A Grisly Halloween Story...

Dear Reader,

Since nothing has been happening at the Trickhart's house. And since it is Halloween. I have decided to post a grisly little story I wrote called, The Cadaver. I will warn you - it is disturbing! But it pales in comparison to what I have endured during the Trickhart remodel.

Happy Halloween.

The Cadaver

By R. Charles “Chaz” Smith

I was sure the orderly had seen me. I ducked into the room and left the door open just a crack so I could tell if he had followed. I waited forever. Not really, but it seemed like it. The surgical instruments were lying on a countertop near a large sink just as I expected - the light from the hallway entered the partially opened door and reflected directly on them. Like they were beckoning me. It was eerie. Well, that, and the fact that this was the first time I had ever snuck into a morgue.

Morgues are fucking quiet. Dead quiet. That’s probably a good thing considering the alternative. If you start hearing some corpse pounding to get out you know its only a matter of time before you’re half eaten body is taking his place in a drawer. The quiet was okay with me except that when I walked across the room my shoes made little squeaking sounds with every step. Not sure why the floors in a morgue have to be kept so clean. I mean they’re corpses right? Its not like they’re going to catch a cold if you don’t bleach and buff the floors every day. And its funny, too, how when things are that quiet you start making up shit. My shoes were squeaking little words in my head, “Squeak, squeak, you freak. Squeak, squeak, squeak.” Fucking shoes.

When I got over to the counter I could see that the working edge of the surgical equipment looked rusty, not shiny like the handles. I moved closer to get a better look and realized the instruments were not rusty. They were bloodied. I’m sure my face contorted when I first realized what the crimson coating was. It was flaking and crusty and reminded me of the maroon paint chipping off my grandfather’s old hay barn. That guy hated painting.

I knew how the tools were used and where the blood came from. Or at least I guessed after remembering the horror in the eyes of the last person to use them - the person who bloodied them as they are now. I saw those eyes back at the fraternity house before I left to sneak in here myself. They were Grayson’s eyes. Grayson had been standing in the doorway of the game room staring vacantly at me and the other guys. Sweat and blood stained his clothes.

“I did it, Dave!” Grayson said, and he reached out his right arm holding something that resembled a large, fleshy, pink stick with a bend in the center. He was shaking hands with it. “I did it and now it’s your turn.”

It fucking made me sick. Still does. Funny how warm you can get in a freezing cold morgue. And trying to erase that ghastly image of Grayson from my mind wasn’t easy but I had work to do. I looked back down at the tools on the countertop and reached for one of them. The instrument was similar to a large pair of kitchen scissors - the kind used for dismembering poultry. I touched them. The cold metal surface felt icy wet. I picked them up carefully so as not to touch the soiled end. I picked up the others, too. I wondered how long it would take to consummate this fiendish little task and carried the implements toward a gurney in the center of the room. The conflicting interaction of shapes and shadows gave it the eerie appearance of an altar, the sacrificial kind. I drew in a deep breath and began my grisly work.

A crisp white sheet covered something large on the stainless steel gurney. Beneath the cloth was a cadaverous lump of human flesh and bone. The mound that made up the head was to my right. Below the head I could see the arm of a woman, uncovered by the sheet and dangling over the side of the table. Her lifeless hand reaching out with her long, scarlet nails. My eyes moved across her chest to where the other arm should have been. Grayson had it now. A stain marked its previous existence. I followed the outline of the torso downward where it abruptly stopped. Two larger seeping wounds soaked the sheet, marking the visits of the other fraternity brothers who had violated the corpse earlier that evening - before Grayson took the arm. The large soiled marks labeled the areas where the thighs had been severed from their torso. Like giant inkblots, the bloody circles oozed toward each other and met in the center of the table.

No pain, no stain.

I stood aside the gurney and carefully pondered the choice before me - the arm or the head? Taking the arm could be done quickly and would be far less morose, but returning to the frat house with the head would make me a hero. But I had already made my choice. On my own there was no way I had the nerve to partake in this “prank”. I’m not like the other guys who were given more money than sense by their rich, absent parents. My mom worked hard to raise me alone after my dad left. She was still supporting me so that I can live in the frat house and experience “the college life” even though our house is only a few miles away. I couldn’t imagine the shame I would feel if she ever discovered what I was about to do. To find out THIS was what she was paying for… it would devastate her. No, I wasn’t like the others. For them this was just the next prank in an escalating chain of horrific pranks. I’m just trying to fit in. It was only after liberal amounts of goading from the guys and even more liberal amounts of alcohol that I even made it this far. But I’m not drunk enough to take the head. The arm will have to do.

I placed the instruments on the gurney next to the body. From my rear pocket I pulled a large black plastic bag, the kind used for grass clippings and fallen brown leaves. I opened the bag widely and rolled the mouth of it over and over so it would not collapse and close on itself during the extraction, then I crouched down and placed it on the ground between my feet. Slowly I lifted my eyes, transfixing them on the hand that reached out before me.

Heroes are forgotten but nightmares are forever.

I lifted the edge of the sheet to uncover the upper arm and shoulder of the corpse. I was careful not to expose the head. I gulped the air, swallowing the stench as it rose from under the sheet. My shoes gave a long whining screech as the sudden smell of death filled my nostrils thrusting me backward. My head lurched forward and swung around in the direction of the sink as I prepared to vomit. I forced the rising mix of beer and gastric juices back down my throat with another gulp and stood hunched with my back to the body.

I have no idea how long it was before I could face the cadaver again. With a deep breath I returned to it and lifted one of the tools from their resting place. I chose a cutting instrument with a serrated blade. Holding the knife-like object firmly with both hands I pressed it against the blanching, dead white flesh between the arm and the shoulder. I moved the blade back and forth effortlessly, in a sawing motion. A clean, yellowish secretion rose to the surface as I continued, followed by minute traces of blood. The fluids mixed together and smeared across the jagged cut.

