Dead Inside

by Chandler Morrison

  I pull the sheet back with my tremor-wrought hand, stopping at her neck, revealing the girl’s face. The bandages have been removed, which is a disappointment, as I would very much have liked to have done that myself, but people with affectations like mine can’t really afford to be choosy.

  The boating accident really did a number on her features, and if not for the womanliness visible underneath the sheet, her sex would be otherwise indecipherable. The surgeons have shaved her head, and without hair to draw attention away from her face, the wounds upon it are ghastlier—deliciously so. Patches of her skin are pink and wrinkled, as the result of savage burns, and there are chunks of it missing completely, the edges of the gashes torn and jagged, making them look like an animal had taken large bites out of her face. The biggest hole is in her right cheek, revealing rows of pearlescent teeth set in pale gums. Her nose is gone, as is her right eye, and a long, curved abrasion along her scalp reveals the white of her skull. I touch the back of my hand to her cool forehead, as if checking for a fever, and the sensation of her dead skin sends chills down my already-shivering spine.

  I peel away the rest of the sheet with painstaking slowness, letting it crumple to the floor, leaving her naked, exposed in all of her lifeless glory. Her body isn’t as mangled as her face, but the injuries that are present are each uniquely beautiful in their own right. Her plump breasts are mostly intact, save a few minor lesions and a missing nipple. Her stomach, flat two nights ago but now bloated with corpse gas, has a number of lesions and small lacerations, and her thighs and calves are marked by crisscrossed cuts and scrapes. I return to the foot of the slab and spread her long, stiff legs, revealing a closely-shaved pubic region and a vagina that graciously appears to be unharmed.

  My erection is pulsing so fiercely within my pants that it’s almost painful.

  “I’m certain you were an object of much desire among living men,” I say to her, gently caressing her calf. Talking to dead girls has always been easier for me than talking to live ones, allowing for a kind of poetic eloquence that is otherwise unavailable to me. “Maybe you were even kind of promiscuous. I can see you on that boat, flirting with the boys and teasing them with your . . . assets.” I frown, thinking about the young men who surely drooled after her like dogs, and I say, “I hope they died, too. I hope it was painful for them. They wouldn’t be interested in you now, anyway. They’ve had their turn with you, ogling your body, so filled with warmth and blood and life, fucking you and ejaculating to the lively sounds of your orgasms.” I light a cigarette, casting a smirking glance at the “NO SMOKING” sign; there aren’t any smoke detectors down here (or security cameras, for that matter), and there’s nothing like pre- and post-coital cigarettes.

  “Yes, I bet you wailed when they fucked you, and I bet they loved it. Frankly, I’ve never understood why men are so enamored by that. Female orgasm has never interested me. Probably because you have to be alive to have an orgasm.” I make a sound that’s sort of, almost, like laughter—more like a sickly gag, I guess—and cough on the smoke that catches in my throat. “Their time with you is over now, though, and it’s my turn. You’d scream if you could, out of pleasure or fear, I do not know. Maybe they’re one and the same.”

  I can’t take it much longer. Her body calls to me, pleading to be violated, and the moment to comply has come. I stub my cigarette out and put it in my back pocket before commencing the ritualistic stages of undress—first the shoes, then the pants, the tie, the shirt, and lastly the underwear, freeing my throbbing penis into the cold, still air.

  “Get ready,” I whisper to her, my voice quavering. I feel like all the blood in my body has rushed into my groin, and there’s an undeniable magnetism between our genitalia, pulling me toward her, beckoning me into her. I spread her legs a little wider and mount her, groaning as I slide myself into the cold dryness of her unlubricated vaginal canal. Gripping the sides of the icy metal table, eyes crawling over her gorgeously ravaged body, I begin to thrust.

  Okay, before I go on, I should warn you that this next part is what most people would consider to be gross or appalling. If you were expecting fifty shades of softcore mommy porn, you’re going to be disappointed.

  Consider this your goddamn trigger warning.

