Completing the initial cut, I wiped the starter down and returned it to my assistant. I then redirected my hands to her abdomen. Gently wedging my fingers beneath the layer of cold flesh, I peeled away the outer skin, revealing the pink layer of dermis beneath.
I looked back up at her face. Still at rest, of course, her expression no different than before. I don't know why, but my thoughts expected something different. Perhaps something deep inside of me wanted her to flicker back to life, to grace me with the vibrant beauty and allure she'd undoubtedly exhibited once before.
Softly, slowly, I paced to the right side of her head. I placed a careful thumb on her closed eyelid, and lifted it.
A crystal blue eye—as blue as a tropical ocean—stared straight out at me.
Startled, I jumped back, trying to catch my escaping breaths. With effort, I laughed out loud, asking myself an appropriate and timely question: why after twenty years of performing autopsies should I decide today to show some trepidation?
I gazed back to her face. The one eyelid stayed open, the sparkling blue that should have been lost beneath a cloud of death still gazing up at the ceiling. Nervously, I stepped back to her. With my shaking thumb, I closed the eyelid. Yes, with a lack of bloodflow to the brain, the eyes would have been clouded over. I did not dare open the other lid for fear that its occupant would show the same lively hue.
Distracted, and taking another deep breath, I returned to my assistant, trying again to set my mind for work. It became obvious that this would be no ordinary procedure. My subconscious—it had been tainted and would now plague me with images of life amid death, her hair, skin, eyes, all possessing the haunting qualities of someone still alive. I laughed inside, holding the giggles back through pinched lips. Ludicrous, my thoughts! For certain I knew, indeed, that she was dead!
Or did I?
Before I continued to cut her open, I had to check. I had to make sure.
I peeled the latex glove from my right hand, and gently gripped her wrist.
The first thing I noticed was her temperature: ice cold. I took her pulse anyway, don't ask me why, I can't give any reason or explanation for my inane actions. I just did it, and got what I expected. Absolutely nothing.
Breathing out a long sigh of relief, I replaced the glove on my hand and picked up a second scalpel. Sharper, thinner, I call this one the 'peeler'. I placed the tip of the blade against the tender dermis and sliced her stomach open. The edge of the knife parted the gummy layer of flesh. The blood was thickly coagulated, long lost of its flow of life, an unmoving swamp. Damn, I should have realized earlier when I made my first incision that the absence of flow signified death. I should have known, it was all too ludicrous for me not to. Yet here I stood, a professional examiner with a scalpel in hand, moments earlier wondering as to whether my subject's soul might still lay deeply buried within her remains, seeking a means for bodily reinstatement.
I wiped down the peeler, replaced it to the assistant, then armed myself with the 'cutter'. Here I would finally make my way into the previously unexplored territory of her stomach.
Inserting the blade, I slid it along the thin incision the peeler made, breaking through the walls of tendon and muscle that made up the exterior of her large intestine.
I felt the warmth hit me like a breeze on a summer's day. The flow came forth, a red river of life ebbing, spilling out from inside her like an overflowing sink. Astonished, I stepped back, nervous and unsure of what to do at the moment. In a rush of panic, I grabbed a few folded towels from my assistant and began sopping up the blood. Unlike the skin, it was warm, almost hot—I could feel it through the towels—and in a striking moment of fear believed that I'd very well effected the final cut ultimately bringing death to this beautiful young woman.
But no! It could not be! I had taken her pulse, and she was dead! I felt her skin, her cold dead skin...
I wiped and drained the blood, the sea of life: the contents of her stomach. Next, in haste, and God forgive this is not proper procedure, I reached my latexed hands deep down into her cavity and muscled open her midsection. Her lower ribs cracked. More blood bubbled up. I scratched an itch on my face, aware but not caring that I had just smeared a patch of her crimson warmth on my chin; the rivulets of sweat now running down my face would dilute its bloody pigment. I blotted the excess blood, took yet another deep breath, then peered into the dark mystery inside her stomach.
At once I needed so desperately to question my sanity, for there was no sound explanation as to what I saw in there.
