Wraith ; Semblance

by Riley Mason

  I ran my hands softly over her skin to try and feel the bones underneath. To see if I could feel a bump or a chip or something that didn’t feel quite right. Anything that could point to a struggle, anything that could fill in the blanks of where she was found and how she managed to get there.

  But, after a few minutes searching, there was nothing. Nothing that I could feel at least. Sooner or later, I was going to have to run an X-ray and maybe I’d see something then, some visual that would help explain what I couldn’t explain at the moment.

  I lowered the zipper of the black bag the coroners had brought her in. Down to the rest of the body being hidden behind the black garment.

  This woman was gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. Of all the things I saw here, there was one thing I didn't see. One thing I was trying to find but I couldn’t find a single shred of evidence of.

  There was not a single mark on her that didn’t seem like it belonged there. There was no dirt, there was no injury, there was nothing on her that seemed to be like it was even slightly out of place at all. Everything fit for her to be alive, nothing fit for her to be dead.

  I wrapped my hands around myself studying the body that lay there, trying to find answers before the investigation had to go formal, before everything needed to be documented.

  I used my hands and started to examine parts of her, her organs, her ribs, to see if I could find any mismatch of feeling like I had looked for in her face, trying to see what was there beneath the surface of her skin. Looking for scars that were out of place, new or old, for any signs of abuse, any signs of neglect.

  There was nothing, nothing whatsoever to find.

  CHAPTER 12

  I looked at the clock and realized that not only was it moving dangerously close to where I didn’t want it to be, but it was also getting there a lot faster than I had realized it could move.

  I found it hard not to count the seconds until that time got there, despite how many seemed ahead of me, the number was too small. As much as I was running from it, I had accepted it was coming for me no matter what I was going to do.

  Part of me had thought to pawn it off on someone else, to make it someone else’s problem, to leave it to someone else’s expertise, a test of their patience and practice. But I couldn’t, that wasn’t who I was, it certainly wasn’t who I wanted to be. I wanted to face this even though my mind was arguing with me to stay as far away from it as possible. That it was too dangerous for me to involve myself, that I wasn’t quite ready despite how much I saw myself as prepared.

  This was more about me and what I needed to do to get myself up to par to what I considered a goal of mine.

  I knew this was part of my profession, it was written into the bylaws of what the expectations of this job were. To leave it now made me weak and that was the last thing I wanted to be.

  I knew that not only was this an obstacle, but it was also something I had to get through no matter what it did to me on the inside, no matter how much I was risking permanent damage to myself.

  What I was having a hard time doing was separating out why this was so difficult for me. It kept dragging those emotions out of me that made it almost impossible for me to be able to breathe, knowing full well I’d had something similar happen to me. That something had shifted inside of me in the window of my pregnancy that had spoiled my baby. A moment which had ruined the path my future was supposed to take

  It was one of the things I’ve been hiding from myself since I became aware of this agenda. Since that boy’s name was installed on my list, assigned to me, along the same line was the gender, the date of birth, the date of death.

  I had to come face to face with something I all but sawed out of my own mind just for being there before my career had started. That thing that sprang up in my head the second it had some air it considered breathable. I was reminded of how much progress I'd failed to make.

  I thought about it, frozen there at the moment as the remorse of the memory settled back into me, relentlessly, like a hurricane it attacked me. It was like it was nausea that had suddenly struck me from a car moving in directions my stomach didn’t quite agree with.

  For a second, I drifted off, my mind just simply stepped out of its compartment and I remembered those memories I had tried so hard to forget, the ones which never seemed to go too far. To mash and dissolve so I wouldn't have to be reminded of them. Now, it seemed, they were there, they had no intention of going elsewhere.

  Quickly, I tried to look at a file, some collection of paperwork sitting there at the edge of her desk. Reading through the language on it, trying to suppress the tsunami of ancient memories that was already working its way up the inner tubes of my body, down the narrow canals of my mind.

  It was like I could feel my heart stop in place for that moment that it passed there. My blood seemed to go thick with ice chunks as it moved through the inner highway of veins inside of me.

  It was there, working its way up to my mind where it felt it had some rightful claim. Knowing full well that something as potent as it was just couldn't be banished to some forgotten region, it was stuck to where it was, it wasn’t leaving anytime soon.

  Before I knew it, I had to wipe a tear out of my eye that was already pooling and I had to catch it before it fell out of me, down my cheek, where it would make all this real again.

  No matter where I looked, it seemed the name on that list, the one that was calling ahead to me to make sure I was there to expose the body of the child when the family came calling to see it, that I was going to have to be there, there was no peaceful escape, no matter what it did to me. No matter how it hurt me.

  For a moment, my mind moved frantically, trying to see if there was anyone to take my place. If there was anyone else who had some availability, or at the very least, was going to be inside the building at some time reasonable to the time the family was coming, I might’ve considered it. Forgetting for a time, all the reasons I wanted to make sure it was me who held this responsibility. I wanted it gone, I was scared, scared I might not make it out of this if I had to confront something like this again.

