by Hadena James
“I’m kind of disturbed that you are eager to rip apart the bodies,” Xavier lifted his helmet.
“It isn’t eagerness, it’s logical thought. We slowly remove the limbs and uncontort them in the process. We can then save the flesh and whatever else we find without worrying about bone dust and skin dust and anything else that might contaminate them.”
“I’m going to regret this,” Xavier groaned.
Eight hours later, I was regretting it. Skin leathers quite well and the stiffness was more than I imagined. My arms were sore and I was covered in a powdery substance that I kept trying to convince myself was tiny sand particles.
Xavier seemed to be doing the same thing. He wouldn’t touch the smock he was wearing or the helmet. He was sitting down on a stool and spinning in slow circles.
“Feel better?” He asked.
“Not in the least. I desperately want a shower. And maybe dinner, but definitely the shower first.”
“I know how you feel.”
“Did we learn anything?”
“Yes, if I hadn’t found the mercury in that single mummy, I would have listed cause of death as exsanguination. Most of the bodies had holes in them, multiple holes and they were probably used to drain the blood from the body and fill it with salt,” Xavier said. “Do you want to shower here?”
“My bag is at the hotel and I’m pretty sure I’m going to burn these clothes as soon as I get out of them. Stop spinning, you are making me nauseous,” I told him.
“Migraine?”
“No, you, spinning in circles,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Xavier, I don’t do well with spinning.”
“Have you always had vertigo?”
“I don’t have it very bad, just when someone is spinning in circles.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It is probably related to my migraines to some degree. The same neurological disconnect most likely.”
“Ok, let’s get out of here,” Xavier stood up. He still didn’t remove the helmet or the mask. We entered the hallway. Several people rushed over to us.
They escorted us to another room.
“Ah man,” I groaned.
“What?” Xavier asked.
“I hate decontamination,” I answered.
“We aren’t being decontaminated,” Xavier said. “No bacteria on desiccated corpses.”
“Then what are we doing?”
“Getting out of these suits in a controlled environment so we don’t breathe in any of this stuff,” Xavier pointed to the fine white powder covering both of us.
We entered a room that had a massive fan going. The fan began to instantly pull things off our suits. It disappeared into the air. A few people were blowing on us with air hoses. The pressure was nearly painful, even through the suit.
However, the dust was slowly being blown off my suit and sucked into the high powered ventilation system. I considered asking what the room was for, but I had second thoughts. The primary one being that I didn’t really want to know.
After twenty minutes or so, the air hoses were turned off. Someone else went over me with a fine brush, removing any traces of what might be left. Once they finished, I was told to remove my suit. I did so carefully, removing the helmet first. Everything was shoved into a bag and whisked away.
“That was fun, wasn’t it?” Xavier asked, yelling over the fan.
“Or something,” I shouted back.
“Let’s go back to the hotel,” he said.
I followed him out of the room. Once in the hallway, I discovered my ears were still buzzing from the sound of the fan. I did my best to ignore it and headed for the exit.
Drainage
This was the hardest part; he hung the body by the feet over a large animal watering trough. After a few moments, he took a large needle, used to remove blood from cattle and inserted it into the carotid artery. The blood began to splash down into the water trough. Tiny splatter dots sprayed up, decorating the sides.
He sat back and watched. His newest piece was completed, now it was time to clean up. This was his least favorite part, but it had to be done.
When the blood stopped dripping from the carotid artery, he took the needle out and moved it to the jugular vein. The blood was running slower than normal. He had been so inspired, that after taking the photos, he had started on the sculpting. After about an hour, he’d realized that he had very little time to get his model cleaned up.
The task had required more effort than usual. He’d used a larger than normal model. A truck driver he had met at a cafe a few days ago. Experience told him that all his models had roughly the same amount of blood. Sometimes though, it seemed like the larger models had more.
Again he sat back down and waited. The water trough was getting fuller. He pulled out his iPhone. Tinny music blasted from the speakers, lights whirled and flashed on his face as the game came to life.
It didn’t take long for him to become completely absorbed in the game. His mind worked out the puzzles and he moved from level to level with ease. The blood began to slow and drip, but could not be heard over the music.
Another level completed, he looked up, noticed the blood was no longer flowing and sighed. He put the iPhone on the chair. The room was now filled with a thick, coppery smell that clung to his sinus passages and coated his tongue.
He moved the needle again, this time to the femoral artery. The blood was flowing slower now. Not only was exsanguination almost complete, but what was left in the model was starting to coagulate.
The iPhone screen shut itself off to preserve battery, but he wouldn’t have time to play any time soon. He found the garden hose. The flat green hose was in a pile in the corner. This was the most important part. It wasn’t easy to get mercury these days and other poisons were too easy to detect. He’d lost some a few years ago and never found it. It had taken months to replenish his stock.
As he twisted the nozzle on the water hydrant, the flat hose began to inflate. When it looked somewhat bloated, he picked it up and carried it over to the water trough. The water trickled from the hose, trying to escape through the tiny covering over the end. It dribbled into the water trough at a faster rate than the blood. The key was water pressure. He couldn’t risk the pressure getting too high and moving around the mercury.
