Enoch O'Connor liked death. Not in such a sadistic way that he enjoyed watching people actually die, or a stray dog run over in the street, certainly not, but it was the process afterwards that interested him. The science of embalming a body with special fluids, and on occasion spices, to prevent it stinking and how fast it would decompose when kept cool became a fascination for him in his youth. It was perhaps an odd, and thoroughly morbid, hobby for a young boy growing up in East London to have, for the most part explained by being the son of an undertaker. The O'Connor men had been in the undertaking trade for almost five decades since the mid-19th century when Enoch's grandfather, Ambrose O'Connor, had doubled as a carpenter. Upon his death in 1884 the trade was passed down to his sons, Owen and Uriah and would in turn almost certainly be passed to Enoch in due time.

Enoch was born in the years approaching the turn of the century in December 1892 to Owen and Valentine O'Connor in the East end of London. Valentine O'Connor was a pretty woman of thirty whose blonde hair was constantly blackened like many of the buildings with the smog of factories. Aside from her husband's employment as an undertaker, whose earnings were split with his brother in the business, Valentine worked as a washer woman taking in laundry for a pittance. The family were far from the worst off of the working class, and managed well enough to get by in daily life without wanting desperately for much with the income they earned.

From as young as six years old, Enoch considered himself different from the other boys his own age. He was never interested in the cricket bats and balls they ran around with in the yard and the streets. Instead, he spent his time out of class sitting cross legged on the hard pavement by himself as he impassively watched the games around him. He would barely pay attention to learning Latin, which frequently resulted in a caning before the rest of the class, but from observing his father's trade, could recite the proper amount of formaldehyde to use when embalming the body of a grown man.

By the age of ten, in 1902, Enoch was accompanying his father and his uncle in a hired horse drawn cart to help attend to and collect the dead from houses along the winding and busy streets of East London. He stood a step behind his father as the two undertakers removed their tall, albeit slightly kinked, hats and knocked on the doors of the grieving family's small home. The door was answered by a woman with tears lining her face and a handkerchief pressed to her mouth.
Owen O'Connor dipped his head, holding his hat over his chest and spoke in a thick Cockney accent, "Terribly sorry for your loss, M'am."
The woman choked out a reply and stepped aside to usher them in. Enoch made to follow his father who promptly placed a hand on his shoulder and addressed the grieving widow again. "My son is 'ere to learn, if you won't object."
Without so much as a reply, they were admitted entry into the parlour of the house where the body of an old man was spread out upon a too small table, his legs dangling over the edge at the knees. At the edge of the room sat a young girl with mousey brown curls who barely looked older than Enoch. As soon as the undertakers, with their black coats and bags entered the room, she burst into tears and rushed from the room, brushing Enoch's shoulder as she did so. The boy just scoffed and moved to stand where she had been, giving his father and uncle ample room to attend the body.

xxxXxxx

1905 was the year Enoch O'Connor, son of an undertaker, began to realise just how different he really was.

He brushed a hand through his dark curls which were beginning to hang limp over his forehead, sticking there with the sweat that coated his face, and replaced his grey cap on his head as he leaned against the shovel he held in his right hand. This had to be the least enjoyable, and certainly the most tedious, part of the job, Enoch thought as he began mumble several choice words under his breath.
" 'ow's it goin' down there, lad?" A laughing voice interrupted the thoughts going through the twelve year old's mind and he looked up six feet into the equally dusty face of Uncle Uriah.
"Faster if you'd 'elp again." Enoch retorted, his lips not even twitching in response to his Uncle's good humour, which was perhaps unusual in his profession.
"Reckon you're done now, anyways. 'Ere..." Uriah held down an arm and Enoch obediently passed up the shovel first before reaching his own arm up and jumping to be able to grab onto his uncle's hand. Bracing his feet on the sides of the freshly dug grave, and with Uriah's help to pull him up, Enoch scrambled back onto flat ground. Not bothering to brush off his filthy clothes, he staggered to his feet and looked down at what had mostly been his handiwork. Other boys raced each other through the streets after school, Enoch dug graves.