  There weren’t any that I could think of anyway, as hard as I tried and as much as I pressed my memories together to try and come up with some sort of solution, there was nothing to be found.

  Nothing at all.

  CHAPTER 13

  It was then that I looked back at the body, deadened white eyes staring up at the ceiling and lined pipes above.

  I wondered what her story was. Not the cause of death, that I could take out of the surgery I had to perform, analyzing her remains. I wanted to know what her real story was.

  A woman like that had to have some unique story about her. What her family life was like, who she was, what she did, it was all a mystery. Even once I handed her back to the NYPD I might never know the truth in what they figured out, any information on open and active investigations were kept confidential.

  I wanted to know, I was curious and inquisitive looking at her, trying to see if there were answers on her body, something specific I might be able to find out, something unique.

  I knew there was nothing, at least nothing I’d be able to see. I put my hands down on the edge of the table, feeling the cool metal through the thin sheet of latex that hugged my fingers.

  Her face was so pristine, immaculate that it was almost intimidating to look at her. She was like a perfectly preserved person, trapped in a vessel she had no use for. Something old and archaic she simply moved on from, leaving this shell behind like old skin shed off.

  I'd seen bodies with this type of preservation—perfect. Usually, once they were cut open, their organs were scarred, abused from pills and medications that wore away at the soft tissues of their vital parts. Typically, in their stomach, vats of sleeping agents, anti-depressants, or some other medication would have piled up, spoiled the body the organ was attached to. That overdose would be the thing that had shut down their body from the inside out, stopped their heart from wor
king, allowing their body to go cold.

  I half expected to see that with this woman, I assumed that's why she was given to us. That there was no cause for foul-play, the police found nothing indicating this was done on purpose, just another woman who swallowed too many pills and had to face the consequences—accidental suicide. That was more than likely what I'd write into her file, that was realistically the evidence I'd find once I was inside, her chest split open, her rib cage open wide as I examined what's left of her.

  “What are you?” I asked, but I heard a shatter in my voice. That simple shake of my lips that made everything blindingly real to me. I could feel the bar inside of me finally snap.

  I could feel the last of my sanity start to tear.

  CHAPTER 14

  My eyes swelled, and the tears were in freefall down my face. It was hard to get ahold of my own breathing, it was erratic, as if my lungs had just simply forgotten how to manufacture and retain air.

  It made my head light and I could feel my heart hammering away at the inside of my chest, slowly chiseling away what was important. It twisted my stomach into knots, and I had to reach out to get my hand onto the corner of my desk to make sure I didn't fall over.

  I tried desperately to think of blackness, to rid my mind of thoughts altogether. Not to think at all. To block out all the thoughts and feelings in my head to make sure I didn't land on the spot inside of me where they would lodge and get stuck and I could deal with them while they ran their course.

  They were stubborn, and they were unforgiving, but I knew they were coming no matter what Idid, at this point, there was no stopping it.

  Slowly, I lowered myself down to the ground. My knees pressed into the hard-tiled flooring and I curled up into a ball, resting my back on the side of the desk, bringing my legs up to my chest and wrapping my arms around myself, tight.

  All of my life felt like it was cracking and falling apart. Like embers from a fire getting trapped by the wind and moving on. They were pieces of me I was trying to keep together, I didn't want any of them to go, each piece of me that was lost in that gust was a part of me I couldn't get back.

  It was too much to have to think about. All of it was too heavy for me to hope to hold. It moved through my mind in simple flashes. Small drops of paint scattered throughout the canvas while my mind filled in all the blank pieces that were left over. All of it was filling in too fast and with too much detail for me to be able to turn a blind eye to it.

  “No, no, no,” was all that I could think as these flashes of memories molested my imagination, strange, dangerous hands reaching down into my mind. Reminding me of a time I nearly didn't survive.

  A period that took almost everything from me in exchange for the most intense pain I had ever thought I could handle, that I was being forced to handle. The one who almost took my life in trade for it finally coming to an end.

  Here it was again, showing up with the same strength and endurance it’d had last time. In these moments, when my guard had slid and fallen and allowed this thing inside of me to walk past all the barriers created to keep it out of the parts of me, far too delicate to its touch. The parts of me that could be hurt the most by what it was capable of.

  I knew it well, intimately well, how much damage this could do to me if I let it roam around me again and I couldn’t stop it before it got free. Free of all the restraints held in place for so long—knowing what it did to my life when I’d had to walk this path the first time it had come around. When it was new and when I had absolutely no idea what to expect of the expectations that were laid out ahead of me.

  My mind raced back to that day—I was back in the office knowing full well that complications had come about in my pregnancy. When I had asked the doctor to explain, he wouldn't, he was vague, too vague for me to be positive.

  He had eventually informed me there’d been concerns and that those concerns were growing to be more validated and were no longer hypotheticals but were slowly inching toward a reality I hadn’t expected was really a possibility.

