Chew&Rose – Light Removals Inc.

We’re driving through Adelaide with a filled body-bag in the back of Rick’s 4-wheel drive; at a painfully slow speed so as to avoid rupture to the Stiff’s plasticene epidermis and to prevent its limbs from falling off on tight corners. We manage to perfect fixed driving postures, staring unflinchingly ahead to avoid looking suspicious to passing cars or pedestrians.

‘Jack’, our model cadaver, ends up in a cobwebbed garage. All I can say is God help him when the Antipodean insect fraternity finally munch through the plastic and get to him. (koalas, kookaburras and possums are cute enough in the garden, but a Huntsman spider in the lounge and scorpions in the bathroom are reasons enough to ensure I don’t miss the flight home).  My final contribution on the way to the airport is to help Rick deliver the gurney to South Australia Police Forensic Science Dept. Our friends in the mortuary have been fantastically generous in lending us information and supplies and we’re keen to return everything in a pristine condition. However, a strange phenomenon seems to have occurred to the cold steel tabletop…

As if some electrolytic event has faintly tarnished the stainless steel, an imprint of my upper body is visible on the surface – shoulder blades, upper arms and butt cheeks. We try to polish it away, but to no avail.

I’ve no idea how it happened. I didn’t knowingly leak any fluid during a show. All I can imagine is that the white heat of performance sparked some vital energy which chemically impacted on the gurney.

If we’d had more time and inclination, we might’ve solved the mystery of this, together with unravelling the centuries-old mystery of the Turin Shroud. Unfortunately, I had a plane to catch – and thinking it unwise to bring it to the attention of the SA Police, we wheeled the trolley into the morgue loading bay, issued our thanks and scarpered.