My Life as a White Trash Zombie by Diana Rowland
And I didn’t.
Yeah, I sure showed them.
I stopped in the doorway of the morgue and clenched my jaw shut in preparation for the heave of nausea that I knew would hit me any second now. All I could think about was that frog and me throwing up all over the tile.
“You okay?” Nick asked, except I could tell he didn’t really want me to be okay. He wasn’t even bothering to hide his smirk, and it was obvious he wanted me to lose it because then he’d be able to feel even more superior. Like all the kids who pointed and laughed when I lost it in Biology.
Jerk. I took a cautious breath, surprised and relieved to discover that my stomach was apparently on my side and was going to behave, at least for the moment. I slowly unclenched my jaw and returned his smirk with one of my own. “I’m fine,” I replied as I stepped in and allowed the door to close behind me.
Disappointment flickered briefly in his eyes which only strengthened my desire to not wimp out in front of him.
The morgue was mostly what I’d expected—cold and vaguely creepy, like I’d seen in the movies. The walls and floor were off-white, but in a shade that made me wonder if it was the original color or if they’d somehow been stained by the strange and gross smells—kinda like the way the nicotine-yellow walls in my dad’s bedroom had once been beige.
The tour continued as Nick showed me the procedure for logging bodies in and out and took me into the cooler where the bodies were stored. I’d expected a wall full of little doors with the slide-out tables that held the bodies, but instead it was simply a giant walk-in cooler—like you’d find in a restaurant or liquor store—with some big shelves on the wall and about half a dozen stretchers lined up beside them. The shelves were empty, but three of the stretchers had black body bags on them.
Dead people. I backed out of the room as quickly as I could without looking like a total weenie. I was sweating from the stress of waiting for my stomach to wake up and realize what was going on. Any second now I was going to heave and puke all over the floor—or perhaps all over Nick. That would be fine with me.
The next room he took me to held hundreds of plastic containers full of tissue samples, floating in a sickly, brown soup—formalin, as he informed me rather pompously. But still not a whisper of nausea. I could hardly believe it. I even got queasy if I saw someone spit on the sidewalk, and don’t ever ask me to change a diaper.
Finally, Nick brought me into the room where the autopsies were performed—the cutting room, he called it. I tried to avoid looking directly at anything in there. Metal tables. Drains in the floor. Lots of really scary tools and equipment. Yeah, I had the basic gist of it. I didn’t need to see it up close and personal.
Nick started pointing things out in the cutting room, blathering on about the duties and the responsibilities and the procedures, with this cocky air about him as if he was the damn coroner. I’d almost tuned him out when I heard him say, “When you’re assisting the pathologist during autopsies, you’ll need to—”
“Whoa!” I jerked my hand up to stop him. “Wait, what?” I asked as sick horror shot through me. “You mean, like when the bodies get cut open?”
Delight lit his face. “Yes, you’ll be helping with the autopsies. You didn’t know that?”
I couldn’t speak for several seconds. There was no way I’d be able to do this. I couldn’t even handle the thought of a frog getting cut. How the hell was I supposed to be all right when it was people? What kind of vicious joke was it to put me in a job like this? Maybe that’s all this was—a big whopping practical joke. Take the loser girl with the weak stomach and no nerves and put her where she’s guaranteed to make an ass of herself. And threaten her with jail and death to make sure she plays along.
Except, why would anyone go through all that trouble just to play a trick on me?
“It’s cool. I’ll be fine,” I somehow managed to say. I wouldn’t be, but I wasn’t going to let him see it. He’d enjoy it far too much if I walked out right now. I didn’t have a whole lot of self-respect going for me, but this was as good a time as any to pretend that I did.
Besides, I wasn’t going to go to jail just because Nick was a prick.
“Good to know,” he said, smirk stretching to a grin. “Because we have one scheduled to begin in about twenty minutes. Might as well get you suited up so you can start learning the ropes!”
Chapter 3
Three hours ago I was in bed, I thought miserably. I should have stayed there.
I was decked out in a blue plastic smock, a paper apron over that, latex gloves that made my hands sweat, and little paper bootie-things over my shoes.
