Apocrypha Sequence:
DEVIANCE
Shane Jiraiya Cummings
Copyright © Shane Jiraiya Cummings 2011.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes:
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Except in the case of short-term lending, if you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
All characters in this book are fictitious.
No reference to any living person is intended.
* * *
Dark Heart Alley (An Urban Fable)
* * *
Welcome to the Apocrypha Sequence, a collection of themed stories outside the continuity of my 'regular' collections, Shards (flash fiction) and the forthcoming The Abandonment of Grace and Everything After (short stories and novellas). The stories in the Apocrypha Sequence lie somewhere in between. There is some overlap between the Apocrypha stories and those in my collections, but this is because I have cherry-picked stories from my body of work to suit the themes present within the Sequence. For each book in the Apocrypha Sequence, I chose a story or two from my collections, a couple of previously uncollected stories, and the odd original or two. Each volume in the Sequence is a remix. You might find a story from this volume elsewhere (by itself or in one of my collections), but its inclusion in the Apocrypha Sequence gives it a more appropriate context—and in some cases, demonstrates its place in a shared world of directly-linked stories.
Apocrypha Sequence: Deviance explores the darkness within the human heart. The first three stories are set in the same hospital, Stratton Memorial, a place where the scales of life and death have tipped in the wrong direction. The morgue is in the sub-basement, a long, dark corridor infrequently visited by the living but a favoured haunt of the dead and depraved. The four examination rooms in Stratton Memorial's morgue have seen more than their share of death. The remaining stories take the Sequence beyond the hospital and into a city just as dark. There, disturbing fantasies of sex, drugs, and violence may become real, and when all else seems lost, redemption might be found in the darkest corner of the soul.
Read on and enjoy this volume, and if you crave more, please seek out the other three volumes that comprise the Apocrypha Sequence. Details about the rest of the Sequence and my other e-books can be found at the end of this volume.
— Shane Jiraiya Cummings
* * *
Blaine awoke to a world of crushing silence.
He cracked open his eyes as though they were encrusted from years of disuse and squinted at the harsh artificial light. The whole room was blurry and white.
Raising his arm, Blaine noticed a thin tube snaking into his vein. He watched with sick fascination as droplets of clear liquid trickled down the length of the tube and disappeared beneath his skin.
He gagged but nothing rose from the pit of his stomach. His airways burned as he sucked in a deep breath. His mouth was dry, his tongue swollen.
The length of his body was weighed down, pinned by lethargy. His limbs ached, but everything was pretty much intact—except he couldn't hear a single sound.
The silence pressed in on him like invisible hands crushing his skull. He experienced no tinnitus whine, no high pitch buzzing rattling through his head, no muted warbles. The noises of the world had been shut off with horrific totality.
The unforgiving light soon subsided, bringing the room into focus.
He was in a bed, that much was clear. Crisp white linen held his torso and legs taut. A heavy curtain, the colour of autumn green, rained down from ceiling to floor on all sides, enclosing the space around his bed.
His gaze wandered again to the tube in his arm. He followed its transparent line to a plastic sack, half-filled with more clear liquid. He tugged his arm a little, aware of the needle embedded under his skin. The sting was a sharp reminder that this was all real.
His hand brushed hard plastic on the bed. Arching his stiff neck, he found it to be a small corded remote control with a single red button.
A cough escaped his chest, rattling up his burning oesophagus. His heart thumped harder as the coughing fit turned into a prolonged spasm, but the sound of the cough failed to reach his ears. Its absence left him violated.
Like his racing heartbeat, the coughing rose through his skull as vibrations. Vibrations but no sound. He reached for the controller near his hip. An unexpected spasm bounced the controller from his groping fingertips and off the bed. He never heard it hit the floor.
He fought to gain control of his cough. Once he did, he calmed himself by taking deep breaths. Every breath was fire and needles.
Exploring his face with a tentative hand, he discovered the coarse texture of bandages. He gingerly followed the line of the bandages to the side of his head. His ears were covered. They were hot under the binding mounds.
He breathed a deep, painful sigh, also silent to his bandaged ears. Logic seeped back through his fears: he was in a hospital and his ears were wrapped in bandages. He couldn't hear anything for that reason. The thought was oddly comforting.
In a bid to regain the lost controller, he strained over the side of the bed. Agony wracked his joints and muscles as he dipped his head closer to the floor. The smell of jumbled disinfectants flared in his nostrils.
The heavy curtain flew back, startling him. He hung limp over the side of the bed, squinting up at the figure of a petite woman standing in the light. The sights of a hospital ward played out behind her—more green curtains, the glimpse of an identical bed across the room. The woman hurried to his side, placed firm, pleasantly warm hands on his ribs and back, and helped him back into bed.
Her tight-fitting uniform and hat proclaimed her a nurse. A tidy crop of raven-black hair contrasted with her white clothes. She was probably in her late twenties—and cute. Her mouth moved quickly around a crooked smile, but he had no idea what she was saying. His world remained deathly silent but for the steady beat of his heart.
She noted his bewildered look and curled her lips into a laugh. Once he had settled himself back under the sheets, she moved to the base of the bed and picked up a small rectangular board and pen. With economical strokes, she wrote on the board and held it up to him.
Hi, Mr Blaine, my name is Nurse Stevenson
A meagre wave of his hand was all he could muster.
She rubbed at the mini whiteboard and scribbled something else.
You were in an accident but you are OK
He closed his eyes and expelled a painful sigh. He hadn't tried to recall what happened, why he was here. Now, he focussed his memory.
He was a boilermaker. He remembered his last day at the site. They were putting up the skeleton of a mall on the edge of town, one of those suburban super-complexes where middle-class teenagers flock for their brand name clothes, iPods, and mindless entertainment.
On the mall site, he'd just finished welding some girders. In the background, he'd heard two of the apprentices messing around. If they were his apprentices, he would have kicked their butts for clowning around. As it was, he took the time to raise his mask and shoot them a glare before getting back to the task at hand. He remembered hearing them ignite a blowtorch, mere steps away from the store of gas tanks.