Uriah clapped his hand on his nephew's shoulder and turned him around, carrying the shovel on his own shoulder as they marched towards the gates of the cemetery. "Fine job, Enoch, I know it ain't clean all 'e time but we gotta do it, eh? Just fink, soon as you're done in school, you can be a proper apprentice."

"And do all your dirty work?" Enoch replied dryly, tucking his hands into his pockets as their feet left the soggy grass of the church ground and back onto the hard cobblestones of London's streets. He didn't mind it all really, the rest of the job quite appealed to him already. He knew it, he understood it, which was a lot more than he could say for Latin and general mathematics. Aside from the manual labour of grave digging, there was a certain morbid charm to the science of preserving bodies.
His uncle just chuckled and dropped his hand from Enoch's shoulder as they walked in silence. They'd barely gone another minute along the road before the dark skies began to drizzle a soft sheet of rain down upon them. Enoch turned up the collar of his old coat and adjusted his braces back over his shoulders where he'd been letting them hang at his sides as he dug.
Another minute or so of silence between them passed before they reached another fork in the roads. Uriah took the road to the left, waving over his shoulder at Enoch as the twelve year old boy rounded the corner to the right.
As soon as he was left alone, Enoch darted into a side alley he knew well as a shortcut to his home. He enjoyed being on his own, and he didn't have any friends to run around with anyway. Not many kids wanted to be friends with the boy whose father had carted off their dead family members and who spent more of his time around dead bodies than live ones.
Splashing through a puddle of stagnant water and probably urine in the middle of the path between two soot blackened buildings, Enoch cursed and shook his foot before grumbling and hurrying his way. He'd only gone a few steps when he tripped over something and barely had time to throw out his hands and catch himself.
"Stupid..." He pushed himself up and rubbed his knee where it had smacked hard onto the stones. Looking down to find what he had tripped over in the dark, Enoch squinted to see and bent down to pick up a twisted shape at his feet. He'd slipped on a child's toy. Looking up he saw what must have happened. Above his head a window was open on the second floor of an old brick building, the torn curtains flapping in the wind that was picking up with the rain. Some careless child had obviously dropped it. Turning the wood and fabric over in his hands he was greeted with a poorly painted face and hair. It was a doll, dressed in a plain strip of fabric he supposed was meant to be a dress. One of its legs had broken off and been lost somewhere in the alley and the joints of its arms were bent out of place. The thought that there might have been a child missing their toy inside the house crossed Enoch's mind only briefly before he stuffed the doll inside his coat and started to trudge away in the rain. "Serves 'em right for dropping it." He muttered to himself.

By the time he got home, the fire was roaring in the hearth and there were bowls of somewhat watery stew ready on the kitchen table. He slipped inside, trying to avoid catching the attention of his parents until he could smuggle the stolen doll to his bedroom. Unfortunately for Enoch, try as he did, he couldn't smother the squeak of the door hinges, or the loud creaking of old floorboards.
"Enoch!"
He groaned and turned his back, holding his coat tightly to his chest and dripping onto the floor as his mother looked up from where she had been draping the last of a load of their neighbours laundry in front of the fire.
"There you are! 'urry up and get out of those fings, your dinner's getting' cold."

Relieved that he hadn't invited any questions, Enoch just nodded and hurried towards his room, only to run right into his father's chest and promptly jumping back.
Owen O'Connor raised an eyebrow and took in his son's soaking wet appearance. That in itself wasn't unusual, but Enoch knew his eyes had already gone to the lump in his coat.
"What've you got th-"

"Nofin..." Enoch quickly interrupted, bowing his head and quickly dashing into his room, collapsing against the door with a sigh of relief.

