John was not looking forward to seeing the landlord swagger back in once Paul’s shaky business scheme fell through the floor.
“Well, I hope you’re happy,” John told Paul in passing, as something began to ooze from the mummy’s left eye socket.
The next few weeks, John spent tripping around Ed, who did not stir unless the TV was turned off. His preparations for the sudden violent return of their landlord never came, but something else did. Paul and the other Phlegms occupied themselves with promoting the mummy, posting flyers on college campuses and taking out ads in the local newspapers. The first week, a few curious spectators trickled in, stared in awe at the decomposed form on the couch and purchased one of Paul’s old National Geographics as a memento of their visit. Then, came the deluge.
At the end of the second week, John arose to find two mohawked teenagers mulling about his bedroom. He leapt to his feet and brandished a small lamp, as the two youths continued to wander about the room, taking in the shag carpet the same way a nature lover would a stream.
“Where’s the mummy? one of the dim-eyed punks drawled.
John replaced the lamp on the shelf. He felt his initial shock and surprise give way to brutal fury. He tried to speak in measured , calm tones but his voice would only come out in a low growl. “Well, that’s a good question. And I’d be glad to answer it as soon as you remove yourselves from my property and see a shrink.”
“Hey, I know you, said the other punk. “You’re the lead singer for the Violent Phlegms. What a dink.”
With that, the two freaks left. John grabbed a pair of pants and followed them into the living room. He couldn’t see where Paul was for the sea of people sitting, standing, kneeling before Ed the mummy. Ed was in his usual position in front of the TV, short a few more fingers and toes and with “Do Not Touch sign dangling from his rigid little form to protect what little was left of him from greedy hands. Every five minutes, someone would turn off the tube, and like clockwork, the mummy would arise slowly and turn the set back on. The spectators even play tricks on him, like pulling his hat over his eyes or tilting the couch a different direction, but each time Ed would dismiss the obstacle between him and his television viewing.
John felt a hand grab him by the shoulder and swing him in the direction of the kitchen. Paul giggled and enthusiastically shoved a large wad of something into his hand. John knew it immediately to be the Phlegm’s blood money.
“This is your portion of the take,” Paul said. “Well, aren't you going to count it?”
“Why should I? I didn’t make this money,” John said. “It just walked in the door, like that mummy.”
Paul scowled, his fleshy youthful face wrinkled in disdain “I just don’t understand you sometimes, John. You spend most of your time making hardly any money in a job you hate, and then turn your nose up at an opportunity like this. Granted its nothing like being a famous rock-and-roll star, but sometime miracles come in smaller packages and you have to learn to appreciate them.”
John balled the wad of money in his fist and pointed with it at Ed. The back corners of lOs and 20s and even a C-note curled across his thumbnail.
“You call that a miracle? Then I guess I really don’t appreciate them,” he said, and shoved his way through the crowd of spectators to get to the mummy. “Keep this under your hat.”
John slid the money under Ed’s Blue Jays cap and pushed the visor down to the mummy’s mold-caked eyebrows. Just then, Ed’s sockets drifted away from the scurrying images on the TV and locked gaze a moment with John. He felt bandaged hand touch his and the mummy 5 ancient lips formed silent words John could not make out. A cold sensation crept from his arm to the base of his skull, and he sensed that he was being pushed away from the couch, the living room, and even the first-story flat where he had spent all six of his collegiate and post-collegiate year. Before he realized it, John was standing on the sidewalk outside staring bewildered down the quiet suburban street.
John spent the next few weeks alone, avoiding all that knew him, thinking. The crowds that had suddenly appeared to gawk at the TV-watching mummy died down to the point where John felt it was safe to return home at will, but he said little to his comrades. Occasionally, he would cross paths with Ed, who had lost some interest in television viewing and was now moving about a bit, stumbling into furniture and dropping bits of himself around the house. Each time he seemed a bit smaller and deformed than before, but Ed seemed to take no note of the fact or of John, and made no further attempts to communicate.
Then, on a Thursday exactly three months after Ed the mummy had appeared, John decided to take a plunge.
“I quit my job,” he said to Paul. “I’m going to become a full-time musician.”
“But what will your parents say?” Paul said, mockingly. “What about the respectable John I once knew?”
“You’ll have to go on without me, Paul,” John said. “I’m tired of the self-loathing, the feeling that I’m spending time and my dreams when I should be spending money.”
His roommate smirked and patted him on the back. “I wish you d said that a few days earlier. The other Phlegms gave up on you for lost and started an advertising agency. They’ve already got the grocery store down on the corner as a client.”
“They’ve given up on the mummy- Ed, too?”
“Sure, people stopped coming in a week or two ago and we figured Ed needed the rest. Anyways, we each made a cool thousand off this venture, enough, that is, if one of us hadn’t thrown his share away,” Paul said.
“No, I didn’t, I-” John turned towards the living room and scanned the furniture for Ed, but the mummy was strangely missing. “Hey, where is Ed?”
“I don’t know. Frankly, I’ve lost track of him these past few days.”
“Star Trek” was playing on the TV again and the remote control bore the unmistakable pungent fingerprints of the absent mummy. John knew it was not like Ed to miss a scene with the pointy-eared alien and gasping Captain Kirk, and the two began a systematic search of the house. John dug into Paul’s closet for clues, then checked the garage, where he found what looked like a fingernail.
He joined Paul in the cellar, and glanced worriedly at the furnace, hoping he hadn’t got to close and simply disintegrated from the heat.
“I forgot to check my room,” John said, and they tramped quickly upstairs.
But John’s room was quiet too, with just a cool breeze floating through the half-closed window. He was about to turn and leave when he spotted a faint trace of black paste smeared across the dark blue shag carpeting and followed it to where Ed’s gold necklace and baseball cap, logo turned up, was resting against a heat register. John hadn’t noticed it there before.
“Do you think he could have crawled out the window?” Paul asked. “And made his way through the prickly shrubbery underneath window? I don’t think he was in any condition to attempt John said. “And why did he leave his hat?”
On close inspection, John noticed more black flakes and bits of bone with decayed wood piled around the brim of the cap. He lifted it up; it was cold except for the plastic strap in back which had grown warm from touching the heat vent. To John’s surprise, his hand brushed against a dried, curled roll of brittle bills under the cap’s visor.