  The doctor had stood there. Doctor Samuels, a tall, thin man, balding, with spots on his face, and a pair of glasses that looked like they were weighing down the thin frame that held them up. As he’d stood there in his white lab coat, so similar to the one I had on now, stumbling through a horrible truth he had to share with me, I could see his face alter, change from what I’d known him to look like. Absent of the joy I had seen in him before. The smiles were wiped clean off his face. That day was not a day for smiles or charm. From the moment I had walked in, I could see his unease, his negligence for eye contact, his failure to properly address me.

  This had been a slight concern for some time now, he had expressed to me, carefully gone over his thoughts and his objections, keeping me informed every step of the way. I always appreciated his abundance of caution, his desire to protect my baby, still so small in my womb. Those worries had grown each visit. He would eye the growth of his concerns. Now, it seemed, they had reached a point where they were beyond concerns. That they had become non-negotiables, fixed fact that I had no choice but to listen to.

  He had spoken about it with such a cavalier attitude that I knew it was in the realm of all things possible, but I too hadn’t anticipated it was something that might actually become a real issue, even when he’d told me he was getting nervous.

  That was something for other people. Dr. Samuels was a genius, top of his field, one of the most gifted in his specialty and if he had the foresight to see this potential issue so far down the line, then he had to have the intellect to make sure it never appeared in real life, that he could stop it before it became a real threat.

  “We have a slight problem,” he’d said to me and in the moment he spilled those words out into the open air, I knew that not only were they serious, nothing was out of the realm of possibility now.

  CHAPTER 15

  “You’re going to miscarry,” he said to me.

  I thought I could handle whatever news he had for me, that regardless of what it was, I would carry a positive outlook with me, a bit of hope in the face of something dark and dangerous that could change everything. I had heard the news, four little words that would slowly edge out a new phase of my life, a path I’d never had to walk, one that I didn’t think I needed to.

  I had volunteered to take this appointment without Luke, without the father of my baby, our baby. I had told him to go to work, that I could handle this despite his objection, in spite of all the worry in his face, I’d assured him it would be fine. My smile had been real when I gave it to him, my kiss was sweet and gentle. Hours ago I had known everything was going to be okay, that it was all going to work out.

  Now, suddenly, everything had changed. My life, Luke and my life had switched so fast I wasn't sure how we were going to keep up. We had made plans and arrangements, building a life for the baby we were going to bring into ours. Now knowing that baby wasn't going to make it.

  I had confidence, knowing full well there were people in her corner, a family I could lean on when I was going to need support. At that moment though, sitting there on the office bed, the Doctor skimming nervously through documents and paperwork, the results of tests that were defining me, I couldn't believe I'd heard him properly.

  “What?” I asked him when I had first heard it.

  He looked back at me, that grave stare I’ll never quite forget. How two eyes, so well-trained and educated can suddenly look so lost. Like they belonged to a child, a boy who had done something wrong to the world and now had to fess up to it.

  When he looked at me, I could feel the truth in his news, my hand going down to my stomach without me even realizing it. “In a day or two, the fetus will pass out of you,” he said to me.

  I felt my heart tear in half, shearing right down its center like a piece of thin meat. It was almost too fast, like stubbing your toe where you know the pain is coming, you have every expectation that it’s on its way, but you still have to wait for it, still
have to serve at its surprise when it finally hits you.

  CHAPTER 16

  It broke me without mercy. It had felt like my insides had suddenly been scraped raw, picked clean. There’d been no feeling in me, there was suddenly nothing, not even my own heartbeat I had felt safe relying on.

  When the tears began to fall, I’d forgotten I was the only person in the room, alone to take on this news. It didn't matter that Doctor Samuels was there, he had no idea what to do with the woman who was breaking down in front of him. He had never excused himself, but I knew he wanted to as my face was buried in my hands, tears coming out of my eyes like oceans.

  I’d watched as he tried to get close to me, to put his arm on me to tell me that even though it wasn’t going to be okay, I was going to survive, I was young, I would have another chance at some point in life. Those words had never gotten out of him, though. I had felt the rehearsed speech coming up through him like vomit. Spinning in his mind because that’s what you say as a professional in that situation. You speak on fact and schedules. I knew he was doing his job, but I was glad he never got the opportunity to offer that advice.

  A black veil dropped over my eyes and that bit of control I had been holding onto melted inside of my fingertips. Before I knew it, there had been men in the room, three of them, all of them holding me down, one of them exposed the skin on my arm.

  I had lost control, forgotten how to contain myself, stopped caring about how to behave. As I’d moved frantically around, I could see Doctor Samuels examining a syringe in his hand, blood had leaked from his face, his glasses broken and laying haphazard on his nose and his lip was swollen, the adrenaline hid the feeling in my fist.

  “Hold her,” he’d said, his voice had taken back its razor edge, the one I was used to, the one I had expected.

  “NO!” I had screamed at the height my lungs would allow before I felt the prick of the needle sliding through my skin and spitting the medicine inside of it into my veins, toxifying my blood.