Immediately he tossed the doll onto his bed as quickly as if it was burning him. He was definitely being silly, it was only a stupid broken toy from an alley, it wasn't as if he'd swiped anything of value. He'd barely swiped it at all really. Thinking better of it, he picked it up again, pushed his bed a few inches to the side and knelt down to pry up a broken floorboard. Hiding the toy in there, Enoch quickly pulled his bed back and stripped off his wet clothes in exchange for a dry pair of trousers and loose fitting shirt.
By the time he changed into nightclothes and crawled into bed that night, he had completely forgotten about the broken doll beneath his floorboards.

Weeks passed before Enoch even thought about the doll again and it was purely by chance that he did. As it happened, the toy maker who owned a corner shop had suffered a heart attack in his shop and the undertaker summoned to take away the body was O'Connor.
Enoch wouldn't have been aware of it had he not been walking that way from school at just the moment a makeshift and temporary coffin was carried out of the shop to be loaded into the back of the black cart. Enoch moved closer curiously, ducking in through the open front door while the shop assistant at the time was occupied assisting with the coffin.
He hadn't ever cared to go into the toy shop before, he hadn't really even had any toys of his own nor had he been interested in them. Wooden dolls and planes lined the walls, stuffed teddy bears with large glass eyes were piled together and in a corner was a stack of unassembled kites. Balls and bats and boats and all manner of toys filled the shelves along with, which strangely seemed to draw Enoch's eye, hard lumps of cheap clay.
The child was just reaching for one when someone cleared their throat behind him and he jumped violently, his heart thundering in his chest as if he'd been caught doing something terrible.
"Can I help you, young man?"

Enoch spun on the spot to face the shop assistant. He was a squat man with a pencil thin moustache and ginger sideburns peeking out below the rim of his bowler hat. The boy opened and closed his mouth a few times before the man spoke again. "I'm afraid we're closed right now, lad. Off you go."

"Closed?" Enoch repeated a little stupidly.

"Closed. Best come back later on, son."

"But what if-"

"You wanna spend ye pocket money, you come back a little later. Sorry, boy." The man said firmly, taking Enoch by the shoulder and starting to march him towards the door.

Enoch couldn't really explain to himself what possessed him to do what he did next. Sticking out a foot and pretending to stumble, he pushed himself sideways into the older man's side and sent them both into the stand of teddy bears. Both it, and the shop assistant went down and in the confusion Enoch rushed back the few steps, seized a lump of clay and stuffed it into the pocket of his school shorts. Picking up his school books again he ran to hold out a hand to the man who was just starting to get his bearings again.
Apologising profusely, but not genuinely, Enoch tried to heave the large man to his feet, almost falling down himself in the process and flashed the most sheepish expression he could muster. "Sorry...awful clumsy, tripped...I'm sorry!"

He could have fashioned his own clay with ease from brick dust, mud and water, it seemed too ridiculous to think of a reason why he'd stolen some. It wasn't even expensive in the first place. Enoch felt a twinge of guilt as he started to trudge home as quickly as he could. If he hurried, he would beat his father in the wagon and his mother would still be delivering her loads of finished laundry.
Stopping only to take a bowl of water from the kitchen, Enoch went right to his room. Closing the door behind him he tossed his books onto the bed, set the bowl on the floor and pushed his bed aside. As he reached for the floorboard to pry it up again, he felt a strange sort of tug that momentarily made him freeze. It was a strange feeling, as though he were being pulled from within himself to do what he was about to do. Immediately he tried to shake it off, pried up the floorboard and took out the doll he had forgotten was there for weeks.
Now he looked at it, it seemed an even sorrier sight than it had in the alley. The arms were bent at right angles and its one leg was scuffed and chipped in places. Ripping off the torn piece of grey fabric that clothed it, he examined the damage more closely. The right leg had broken off and splintered where the knee joint should have been. Gingerly he started to twist the arms back into place, rolling them in their little wooden sockets until they moved once again as they should have.

