Morgue

Morgue

Night shift at the morgue, peopled by the usual cast. Doctor di Montago, bespectacled, white-coated, gloved and booted, carrying his hands like trophies before him, ceased wondering how he fell into the job twenty years ago, now jaded, going through the motions with practised ease, his commands, remarks, long formulated to standard instructions, even his macabre jokes become cliché from constant use, sawing and cutting, rending and extracting with bored efficiency as the implements ring in their flashing flight and innards slump into trays.

Hugo, his assistant, chosen for his deathly pallor, greasy hair curled and untamed, ever obedient, lips apparently about to drool, eyes fixed on the doctor’s busy hands and the bodies opened for display, watching as the organs slip and slide through skillful hands, unsickened by the sight of a thousand gory insides, responding to the doctor’s needs with swift efficiency, passing tools, accepting trays besplattered with blood and bile, never speaking but ever alert to the passing scene.

And the bodies themselves, cold and pale as they proceed from their metal storage drawers to steel operating table, ghastly with stagnant bruising and gaping wounds, patient, waiting their turn on the chopping block, when all their vile secrets be drawn from their compliant corpses to be detailed, recorded and prepared for disposal; on cold steel they wait with cold flesh and empty eyes, uncomplaining, unprotesting and patient as they never were in life.

Even those bearing already the roughly stitched and lumpen scars of autopsy, empty of feelings and innards, awaiting their return to frigid storage, stories told and signed and sealed, staring sightlessly beyond the ceiling.

Doctor di Montago, sewing his last stitch in the latest patient, glances up at the clock ticking away on the wall.

“It’s time, Hugo,” he says, “Help me with this one and then we’ll deal with the others.”

Hugo giggles a little, then comes to the top of the table and grabs the client’s head with both gory hands. He holds it steady as the doctor recites a long incantation in some bizarre and unknown tongue. As his voice dies away, there is stillness and silence in the morgue for a few passing seconds. Hugo braces himself against the table, clearly expecting some resistance from the body whose head he clamps so securely.

Then the corpse jerks in spasm, powerfully forcing itself upwards against gravity and Hugo’s exerted strength. It falls back again and starts twitching and moving, head beginning to turn in spite of Hugo’s hold, arms and legs flailing aimlessly. The doctor takes a step back.

“It’s okay, Hugo. You can release him now..”

Reluctantly, Hugo lets go of the body’s head and retreats to a safer distance. Then both turn from the jerking corpse and go to another. They repeat the process until one more body is kicking and twitching its way into some semblance of life.

Slowly di Montago and his assistant move from cadaver to corpse, restoring them until the morgue is filled with dead bodies in various states of recovery. Many now have a sort of control over their limbs and are wandering blindly around the operating room, bumping into things and upsetting trays of instruments. Some collide with each other and both crash to the floor, there to thrash about until they gain enough control to stagger to their feet again.

So the chaos continues, quite silently apart from the occasional noise of falling implements and trays, and the doctor succeeds in reanimating the last body. He congratulates Hugo and they watch the confusion all around them for a moment.

It is clear that some of the dead can now see, for they walk with more purpose, though still halting and unstable. These seem to be of one intent, for they begin to gather around Hugo and the doctor.

Hugo points at their hands. “Doctor, they’re carrying knives and saws.”

“I had noticed,” claims the doctor. “Perhaps we had best get out of here.”

But they are too late. There is no way to force a gap through the ring of corpses hemming in the two operatives. And, with every moment, more are joining the crowd, forcing the earliest even closer.

“We must fight our way out,” shouts di Montago as he hurls himself at the dead. The attempt is hopeless and the knives are forced home into his writhing body as the saws begin to hack away at his limbs. Hugo goes down in a forest of metronomic blades. Soon, little remains of the two but bits of flesh lying in a pool of blood.

–ooOoo–

Detective Inspector Charles Cobham arrived late at the morgue. He was new to the job and the town and it had taken a while to find his way there. Even so, it was a surprise to see the size of the crowd that had gathered already.

With the help of a constable, he forced a way through and entered the building. The constable showed him the way to the operating theatre. He was not prepared for the sight that awaited him there.

The place was littered with corpses, some with the stitched cuts of autopsy, others without. In places there were heaps of them, but there was hardly a foot of floor space not covered by a body. And, in one corner where no bodies lay, there was only a large pool of blood. Lumps of unidentified stuff made gruesome islands in the gory lake.

It was a while before Cobham could speak. In fifteen years in a big city precinct, he had never seen the like of this. Finally, he turned to the constable.

“What the hell happened here? Some sort of wild teenage prank that went wrong? Or did the night shift go insane?”

“Definitely not a night shift, sir,” said the cop. “There’s been no night shift for twenty years. And not teenagers either.”

“What then,” asked Cobham. “This is sheer insanity.”

“I don’t know, sir. But this has been happening on this night for twenty years. Ever since the ME, a Doctor di Montago and his assistant were found murdered exactly like this. All the bodies strewn about in the same way. That was why the morgue stopped having a night shift.”


Word count: 1,044
For SCREAMS!!!, June 14 2023
Prompt: Night shift at the morgue.