The fireball rocked the site; it was the loudest thing he'd ever heard. The boys were blown apart before his eyes, an instant before he was thrown skyward. The whole thing happened in a single heartbeat.
"How long have I been here?" The words croaked from his lips. His rusty vocal cords worked but he hadn't a clue if the words were loud enough for Nurse Stevenson to hear. She inclined her head, seeming to ponder the question. At least she heard him.
A few seconds later, she held the whiteboard up again.
A week
"What about my hearing?" he croaked.
She nimbly wiped her last words from the board and wrote a new sentence.
Your hearing will return soon. I will get the doctor.
The relief rippled through him with a sigh, despite his burning throat.
A scream rang through the room. The scream was blood-curdling, knifing a chill through his body. It was a long way away, but he heard it with horrifying clarity.
"What was that?" He arched his head to the side, listening for the scream again.
Nurse Stevenson seemed unaware of the scream still echoing in his ears. Her mouth flapped in rapid succession, but he heard nothing. Registering his blank look, she returned to the whiteboard.
What is it?
"I heard a scream," he said far too loudly, pinioning her with searching eyes.
Impossible, Mr. Blaine. U R deaf.
He continued turning his head from side to side. The world was now cocooned in silence once more.
"I ..." he stammered, his voice dead to his own ears.
I didn't hear anything. I'll get the doctor, the board read. The nurse vanished through the curtain.
#
Time passed. Blaine pulled into himself, balling his body under the sheets. He tuned his focus to listening for more sounds. Screams. Any sounds at all. He was deaf, of that he was certain. And yet that scream, that awful scream, was as real as the nose on his face. Why didn't the nurse hear it?
Unable to maintain his vigil, he yielded to sleep.
#
A firm shake ended his dozing. A tall man in a white coat continued to shake his arm. He didn't like the man—the doctor—there was something about his eyes, they were too guarded, too unyielding. It was irrational but the feeling lingered.
The doctor, a dark man of sharp lines and even sharper cologne, moved to the end of the bed and took the small whiteboard in hand. In scrawling style, he wrote:
Hello. I am Dr Radisich.
Blaine propped himself up to face the doctor at close to eye level. The pain was still there but lessened each time he tested his neglected muscles. He wasn't an invalid, despite the hospital and the deafness. In front of this doctor, he needed to prove it.
Blaine's resilience and stamina had always been his strong points. He was a veteran of the Amity Valley Football Club. He liked to test his physical limits through rock-climbing and dirt-biking.
"Doctor." The word spilled from his lips in an over-loud tone.
Save your words Mr Blaine, you are shouting, wrote Doctor Radisich.
"Sorry," he whispered, too softly this time.
You were involved in a workplace accident and have lost your hearing.
He nodded, waiting for more information.
Your hearing was damaged by the explosion. You were lucky to be wearing a facemask.
Nodding again, he remembered the shockwave blasting his face. It could have been much worse.
Your hearing will return in time but we don't know when. You must be patient.
A scream pierced the silent room again. Doctor Radisich carried on, intent on writing something on his whiteboard, totally oblivious to the shriek. Blaine bolted upright, swinging his head from side to side in an attempt to locate the source of the noise. Goosebumps sprang up over his arms and chest. The scream came from somewhere behind the doctor, still distant but closer than before.
It was a woman's scream. Her desperation tugged at his heart.
Are you alright, Mr Blaine? the doctor wrote quickly, noticing his strange behaviour.
He shook his head violently. "Screaming. I can hear screaming!" To his ears, his words were no more than a sick parody. His tongue and throat worked, but nothing came out.
Dr. Radisich moved his lips rapidly but their meaning was lost to him. He turned and thrust his head through the curtain. Moments later, a male nurse appeared. Nurse Stevenson was close behind. Their entrances were sudden and intrusive.
The doctor disappeared while the two nurses hovered by his bed. Nurse Stevenson stepped forward and slipped her petite hand inside his. The warmth of her skin was reassuring; she stroked his arm the way an owner strokes a pet just before it's put down.
The doctor soon re-emerged, a needle prominent in his hand.
Sighting the needle, he tensed. As the doctor drew closer, he struggled, attempting to get to his feet. "You have to do something! She needs—"
Springing forward, the male nurse held Blaine by the shoulders with practiced ease. Blaine was a big man, bigger than the nurse, but the nurse was fit and had all the leverage. Nurse Stevenson pleaded with her eyes while holding his arm. The needle was injected straight into a valve attached to his plastic IV tube. Within seconds, the fight fled his body, his strength ebbed away. Sleep soon took hold.
#
A scream—desperate and hysterical—ripped him from a fractured dream. The scream had grown in intensity.
He ran his hand over his face and head and could still feel the bandages. He hadn't dreamt everything; he was still in the hospital, although many hours must have passed since they drugged him. The lights were dimmed but the green curtain still surrounded his bed.
The scream continued, pulling at the very fibres of his heart. Every few seconds it died off, returning with force moments later.
He ripped his sheets off and threw his legs over the side of the bed. Waves of dizziness threatened his resolve as he rose, but he quickly regained his balance.
He was compelled to act.
Testing his weight, he placed his bare feet on the floor. The concrete was freezing. His pyjamas offered little protection from the chill air wafting through the ward. His arm bound him to the IV bag. Without hesitation, he ripped the slender metal from his vein, which burned for long moments afterwards. Another wave of dizziness assaulted him as he stood. His body was fatigued but flexing his limbs gave him the confidence to move.
Another scream jolted through the hospital.
He wobbled forward, unsteady, at first, until he settled into a rhythm. Drawing the curtain aside, he found his room deserted. Another three curtains, all in matching shades of green, partially hemmed off sections of the room. A solitary four-paned window, with bars on the outside, provided the only feature to the room. The sky outside was dark.
He left the room and entered a long cluttered corridor. Following the sound of the screams, he turned to the left and took off at a jog. He rushed past the nurses' station, a reception desk located at the crossroad of two corridors. The nurse, a chubby dark-skinned woman with glasses, looked at him with curiosity but didn't interfere. She said something as he passed, but he didn't hear any of it. Like her words, his footfalls were silent to his ears as he squeaked along the linoleum.