Pulling the bowl of water closer to him, Enoch shifted and pulled the clay out of his pocket. It was hard almost as brick, but with enough force he could compress it the tiniest bit. He dropped the whole lump into the water and waited half a minute before reaching in and starting to squeeze it until the clay had become mouldable in his hand.
He ripped off a small chunk and left the rest of the lump to the side. Rolling the clay in his hands, he frowned and bent it into shape until it somewhat resembled the doll's remaining stick leg. He just had to hope it was still sticky enough. Picking up the doll, Enoch pressed the makeshift leg to the broken knee joint and tried to mould any excess clay over it until he could safely move his hand without it falling.

Enoch couldn't help it; he laughed and grinned at his achievement, small though it was. When the clay dried the doll would have a new, relatively sturdy leg. As quickly as it came, his smile turned into a frown of confusion.
"Now what'd I do that for anyway?" Sighing, he overturned the bowl of water and tossed the now more or less repaired doll back into its hiding place in the floor.

Enoch woke that night in a cold sweat. His dreams had been plagued by nightmares and he felt a feverish heat all over his body as he sat bolt upright in his bed. Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, he scooted to the edge and planted his feet on the cold floor. His head was swimming and cloudy, and he wasn't completely sure he was awake as he stood up and pulled a coat on over his nightclothes. It was as if he was still dreaming, like he wasn't quite in control of his body as he slipped into his boots and he felt the strange tug in his gut that he'd felt fixing the doll. Enoch let it pull him, guide his feet which were tingling peculiarly, through the house and towards the front door. Careful not to make much noise, not that he was sure he could have pulled himself back, he slipped outside into the bitter chill of the dead of night. He didn't go far, only to the next door over which lead into the undertaker's parlour. It was locked, of course, but Enoch pulled a key from his pocket (when had he taken it?) and unlocked the door quickly, admitting himself.

The building held a strange warmth and familiarity for Enoch, despite how cold it was kept. Various sizes of sample coffins lined the rear wall made of oak and elm and the simple plywood. An immense industrial cool box occupied a whole corner of the shop, although it was cold enough in the winter that there was little use for it. Beside this was a locked cabinet that Enoch knew contained a various bottles of poisons and ointments, and a large supply of formaldehyde under lock and key. But it was the long, heavy table in the centre of the room, or rather what was upon it, which drew Enoch's eye. Lay out upon the table was the half-naked body of a man in his fifties, the toy maker who had died that same day. He smelt strongly of formaldehyde as Enoch walked impassively up to the body. His face betrayed no emotion, he had long since accustomed himself to the sight of death. He hadn't even noticed he'd stretched out one hand that now hovered in the air over the dead man's chest, until he felt another peculiar tug in his gut. Immediately he snapped out of the half conscious daze he had been in since waking and pulled his hand back. He had almost felt like he'd felt something jerk inside the toymaker. It was impossible and he knew it, the man was very much dead and he hadn't even been touching him.
Enoch shuddered involuntarily and tucked his hands firmly back into his pockets as he turned to leave. Something squeaked and he jumped as a rat scuttled over his foot, its worm like tail brushing his bare ankle. The boy grimaced as it scuttled away into a dark corner and very slowly lifted his foot to remove his boot. He edged closer to the rodent as quickly as he dared and poised to strike. Holding the position a moment longer he hurled the heavy boot at the rat as it bustled around, sniffing at the walls. It struck and with a loud squeak the rat weakly tried to scamper away. Enoch seized it with both hands and struck its head hard against the edge of the table. The rodent went limp in his hands and he stared half in amazement and half in disgust at what he'd heartlessly done. The regret didn't last longer than a moment, the rats that roamed the gutters and streets of London were disease ridden, disgusting creatures and he really shouldn't have touched it at all. Yet, he was undeterred by the potential for disease and, for some reason he couldn't quite explain to himself, put the dead rodent into his pocket.

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