Lying on the metal table in front of me was a middle-aged man decked out in absolutely nothing at all. A dead man. Buck-ass naked with his little shriveled junk right there for everyone to see.
Standing on the other side of the table was another middle-aged man, but thankfully he was quite alive and fully dressed. Dr. Leblanc was the parish’s forensic pathologist and performed all of the autopsies. I’d always assumed that the coroner was the one who did them, and was even dumb enough to tell Nick that it would be cool to meet the coroner. Of course he then took way too much pleasure in telling me that the coroner was an elected official who hired people to do the investigations and the autopsies and stuff like that. It made sense once it was explained to me—kinda like the way the sheriff hired deputies to do police work. Still, it annoyed me that I’d given Nick such an easy shot at showing how much smarter he was than me.
Dr. Leblanc was probably in his early fifties or so—average height and weight with a bit of flab at his waist, hair a thinning mix of blond and grey, and eyes a light blue. My first impression was that he looked more like a high school history teacher than someone who cut open dead bodies. Not that I had a lot of experience to draw on since, as far as I knew, I’d never met a pathologist before. For that matter I’d only ever known two high school history teachers. My freshman year I’d had Mrs. Pruitt, a nasty old hag who gave tests full of essay questions and who’d marked off points for misspelled words. I’d failed her class since I couldn’t spell for crap—even though I knew the answers. I had to repeat it the next year and got Mr. Landry who looked a little bit like Dr. Leblanc in that they were both middle-aged white males. Mr. Landry was a whole lot cooler than Mrs. Pruitt, and I actually did really well in his class, getting A’s and B’s on the tests.
But then the whole thing with the frog in Biology happened, and I dropped out before finishing the semester. Yet another shining moment in the life of Angel Crawford.
“This your first time seeing an autopsy?” Dr. Leblanc asked, jerking me out of my brief pity party as he peered down at the body and made notes on a clipboard.
“First time seeing a dead body at all,” I admitted sheepishly. I heard Nick give a low snort of derision, and I could feel my face beginning to heat.
“Really?” Dr. Leblanc said, and to my surprise his expression was one of approval. “I’m impressed that you’re handling all of this so calmly.” His eyes crinkled in a smile. “Nick here lost his breakfast his first day in the morgue.”
I had to resist the urge to grin as Nick went white then sullen. “I had a stomach virus,” he muttered. Dr. Leblanc gave me a little wink that Nick couldn’t see, then quickly returned to his examination of the body.
My tension faded to a more reasonable level. At least if I did end up puking, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
“So, uh, how do most people get jobs doing this?” I asked, trying to make it sound oh-so-casual and not full of my maddening curiosity as to how the hell I’d landed this bizarre gig.
Dr. Leblanc shrugged. “Usually people simply come in and apply. It’s a good start for someone interested in forensics or pathology.” He gave a nod toward Nick who gave a proud smile. “But sometimes, the coroner tells me, he’s hired someone—usually as a favor for one of his political cronies or supporters.” His eyes flicked back to me briefly before dropping back to hi
I struggled to control the are-you-kidding-me? look I knew was on my face. Highly recommended? Me? How the hell would any of the coroner’s political buddies even know who I was?
I could feel Nick’s eyes on me, no doubt trying to figure out what special connections I had.
Dude, if you figure it out, let me know, I thought. I’m as baffled as you are.
Dr. Leblanc finally put his clipboard aside and picked up a scalpel. He gave me an encouraging smile. “It helps if you try to look at this as ‘interesting’ instead of ‘disgusting.’ And if you do have to pass out, please do so out of the way. Also, all puke goes in the garbage can, please.” His eyes flashed with humor, and I found myself grinning.
“Deal,” I said.
I did my best to keep Dr. Leblanc’s advice of “interesting versus disgusting” in mind as I watched the procedure, but there were some parts that were disgusting, no matter how much I attempted to convince myself otherwise. In particular, the search through the stomach contents was unspeakably nasty, but I was a bit encouraged to see that Dr. Leblanc’s face was twisted in a grimace as well. Apparently some things were always gross.
