by Daniel Parme
The only problem was that she was difficult to read. Other than the sex, I could never tell if she enjoyed my company. There was a lot of biting sarcasm in her voice, and sometimes it was hard to take.
The thing about having a lot of sex with Virginia is that you don't really pay much attention to anything else. Not even your new job at the morgue, which, you might think, should be more than enough to hold your attention. All those dead bodies, normal dead bodies. Bodies dead from sickness or old age or all the regular things that kill bodies. All those dead people, and their families crying in that sad grey room. All those dead bodies should have been more interesting than they were in those first few days, even if you didn't really work with them, even if you spent most of your day on the phone or filing paperwork.
The thing about having all that sex with Virginia is you don't even notice the way you've been looking at those dead bodies, even if you haven't really been working with them. You don't even notice how you stare at them. Longer each time. You stare at them and get lost. Zone out. You go to work and you look at these dead people, and you don't realize the effect they're having on you because you're too wrapped up in forgetting about everything.
The thing about having all that sex with Virginia is that after those three days, you don't have all that sex anymore. In fact, you don't have any. It just stops. It just stops because LT, he's regressed. He's back on his couch, watching TV and completely ignoring your pleas to get up and do at least a little work around the house.
And Virginia, she notices. And Virginia, she is not pleased.
One morning, the third morning, you wake up and say to her, "I have to go to work."
And she says, "Ok. Bye." And she goes back to sleep.
And just like that, she's done with you.
Chapter 14
Let's forget about Virginia. Let's get back to working at the morgue.
The morgue was full of shiny tools and the smell of chemicals. It was clean. Sterile. The front desk, where I would spend most of my time, housed a computer and drawers filled with writing utensils and all manner of things you would expect to find at a front desk. The wall behind the desk was lined with filing cabinets.
The back of the morgue was surprisingly similar to the front desk. There was a desk with a computer and writing utensils and everything you'd expect to find at a desk. There were a couple sinks for washing hands and tools, two tables for autopsies and whatnot, a cabinet full of all sorts of chemicals with familiar names and smells. And the back wall was lined with filing cabinets, refrigerated filing cabinets, full of people rather than paper.
After my first few days, I started showing up early. And when I say I was early, I mean I was early. Forty-five minutes, an hour. I wasn't having sex anymore, so I had plenty of time to show up early.
I started showing up early because I was becoming fascinated by the dead bodies sleeping completely covered in pale blue blankets that almost matched the skin. I studied the bodies. The way a woman's breasts would hang down to the sides, into her armpits. The way the fingers and toes never really looked relaxed, or tense. The way veins would show up in the oddest places, like holding a flashlight up to and egg.
I studied them because, well, I'd never really studied dead bodies before. I'd only eaten them.
One of my first early days, I found myself alone. Dick was out, Eli was out. It was just me, in the morgue, with two new bodies in the back. I'd already gone over the paperwork: a forty-seven year old woman who'd had a heart attack, and a kid, sixteen, who'd been shot in the chest.
I couldn't help myself. I had to do it.
I slid the woman out of her little drawer and looked for a moment at the sheet covering her body. It reminded me of a loaf of bread, covered by a dishtowel, cooling on the kitchen counter. The only real feature was the little tent at the bottom, pitched with the poles of her feet.
I pulled the sheet, folded it up, and set it on the examination table a few feet behind me. The loaf of bread took shape; a little round, a little pale, and a little cold. A transubstantiation the Catholics would go ape-shit over. (Thank God they don't burn people at the stake anymore. Although I'm sure this sentiment is quite capable of landing a few protesters on my lawn.)
The muscles had grown tired of holding all the fat and skin in their proper places, and the fat and skin hung at the sides. The breasts had slid to rest on the arms, a mudslide brought on by the rains of death. The fat belly had flattened, or migrated, so the fat sides were now really fat sides. It went the same for the meat of the arms and legs, the way the topsoil is pushed aside to make room for the expanding gas chamber of a volcano threatening to blow.
This woman, though, she would never blow anything again. Not the steam from a spoon of hot soup or the candles on a birthday cake. Not a fat line of cocaine or an entire paycheck at the mall. Not her husband or her lover.
She was done. Everything building up inside her, everything ready to explode – it all just stopped. All that power that had taken years nearing the surface, it was all trapped. She could never let it out. She was a false alarm, and I felt sorry for her. Or, more accurately, I felt sorry for all that stuff she'd never be able to let out.
I imagine that as she was dying, clutching at the arm they say hurts when your heart gives out, she was sorry for all that stuff, too. There was so much of it in there, and now it would rot away with the stretch marks on her hips and the cellulite on her ass. She had to have thought about it, that poor woman. Knowing there's more in there than what you've been able to set free in the last half-century. If her heart hadn't already failed her, I'll bet it would have broken at the thought.
I looked at her face, and I had myself convinced that she had moved her mouth. Or tried to move her mouth. Like I could see the muscles trying, trying so hard, to get those lips open. To tell me something. To let something out.
The mouth, that's where all the power is. The gateway to what's inside. Breathing, eating, drinking, speaking. It's the mouth that allows all of it. At least, that's the way I thought about it then.
