My Life as a White Trash Zombie

I struggled to control the are-you-kidding-me? look I knew was on my face. Highly recommended? Me? How the hell would any of the coroner’s political buddies even know who I was?

I could feel Nick’s eyes on me, no doubt trying to figure out what special connections I had.

Dude, if you figure it out, let me know, I thought. I’m as baffled as you are.

Dr. Leblanc finally put his clipboard aside and picked up a scalpel. He gave me an encouraging smile. “It helps if you try to look at this as ‘interesting’ instead of ‘disgusting.’ And if you do have to pass out, please do so out of the way. Also, all puke goes in the garbage can, please.” His eyes flashed with humor, and I found myself grinning.

“Deal,” I said.

I did my best to keep Dr. Leblanc’s advice of “interesting versus disgusting” in mind as I watched the procedure, but there were some parts that were disgusting, no matter how much I attempted to convince myself otherwise. In particular, the search through the stomach contents was unspeakably nasty, but I was a bit encouraged to see that Dr. Leblanc’s face was twisted in a grimace as well. Apparently some things were always gross.

Yet, shockingly, I still hadn’t barfed. Not even the slightest desire to gag. It was almost surreal. I was the chick with the weakest stomach in the whole damn world, but here I was looking inside a damn body with the organs and guts and blood, and I was . . . hungry? I blinked in surprise as my stomach gave a little nudge that clearly wasn’t nausea. What the hell? Okay, so I hadn’t eaten any breakfast other than that coffee-drink thingy, but this was still a bizarre time to have a healthy appetite.

“Angel, come look at this,” Dr. Leblanc abruptly said, holding the dead guy’s heart in one hand and gesturing me over with the scalpel in his other. I obediently moved to his side, absurdly reminded of a movie where an evil priest ripped people’s hearts out with his bare hands. “That’s how he died,” he continued, using the tip of the scalpel to point to a slice he’d made in a small blood vessel on the outside of the heart. “See the blockage?”

I stared at the tiny yellow glob of what I assumed was fat or cholesterol or whatever the heck it was that blocked blood vessels. “That? But, it’s so small!”

He nodded then set the heart down on the white plastic cutting board in front of him. “I know. A bit humbling to think that something that looks so minor could have dropped this guy like a stone. He never had a chance.”

I stepped back as Dr. Leblanc finished his examination of the heart. And if I’d died from that overdose they’d be doing all of this to me. For the first time today I could taste bile, though it had nothing to do with anything I was seeing or smelling. If I’d died it would be me naked on the cold metal table, sliced open from throat to crotch. . . .

I straightened, eyes narrowing. I knew what was going on. Highly recommended, my ass. This whole job had obviously been arranged so that I could get a little more appreciation for the life I’d managed to screw up so well. Work in a morgue instead of going through stupid rehab. Now that was a scenario that made sense. I found myself smiling smugly, stupidly pleased that I’d figured it out. That’s cool. I can play this game. Hell, so far this was still a thousand times less annoying than rehab. A month of this and then I’d be home free. And this was even a paying job.

I watched as Dr. Leblanc removed the organs to weigh and examine them. Is he in on it? I wondered idly. Did he know I was really a pill-head loser? He probably doesn’t, I decided. There’s no way he’d be so nice to me if he knew.

Dr. Leblanc dropped a fist-sized kidney-shaped thing into a large plastic bag between the dead guy’s legs then picked up a towel and wiped his gloved hands. “Almost done,” he said to me with a smile. He turned and gave a nod to Nick. “You can do the head now.”

Nick stepped up to the table. “At least this body has one. We cut two yesterday and neither had a head. First one was that murder that was all over the news.” He flicked a glance at me. “You heard about that one?”

I responded with only a nod. I wasn’t about to let him know that I’d been questioned about it.

