The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Taxidermist
Good morning--you're Die-Sandra or...oh, Deathandra? Whatever--what can I tell you about today? Taxidermy? Right, I heard about your art project. The art teacher still on stress leave? I guess you're probably cut out for this sort of career. It may have a few bumps along the way, though.

First, you'll no doubt continue to play with roadkill while you steal the occasional fetal pig from the biology class. At some point after high school you'll take a taxidermy class or two, but it will be a learn as you go kind of thing--you'll eventually meet up with some redneck outdoorsman who's mastered the art and he'll show you the finer points of making that deer's head or bearskin look lifelike.

He's old, though, and probably drinks a bit more than he should. It will be while under the influence that he tells you the truly troubling details of his own taxidermic background. It will come back to haunt you later.

You will move on from the small town where he showed you the ropes to the bright lights of the big city--I'm assuming that stuffing dead animals or not, you probably need to be somewhere big enough to have a lively underground culture where like minded freaks hang out and share their dysfunctions for a few hours on weekends.

The city will be slow to embrace your vision of taxidermy for the masses--you'll likely have to work in a variety of piercing/tattoo places to make ends meet for a bit--but eventually you'll strike gold in partnering with a funeral home for pets. Dowagers will, in their heartbreak over the loss of Fifi, agree to have you stuff and mount their dearly departed animals.

One particularly wealthy, but odd client will bring a variety of creatures for your special care and attention. Each time she'll seemingly be more interested in you than the fruits of your labor. You are confident enough not to be intimidated by her, or by her odd requests. For instance, you readily comply with her wish to put a lhasa apso on wheels so she can continue to tow it through the park just like she did when it was alive.

Then one night she phones you late, and demands you come to her home. She seems a bit shaken, but then composes herself and leads you into her study, where the body of her most recent husband awaits. You cringe at the thought of what she asks you, but you call your old mentor and ask for his help. His stories about what he learned while in the army from some nazis he was assigned to guard after the liberation of concentration camps now come in handy.

A week after her assignment was given, you present the woman with her preserved husband and an exhorbitant bill. She pays it gladly, and then informs you that she has two other ex-husbands in cryogenic suspension and she'll pay you double to process those bodies.

You make enough from her to take some time off and fulfill your lifelong dream to tour Transylvania. When you return the police are waiting--seems you have interfered with a murder investigation by destroying the evidence of her suspected poisoning of her most recent husband--plus there's the whole legal problems created by messing with dead bodies for profit--seems there are laws about such things.

Ahh well--you can work your magic on the rats in prison to help pass the time.