  So, I’m thrusting. I always start slow, no matter how strong the urge in my loins, pushing myself into her as far as I can go and then pausing mid-thrust, holding it there, body trembling, before pulling back until just the tip resides within her, at which point I push forward once again, the loud clap! sound of our genitals slamming into each other sending bursts of ecstasy into my brain.

  I moan, quickening my pace a little. I shift my inconsiderable weight to my right arm so I can run my left hand over her upper body, squeezing her full, firm breasts and slipping my thumb into the hole where her right nipple should be. I press on her bloated belly, causing an eruption of gas to escape loudly from her mouth and anus, the scent at once arresting my sinuses with sweet pungency. Leaning down, I kiss her mangled lips, tasting the acrid remnants of the death breath still slithering up from her esophagus. When I again push on her stomach, she belches once more, sour fumes filling my mouth and surging down my throat—I can even feel a cool puff of air shoot from her vagina, which is beginning to tear and chafe with the friction of my now-frenzied movements.

  I think this is the part where two living people would achieve the peak feeling of bodily conjunction, their carnal union at its explosive conclusion. I’ve heard of simultaneous orgasm—that’s usually how it happens in the movies, anyway—but I’m unsure of how often it actually occurs, if at all. The two living girls I’ve been with never came at all, and my own “climax” was nothing memorable, the faint pleasure paling in comparison to the ecstasy I feel when I ejaculate into a dead woman. The dead have no expectations; there’s no pressure for you to make them feel anything. I copulate with corpses largely because it is all about me, about the meeting of my needs—my dead sexual partners exist only to bring me pleasure, and they require nothing in return.

  I bury my face in her neck, so as to muffle my baboon-like hooting as I stab my pelvis forward for one final thrust, shooting thousands of doomed children in the general direction of her dead and useless ovaries. Another benefit of my little fetish—no condom, no problem. I could very well be the most fertile man on the planet, but my lovers are all equipped with the best birth control the world can offer. As in, dead reproductive systems. I know that goes without saying, but I like to say it. Dead eggs. Barren uteruses. Fruitless wombs.

  I collapse off her and land on my side on the cold metal floor, hurting my ribs, but the pain is flushed away by the residual euphoria that’s flooding my body. My groin is still pulsating with swirling warmth, and my abdominal muscles are flexing achingly, ecstatically. My entire physical being has been restored with glimmering life, all thanks to the delights of a girl filled with abyssal death. Her void fills my own.

  I roll over and crawl to my pile of clothes, pawing through them and digging in my pants pocket for my cigarettes and lighter. I fire one up and lie back down on the floor, breathing heavily, sweat glistening on my skin in spite of the chilled air. “Goddamn,” I say, letting smoke out of my nostrils. “I haven’t had a lay like that in months. You have my deepest gratitude, Ms. Turpentine. Just think, our lovemaking has given purpose and significance to your death. A tragic boating accident that leaves a young girl dead is one thing, but it becomes something else entirely when your lifeless body contributes to a union more fervently passionate than that which any living person could ever try to replicate. I will not forget this night.”

  ***

  The following week, still satisfied from my tryst with Abigail, I’m dozing in the security room when the radio on my belt squawks and a panicked female voice shouts, “Security! Security! We’ve got a situation in room 13B, you need to get here, NOW!”

  I rub my eyes and sit up, yawning. Taking the radio off my belt, I say, “What do you mean you have a
situation. What kind of situation.”

  A long pause, then, “JUST GET THE FUCK UP HERE!” It sounds like there’s screaming in the background.

  I breathe a groaning sigh and then say, “All right. I’m coming now.” I get up and leave the little office to head for the elevator, thinking I should have checked the security feed for that room before going so I could have an idea what I was up against. We don’t have “situations” at this hospital. I assume the nurse is new, probably an intern or a medical student, and is freaking out about something minor. It’s four in the morning at Preston Druse Hospital; what could possibly be going on that’s important enough to involve the otherwise-unneeded security guard?

  Room 13B is in the maternity ward. As I’ve said before, I hate this part of the hospital, so in accordance with Murphy’s Law, of course this would be the location of the mystery “situation”. Whatever it is, no matter how bad, I’m not touching any fucking babies. I didn’t sign up for that shit.