As he ran past open archways, he glanced into each room. Most rooms in this ward were like his, housing four beds, each curtained off for patient privacy at this time of night. The curtain colours changed—some rooms had that same drab green, while others had curtains the colour of rust or faded summer blue. One room, with blue curtains, was full of co-opted acrobats—burned and scarred souls suspended from wires and slings above their beds. The man closest to the door was bandaged and squeezed into a full- body pressure suit. Poor bastard.
As Blaine jogged down the corridor, some of his strength returned. An old man with a sunken jaw stared through him from his wheelchair. The wrinkled geezer glided on in the other direction.
He dived into the elevator at the end of the passage. It was cavernous, with doors on both sides. In bewilderment, he studied the buttons. The screams came from somewhere ... deep.
He pressed the button for the lower basement. The elevator jolted downward, the sound of the gears and pulleys lost to his ears. Endless heartbeats later, the elevator ground to a halt, with the door behind Blaine springing open. It took him a few moments to realise, as the metallic sliding sound failed to alert him.
A high-pitched scream, more intense this time and wrought with pain, rang through the dark corridor before him. She was close.
With scattered debris such as a broken wheelchair and empty metal shelving, it was clear this section of the hospital was rarely used. Blaine jogged into the darkness, passing several double doors indented with small glass windows. The rooms were devoid of light. The smell of sterilised death clung to the place, masked by potent industrial chemicals that made his head spin. Signs above the doors told him all he needed to know. He noted each as he passed: Morgue Examination Room One. Morgue Examination Room Two ...
Another scream tore through the hospital.
It came from room four, just up ahead. A dim light shone from underneath the reinforced door.
He tried to contain his ragged breathing. His heart raced as he exaggerated his last few steps. He had no idea if he could be heard. Any noise could give him away. Approaching with caution, he glanced through the viewing glass. Black tape had been plastered over the glass, but a section had curled up, allowing Blaine a glimpse into the room.
A man with dark hair and a white coat was inside. His back to the door. Something shiny in his hand. The man's silhouette was familiar, but with the dim light and his face turned, he couldn't tell.
He was fixated on someone in front of him. With his view blocked, all Blaine could see were two bare feminine arms, each bound with wire to metal shelving. Rivulets of blood trickled from her wrists down to her elbows.
The man's hand moved with precision as he leaned closer to the girl. Blaine couldn't see what the man was doing to her but it caused his hairs stand on end and his stomach to knot. Blaine clenched his fists as another anguished scream rocked the hallway.
There was no doubt now. He was answering this girl's cries.
The man in the coat stepped back to admire his handiwork, offering Blaine a full view of the debauchery.
The girl was spread-eagled, bound at the wrists and ankles by the cruel wire, holding her in an 'X' shape. She sagged against her restraints, sobbing uncontrollably with her head bowed. Bedraggled dark hair, falling past her shoulders, shrouded her face. Her hospital gown was ripped open at the front and covered in blood. A poorly stitched wound on her throat was crusted with dried blood, and dark crimson lines marked her breasts and stomach. Fresh blood stained her torso a foul red and dripped onto the floor, where it was captured by plastic sheeting. The plastic covered the floor and much of the walls.
She looked up at her tormentor with pathetic, pleading eyes. Blaine's blood burned when he caught sight of her face, her terrified face. Christ, she was barely eighteen. Too young to die at the hands of this sick bastard.
She shook her head as her torturer advanced again. He could see clearly what he held in his hand. A blood-stained scalpel. Her mouth moved, but if she said something, it was forever lost to Blaine's deadened ears. In his mounting rage, Blaine doubted the cruel bastard with the scalpel heard it, either.
He searched for a weapon, anything he could use to take the guy down. The corridor was sadly lacking.
Turning back to the door, he saw the man waving the scalpel in the hapless girl's face. She shuddered and sobbed. He also caught sight of the tormentor's face. He wore a surgeon's mask but the eyes gave him away. It was that prick of a doctor: Radisich.
His fury raging, Blaine no longer cared about a weapon. Rational thought was overwhelmed by raw adrenalin.
He slammed his shoulder into the double doors with explosive force and hurled his bulk into the examination room. Dr. Radisich turned in surprise, dumbfounded by the white blur of motion that charged toward him.
The collision was sickening. The doctor collapsed like a sack as Blaine crash-tackled him into the concrete wall. A nearby metal trolley, carrying pristine metal tools and kidney-shaped bowls, rattled from the impact.
Blaine didn't hear the clatter of the scalpel hitting the floor, the crumple of the plastic sheeting, or the snap of Radisich's ribs. The pair went down hard, the doctor bearing the brunt.
For long moments, nothing moved in Examination Room Four.
Blaine rose to his feet and dusted off his hospital-issue pyjamas, trying to remove the taint of the loathsome creature passing himself off as a man.
He stared at the crumpled doctor, splayed unconscious in a mess on the floor, silently grateful for his years of football training. Unable to contain his disgust, he spat on Radisich before turning to the girl.
#
Mr Blaine, what led you down there in the first place? flashed up on the laptop screen.
Blaine pondered the detective's question carefully, reviewing everything that had happened that night. Getting the nurses to call for help, then actually believe him, took some doing. He had commandeered a notepad from the nearest nurse's station and frantically scribbled his messages.
Seeing the tortured girl's cuts soon convinced them. It was harder to convince the medical staff that Dr. Radisich was the culprit, but it didn't matter too much, either. He'd been safely jammed into a storage cupboard, still unconscious and bound with the same wire used on the girl, until the police arrived.
I heard the girl's screams, Blaine typed on the screen, immediately below the question. He decided shouting at the detective was probably not a good idea.
The detective, probably a few years younger than him, stared him long and hard in the face. His eyes wavered between Blaine's and the bandages wrapped around his ears. He soon left him with the laptop while he discussed something with another detective.
They returned together a few moments later. The other detective, approaching his fifties, read the transcript and also shot Blaine a hard look.
He turned the laptop around and typed something. Turning it back to Blaine, it read:
That is impossible, Mr Blaine. The girl's vocal cords had been removed.
* * *
Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae.