The trough was now three-quarters of the way full. He opened a custom made valve and water began to drain out into a floor grate that ran under his house and emptied into his sprinkler system.
The thick brownish-red blood began to thin and change colors, from brownish-red, to red, to dark pink, to light pink. He wasn’t sure if he could see the ball of mercury yet or not, it blended in with the bottom of the trough. He kept meaning to paint it black, but he kept forgetting until he got to this point.
There was a loud whir in the basement that made him jump. It always made him jump, even though he was expecting it. It was the sound of the sprinkler system motor spinning up as the system pressurized. In a few moments, his manicured yard would start to receive the moisture it so desperately needed this time of year.
The water was still pink, but getting lighter with every drop that entered the trough. He turned the hose away from the trough and pointed it directly at the floor drain, then removed the pressure blocker he had custom made for it. The water began to rush from the end of the hose. It splashed noisily onto the floor grate and soaked the flip-flops he was wearing. The hair on his legs collected the stray water droplets.
The trough was still emptying. The nozzle was set about two inches from the bottom of the tub and worked via gravity. No motors or pumps to empty it out, when the water had drained to the magical line, he would be able to find his mercury.
He dropped the hose and walked back to the hydrant. Turning it off, he watched as the pressure in the hose dropped, flattening it out again. He rolled it loosely into a ball and tossed it back into the corner.
All that was left was the trough,
the water, the blood and the mercury. He stood over the tub gazing into it, willing himself to see the silvery liquid. He knew it would be a ball, perfectly round and separated from the water and the blood.
The process was slow, but he didn’t notice. He continued to scan the dropping water level for the precious silver ball. When he thought he saw it, he grabbed a new syringe from the counter and waited a while longer.
The water stopped draining. The critical two inch line had been reached. There it was, near one of the corners. He sucked up the mercury using the new bovine syringe.
Inside the syringe, the mercury instantly began to separate from the small amount of water that was sucked up with it. He waited for it to separate completely. When all the water was close to the needle, he gently pressed the plunger and watched as it dribbled out, down the needle and over his fingers.
He didn’t want to lose any of the mercury, so he left a little water in the needle part. He set it aside and turned his attention to the water trough.
He wasn’t a small man, not by any means and his age, while climbing, wasn’t yet a huge hindrance, but it was getting harder and harder to empty the last two inches of water from the large water trough. There were times he thought about getting a smaller one, but he was afraid that the blood splashes wouldn’t be contained if it was smaller. Tomorrow, he’d start making a rig to help him turn it over and empty it out. But not today.
Today, he’d finish cleaning up.
The muscles in his arms became defined as he pushed on the side of the tub. The veins in his forehead became visible. The tub seemed to hang up on the bottom edge before tipping. The rapport of the metal hitting the concrete caused his ears to ring and hurt for a moment. He gave it another good push and turned it upside down to let it drain the rest of the way.
Tomorrow, he’d remember to paint the inside of the tub as well.
The water and blood were gone. He’d gotten his mercury back. Now there were only a few more things to do for clean-up.
He lowered the model down onto the counter, suddenly remembering to move the mercury-filled syringe before it rolled off and hit the floor. It was plastic and shouldn’t break, but better safe than sorry.
Using a large serrated kitchen knife, he cut open the chest and gut of his model. He began packing it with rock salt. It took hours to fill the cavity using a measuring cup, but he was fascinated by how much salt a human body could hold.
Without blood, some of the organs had already begun to shrink, leaving spaces. The rock salt slid down the organs and into the empty cavities, filling them. The smell was awful, but the salt would cure that, eventually. For him, the smell was tolerable; he’d lost his sense of smell when he started taking blood pressure medicine a few years ago.
His arms were starting to get sore as he finished filling up the empty cavity. Using thick thread, he began to sew the chest back up. Next, he placed a funnel in the mouth of his model. He poured exactly one cup of rock salt into the throat and mouth. He sewed the mouth up. Finally, he tilted the head back and placed the funnel in the nose. He filled it with salt, moving it from nostril to nostril. There was a strange sound from inside the head, but experience told him it was the pressure of the salt breaking the blood-brain barrier.
As if he needed proof, a small amount of fluid bubbled up through the rock salt on the nostril without the funnel. He finished filling the right side and grabbed the thread one more time. He sewed the nostrils shut.
The chair in the basement was almost as old as he was. The wooden legs had scars and chunks taken out of them. The fabric on the arms, back and seat were wearing thin from years of use, but he liked it. He sat down in it to rest for a while. He might have to stick to smaller models from now on, he was getting too old for the larger ones. However, that was an insult to his sensibility. People came in all sizes and shapes, he loved the diversity, craved it, needed it to show that all people were essentially the same in the throes of death.
The tinny music resumed and he completed a couple more levels on his iPhone. He also checked his Facebook and Twitter account. He commented on a few posts by friends on Facebook then opened up his email and read it. There was nothing interesting in it, a few notes from friends, some spam mail about how to lose weight or get a bigger penis, and an advert for cheap eBooks. He scrolled through the books in the advert and found one that looked promising for $0.99 and bought it.