  As I proceed down the hall toward the room in question, I hear a male voice scream, “SHE CAN’T BE DEAD! SHE CAN’T BE FUCKING DEAD!”

  I quicken my step a little, figuring that a woman had died in childbirth, and now the husband is getting belligerent. Christ, people are so goddamn sensitive.

  When I step inside 13B, several things are immediately apparent.

  First, is that the mother has, in fact, not died in childbirth; she’s lying in the bed, sobbing, holding a newborn to her chest, naked and with the umbilical cord still attached. It isn’t crying, its limbs are sprawled out limply, and its skin is a cool bluish color. I don’t know much about babies, but I know they’re technically not supposed to be blue.

  Next is that the screaming man, presumably the father, is barely being restrained by three nurses who are fighting to get him under control as he bucks and thrashes against their grips, shrieking and yowling like a house cat that’s gotten caught in a bear trap. His sweaty hair hangs in his face, which blushes cherry-red with fury. One of the nurses has a busted lip and a bleeding nose, bent at an awkward angle.

  The final thing I notice is the doctor, a pretty woman with thick glasses and blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, her attractiveness marred only by the fact that she isn’t dead. She’s standing in the corner, seemingly removed from all the chaos, staring at the woman in the bed. She has eyes like halogen lamps, but there’s something strange about them, like the light in them is cold and detached. They’re glossed-over and hazy, cast with a beautiful deadness that I’m used to seeing when I peel back the eyelids of my lovers. There’s something else in them, too, though . . . there’s a hunger that emits not only from her eyes, but haunts her entire face, and it’s then that I realize she isn’t staring at the woman in the bed—she’s staring at the dead baby in the woman’s arms.

  “Hello?” one of the nurses, the one with the bludgeoned face, shouts at me. “Fucking DO SOMETHING!”

  This really isn’t my area of expertise. My figure is lanky and spindly, and not designed for physical confrontation. I’ve never been in a fight, I’m not sure I even know how to throw a punch. The thumb gets tucked inside the fist, right? Or is it the other way around?

  I don’t have time to think about it, though, because the man breaks free from the nurses and barrels past me, knocking me onto the floor. He snatches something shiny and silver from a pushcart filled with medical supplies, and then charges over to the woman in the bed, shouting, “Don’t worry, honey, we’re gonna go see her now!” He raises the silver object—which I now realize is a scalpel—over his head, and plunges it into the woman’s breast. Blood splatters onto his face and chest. The woman screams in horror and pain, but only for a moment, because the man withdraws the blade and jabs it deep into her eye, abruptly cutting her off. All the nurses are screaming now, and I can hear commotion coming from the hall as more personnel flock to the scene. The doctor, though, remains silently rooted in place, still staring at the infant with that ravenous look in her eyes.

  “FUCK ALL OF YOU!” the man bellows at us as he wrenches the scalpel free from his dead wife’s skull. “YOU LET HER DIE!” There are tears streaming down his stubbly cheeks and plunking onto the collar of his wrinkled, bloodstained shirt. If ever there existed true grief in its purest form, it is within this man. He drags the blade across his throat, spraying freshets of dark gore onto the bed and linoleum. The nurses’ screams increase in volume. The doctor keeps staring.

  ***

  Someone calls the police, and they come and ask us all kinds of silly questions, in their silly officious voices, while we stand in the hallway. The crime scene unit takes pictures of the mess in the labor room, now sanctioned off by yellow DO NOT CROSS tape. I’ve been watching the doctor the whole time; she seems distracted and dazed, which I suppose could be from shock, but I don’t think it is. There’s something about her that isn’t quite right. Her eyes, though—those big, dead eyes—they’re mesmerizing. Her irises are like hard blue ice encased in dusty crystalline globes, glimpses of Neptune through a telescope with a breath-fogged lens.

  In listening to her talk to the cop with the notebook, I learn she is Helen Winchester, head maternity doctor here at the hospital. She works mostly after-hours, but if there’s a reason for this—and I suspect there must be—she doesn’t provide it.