The plaque gleamed, caught on the cusp of shadows and fluorescent light. Burnished copper letters. Stark Roman font.
"This is the place where death delights to help the living." Parrish's recital of the phrase was now ritual as he donned the second pair of latex gloves. They snapped into place with a satisfying echo that hung in the air. Smells of rubber and disinfectants clung to the place, thinly masking the stench of decay.
The plaque had been there for as long as he could remember, even before the tenure of crazy old Doc Kaufmann, who once famously ate a cadaver's eyeball, and perversely, taught him everything he knew about forensic pathology.
"Doctor Parrish?" The diener said, throwing his concentration into turmoil.
"What is it, err... Greg, wasn't it?"
"Gary, sir. The body's been prepped."
"I can see that." He spared a glance while adjusting his gloves.
A young woman lay naked upon the slab. Her breasts were thrust out, courtesy of the body block jammed between her shoulder blades. The lines of her ribs and the hollow of her chest lay exposed under the intensity of the low-slung bar lamp.
He stopped fiddling with his gloves as he stood mesmerised, tracing with his eyes the waves of her raven hair as they ate the light and shimmered with the glut. His gaze lingered on the curve of her breasts, coquettishly angled by her position on the slab. Noting the fullness of her nipples—hard, dark lumps contrasting to her pallid skin—he silently thanked the powers-that-be for his good fortune. An attractive woman, even a dead one, was better than the grisly parade that usually passed through his life and his morgue.
"The bread knife's not here," Gary said, "do you want me to go get one?"
"That won't be necessary." His eyes swept the room a final time before settling on the leather case placed by the door. His leather case.
Gary was all rangy limbs and awkward angles as he hovered by the corpse. The low bar lamp brought his apron and the folds of his scrub suit into sharp focus, obscuring his face in the feathery darkness beyond. He looked more like a butcher's clumsy apprentice than a morgue diener.
Dr. Parrish shook his head as he took possession of the case. "Greg, shouldn't you be doing something?"
"Umm ... oh, right. And it's Gary, sir." He paused a moment longer before shuffling off to fetch the tape recorder.
As he laid the case upon the aluminium trolley next to the corpse, Parrish heard the assistant mutter something from the far corner of the room. It was a smallish room lined with metal, which amplified every sound.
Brushing aside his irritation, he withdrew his personal serrated bread knife—a surgical version of the household knife, ideal for slicing organs—and placed it on the trolley next to the electric Stryker saw and the scissor-like enterotome. After storing his leather case at the foot of the trolley, he surveyed his tools, waiting for the assistant to return.
He picked up the scalpel, checking to see if it was fitted with a #22 blade. The mavericks in Emergency sometimes raided the morgue supplies for their own ends, especially the larger sized scalpel blades. Satisfied, he replaced it, and moved to caress the Hagedorn needle when the diener returned with the recorder.
"Put it down." Parrish noted the diener's awkwardness.
Gary flinched, placing the recorder on the scales which dangled above the end of the autopsy table. The scales bobbed up and down, the needle settling to 272 grams.
"Not there." Parrish sighed from behind his surgical mask.
Snatching the tape recorder up with child-like indignity, Gary then leaned across the exposed corpse and dropped it onto the trolley with a clatter. He couldn't resist stealing a glance at the breasts as he pulled back and straightened.
"Idiot," Parrish muttered, more concerned by the tape recorder dropping onto his knife than the lecherous behaviour of his assistant.
"Tell me, diener—it was Greg wasn't it—do you know what we do now?"
"Gary, doctor."
"Well?"
"We ... umm ... make the first incision?"
"No, diener, we don't."
Gary flushed. His hovering hands, drawn up like effeminate claws, spoke volumes of his inexperience.
"We confirm the identity," Parrish said after the silence wasn't filled. "Get the paperwork while I inspect the tag."
He watched the diener shuffle off to the filing cabinet before moving to the woman's feet. He prided himself on efficiency and precise movements, navigating around the table without raising a sound. He stooped by the corpse's big toe and read the name on the tag quietly to himself.
"What was the subject's name?"
Gary startled at the sudden question, almost dropping the clipboard. "Umm ... Natasha."
"Umm Natasha who, diener?" Parrish was tired of having his time wasted by this fool.
"Natasha Kohl, Doctor. From out of town. Lived in Berlin, Germany."
"What were you doing here, all that way from home?" Parrish asked of the corpse. "Now, diener, we've established this is the correct body. How do we proceed?"
"The first incision?"
"No ..."
Again, the diener paused awkwardly beside the autopsy table, clutching the clipboard across his chest like a shield.
"Try, the external examination," Parrish instructed.
Gary nodded.
"I take it you've not performed many autopsies before, then, diener?" Parrish emphasised the assistant's title. "Stop cradling that clipboard, get over here, and activate the tape recorder."
Gary scurried to comply, uncertain of where to offload the clipboard.
"Wait," said Parrish. "On second thought, read me the cause of death."
Gary froze mid-step, then returned to studying the file.
"Umm ... says Cause of death: Unknown."
"What? Incompetent fools. Any injuries listed?"
"Nope."
"Are there any notes, then?" Parrish waved his hand for emphasis.
"Says Rigor has not set in at time of admission."
"When was that? This morning?"
"Umm ... hang on." Gary scanned the file with darting eyes.
"Out of the way, fool!" Parrish nudged the assistant away and commandeered the clipboard. Gary half retreated, half stumbled against the wall.
Propping his lanky frame on the handle of a body storage vault, he shot the doctor a glare laced with indignation and shock. Parrish was too absorbed in the file to take notice.
"This is ridiculous," Parrish fumed. "Not a skerrick of information to be found. I'm examining blind."
He tossed the clipboard at the open filing cabinet. It smacked off the side of the cabinet and clattered to the ground as Parrish circled around the body and resumed position next to his tools.
Gary scampered over to retrieve the fallen clipboard while Parrish commenced the external examination.
"Do you know what diener means, Greg?" Parrish's eyes never left the corpse.
"Gary," said the diener, shaking his head as he shunted the cabinet door closed. The metallic echo reverberated through the room.