“And then we had one come in who’d been in an MVA—motor vehicle accident. The victim was so mangled it took our guys half an hour to find the head, and when they did, it had apparently been squished by a passing car. They ended up bringing the pieces of skull back in a plastic bag.” He gave a snort of amusement, and I simply stared at him. How could he be so casual about describing something so awful?

“Now pay attention,” he ordered me. “You’ll be doing this pretty soon.”

Resisting the urge to flip him off, I watched in sickly fascinated horror as he took a scalpel and made a cut from ear to ear over the top of the corpse’s head. Once the cut was made he set the scalpel aside, then dug his fingers between scalp and skull to peel the scalp back on top and bottom, exposing the entire top of the skull.

And I still didn’t have even a whisper of nausea.

Unbelievable.

Next he pulled a mask and a face shield on. “You probably want to put a mask on,” he said as he plugged in what I suddenly realized was a bone saw. “This kicks up a lot of bone dust, and you don’t want to breathe it in.”

I hurriedly yanked a mask on as he started the saw, quickly realizing that Nick hadn’t been exaggerating. By the time he finished making a cut around the top of the head there was a fine film of pinkish-white dust covering the area around him. I tried not to think about the fact that I probably had bone dust in my hair. I planned on taking an epic shower after this day was done.

He set the saw aside and picked up a T-shaped tool with a chiseled bottom. “These are called skullcrackers,” he said with a grin that was almost genuine. “Swear to god, that’s their official name in the catalog.” He jammed the chiseled end into the cut made by the saw and gave the skullcracker a sharp twist to pry the cut wider. I cringed involuntarily at the sound of breaking bone as the tool lived up to its name.

Nick stuck his fingers in the widened gap and pulled. The top of the skull came off with a tearing, sucking sound, and suddenly there before me were the grey and pink convolutions of a brain.

“There ya go,” he said with a silly little flourish as he pulled his mask and face shield off. “Your first time seeing a real live brain.” Then he sniggered. “Real dead brain, that is.”

I followed his lead and pulled my mask off, then froze. All of a sudden it seemed as if I could smell the brain, and not in a oh-how-gross way, but as if someone had taken the lid off a pot of gumbo to let the aroma fill the room. And I knew it was the brain that smelled so utterly enticing— knew it with every single cell of my being.

What the hell was wrong with me?

To my shock and horror my mouth began to water and my stomach gave a loud growl—loud enough for the others to hear. Both of them turned to look at me and Dr. Leblanc gave a laugh. “Okay, you’re officially the toughest morgue tech who’s ever worked here if you can still be hungry during an autopsy!”

I gave a weak laugh in answer as I struggled to hide my confusion. Yeah, that’s all it was. I was just starving.

So why did I have the horrifying urge to grab a handful of that pink and grey mass and shove it into my mouth like movie popcorn?

A shiver crawled down my back. I was being stupid. I’d skipped breakfast, that’s all, and was probably still recovering from my dumb overdose. There was no possible way that I really wanted to eat the brain. It had to be some sort of flashback to that whole crazy hallucination.

Fortunately, Nick seemed to be oblivious to my anxiety. He picked up a scalpel. “The rest is easy. Slice the spinal cord where it connects to the base of the brain—” he said, somehow shoving the brain aside and sticking the scalpel in and around. “—and you’re good to go.” He set the scalpel aside and tipped the brain out into his hands, cradling it carefully.

He turned to me with naked challenge in his eyes. “Want to hold it?”

I froze for several seconds. I did not want to hold it, but there was no way I could admit it was because I was afraid I’d start hallucinating and crave it again.

I saw the smirk begin to form on his face. Oh, hell no. I was not going to let him win this one. Even Dr. Leblanc was watching to see what I was going to do. It’s a stupid little initiation, that’s all. I can do this.

I stepped forward and stuck my hands out, meeting the challenge in Nick’s eyes with my own. He grinned, placed the thing in my hands. It was slippery and a little mushy—a bit heavier than I expected it to be.