The Corpse



  CORPSE

  By Samuel P. Kay

 

  Cover Art by Pat Sinclair

  Copyright © 2016 Samuel P. Kay

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, Living or dead, is entirely coincidental

  Steven Moore’s body was brought into the county morgue after he was found in the woods by a couple of hikers. Although the cold had delayed the decomposition of his body, what was left of it was in really bad shape. Wild animals made a feast of him.

  The county coroner and his tech for the county morgue, will soon begin the autopsy to find out the cause of death. It was a normal day for them and like a lot of people they are under the assumption that when a person dies their spirit leaves their body. That was not so in this case as Steven had been aware of what was happening and had felt the pain as the animals had ripped into his flesh. He also knew what was going to happen next.

  CORPSE

  A soft layer of snow was covering the dense forest floor making the tracks of the deer easier for me to see. My favorite tree stand lay just ahead but I knew I would have to go the long way around to keep my scent from giving me away. As I made my way through the woods, the weight of my gun resting heavy on my shoulder, I tripped and fell banging my head. I am not sure what I had tripped over or what I hit but it could have been the hard surface of a large rock. I knew that my skull was crushed and the pain shooting through my head was unbearable.

  I laid there for what seemed like days as the forest animals began exploring my body. A lone coyote came near, it was leery at first but soon came closer and sank its teeth in to me. I felt the sharp teeth as they pierced my skin before sinking into the muscle, pressure from its jaws giving me no chance of escape. Then the ripping began, my hand was being twisted one way, then the other as it was being torn from me. My screams went unheard as my hand left my body and disappeared through the trees, clasped firmly in the jaws of the coyote.

  I heard a woman scream, then shortly a man’s voice joined hers. After slapping the woman to pull her from her hysteria the man removed his phone from his pocket and placed a call.

  “I need the police to come to Edgewood Estates,” he said, “We’ve found a dead body on the property. Come to the woods on the west side of the Estate house and I will meet you there.” Once he had relayed the information the nine, one, one operator needed, he took the woman by the hand and led her away from me.

  He couldn’t have been talking about me, I thought as I lay there waiting for help to come, because I wasn’t dead. Had someone died on my estate and why was my wife traipsing through the woods with a stranger.

  Soon I heard voices again. Great, I thought, help had arrived and they would have some strong pain medication, I hoped anyway. When they moved closer I saw they were the police, they didn’t come directly to my side but stayed about 30 feet away. Come closer, I yelled silently, come and get me out of this frozen hell.

  As yellow tape was being placed around the trees that surrounded me I could hear others approach. You have to be careful what you wish for because instead of help when they moved in closer they lifted me and placed me in a heavy black plastic bag. As I lay there looking up at them, pleading for help, they zipped up the bag closing it around me. As they lifted my body I felt my open wounds rub against the plastic and cried out in silent agony.

  When they unzipped the bag, I felt my body being lifted up and placed on a table, the cold steel bit into my flesh as if it were a knife cutting into me. The edge of the table pinned my arms to my sides keeping me from sliding around once they started cutting into me. I knew they were going to do an autopsy and started praying for the Lord to take me out of this body. I knew now that I was dead and my soul was trapped inside of this dead shell. Praying was not going to work because if I was going to be taken from this body, it would have happened before the animals found me. This had to be a punishment I thought, for something I did while I was alive. I had not heard the movement around me but I felt a stinging and burning sensation as the scalpel sliced through me traveling down my chest and into my abdomen and I knew then that they had started. I could not see what was being done by the scalpel, but could see some movement on either side of me. The voices told me that they were both men, one older, probably in his fifties, the other one sounded young, maybe in his early twenties. The younger one is asking a lot of questions, letting me know that he was new to the business, hopefully the older doctor was more experienced in the job that was being done. I felt one of them grab my intestines, pulling every inch of it out of me checking to see if there was anything abnormal. Finding nothing wrong he used what felt like a very dull knife to remove it. I heard a squishy plopping sound as if someone had just thrown my intestines into a bucket. The slicing began again and I continued to feel pain as organ by organ they emptied my lower cavity before moving up to my chest.

  The young man moved away from the table, then moments later I heard a whining motor. He returned and I felt a ripping pain as my ribs were cut away from my chest plate so my body could be opened wider to display my internal organs. I was thankful I couldn’t smell anything, believe me I also wished I could not feel, hear, or see anything either. I could hear myself screaming when the pain hit me and wished they could too, but they can’t so they are not gentle, nor do they stop. A loud cracking sound filled the room just before the pain again racked my body. I felt my bones separate as they forced the plate from where it has rested for the last fifty-five years.

  I felt the dull knife slicing into me again, Roy was holding my heart up and I swear I could feel it beating against his fingers. This was weird as all other parts taken from my body had no longer affected my soul.