"It's German," Parrish dropped back into measured tones. "Those Germans are an industrious people. A good sense of order. They were the first to perform autopsies, you know." He bent low, hovering his face bare inches above the woman's chest. "Diener means servant, Greg. Do you like the sound of that?" His eyes sparkled as he looked up from his inspection and met the diener's sullen glare.
Parrish flicked on the tape recorder as he drew himself to full height. "Stratton Memorial Hospital, autopsy in morgue examination room two," he said aloud. "Subject's name is Natasha Kohl. Female Caucasian. Approximately thirty years of age. Estimated cause of death: unknown. Dr. Hamilton Parrish MD is prosector." He paused, glancing at Gary again. "What's your surname?"
"Timms."
"And the diener." Parrish spat the word at Gary. "Is Greg Timms."
"Gary." The assistant muttered.
"Time is two-thirty-nine pm, and I have commenced the external examination."
Parrish moved around to her feet once more. He placed his hands on the aluminium slab either side of her legs and began his task. His gaze soon drifted upward, taking in her calves and thighs.
He swivelled first to the left, then to the right, following the table's moulded blood groove up the expanse of her legs. With her torso pushed out by the body block and the table angled downward to facilitate blood flow, he had a prime view of her curves and the sparse hair of her pubic region. He savoured the sight, knowing tomorrow would bring a decomposing drunk or a messy railway suicide.
"Subject appears to bear no obvious signs of trauma," he spoke into the recorder. "Her skin is very white. Unusually so."
Gary had crept closer, floating behind Doctor Parrish.
"I'm examining her legs for injuries or needle marks." Parrish started at the toes, wedging them apart while holding the foot closer to the light. It was true. No rigor mortis. Her limbs were still supple, even after lying in the morgue for hours. Her state prevented a guess as to the time of death. The case grew more intriguing by the moment.
He worked his way upward, inspecting knees and thighs for signs of the unusual. He paused at her crotch, sifting through her pubic hair. He pried her legs apart like an easy hooker, and spread her labia wide.
"Unusual," he said into the air, keeping a calm voice despite an accelerating heart. "If I didn't know better, I'd say her body is exhibiting signs atypical of a corpse. As if she only died this very moment. There is ..." He coughed, cleared his throat. "A surprising amount of vaginal fluid."
Parrish shifted position, allowing the legs to droop and splay even further apart. Standing by the woman's torso, he checked for a pulse.
Nothing.
"Diener," he said. "Fetch a thermometer. I'll need you to take a measurement."
Gary sauntered off to do as bidden.
"Quickly!" Parrish called after him.
Gary returned a moment later with the thermometer in hand. He wavered as he stared at the body, his indecision clear.
"In the rectum, man!" said Parrish, leaning across her face to feel for breath.
Gary eased the glass device into the orifice. Expectancy was clear on his face. Even Parrish looked down with anticipation. Instead, nothing. Heartbeats later, Gary removed the thermometer and arranged the woman's legs in a more modest pose.
"What's the reading?"
"Umm ... a few degrees above room temperature," Gary cocked his head, "isn't that what you expected?"
Parrish didn't answer. Instead he was fixated on something near her breast. "Get me a magnifying glass."
Gary dutifully complied. Within moments, the magnifying glass was in the doctor's hand.
"Come here," the doctor motioned. "What do you see?"
Gary leaned forward, awkward in close proximity to Parrish, and stared through the magnifying glass.
"Well?"
Gary pulled his gaze from the glass and focussed instead on the woman's chest and abdomen.
Dr. Parrish traced a line with his finger from underneath her breast down to below her abdomen. "There! It looks like a scar. A faint one, but definitely a scar." He began to trace the line back toward her other breast but pulled back, whirling to face Gary.
"Tell me about the initial incision," Parrish demanded.
Gary stepped back, flinching from the doctor's fervour. "Umm ... it's a deep cut, down to the bone. It's a 'Y' shape, starting from the front of the shoulders and goes down to the ..."
"Go on."
Gary stared harder at the corpse, at the near-invisible scar. The line Parrish just traced. "Down to the abdomen."
"Someone's been at her before me."
Gary nodded but shrank back. Confusion was rife in his eyes.
"I don't like this one bit. We have to cut her open." Parrish moved with purpose, repositioning himself next to the trolley. "Normally, the diener makes the first incision, but I think I'll spare you that honour today."
Gary stood in the shadows.
The woman's chest lay exposed, propped up, and at the mercy of Parrish's scalpel.
"I am commencing the initial incision," Parrish declared to the recorder.
He stabbed the scalpel into the right shoulder, furtively at first, but was soon slicing along the scar in a barely controlled rush. Parrish used hungry sawing cuts to part skin and flesh. Trickles of blood and other fluids seeped from the monstrous incision, spilling down the woman's torso and onto the table.
A tiny moan escaped into the room, almost unheard, as the scalpel sliced through the woman's stomach tissue.
Parrish's response was sluggish as he shook himself from the task. "What was that?"
"What?"
Parrish gaped at the corpse. "Did you hear a noise? Like a sigh?"
The woman's face was locked in a death mask as before. Her closed eyes were lost to the world, her mouth open in the tiniest of pouts. All identical to when Parrish first entered the room.
"I'm continuing the incision," he said to the recorder, as he plunged the scalpel deep into her stomach, picking up the weeping thread of the cut. He was approaching the lowest end of the incision but proceeded with caution, having lost his earlier vigour.
Gary. A voice called to the diener. A feminine voice. Foreign. Stop him! He's not doing it right.
Gary looked about the room in alarm but saw nothing—no one other than the doctor and the corpse. Parrish's tentative scalpel was nearing the abdomen and the pubic area.
Diener! Dr. Parrish looked up from his bloody handiwork to stare Gary in the eye. He lowered his mask, exposing a demented grin. His voice, the screech of a harpy. Punch me in the face!
Gary shook his head, timidly at first, but more fervently as the doctor's grin darkened to a snarl. He tried to back away but his limbs tingled with energy, a sudden desire to violence.
Punch me, knock me out! Or you're fired! The doctor's voice was out of sync, built of raw menace. You incompetent fuck! Diener! If you don't punch me in the face right now, I'm gonna gut you next.