I couldn’t tell how fresh the body was. After all, I’m not a fucking mortician. The thick leaking liquids mixed and became darker as I sawed through the meaty arm. I could hear the plump, corpulent flesh ripping in the quiet surroundings of the morgue. The noise sickened me but I continued. The razor-sharp edge of the instrument began working its way through the stringy fibrous muscle tissue below the vascular skin. The cutting became noticeably more difficult at this point. I pressed hard, sawing. Soon the blade scraped across the long, cord-like tendons below the layer of muscle.

I withdrew the knife from the meaty crevice and the blade cleansed itself against the sides of the gash as it was being removed. I then held the wrist of the woman’s arm tightly in my hand. Like everything else in the morgue, her hand was cold. Her arm was held in place firmly by bone. I repositioned the limb, stretching it outward. Using the gurney as a fulcrum between the arm and the shoulder I pushed down heavily on the upper part of the extremity. The bone separated from the cartilage with a loud “crack” that seemed to ricochet against every surface in the morgue. I froze waiting until the ringing sound of silence returned. In the morgue’s cold, quiet stillness my squeaking shoes were shrieking now. Or it may have been me.

After the tendons were snipped and the carving complete, the amputation flopped with a heavy “thud” into the plastic bag on the floor between my feet. It bounced as it hit the floor and spattered red. I lowered the sheet over the open trickling fissure where the dead woman’s left arm had been.

I reached between my ankles for the edges of the bag. In the darkness my fingers touched the woman’s hand as it was lying outside the confines of the plastic. It was so soft. I imagined her caressing someone’s cheek, perhaps a husband or a daughter, with her dismembered limb. I crouched down and placed it inside the bag and began to tie it shut. Light from the hallway suddenly poured into the room as the door of the morgue flew open.

“What in hell are you doing in here?” boomed the voice from the silhouette of a man standing in the fully opened doorway. The glaring beam of a flashlight pierced the remaining darkness and fell upon me stooping next to the gurney. I tumbled onto the bag of meat then leapt into the air with a gasp. I stood dazed, not moving. The image in the doorway laughed aloud hysterically then reversed the light onto its own face. “Shit, Dave. I must have scared the hell out of you!” said the face.

My eyes took a second to readjust to the less intense glare filtering in from the hallway outside the morgue. My friend Marc from the fraternity stood in the doorway with the beam from the flashlight illuminating a wide toothy grin.

“You son of a …”

“Shhh, not so loud,” Marc’s whispered voice clipped my words. “The other guys just sent me to find out what was taking you so long. Did you do it?”

“Yeah, I did it.” I said breathlessly. Then holding out the cadaver arm in my hand to imitate Grayson, “I did it and now it’s your turn.”

“Thanks,” Marc said sarcastically. “I’ll see you back at the house.”

“You’d better make sure your home by midnight.” I hunched over, dragging the lawn bag behind myself and limping toward Marc in the doorway. “That’s when the dead come back to life… and this corpse is gonna be pissed!”

I ran past Marc brushing him with the bag as I exited the morgue. I continued running down the hall until I came to the main corridor of the hospital then walked slowly as I passed a few staff and patients near the lobby exit. Once safely outside I gasped and breathed in deeply as if I had been holding my breath throughout the ordeal. The air was sweet and cold and fresh, nothing like the stale air of the morgue. I looked to the full moon above and suddenly the realization of what I had just done washed over me. I burst into the uncontrollable laughter of a young child who had just perpetrated a risky Halloween prank. But this was much worse. I walked to my car, snickering, unable to control myself and not sure I would ever be able to control myself again.

When I returned to the fraternity house the others were waiting to see my bounty. They drank beers and laughed as I told my story, much like they had while listening to the stories of my three predecessors that night. We lost complete track of time as the minutes drew closer to midnight. I finished my third beer as we pondered Marc’s handling of the final portion of the night’s business.

“What’s taking Marc so long?” Grayson asked.

“He stopped to get head!” another replied, spurting beer down his chin and we all laughed.

We contemplated all sorts of horrors. We joked about what it would be like to “reassemble” the parts once Marc returned with the skull and began to wonder how we would ultimately dispose of our prank. It was at that moment the telephone rang.

“Oh, shit.” one of them coughed. “You get it, Dave. It’s probably for you again anyway.”

I jumped to my feet and grabbed the phone. “Okay guys keep it down for a minute.”

As I picked up the receiver, Marc burst open the front door, giggling and holding a large, black, plastic bag in his hand. It looked as though he carried a basketball in it.

“Shut up, guys. I’m on the phone!” I shouted. “Hello… This is Dave.”

“Dave…” said the voice on the other end of the receiver. “For Christ’s sake, where have you been?”

I could barely hear the words over the commotion caused by Marc’s return. “Who is this?”

Marc untied the bag and sunk his hand deep into it. With his arm inside he reached around then made a tight fist and began to remove the skull. I grimaced and turned my back to Marc and the others to concentrate on my call.

“…your mom, Dave. There’s been…” the voice of the caller became inaudible over the frenzied banter behind me.

“Hold on a second!” I told the caller.

Marc ripped from the bag the woman’s pale, wretched skull and held it high above his own. Clutching the monster’s scalp in his bloody hand he gloated with self-admiration as though he were Perseus, the son of Zeus, slayer of the gorgon Medusa. Our fraternity brothers screamed and laughed impetuously.

“Hey, keep it down!” I shouted. “This guy says it’s about my mom.”

I turned to face the others. My eyes scanned the room and focused on the woman’s head dangling from Marc’s dripping fist.

“Oh my God!” I shrieked. “That’s my mom!”