Friday – Heads in a Glass Case

Today on my drive into work, I was thinking about the heads I saw last Monday in a glass case outside of a door marked "Restorative Arts Lab" at the mortuary collage run by the corporation I work for. There were 5 of them, male and female, representing different ages and races, lined up neatly and looking very serene. They were not real, just realistic, with life-like skin tones and rooted hair and eyebrows. I assume that "restorative arts" refers to the art of reconstructing a face damaged by violence or misfortune so that family and friends will recognize the person lying in the coffin, and can then say to each other with conviction, "They did a nice job – he looks like he's sleeping. Why, you can't even tell where she hit him with the ax!"

( Macabre Museum )