  “Hey Doc”, Roy asked, “is it just me or does this look rather large to you also?”

  “Throw it up on the scale and weigh it,” Dr. Johnson answered, “that way we will know for sure. When you’re done put it over on the table and I’ll take a look at it.”

  I couldn’t make out what else was said I did however notice Roy had lined up all the containers with organs in them on a table in the corner of the room. What they were going to do with them I did not know, nor did I care. I just wanted all of this to stop, but they just kept on working. This whole autopsy seemed to be taking years instead of hours. Finally, they stopped and closed me up.

  The doctor moved towards my head and looked down on my face, how could he not see that I was feeling everything he was doing to me? I could see his salt and pepper hair that had escaped from under his cap. He motioned for something from Roy and the Sternal saw was handed over. I heard the buzzing sound as Roy moved into position above my head and began cutting through my skull. What the hell was he doing, was my first thought as I felt a searing pain that started where my forehead should have been. The pain moved very slowly around my head as smoke and bone fragments were shed by the saw.

  The blade caught in my hair which was getting twisted and pulled from my scalp. I could feel every single strand as it broke free from the skin holding it grounded in place. The sound stopped, then Roy took a hammer and chisel moving his way around my skull widening the cut. He took a T-shaped chisel, what the doctor had called a skull key, and used it as a lever. I felt the top of my skull being pulled and twisted right before the suction let go with a loud pop. Cold air hit the inside of my head, freezing my brain, and I realized that he had just removed the skull cap which moments before had been cut free. What makes a person want to do this for a living, I wondered, they have to be sick in some way, or maybe the money really is that good.

  I started thinking back
to when I was fourteen, and had watched my father kill my mother. Dad didn’t do it on purpose and he held her afterward for what seemed like hours. He picked her up and told me to open the door to the basement. I did as I was told then as he descended the stairs I shut the door behind him. I sat there in front of that damn door wondering why he had taken her downstairs instead of trying to get help. Why was he shutting me out when my mother was hurt and I needed to help her? After a few minutes I heard the sound of his chain saw. I ran outside and around the house to the basement window. Looking in I saw my father cutting my mother’s body into small pieces. There was blood everywhere but my father didn’t seem to mind. I ran as far away as my legs would carry me and vomited until my stomach was empty.

  I was brought back to the present by pain so bad I wanted to jump off the table and rip this guy’s head off. Whatever he did hurt like hell. When I got my bearings back I could tell he had removed my brain and taken it across the room to dissect it.

  Lunch was delivered so they washed up and moved to a clean table to eat. They hadn’t even finished with me yet and here they were eating and laughing. I couldn’t believe they were taking a lunch break before finishing. They are even telling jokes, how rude is that, I asked myself before my thoughts switched once again to my past life.

  While I was still in my early twenties, I worked in a slaughter house close to where I lived. The men there would joke around while they were slaughtering the animals and I now know what that was like because these two were treating me as if I was some sort of animal. That pissed me off because I am not an animal, I am a human and if I could make my body move I would scare the shit out of them. The more I thought about it the more I realized that no matter how mad I got there was nothing I could do, that pissed me off even more.

  Did everyone’s spirit stay in their bodies after they died or was this happening to just me, I wondered. I know I was an ass at times, but most of the time I was a good person as far as I know. That could just be my way of thinking as I had not done anything that I had been taught was wrong. I had a lot of friends so I had to be doing something right. My wife and kids love me. I was a deacon in my church. I got along with all my neighbors, except for the drunk three doors down the road from me. They moved me to a gurney, I wondered where they were going to take me now. Could be the freezer but knowing my luck they are going to cremate my body, which has always been my biggest fear. A loud click fills the room as one of the small doors in the wall to my left was being opened. A table was pulled from the opening and my body was once again transferred this time to an ice cold slab. Surrounded by walls I waited for the sound of the door closing and the latch being set back into place making my world go black.

  I could still feel what was left of my body, even the cold air of this cooler where dead bodies are stored could not dull my pain. My fear of being burnt could rest as I was locked in and although the cold air burnt my skin it was not fire. I had never thought about being frozen, at least I was already dead so the cold won’t kill me.

  I wasn’t sure how long I was in that cold tomb, but was glad when the sound of the door opening invaded my silence and light shined in. My body was moving again as someone pulled the drawer out of the wall. I was lifted and place on the exam table, this time I was covered with a sheet.

  “Thank you Roy, for getting him ready for me.” I heard the doctor say.

  “Your welcome doc,” came the voice of the young man.

  “Hopefully we will find out what killed him.”

  The door closed and it got quite, actually unnerving quite, even for me. I will be tortured again, I thought as they had not returned my body to the cooler. I guess there is no rest for the dead, at least not at this place anyway. I decided to enjoy the quite for as long as it stays this way. I won’t have to worry about the pain, I thought, before it came to me what lay ahead.