The threat cut to Gary's core, spurring him into action. The tingling in his limbs hit critical mass.
Gary lunged, grabbed Parrish by the wrist, and wrenched at the scalpel. It was freed from the woman's abdomen with a slick sound.
"What are you—" Parrish stammered. All trace of the harpy's voice was gone. The doctor appeared dazed in the heartbeat before Gary's fist slammed into his face.
The bloodied scalpel clattered to the floor as Parrish crumpled. The crunch of bone and cartilage ghosted the room before fading away.
"Gary."
Confused, he looked down at the woman. Blood spilled from the incomplete incision spanning her torso. Her breasts were still propped up and within reach, their bareness enticing. He wanted to move but her eyes—her open, lightning-streaked eyes—held him in thrall. His thoughts were trapped in the blue-white zigzags. The tingle surged through his extremities; his skin itched and burned.
"Pick up the scalpel," she commanded. The lilt of her voice was intoxicating. Compelling.
He picked up the scalpel.
"Finish the incision." The woman's eyes swirled with electric fire as she raised her head to study him.
Gary hesitated.
The corpse gripped the edges of the table and pulled her legs up, spreading them suggestively.
"Finish the cut, Gary," she commanded. Her voice was insistent, echoing through his mind a fraction of a second after it reached his ears. "But do it slower, deeper. With care."
Wavering, Gary fought the suggestion and the incessant energy under his skin.
The woman writhed on the autopsy table, arching her head back, breasts and hips forward, in an entrancing rhythm. More blood, crimson shading to black, spilled from her wound and was smeared across the slab by her gyrating buttocks.
Gary struggled against the betrayal of his groin. Sweat banded across his forehead and along his back. His skin crackled with latent energy; his scrubs were saturated—damp plastic chafing his skin.
Finish the incision, diener! She screamed without opening her mouth. The words lingered in his mind; a wave of nausea in his gut.
The moment he stepped forward, scalpel raised, the nausea and heat diminished. Everywhere except his throbbing crotch.
He wiped his brow and blinked the excess sweat out of his eye. He'd already positioned the scalpel over the woman's stomach.
The woman stilled. They both watched the blade slide into her abdomen. The upward thrust of the scalpel forced out a breathless gasp from her.
With a mix of delicacy and clumsiness, he started the upward cut toward her left breast. He pressed his groin into the side of the table; the cool metal was a mixed blessing. Static electricity discharged up the front of his scrubs.
The woman renewed her gyrating, soon filling the examination room with moans of pained delight. Gibberish punctured her moans; a chant that was both familiar and foreign.
The scalpel blade was greedy despite his awkward hand. Urged on by the corpse's desire, it sliced through her flesh and soft organs. Blood and intestinal fluids spilled from the incision as he arced up the side of her abdomen and further. The smell was fetid yet tinged with saccharine sweetness, as though he were dissecting a mouldy gingerbread woman.
He scraped across her ribs. Every scoring of bone wrenched stuttering whimpers from her. Gary lifted her breast with his free hand and tentatively ran the blade beneath its curve—generating whimpers, followed by a shuddering moan as the scalpel circled her breast and finished at her shoulder. White skin disappeared beneath her fluids as the incision wept.
Gary pulled the scalpel free. His erection diminished as the press of cool metal took effect and the electricity abated. The clamminess remained, along with an intense headache pounding at the base of his skull.
The lightning-eyed woman continued to writhe, exulting in the expanding pool of blood. The table was awash with it; gravity and motion eased it down the blood grooves, burgundy thinning to silver.
After long moments of revelling in the pain and the blood, she petered off. She then fixed Gary with a predatory smile, running her fingers along the incision. In their wake, the cut healed over, leaving only a bloody smudge.
"Diener," she purred, sliding from the slab and stepping over the fallen form of Dr. Parrish. "You have executed your task well."
She paused to examine the surgical tools, testing the weight of each item. She seemed especially fond of Parrish's knife, fingering it with the appreciation of a true fetishist. Blood coursed down her legs and pooled at her feet. Appearing to grow bored with the tools, she abandoned them and crossed the room for the door, spattering a bloody trail across the floor.
Two snowy figures with matching pairs of zigzag eyes hovered outside the door, pressing their faces against the tiny inset window. The woman paused before the door, turning from her kind to fix Gary with one last stare.
"We may meet again, diener." She smoothed a palm over her hip; her gaze lingered on the bloodied scalpel in Gary's hand.
Gary shuddered, dropping the surgical blade. Unsure what to do, what to touch, he held his hands up, palms open, like a pre-op surgeon. His heart and skull thumped in unison.
"Remember, diener." The woman pointed to the plaque above the door. She uttered the phrase in imitation of Dr. Parrish, perverting it. She paused to blow him a kiss before slipping through the door. Joining her companions in the corridor, she disappeared from view, leaving a bloody smear on the door handle and her translated words lingering on Gary's conscience:
"This is the place where the living help to delight death."
* * *
The world spun. Grey lines of swirling chaos formed at the edge of vision as he opened his eyes. Like the jarring stop of an amusement ride, the room came into sudden, sharp focus.
Greyness—stainless steel and concrete—pervaded the room. A metal table rose in front of him, shrouded with a white cloth. The cloth concealed lumpiness in a vague, albeit hefty, human shape.
"Hey there," a man's voice called.
He turned at the sound of the voice. A humanoid silhouette, swirling with mist, black and ethereal, extended an arm-like appendage toward him.
He recoiled.
"Oh," the voice said, coming from the mist. "I forgot."
"What are you?" He tried to hold the quiver from his voice.
"The name's Blake. What's yours?"
"Daniel. Daniel Caruthers."
"Pleased to meet you."
"You too," he answered without thinking.
Daniel kept a wary distance while he studied the shape named Blake.
After moments, Blake broke the silence, "Umm, Dan, you might want to move."
"Why? What are you going to do?"
"Nothin' mate. It's just that ..." Blake pointed toward Daniel's legs.