Nestled amidst the dead walls of muscle were three human fingers.
Shocked, I gazed back at her face, then again into the exposed cavity just to confirm that what I saw had not been imagined. It hadn't been an illusion. The fingers were there, just as I'd seen them. Three of them, an index, middle, and thumb, a wicked threesome of flesh and bone arranged in a fashion that looked as if the remaining two were lost somewhere behind the bloody walls of her stomach, unsuccessful in their attempt to dig their way in.
I reached inside and carefully picked the index finger up, gripping it between my own index finger and thumb. Upon immediate observation, the horrible truth was clear. It had been bitten off, the teeth marks apparent at the lower knuckle, then swallowed whole. I carried it to my desk and placed it in a large specimen plate.
It was at this time I realized the Kitaro CD had finished. Time had passed all too quickly. The sudden infiltration of silence was terrifying. I looked at my watch. 7:30.
I walked to the window, drew the curtain aside. The sun was taking refuge behind the city of buildings to the west.
The setting sun...
I swallowed hard, at once inane thoughts preoccupying my common sense. It couldn't be possible, could it?
I spun to view the body. It lay motionless. Quickly, I went to the phone and dialed up the precinct, got Reilly.
"What'cha got?" he asked, not offering any pleasantries.
"A question." I waited for a reply, hesitating, not really wanting to ask him for fear of revealing the insane suspicions rolling around in my head. "At any time," I forced out, "was the body ever exposed to sunlight?"
There was a frightening silence at his end of the phone. "What?" He'd never heard a question quite like this before.
"Just what I said. At any time was the victim's body exposed to sunlight?"
He hesitated, then said, "Well, I don't think so. The sand dune was hollowed out. The body was creviced in that area. She was completely shrouded when we removed her. So I would have to say no. No exposure to the sun."
"Thanks." I hung up the phone with Reilly's voice trailing away in the receiver.
Ever so warily, I turned and again viewed the body. Unmoving. I shuddered, gooseflesh eating away at my skin. I looked at the finger on my desk, tendrils of muscle strewn away from the knuckle.
I then walked back to the window, again pulled the curtain aside. The last breaths of daylight had finally taken refuge behind the horizon.
From behind me, a low moan.
I turned around slowly and although I'd anticipated the truth of the matter, nothing on this earth could have prepared me for the sight that confirmed my bizarre suspicions.
The woman's head rose up from the table, the neck straining, tendons bulging like sticks. The perfect brows were downcast, the mouth suddenly twisting into a scowl of fury. I swallowed hard as I found myself staring at this creature, this creature whose face captured the essence of beauty, yet pitched and fidgeted in horrid surprise at its unfamiliar surroundings and odd predicament. Both its eyes caught me standing there, staring at it in terror-filled awe, the crystal blue hues now burning with sickly anger, its ruby-red mouth open like a snake's, emitting a venomous hiss, exposing four razor-sharp fangs protruding like daggers, each one stained with blood—the nourishment in its stomach. It tried to rise, clawing at the air, not fully aware that its body had been gouged and partially disemboweled. Its intestines slipped free from the open cavi
ty and slapped wetly to the floor.
Terror forced my heart to pound. I ran to my desk and opened the second draw down from the right. I dug frantically through the contents until I located my ruler. I've had it for years. It's a big wooden one, twelve inches long, almost two inches wide. I grabbed the small hammer I also keep in the drawer because of the picture that keeps falling off the wall behind my desk.
I leapt forward, the ruler in my right, the hammer in my left. The beast shot a look of horror in my direction: a combination of fear and intense anger that frightened the shit out of me. I nearly hesitated, but fear pushed me forward.
I brought the ruler down, aiming for the exposed heart.
It sank in to the lifeless organ like a knife slicing into warm butter. Instantaneously, I swung the hammer down and connected with the top of the ruler, driving it deep into the soul of the vampire.
Words alone could never describe the noise—noises—it made upon finally meeting death after God knows how many years. It sounded as if the souls of all those who'd lost their lives at the hands of this aberration had finally screamed free from their purgatory to find rest in the peaceful world.