  It disturbs me how much I’m drawn to her. Maybe it’s the eyes, or that air of off-ness about her. I can’t quite call it attraction, though she is attractive by all the standards otherwise foreign to me, and if she were dead, I wouldn’t be able to get my pants off fast enough. But she’s not dead, even if her eyes indicate differently, so she shouldn’t be of any interest to me.

  While the cop is questioning her, she catches me staring at her. Unable to look away, transfixed by the spell of her eyes, I hold her gaze for a few long moments. A chill runs down my spine, a shiver as cold as the murky blue orbs behind her glasses. It’s as though she’s looking into me, like she can see me for the perverse freak I am, but instead of turning away in disgust, she seems almost captivated. I suppose it’s something that could be a trick of the light, or a misinterpretation of the cool stillness floating around her pupils, but I doubt it. When I can no longer hold her stare, I walk off down the hallway. The director of the hospital gave the rest of the night off to all those present at the scene of the crime, so I leave and drive home. It’s cold within my car, despite the warm summer night, and I can almost feel Helen’s presence, as though she were in the back seat, boring holes in my head with the frosty flame of her gaze.

  Something has been set in motion. I don’t know what it is, or how I know it, but I am afraid.

  ***

  The next night I follow her on the camera monitors, watching her go from room to room, patient to patient, her movements gentle and lithe, her face smiling when she’s talking to people, but solemn and downcast when she’s alone between conversations. There’s no audio on the cameras, so I don’t know what she’s saying, but I suspect her voice is as it was the night prior: light and pleasant, but subdued and almost overly calm, making one wonder if she’s naturally of a mellow temperament, or if she just doesn’t give a fuck about the people around her, or what they have to say. I hope it’s the latter.

  Her rounds throughout the hospital are uneventful and boring, so I allow myself to doze a few times in my chair before waking to track her down again by flipping through the monitors. This goes on for the first three hours of my shift until she hangs her long white coat in her office, takes a blue duffel bag from underneath her desk, and walks to the elevator. I switch to the elevator camera and watch as she bushes the “B” button for the basement.

  Now, the only place of any real note in the basement is . . . the morgue. There are a couple of supply rooms, but they don’t contain anything a maternity doctor should need, and certainly not at the end of her shift. Why, though, would said maternity doctor need anything from the morgue?

  I think of the way she looked at that dead baby last
night. I try to make something of it, try to come up with some sort of explanation, but am unable to draw any conclusions, logical or otherwise.

  And yet, here she is, swiping her keycard and entering the Cold Room of the Corpses.

  For the first time, I am distraught by the fact that there aren’t any cameras in the morgue.

  I swivel in my chair with my fingers steepled, clucking my tongue and thinking about how best to proceed. There’s probably a perfectly valid reason for her to be in there, and there’s probably nothing special about her other than those gorgeous glossy eyes that I find myself longing to see once more. I could go down there and act like I’m on my nightly patrol, but the idea of actually having to talk to her upon running into her is even more daunting than the prospect of talking to regular people—assuming, of course, she’s not regular. I really don’t have any significant basis for that kind of presumption, other than a funny feeling in my stomach. Or perhaps that feeling is a little south of the stomach, but it’s probably best not to entertain such a notion about a living woman.

  I guess I’ve already made up my mind about what I’m going to do, social anxiety or not, so instead of further mulling over a decision I’d made as soon as she hit that elevator button, I leave my office and head for the morgue.

  ***

  “Why are you naked.”

  That’s the only question I’m able to force past my lips, despite the existence of other, more obvious, inquiries. Like, “Why are you eating that dead baby,” or “What the fuck is going on here,” or “Don’t you at least want some sauce to dip that in, or something.”

  If she were dead, I don’t think I’d last more than thirty seconds before blowing a creamy load of useless sperm into the tight coldness of her cunt, a tidal wave of white soldiers surging into the certainty of death unknown, searching frantically for something that no longer exists. The mere thought of it makes my dick stiffen a little; complete arousal is rendered impossible by her beating heart and functioning lungs, contributing to a flushed liveliness in such stark contrast to the deadness of her eyes.