He dreaded looking down but couldn't resist the urge. What passed for his hips disappeared through a white sheet identical to the one on the other table—yet he didn't feel a thing. His arms, legs, and body were as vague and ethereal as Blake's. He flinched and the world spun again, a crazy whirligig of greyness, to find himself in the centre of the room under the light of an overhanging lamp.
"How'd you do that?" Blake asked.
"What?"
"You blinked out for a sec."
Daniel fixated on the swirls that replaced his absent flesh. "What's happened to me?"
Blake glided forward across the concrete. "Well, the last thing I remember was eating dinner. Something was caught in my throat, and then ... and then I was here. You?"
"I ... was in the car. There was a light, just a flash really. I don't remember anything else." He studied the slab with which he'd just been merged. Small drying patches of brown saturated through its covering cloth. The shape beneath looked human, vaguely so, but he couldn't tell.
He grabbed for the cloth with a shadowy hand, only to pass through it, groping at nothingness.
"It's no good, mate. I tried that already," Blake said. "It's a safe bet that's us under those sheets though."
Despite a yearning to throw up or to shout to the heavens, Daniel felt nothing—except an itch. Like the feeling an amputee experiences after losing a limb, he struggled against a palpable loss. The absence of the physical ached, but only in his thoughts. That was all he had left.
From beyond the door, Daniel heard muffled voices approaching. "Someone's coming," he whispered, feeling strangely exposed.
"What do you want me to do, mate? Hide under the table?"
A face, dark with stubble and suntan, appeared in the glass window inset into the door. A second later, the door swung open, admitting the man and another trailing behind. Both men wore the aqua-coloured garb of hospital staff.
"I thought you said you heard voices," the stubbled man said.
His blonde-haired companion nodded. "Yeah, I swear I did."
"We're right here!" Daniel stepped in front of them and waved his arms.
They didn't react.
"Sorry, maybe it came from room four," said the blonde man. "You know the weird stuff that's gone down in there,"
"Yeah," the other replied, walking up to the table housing Daniel's body. "When did this one come in? There's no tag."
"Less than an hour ago," the blonde said, "paperwork's still upstairs."
"Hey, I'm right here!" Daniel moved to the other side of the slab and floated inches in front of the darker man's face.
"Save your breath, Dan. They won't hear us." Blake coasted around the room. "We're dead."
The man pulled back the sheet. Daniel's sheet. "Hey!" Daniel protested.
His face, his flesh and blood face, was crumpled. He wore a look of surprise, nearly lost amid the carnage inflicted by the metal and glass of the car accident.
The sense of finality overwhelmed him.
The room swirled again as he reeled from the table. Only the details of his ruined and very dead face remained constant as the world wavered.
"Sorry you had to see that, mate." Blake hovered close by.
"Oh God. I have a wife and kids. What's gonna happen to Sarah now I'm ..." Daniel trailed off into silence.
"Jeez," said the stubble-faced examiner. "That can't have been fun."
The blonde man nodded but said nothing.
At his shoulders, Daniel and Blake looked on as the examiner covered Daniel's corpse.
Suddenly sniffing, the blonde man raised his nose and looked around the room.
"What is it?" the other examiner asked.
"I can smell something. Something sweet."
"Yeah sure. You only get disinfectants and death down here," the darker man said. "I can't smell anything, except maybe porky over there." He pointed to Blake's remains.
"Hey! Screw you, dirtbag," said Blake.
"Come on, it's always cold in here. I hate this room," the blonde man said.
The other examiner nodded, then turned for the door.
The lights flicked off, followed by the door closing with a thud, which echoed through the room and into the corridor beyond. As the sound of footsteps retreated, a gentle draft wafted through the room, carrying the fragrances of lavender and roses.
"You smell that?" said Blake, a disembodied voice in the darkness.
"Flowers, a whole bouquet of them. Like the ones I brought home to Sarah last Valentines Day. She loved roses. Lavender too. The florist put a sprig in the bouquet for me."
"More like Eucalyptus to me. My ex used to burn it in those little oil burner things around the house. I loved that smell." Blake paused. "When things were bad between us, that smell was sometimes the only reason I'd come home."
"I'll miss Sarah—and the kids. It's going to break my heart to not see them grow up."
"I'll miss the Colonel's Three-Piece Feed, but what are you gonna do?" Blake laughed. "That's why I'm here in the first place."
"What do we do now, do you reckon?" asked Daniel.
"We wait for the light, I guess. Isn't that how it works?"
Together, they waited in the darkness as a breeze swirled through the room. An interlude between death and something else, bearing lavender, eucalyptus, and aromas of lives left behind.
* * *
Dark Heart Alley (An Urban Fable)
I - Blood and Neon
"This place is killing me, Joe." Tears welled in Miri's eyes. Blood spattered her top, which had been partially shredded. A handprint was smeared across her left breast.
Joe reached out to comfort her, but Miri turned from him and wiped her eyes. Joe's outstretched fingers brushed her clothes as she hurried past him and out the door. In the seconds it took the door to close, he could hear Miri's footfalls on the pavement increase to a run. The gate leading from St Mary's Church to the world beyond squeaked on its hinges as Miri pushed it open, and Joe was sure he heard her sob as she did so.
Joe closed his eyes, listening for the sounds of Exeter Street outside, feeling Miri's despondency and fear recede and be subsumed by the throngs of the Strip.
Joe knew what lay ahead, and for the first time in a very long time, he shuddered against the chill.
"This place is killing both of us, Miri," he whispered.
#
The geography of the Strip was like a hooker at her work—a clutch of alleys astride Exeter Street, pumping into it, sliding from it. The Strip festered with drugs, sex, and menace. The stench of garbage and cigarette smoke wafted through its alleys. The Strip's boundaries were unofficially marked by the glow of neon signs, and to the north and east, the grey wall of the Federal Interchange, an expressway that connected the central business district to the suburbs. To the south and west, where the neon light gave way to the darkness, the Strip merged into the Fringe.
The Fringe was the bruising around the cancerous Strip and home to the bruised. It was a tangled industrial no man's land of alleys, tunnels, deserted factories and terraces, and dark, untamed paths. The Fringe was the stomping ground of derroes, crazies, the poor souls who couldn't make it on the Strip, and something darker altogether.