He put the phone in hibernation and slipped it back into the pocket of his shorts. It was time to finish clean-up. Sunrise would be upon him soon and while he doubted any of his neighbors would see him, even in the bright midday sun, it was a chance he didn’t want to take.
The model was lighter, but not light enough, not yet anyway. He rolled it off the counter and onto a tarp. The stitches at the mouth broke spilling out salt. He sighed again, but ignored the salt on the tarp and began to pull the model outside.
He’d been smart enough to build an exit out of the basement that didn’t require him to go through the upstairs. The model shifted weight a few times as it rolled around on the tarp, but he was used to that.
The muscles in his arms and shoulders were starting to ache by the time he reached the pool. The pool had a cover on it all year round. It hadn’t been used in almost two decades, not as a pool anyway. He removed part of the covering and revealed the salt hidden underneath. He rolled the model off the tarp and into the salt. It almost instantly began to sink.
He had a moment when he wondered how long it had been since he had emptied the pool. He couldn’t remember, two years, maybe more. He needed to mark it down on his calendar next time he did it. The pool would hold about thirty models before it needed to be emptied. The salt would need to be replaced, the models moved to other areas. He guessed he was getting close to having thirty in there now. He sighed again.
Later this week, he’d have to clean out the pool.
Six
“Did you learn anything?” Gabriel asked as we entered a conference room at the ranger’s station.
“I hate desiccated corpses,” Xavier flopped into a chair and popped the muscles in his neck. “I didn’t have the equipment to rehydrate them, so we ended up tearing a few of them apart to find evidence.”
“Did you find any?” Gabriel was currently setting up a whiteboard.
“Maybe,” Xavier shrugged. “I don’t think we are going to get much off the victims. They’ve been in the sun too long, the salt too long, it’s nothing short of miraculous that we found the mercury. We found holes that might be where they were drained of their blood, but it’s just a guess at this point. They could be something entirely unrelated. Hell, the salt could have eaten the holes in the flesh.”
“We’ve been searching for a registry of people that buy mercury, there isn’t one,” Michael said. He looked terrible. His face was red, his eyes bloodshot, his lips peeling and he had developed an odd wheezing noise when he breathed. Xavier frowned at him.
“There won’t be a national registry of mercury buyers. Despite the toxicity warnings, it is relatively harmless in elemental form,” I said.
“But people get mercury poisoning,” Gabriel got markers from his bag of supplies. He tossed me a hot pink one.
“Yes, but that is from compounds, not elemental mercury. Aside from high school science teachers trying to make chemistry cool, mercury, in its elemental state, is not used for much,” I said. “However, we all saw our high school chem teacher pour the liquid metal onto a counter top and watched as it formed a sphere and rolled across the surface.”
“My teacher never did that,” Lucas said.
“Mine either,” Gabriel added.
“Oh, well mine did, and I’ll give her kudos, it was cool. But that’s about it. You can eat elemental mercury with few side effects or rather; drink it, since it’s a liquid. I can think of a handful of professions that used to use it, but honestly, there just isn’t much call for it.”
“We’ve all heard the phrase ‘mad as a hatter’,�
� Lucas said.
“That’s true, but they were heating the mercury. I don’t know the felting process exactly, but they were exposed to things other than just mercury. It used to be a laxative. The body doesn’t absorb it. I could inject it into my thigh and as long as I don’t hit a major vein or artery, it is just going to sit in my thigh. Eventually, it would form a squishy cyst and have to be lanced and drained, but I’m not going to get mercury poisoning from it. And mercury poisoning is rarely fatal. It makes you feel like shit and go a little nutty, but otherwise,” I shrugged.
“Then what killed our victims?” Gabriel asked.
“Despite, Ace’s claim, mercury is used in all sorts of things. There would be a registry of companies that worked with it, but not individual buyers. Mercury compounds poison water and dirt. Those compounds poison humans. However, the element, as we found it, is relatively harmless. I can say any of the victims belonging to us died of cardiac arrest and/or failure,” Xavier said. “Mercury in the heart would cause it to stop beating completely or create a heart attack. Mercury is denser than blood, harder to pump and it starves the heart of oxygen. But it would have to be injected directly into an artery or vein. ”
“Why use it?” Gabriel asked.
“That is a good question,” Xavier answered. “Mercury would cause smaller vessels to collapse or explode, starve the tissue of oxygen, the muscle death would be excruciatingly painful, but it would also cause contortions. The problem is there are far more practical poisons that are easily available, that would do the same thing, like arsenic.”
“And you can still find it in ant poison,” I said.
Gabriel’s gaze moved between Xavier and me. Xavier was staring at Michael and didn’t seem to notice. I, however, felt it very intensely.
“I’m bothered that the both of you know that much about poisons,” Gabriel finally said.
“Really?” I asked. “I was thinking you should be more perturbed by why the killer wants the victims to suffer from contortions.”