Mort-Decorum: The Embalmer’s Eternal Sleep

The first breath of air inside Mort-Decorum was cold, dry, and carried a faint, antiseptic tang, strangely free of the usual mustiness of decay. The name, roughly translating to “Death’s Propriety,” was a disturbing reflection of its owner’s vocation. This abandoned Victorian house had been meticulously maintained for decades, not for living, but for the chilling purpose of perfect presentation. It felt less like a home and more like an enormous, luxurious display cabinet, where nothing was permitted to slump, sag, or surrender to the natural process of time.
The man who curated this strange atmosphere was Mr. Percival Graves, a renowned and highly sought-after master embalmer of the era. Graves specialized in preserving the recently deceased with an unnatural, lifelike perfection for private viewings, treating his work not as a service, but as an extreme art form. He was meticulous, obsessed with symmetry and stasis, believing that true respect for the dead meant rendering them immune to time. His personality was distant, unnervingly calm, and deeply detached from the warmth of human life, finding comfort only in the stillness of his final clients.

The Preparation Chamber

Graves’s operational heart of the manor was a subterranean “Preparation Chamber.” Here, he performed his work, aided by complex plumbing and a unique ventilation system. His daily ledgers, found meticulously filed in a dusty cabinet, documented not only his clients but his formulae—detailed records of chemical compounds and procedures used to achieve his signature ‘living sleep’ appearance. His final, chilling entry, written in a steady hand, read: “The ultimate subject is now ready. The only way to guarantee the perfection of the process is to remove the variable. No element must be left uncontrolled.”
The house preserves his methods. The tap water from the main floor sinks still runs faintly clear, despite decades of neglect, suggesting a deliberate and complex plumbing system designed for constant chemical circulation.

The Final Display in the Abandoned Victorian House

The end of Mr. Percival Graves was a masterclass in his own desired stillness. Servants, upon arriving one morning, found the entire house immaculate, every sheet perfectly drawn, every surface dusted. The Preparation Chamber was sterilized. Graves himself was gone. Only a single, black leather physician’s bag lay discarded on the landing, containing only his sharpest needle and a small vial of his signature, unlabeled embalming fluid.
The ultimate mystery lies in the small, windowless parlor. There, the casket remains on the pedestal, precisely centered. Though no body was ever found, the presence in this abandoned Victorian house is absolute. The scent of chemicals lingers, and the quiet is unnerving—the profound, manufactured stillness of a man who pursued a final, beautiful perfection, and in doing so, achieved his own quiet, eternal preservation.