The Body

A section from 'Thorns in the Dream'

THE BODY

The young intern at the Salt Lake City Morgue unzipped the body bag holding the young woman with slit wrists, lifting her body onto the examination table to start her autopsy. She was Maria Seltz, a 19-year old med student that had recently graduated. She was well built with long legs, long red hair and fair skin tone. She'd seen it all, so she assumed this one was a suicide at first and therefore just shook her head.

“What, do they think I can't handle a hard job, Marty?” she asked her co-worker, who had been busy putting all of the excess body parts together with the torn bodies that they belonged to.

“I don't know honey, but I'll be hanged if that there was a suicide. Don't look like a suicide to me. Take a look at how deep those cuts are!” he remarked as he walked over to point out what he meant. He placed his fingers against the skin, pulling it apart to show her the cuts to the bone. “What person committing suicide goes that dangdeep, you tell me.”

She nodded, grabbing her magnifying glass for a closer look. He was right. The blade used had been very heavy-handed, so much it had almost sliced through half of the bone. The woman didn't show signs of struggle so she had to assume she was already dead at the time or was drugged so damn much that she couldn't feel what was being done.  This girl had come from the asylum just down the road where a horrible, unspeakable murder had taken place and this was its victim. The victim of a cannibalistic and probably insane psychologist. Who, she remembered with a shudder, was still on the loose.

Poor girl.

She washed the body of the blood and continued to shake her head fighting tears as she did what she needed to do, then closed her up. Her body had been so obviously pumped with drugs that her system started to shut down far before her wrists were cut. She would have been in a lot of pain before she died and that bugged her. She always wished a quick death on those that she came across here, hoping that their souls were at peace.

“Tox results are back, she was definitely drugged. Heavy, heavy doses of painkillers and psychological medications were found in her system. How did she even live to have her wrists slashed, she should have been dead a long time ago,” the doctor told her before walking away.

You aren't the one dealing with the body, she thought bitterly as she took the folder back to the lab and handed it to one of her supervisors. When she went back to the morgue to find the body had been moved, she panicked and screamed for her partner who promptly came running. They both saw the empty table and Marty just laughed.

“FBI just came to claim the body, don't worry,” he said as he went back to his work station.

“FBI? What in the heck do they want with this case, it's not their kind of crime,” she snarled.

“Hey, they have their orders. Odd, though, they didn't have the lettering on their jacket,” he mused before his eyes opened wide. “Call security. NOW.”

By: Jessica Green Jones- http://www.dementedbooks.webs.com