Yet, shockingly, I still hadn’t barfed. Not even the slightest desire to gag. It was almost surreal. I was the chick with the weakest stomach in the whole damn world, but here I was looking inside a damn body with the organs and guts and blood, and I was . . . hungry? I blinked in surprise as my stomach gave a little nudge that clearly wasn’t nausea. What the hell? Okay, so I hadn’t eaten any breakfast other than that coffee-drink thingy, but this was still a bizarre time to have a healthy appetite.
“Angel, come look at this,” Dr. Leblanc abruptly said, holding the dead guy’s heart in one hand and gesturing me over with the scalpel in his other. I obediently moved to his side, absurdly reminded of a movie where an evil priest ripped people’s hearts out with his bare hands. “That’s how he died,” he continued, using the tip of the scalpel to point to a slice he’d made in a small blood vessel on the outside of the heart. “See the blockage?”
I stared at the tiny yellow glob of what I assumed was fat or cholesterol or whatever the heck it was that blocked blood vessels. “That? But, it’s so small!”
He nodded then set the heart down on the white plastic cutting board in front of him. “I know. A bit humbling to think that something that looks so minor could have dropped this guy like a stone. He never had a chance.”
I stepped back as Dr. Leblanc finished his examination of the heart. And if I’d died from that overdose they’d be doing all of this to me. For the first time today I could taste bile, though it had nothing to do with anything I was seeing or smelling. If I’d died it would be me naked on the cold metal table, sliced open from throat to crotch. . . .
I straightened, eyes narrowing. I knew what was going on. Highly recommended, my ass. This whole job had obviously been arranged so that I could get a little more appreciation for the life I’d managed to screw up so well. Work in a morgue instead of going through stupid rehab. Now that was a scenario that made sense. I found myself smiling smugly, stupidly pleased that I’d figured it out. That’s cool. I can play this game. Hell, so far this was still a thousand times less annoying than rehab. A month of this and then I’d be home free. And this was even a paying job.
I watched as Dr. Leblanc removed the organs to weigh and examine them. Is he in on it? I wondered idly. Did he know I was really a pill-head loser? He probably doesn’t, I decided. There’s no way he’d be so nice to me if he knew.
Dr. Leblanc dropped a fist-sized kidney-shaped thing into a large plastic bag between the dead guy’s legs then picked up a towel and wiped his gloved hands. “Almost done,” he said to me with a smile. He turned and gave a nod to Nick. “You can do the head now.”
Nick stepped up to the table. “At least this body has one. We cut two yesterday and neither had a head. First one was that murder that was all over the news.” He flicked a glance at me. “You heard about that one?”
I responded with only a nod. I wasn’t about to let him know that I’d been questioned about it.
“And then we had one come in who’d been in an MVA—motor vehicle accident. The victim was so mangled it took our guys half an hour to find the head, and when they did, it had apparently been squished by a passing car. They ended up bringing the pieces of skull back in a plastic bag.” He gave a snort of amusement, and I simply stared at him. How could he be so casual about describing something so awful?
“Now pay attention,” he ordered me. “You’ll be doing this pretty soon.”
Resisting the urge to flip him off, I watched in sickly fascinated horror as he took a scalpel and made a cut from ear to ear over the top of the corpse’s head. Once the cut was made he set the scalpel aside, then dug his fingers between scalp and skull to peel the scalp back on top and bottom, exposing the entire top of the skull.
And I still didn’t have even a whisper of nausea.
Unbelievable.
Next he pulled a mask and a face shield on. “You probably want to put a mask on,” he said as he plugged in what I suddenly realized was a bone saw. “This kicks up a lot of bone dust, and you don’t want to breathe it in.”
I hurriedly yanked a mask on as he started the saw, quickly realizing that Nick hadn’t been exaggerating. By the time he finished making a cut around the top of the head there was a fine film of pinkish-white dust covering the area around him. I tried not to think about the fact that I probably had bone dust in my hair. I planned on taking an epic shower after this day was done.