All these bodies used to be people, people with strength and some sort of power (or soul, or spirit, or aura, or whatever), and now, because the mouths were out of order, this power was just stuck in there, in those fleshy sarcophagi.
I'd once read that certain tribes (in the South Pacific, mostly, although probably in other places, too) believed that a dead body still contained the strength of the person who had inhabited it while alive. The warriors would eat their defeated enemies and absorb that strength. This same book also said that some cultures were known to eat the flesh of their dead relatives. They believed they would carry the soul of their dearly departed grandfather around in their veins until their own grandchildren ate them. And so on. And so forth.
I learned all this in an Anthropology class in college.
This was when I didn't pay too much attention to theories about Big Namba or Small Namba tribal culture. This was when my biggest problem was trying not to show that I was there, in class, hung-over and fighting my need to vomit.
I learned about this in college, and I hadn't thought about it since. Now, standing over this corpse of this woman, I thought about it again, and it made sense.
I poked and prodded like a farmer looking over a pig, deciding if it is good enough, fat enough, healthy enough, to serve to my family for Christmas dinner.
I poked and prodded, comparing the feel of the thighs to my recollection of Erica's. Erica's thighs were thin and athletic, muscular, great to look at and easy to chew, like the most tender of human filets. These thighs, you could tell they'd be a little chewy, fatty. Slow roasted, like a nice prime rib, they would have been fantastic. But raw, not so much.
You might think I'd have caught myself thinking about all this and stopped myself because it was disgusting and twisted and wrong. You might think I'd have thrown that sheet right back over that loaf of cold bread, walked back to the front desk, called Dick Pea
rson, told him I quit, and run out the door.
I guess maybe I should have.
Yes, I did realize that the goings-on in my head were a little, well, off the mark. And no, I did not believe that eating this woman would somehow allow her, or those things trapped inside her, to live on. I'm not fucking crazy.
Sure, I thought about what it would be like to cut her up, cook her up, chew her up, swallow her. I thought about which ways to cook which cuts. I thought about what it would be like to eat her, but in that way you imagine what it might be like to fuck a chicken.
I did not think about what it would be like to actually eat her.
So my mouth watered a little. So what?
I was squeezing the right triceps when Eli showed up. "New one?"
I dropped the arm, which bounced off the table and fell swinging over the edge. "Holy shit, Eli. Don't sneak up on me like that. You could give someone a heart attack."
"Like her, huh?" He stepped in for a closer look. "She's a heart attack, right?"
"Did you look at her file?"
He cracked his neck, then his fingers, out in front of him, like an arthritic pianist. "No. I can just tell most of the time."
"That's creepy."
He smiled. "Yeah. Comes with the territory." He picked up the folded sheet from the exam table. "What are you doing back here, anyway?"
Hmmmm. "Nothing, really. Just looking." Looking, yes. Sweating now, too. "Thinking about what it's like to die."
He seemed to buy it, walked to the side of the table, and looked the woman over slowly from feet to head. "You're new. You won't think about that anymore, not after a while. After a while, you'll forget they're even people. Of course, they're not people. Not anymore. The people part is gone. Poof. And all that's left is this." He punched her in the stomach, and she farted. She farted, and Eli laughed. "Ah. That'll never get old."
I covered her back up, slid her back into her drawer, and went to spend the rest of my morning filling out and filing paperwork. To spend the rest of my day thinking about why I was thinking about whether a cabernet or a merlot would go best with a nice, tender rump roast.
Chapter 15
The thing about working at the morgue is it's a new experience for you, full of interesting and oddly exhilarating sights and sounds and smells.
The thing about not talking to, or sleeping with, Virginia anymore is that now you have all sorts of free time to indulge in your new interests. You get yourself into a new routine, which goes a little like this: wake up, eat, shower, drive to work (speeding, rolling through stop signs because you simply can’t get there soon enough), check out some corpses, go home.
Life is all about routine, especially when you don't share your life with other people. And the routine doesn't stop just because you're home. Maybe you'll clean up your apartment a little. Maybe watch some television or read a book. But usually you'll sit at your computer and spend some time in Jeffrey Dahmer chat rooms or typing C-A-N-N-I-B-A-L-I-S-M into search engines, you know, just to see if anything interesting pops up, anything you can learn.
You learn, for instance, that you are, by definition, a cannibal. Or a recovering cannibal, at any rate. You learn that the technical term for cannibalism is Anthropophagy, and that your particular practice is recognized under Anglo-American law as a necessity defense under something called the Choice of Evils Doctrine. It is formally known as Survival Cannibalism, for obvious reasons.
You learn about other forms of cannibalism, as well. The Aztecs practiced ritual religious sacrifices and ate war captives, strangers, and enemies. This is known as Exocannibalism because, you know, it’s outside the tribe.
You learn that the Celts and Aboriginal Australians would eat their dead friends and relatives as a way to release the soul from the body (and you're proud of yourself for remembering that from college). This is called Endocannibalism because it’s inside the tribe. They do say that it’s good for families to sit down to a nice meal together…
You read case studies of serial killers, crazy fuckers who would decorate their houses with body parts. Skulls on bedposts, shrines of bone and preserved genitals. They'd keep heads in the freezer, heads in their beds. They'd prefer little boys, or little girls, or ethnic boys, or they'd prefer the taste of virgins.
