It was a warm morning in August, an uneventful Friday that was going to be hot and sticky. The kind of late summer day cursed with a humidity that left the outside of the basement windows peering into the morgue covered in condensation. A soft dew obscuring curious eyes from taking a gander at the new addition. If one were to have dared to sneak a peek inside, they would have seen what one would expect. The cold slab, the freezers, the tray with blood soaked autopsy tools, the body of Mrs. Mortensen covered by a white sheet. Not a thing out of the ordinary. When it came to small towns like this, where everybody knew everybody, the news of the old widow having died the night before had turned to quick gossip. It wasn’t a surprise to see her there, it was to be expected that an autopsy would need to be conducted before she would be put to rest next to her long-dead husband in the small town cemetery just a mile down the road. The morgue, located in the basement of the small local hospital, was quiet. This shouldn’t have been a surprise either, with the only occupants being the formaldehyde infused bodies of four very recently deceased townspeople, an unclaimed cadaver, and Mr. Leonard Watson. He didn’t find his current company to be the most ‘lively’ of conversationalists. But he stood there, nonetheless, hands resting near the pale blue-gray forearm of Mrs. Mortensen on the autopsy table - proud of his quick work and the fact he had merely gotten a speck blood on his shoes this time. The table was cold, like the chill of a car door in the dead of winter. Leo was a mortician, recently graduated and quite happy with his quiet little underground job, away from the prying eyes of a town that always seemed to know too much. A town, it seems, he would never be able to escape.
It had been an interesting night, if not typical in many ways, but the slight increase in fresh cadavers after a relatively hushed week was a cause for raised brows. It was a week that had initially consisted of only one recent addition to the cold-storage. Until today. Four people in total had arrived right after midnight, all dying in their sleep, seemingly from the same cause. A stroke; quick, like a thief in the witching hour it arrived and then vanished, taking the lives of the four senior women in death’s gentle hands like a breeze. But they were old, ancient, Leo told himself, and it was hotter than normal. They had all come from the same retirement home down the road. The AC unit, they had told him, had broken the evening before and it was a challenge to make sure all of the residents stayed hydrated and cooled, it was unintentional negligence, they assured. They claimed they didn’t hear them, that they had all been fine when checked on, but by the midnight rounds they were all dead. They swore it wasn’t their fault. Leo didn’t care, it wasn’t his job to care, just to confirm what was already known and lock them up until someone who cared enough to claim them arrived. It was also Friday, he just wanted to get home to his dog, his boyfriend, and a cold beer and forget about the wrinkly bodies of the four deceased laying just a few feet behind him. All he had left to do was slide Mrs. Mortensen into the freezer, clean his tools, and go home. There was something about a nearly full morgue that, no matter how comfortable with the dead one is, can cause a bit of uncertainty. The kind that made the bristly hairs on the back of one’s neck stand on end with the thought of all those cold eyes behind you. Even in the early morning hours it was unsettling to be here alone. It seemed eerily silent amidst a full house, so he quickly draped the white sheet up over old Mrs. Mortensen’s face and placed her in the bottom left-hand freezer. Five of the six freezers now had occupants, four elderly women - Mrs. Mortensen, Mrs. Trudeau, Mrs. Delphine, and Ms. Jones, and one homeless man in his thirties who had been found on Wednesday in a ditch. The town called him Bo-Jingles. No one had claimed him, no one would. The last freezer door was closed, and was his tradition he double-checked the locks. Just to make sure. He wasn’t a superstitious guy, but he came from a superstitious family and genetics die hard. You treat the dead right, but you keep them locked away. After surveying his work he went about prepping the morgue for the weekend guy. Tools were washed, songs were whistled, everything was as cut-and-dry as could possibly be. Anything to distract the mind from the deafening silence around him. The time was 8:42am and the only sounds to be heard were the occasional passing of conversation from the morning-shift coming in the first floor employee entrance at the top of the staircase. Every little noise made him jump. He was ready to go, letting his dreads come loose from being bundled up all day. Then his phone went off. A charming 8-bit digital rendition of “Shave and a Haircut”. Leo had liked this concept for one simple reason. While he was in Australia the summer before starting college he had discovered that the traditional two bits number had been commonly swapped for the phrase drop dead, and he found this amusing. So it had been his ringtone for years. Seemed appropriate. “Dah-di-di-dah-di,” the phone sounded again, only providing “shave and a haircut”, but never reaching the finale. Then, from somewhere behind him, came an answer. Knock-knock. Leo’s back straightened, he nearly dropped his phone the cold metal flooring below. It was just his imagination, it had been a long night and the old metal was just popping in place. He checked his phone, his boyfriend asking if he was on his way. He tried to respond, hands trembling ever so slightly. As he stood upright his phone signaled a third time. “Dah-di-di-dah-di.” Knock-knock. He turned his eyes to the upper freezer where Mr. Bo-Jingles had been kept. He cautiously approached, flipped the latch and let the door slide open a bit. The sheet covered body was still there, motionless. Leo softly knocked out the tune again on the side of the freezer box with his knuckle. Knock-knock! Mr. Bo-Jingles didn’t move. Something else behind him did. The bottom left freezer door swung loudly on its hinges. Something ran into the autopsy slab. Its warbling reflection obscured on the handprint covered freezer door beside him. Its naked form shuddering unnaturally, the scalpel he had yet to clean in its long nailed grasp. Mrs. Mortenson smiled. “Drop… dead.”
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AuthorA collection of short stories and flash fiction pieces. These original tales are the property of Alycia Davidson 2017-2023. This section of my site is rarely used now as I tend to post more short stories on my Patreon. Archives
July 2023
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