And then it lay dead on the cart. Again.
Fifteen minutes later, the phone rang. During that time, I drained the body and closed it back up, leaving the ruler and hammer inside. I'd just taken my gloves off when I answered it. Reilly.
"Well?" he said. No hello, nothing.
"Well what?" I answered, still shaken.
"Did you come up with anything?"
"Well...yes. I did." I hesitated, catching my breath. I was still winded from the shock. "She wasn't murdered,” I said. "She died of a...a heart attack." It seemed appropriate. Kind of ironic. After all, I wasn't going to tell him the truth.
"A heart attack? You kidding? No murder? Hmph. Well, we still need to find out who she is."
"I suppose so," I answered, anxious to hang up the phone before he asked.
"Oh, Michael. The contents. What was in there?"
I looked to the jar on the shelf next to my desk, filled with formaldehyde. It held three human fingers.
"Hold on Michael," Reilly said. There was a pause, and then he said, "Get this, some guy just walked in. His hand's all bandaged up. He's freaking out, said he just came from the emergency room at Gabriel Medical. He's telling everyone that some girl bit off three of his fingers last night. Jesus, what's this world coming too with all the weirdoes?”
"Uh…" I didn't know what to say.
"Listen, can I talk to you later?"
"You bet, Reilly."
He hung up, and I went back to staring at the three severed fingers floating in the jar on the shelf next to my desk.
Last Resort
The desert never seemed so alive. Nothing had ever been so hard than leaving it all behind.
Jack peered over at Bryan, the boy's face anemic under the bite of the late afternoon sun, harsh rays blaring through the windshield. The nine year-old stared back at his father for the briefest moment, then set his empty sights back across the shimmering asphalt of I-75. His blistered lips gently parted as though to say something, but nothing came forth. Silence. Jack knew better than to get his hopes up by now.
The sign for Las Vegas Boulevard came into view and Jack took the mini-van across the unmarked drift of sand hiding the road. The wheels kicked up clouds of dust as if cloaking their entrance, blanketing the cracked windshield. He turned on the wipers, chasing away only minimal amounts of sand, the wheels skidding harshly into a deeper drift. The mini-van fishtailed toward the side of the road, and for a moment Jack thought it might get stuck, but it snagged something solid and cleared the obstruction. At the end of the off-ramp, he looked up and saw the once famous Las Vegas Strip, its two-mile stretch of hotels never looking more dead. No lights. No sounds. No movement. A harsh contrast to the shimmering desert plains behind.
"What do you think?" he asked Bryan. Getting an answer from his son was as much a long-shot as finding a working slot machine, one no less willing to pay out. He put a hand on Bryan's shoulder; the boy flinched, eyes straight ahead, the sweat long dried up from his emaciated frame. "You think we'll find anything here?"
Bryan stared straight ahead, unanswering.
Jack turned the steering wheel, started down Las Vegas Boulevard. "Let's find out, shall we?"
A minute later they passed the familiar diamond-shaped Welcome To Las Vegas sign that for years had ushered in hundreds of millions of thrill-seekers to their preferred places of contribution. It stood barely recognizable now, like a rotting scarecrow, half its letters circling the base of the steel post in crumbled pieces. To the left Mandalay Bay towered silently into the gray sky, a giant now set in dead stone by the darkest of all Medusas. Lifeless taxis and cars crowded the entrance spilling mummified bodies from unshut doors and broken windows. Having never visited Vegas in its epitome, Jack could only fantasize at the gaiety and excitement that once thrived here. The photos he'd seen, the movies, the paintings—it'd all looked as though a grand celebration were taking place. Fourth of July, but even bigger and better and more stimulating than one could ever fathom. Now it looked mournfully unremembered, as dazed and as desperate as the two of them might've appeared if anyone had been around to see them: wounded, straying into town, stomachs crying for food, eyes in search of shelter, minds in search of solace.