You learn that these people are fucking crazy. Even when they explain themselves, they're really only telling you that they're completely gone, off their rockers, the lights in their attics all smashed bulbs on the floor, which is covered in beautiful, hand-crafted, human-skin rugs.
You learn these people are crazy.
You learn you may be crazy, too.
You learn that you're developing an unhealthy obsession. Survival is one thing. You can't feel bad about doing whatever it is you had to do to survive, even if you do.
Survival is one thing. Pleasure is another. Compulsion, curiosity, desire – all others.
You learn that you're crossing into dangerous territory here, letting yourself learn about all this, letting yourself become more and more interested with every word you read.
You're crossing into dangerous territory, letting your mind wander like this. And oh, it wanders. It wanders over every inch of skin, every muscle. It wanders through every vein and in and out of every organ. The liver, heart, brain. Even the spleen. The pancreas. None of the body escapes these sick new fantasies.
You learn you're definitely crazy.
But you're still sane enough to know you're crazy, and that's something. You're sane enough that you're not murdering people and bringing them home. Or bringing them home and then murdering them. You're not cutting them up, making milkshakes out of their flesh. You're not replacing the carton of Rocky Rhode ice cream with a head full of grey matter.
You learn you're crazy, but not totally.
You wonder if anyone is keeping an eye on your internet usage. Is cannibalism red-flagged? Jeffrey Dahmer? Albert Fish?
You wonder if anyone is going to come for you, but you only wonder for a moment because you're only a little bit crazy, and you know that you're allowed to learn about anything you want to, just as long as you don't start practicing.
So you make rules for yourself.
No killing.
No dismembering.
You can't believe you're making these rules, but they seem like pretty good rules to live by anyway, so you continue.
No stealing any bodies from work.
No eating.
No talking about this with anyone. Ever.
Chapter 16
In all fairness, it's wrong to say that, due to lack of physical performance, I'd fallen out of favor with Virginia. She loved the sex, no question, but there was more to her than selfish little nympho.
When you can't get it up, you just start to think that you're no good for any woman, so how could she possibly want anything to do with you? It's really nothing more than an insecurity issue.
I hadn't talked to her in a couple weeks, but that was hardly her fault. I was embarrassed, you see. And then I got all wrapped up in my new hobby. There just wasn't any time.
"So how's work?" She was pouring a drink for me and was perfectly friendly.
I expected her to be a little colder. I thought it was her nature. "It's work. Dead people aren't very exciting, but at least they don't give you any shit."
"Really? Dead people aren't exciting?" The sarcasm knew to come out of her mouth the way baby sea turtles just know to head for the ocean.
I was in no mood for it, though. "Yeah, really."
The thing about sarcasm is you really can't fight back. How do you fight with a tone? You might as well take a swing at the fog. Sure, you can try to fight, but you're usually met with either "Oh, relax. I was just kidding," or "You misunderstood my tone." Then there are those with a preternatural gift for sarcasm, born with a sense of bitter, passive-aggressive humor. You'll never come out on top with them. At best you'll hear, "You need to learn how
to take a joke."
I was in no mood for it, so I just sat there, quiet, looking at my drink.
"Oh, what? Can't take a little sarcastic remark?"
Sarcastic people also have trouble understanding why some people don't handle it well. It's not their fault. They just didn't grow up on the same side of that fence.
"Listen," I said. "Listen. I'm a little embarrassed about, well, you know. That's all."
She put her rag down and positioned herself across the bar, where she crouched down to my eye-level. "Listen. I don't mean anything by it. It's just my tone. You can't help your tone, you know? I'm not mad or anything. I don't mean anything personal. I just pick on people I like. I totally destroy the rest."
"Like a six-year-old putting gum in a little girl's hair, huh? At least you're mature about it."
She smiled. "There, see? Like that. You can do it, too."
I wasn't about to tell her that even though I sometimes had a problem dealing with her little biting remarks, it was also kind of a turn-on. "I just don't think sarcasm is an all the time thing."
"Yeah, well, I'm not sarcastic all the time." She took a sip of her water, or maybe it was whiskey. I couldn't tell through the red plastic of the cup. "How's that going, by the way? With your little guy, there?"
And there that was. "Not so good, actually. I can't figure it out. I mean, after the accident, up until that night with you, I couldn't. I figured it was the stress and the malnourishment and everything. And then there were those days with you. And then nothing again. I can't figure out why it's happening. Or not happening, I guess. It's really starting to piss me off."
"I can understand that. It’s pissing me off, too." She pulled some goofy-looking ballet stretch and cracked her knees. "Ahhhh. That's better. I wonder what snapped you out of it then."
"Yeah. So do I." I sucked down the rest of the drink.
I wondered why I was talking to her about this. I couldn't bring myself to talk about it with anyone else. Not the doctors or shrinks. Not Adam or Dave. I think it may have been because they were all men. I didn't want them to know. Yeah, it was sort of childish.