Business was generally kept in the Strip. That's how it had been for generations. The CBD and the suburban ring of respectability ensured it remained so. But like all rats' nests, eventually the rats overcrowd, turning their teeth on each other, casting out or devouring the weak.
Exeter Street was fast becoming known as the Bloody X, Execution Street, due to the handiwork of a madman dubbed Mr X. The Strip's blood-stained edges threatened to seep into other neighbourhoods, a spreading wound the city could no longer ignore.
#
"Miri! Wait up!" Joe called.
Joe chased her through knots of men strolling the Strip. The raucousness and garish lights of Exeter Street receded into a vortex of sound and colour—a noisy blur of pink, red, and white swirling around the slender figure of Miri.
Miri bustled into a clump of sweaty men as they ogled a topless peepshow dancer through a dusty window. She tried to squeeze her way through but she was grabbed by a fat, olive-skinned man. He pulled her in close against his chest and sagging belly, both visible when his unbuttoned shirt flapped open. Miri fought and stumbled, crashing into the man's twin brother as she pulled away.
"Hey, baby," the greasy brother purred.
The encounter became a tangle of arms as she fended him off until he caught her wrist with lucky reflexes. He held her tight, twisting her arm behind her. With his advantage, he squeezed her breast with his free hand, although his smile faded when he felt the sticky blood on her clothes. Miri grimaced and squirmed beneath his fingers.
"Leave her alone!" Joe shouted as he approached.
The man tossed Miri towards his brother. Fuelled by testosterone and cheap spirits, he faced off against Joe, sizing him up while rubbing his hand on his jeans. His mates closed ranks, a wall of flesh pressing in beside him.
Joe was dwarfed by the men but stood his ground. The gang edged toward him, their eyes hungry, their fists balled.
Rage curled the corner of Joe's mouth.
The lights on the block dimmed: the street lights, the fluorescent and neon in the windows of Tania's Sex-A-Rama, Minion's, and The Peep Hole, and even the headlights of the cars as they cruised along Exeter street.
With her tormentor's attention elsewhere, Miri pulled her strap over her shoulder and slunk off into the gathering crowd.
#
Miri huddled on a doorstep in the first alley that led her from the lights of Exeter Street. She cupped her head in her hands and fought back tears. Goosebumps covered her arms and legs. Her miniskirt, blouse, and fishnet stockings offered no protection from the draft funnelled through the streets. The cold was unrelenting. She curled into a tighter ball as defence against the wind. The soles of her feet were freezing, the consequence of abandoning her high heels as she ran.
A dark silhouette loomed at the top of the alley, framed by the light of the streetlamp at its back.
"Piss off, creep," Miri sniffled.
The silhouette drew closer. Every step echoed down the hill and into the valley of darkness beyond.
Hugging herself even tighter, she turned her face into the splintered wood of the door. Too much had happened tonight without this, another attack, another set of hands. A sob wracked her as the man drew closer.
"Miriel."
"Joe?" She squinted up at him through tears.
The light was still at his back, but the silhouette took on a calming familiarity.
"Come back with me to the centre."
Miri sobbed again and rubbed her eyes with the heel of her palm. Filth slicked her legs but the cold numbed her to the worst of it.
Her makeshift sanctuary was the rear entry to a small warehouse, one of many clustered in this part of the Strip. Grime clung to the concrete. Discarded needles glinted in the dim light nearby.
The maze of walkways and alleys that comprised this side of Exeter Street was the ideal haunt for the Alley Cats, hookers who offered sex then and there, in doorways, pressed against walls. Already, a few shapes watched them from the shadows further down the street.
"Come on, I have a hot shower and nice warm coffee waiting. Let's get you out of this cold." Joe said.
"What happened? With those guys, I mean?" She uncurled herself a little.
"Just a misunderstanding. They'll be no more trouble to you." He sounded distant.
Without a further word, she reached out to him. Joe took her hand and eased her to her feet. For a moment, their eyes locked—hers, watery and pale; his, the unreadable grey of stone.
Miri was a fresh face on the Strip, yet to be broken by the tide of perversion heaped onto this single neighbourhood. Joe had taken her under his wing the day he'd set eyes on her, although that had only delayed the inevitable.
Everyone lost their souls on Exeter Street. Some gave them up to crawl the heap for positions of power—the dealers, the pimps, the strip club owners. Others, like Miri, ended up there through happenstance or the worst of luck. People were already a little damaged when they arrived at the Strip. Miri, like the others forced into prostitution, was no exception.
Joe gently guided Miri from her squalid sanctuary. With one arm around her shoulders, he walked her up the incline and back toward the neon glare of Exeter Street. Joe paused at the top of the lane and glanced back.
Joe's arm tensed, and he tightened his grip on Miri's shoulder. "What's wrong?" she asked.
Joe peered into the darkness a moment longer and then shook his head and forced a smile. "Nothing, Miri. Let's go."
From among the shadows, hidden from the Alley Cats on the prowl, another set of eyes watched Miri and Joe disappear. Dark, insubstantial eyes that saw only the lusty highs of sex and death.
#
Guided by Joe, Miri's mind was only dimly aware of the walk back through the Strip. Clumps of drunken men inexplicably melted away with reverence, allowing them clear passage through an area normally clogged with people.
She caught sight of the brothers that groped her, but they, too, stepped well clear of Joe as he ushered her through. Their faces remained bowed and solemn as they passed.
"What did you do?" she mumbled into Joe's ear.
Joe's gaze was held straight ahead. "Not enough."
In silence, she endured the long walk to the outreach centre on achingly cold feet. Flashing signs, shopfronts plastered with hundreds of lights, and lurid posters, all screaming SEX, mocked her as she struggled on. The smell of sweat and alcohol was ever-present, leaving her nauseous.
The outreach centre, an annexe of the crumbling St Mary's church, was a landmark perched stately and impotent on a hill at the quiet end of Exeter Street like an eagle too old to fly. As Miri approached, she allowed a memory to slip through her defences: the trail of blood.
Trembling grew into a sob. Her legs finally gave out as she sank into Joe's quiet strength. He half-guided, half-carried her through the doors.
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