He set the saw aside and picked up a T-shaped tool with a chiseled bottom. “These are called skullcrackers,” he said with a grin that was almost genuine. “Swear to god, that’s their official name in the catalog.” He jammed the chiseled end into the cut made by the saw and gave the skullcracker a sharp twist to pry the cut wider. I cringed involuntarily at the sound of breaking bone as the tool lived up to its name.
Nick stuck his fingers in the widened gap and pulled. The top of the skull came off with a tearing, sucking sound, and suddenly there before me were the grey and pink convolutions of a brain.
“There ya go,” he said with a silly little flourish as he pulled his mask and face shield off. “Your first time seeing a real live brain.” Then he sniggered. “Real dead brain, that is.”
I followed his lead and pulled my mask off, then froze. All of a sudden it seemed as if I could smell the brain, and not in a oh-how-gross way, but as if someone had taken the lid off a pot of gumbo to let the aroma fill the room. And I knew it was the brain that smelled so utterly enticing—knew it with every single cell of my being.
What the hell was wrong with me?
To my shock and horror my mouth began to water and my stomach gave a loud growl—loud enough for the others to hear. Both of them turned to look at me and Dr. Leblanc gave a laugh. “Okay, you’re officially the toughest morgue tech who’s ever worked here if you can still be hungry during an autopsy!”
I gave a weak laugh in answer as I struggled to hide my confusion. Yeah, that’s all it was. I was just starving.
So why did I have the horrifying urge to grab a handful of that pink and grey mass and shove it into my mouth like movie popcorn?
A shiver crawled down my back. I was being stupid. I’d skipped breakfast, that’s all, and was probably still recovering from my dumb overdose. There was no possible way that I really wanted to eat the brain. It had to be some sort of flashback to that whole crazy hallucination.
Fortunately, Nick seemed to be oblivious to my anxiety. He picked up a scalpel. “The rest is easy. Slice the spinal cord where it connects to the base of the brain—” he said, somehow shoving the brain aside and sticking the scalpel in and around. “—and you’re good to go.” He set the scalpel aside and tipped the brain out into his hands, cradling it carefully.
He turned to me with naked challenge in his eyes. “Want to hold it???
I froze for several seconds. I did not want to hold it, but there was no way I could admit it was because I was afraid I’d start hallucinating and crave it again.
I saw the smirk begin to form on his face. Oh, hell no. I was not going to let him win this one. Even Dr. Leblanc was watching to see what I was going to do. It’s a stupid little initiation, that’s all. I can do this.
I stepped forward and stuck my hands out, meeting the challenge in Nick’s eyes with my own. He grinned, placed the thing in my hands. It was slippery and a little mushy—a bit heavier than I expected it to be. I’m holding a brain in my hands. Holy shit. An unfamiliar sense of pride began to trickle through me. I’d risen to the challenge. It was a stupid and gross challenge, but I’d done it.
“You can go ahead and put it in the scale,” he said.
I set it carefully in the scale and stepped back. Dr. Leblanc gave me another sly wink, then peered at the numbers on the scale and wrote them on his clipboard. I smiled, absurdly pleased with myself.
Then I quickly grabbed a towel and wiped my hands off before I could give in to the insane urge to lick my fingers.
Chapter 4
It was after five P.M. by the time I finally left the morgue and climbed into my Honda. I turned up the volume on my cheap-ass car stereo, slapping the steering wheel in time to the beat as I drove, my mood a lot brighter than I’d expected it would be after my first day on the job.
Okay, so the job was weird, gross, and nothing I’d have ever signed up for on my own. But it was also kinda cool, in a freaky way.
Plus, I hadn’t screwed up. In fact, I’d done all right. I wasn’t used to feeling proud of myself. It was definitely something I could get used to.
After Dr. Leblanc had finished the autopsy I got a crash course in how to sew a body back up—nasty! And, even nastier, I learned that the organs taken out during autopsy didn’t get put back in before the body was sewn up. Instead they went into a big plastic bag and were sent to the funeral home in the body bag, where they’d then be put into the casket between the legs of the dead guy, all covered up with a pretty blanket so that no one at the funeral would know the bag was there. At least that’s what Nick told me. I wasn’t completely sure if he was fucking with me or not.