Ahead the strip was clogged with hundreds of abandoned vehicles, some inverted, some piled three high. Slowly, Jack turned left onto Flamingo Road. "Might as well find some food first," he told Bryan, staring at the road ahead and knowing quite well it didn't matter which path he took, what choices he made for them.
Winding around a number of wind-stripped cars, Jack chanced another look at his son. The boy's body trembled, near-seizure, fingers clawing his chest, eyes looking through the side window at the atrophied bodies in the road and weird brown weeds growing out of those not covered in sand. Lucky me, Jack thought, keeping his attention ahead, the stretch of road leading him virtually unobstructed all the way to Paradise Road. He turned left past the shattered ruins of the Hard Rock Cafe.
Ahead a number of smaller motels flanked the sidewalk, the remnants of cars and taxis stripped useless at the curbs. Further down a few small stores lay deteriorating like defeated soldiers hurled aside in the heat of battle, their corpses picked at by vultures who themselves had no time to savor their winnings before also being devoured. Other local businesses—a drug store, a deli—were boarded over, the wood splintered in places to reveal a terrifying blackness within their husks.
To the left Jack saw a diner, its wrap-around front window fully destroyed. A sign hanging from a rusted post out front whipped about in the wind, the bitter shrill of its rusty hinges shooting across the lifeless street like the wail of a starving cat. He pulled off Paradise into the lot of the small eatery, sheets of sand thrashing Bryan's closed window. A white Buick LeSabre sat alongside the convenience store next door, its owner long gone and forgotten, perhaps rotting beside the video poker game he came to play long ago.
The wind picked up again, sand billowing on all sides of the mini-van in more driven whirls. Instantaneously the sun dipped behind the soaring hotels, the cold of night racing in to spread its darkness over Jack's thin grip on faith, like massive tenebrous wings.
Jack set the van in park and got out, walked around the front of the vehicle to Bryan's window. The boy pressed quick-bitten fingers against the glass, eyes dried of tears cast somewhere beyond Jack's presence. Absent of desire.
"I'll be back, kiddo. I'm just gonna check and see if there's any food, okay?"
Bryan panicked, hoarse voice wailing over a dry swollen tongue, through yellow teeth. His eyes bulged, hands pounding the window then searching for the door handle that wasn't there. Jack slid open the side panel of the mini-van, removed a shotgun and pistol from the back seat. He checked to make sure they'd both been loaded then reached over to the front seat, ribs jutting against the tat
tered cloth interior. He handed Bryan the pistol. The boy quieted.
"You won't need this...but take it just in case."
Jack shouldered the rifle, then closed the side door and stepped towards the diner. The winds surged, stronger amidst the sun's absence. Sand battered his face, a hot sheet bringing pain, nearly blinding him. He squeezed his eyes shut, wiping granules drawn towards the moisture of his tears. Wrapping his arms around his head, he tackled the three sand-buried steps to the entrance of the diner and went inside.
The counter, stools, booths were wrecked, the glass displays smashed, dishes and utensils strewn everywhere. Stepping over a fallen stool, he peered behind the splintered counter-top. The empty eye-sockets of a uniformed waitress stared back at him from the floor. The flesh had been eaten clean from her bones, only patches of mold-buried muscle and tendon remaining on her arms and legs. For a moment he imagined seeing something wriggling down there, something beneath the tatters of her uniform near the hollow of her stomach—something bigger than any insect he could name. He pulled back, at once assuring himself that it was just a shadow...just a shadow...just a shadow cast by the setting sun through a shard of glass still in the storefront window frame. Jack turned away, a writhing feeling in his stomach reminding him of the thing's latent presence, promising him that it knows he's nearby...that it smells him, wants him. That he has much more to offer than its present host.
Swallowing a dry lump, he stepped back to the front of the diner and peered outside toward the mini-van. Bryan, still in the front seat staring back at him, white fingertips pressed against the window. Jack's thoughts were torturesome, tears moistening his dry eyes, his once beautiful little-leaguer now a poor nine year-old pushing forty. The remnants of his mother's features long vanished, resigned to two years of torment, of suffering, of pain. Jack held up an index finger, mouthed I'll be right there.
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