...In The Morgue
(A Prologue to 'Scaring the Stars Into Submission')
…a white lily blooms up slowly from between the blue lips of a dead boy. It is fitting, perhaps, that this is how my tenure here ends, that my long career of deaths stacked upon each other ends on the final image of a blossoming flower whose roots, I imagine, spread out deep inside the cadaver on the table. For the briefest of moments, I allow myself to visualize the thin tendrils snaking down into the lungs to tickle the alveoli.
The boy is not quite a teenager. He is old enough to be in that awkward place where one finds themselves before ever truly finding themselves – that place where confidence wavers like long blades of summer grass – around others the same age. Minus the normal discoloration of a lifeless body, he is pale and seems to have spent little to no time out in the sun, which makes the lily’s appearance all the more stark and shocking. Its pure white petals against his washed out dermis is a contrast I’m sure to never forget.
He is neither skinny nor muscular, but somewhere in between. I’m guessing he may play an indoor sport or simply has a high metabolism; his physique has tone, but not due to spending hours in a weight room. Appropriately manicured nails on both the toes and the fingers, no obvious injuries from childhood are apparent and no scars to speak of. He is sixty-five inches in length and weighs approximately one hundred and thirteen pounds, give or take for swelling and decomposition.
I move my hands up his right calf and notice out of the corner of my eye another lily sprouting, oh so slow, from his left ear. This one is pale pink and it opens, timid, unfurling its petals as if to test the surrounding air first. It is a delicate and careful unwrapping of a strange gift from an even stranger place. This time, I imagine its tendril-like roots finding purchase around the tympanic membrane, but originating deep inside the snail-shaped cochlea. If the boy were alive, would he be able to describe the sound of blooming?
Another lily, of lightest blue, stems from his other ear. Two more erupt from the mouth and one from each nostril, all different hues. It is spring-time in fast forward, a nature movie splayed out on my table with each scene faster than the previous one. Tiny lily buds poke through his pores and fatten, spreading outward easily from the decay into beauty. He is no longer a cadaver; he is an ecosystem, a compost pile returning his skin to the earth that bore him. After several long minutes, it is not so much a body on my examining table as it is a mound of someone’s perfect garden. The explosion of color erupting from him is astounding, but that it is coming from within him forces me to sit and take stock of the moment.
I sit on the metal rolling chair, stunned. The lilies have made a grave of him, an altar of flora and fauna smothering him in color as if painted on and left to mummify below their stems and stamens. His is certainly not the first death I’ve seen that has evolved into a post-mortem surreality, but this is probably the most poetic I’ve ever witnessed. I feel like allowing myself, for the first time in forty-seven years, to sob uncontrollably at the majesty of this tiny living meadow on my examination table.
I almost want to leave him there in peace for the examiner replacing me as a matter of respect. I don’t want to cut this boy open now. I want to leave him be. I want to leave him for the generation coming after me, I want them to see what death has become over the last decade. I want them to understand that death is not as easy as it used to be and that the living seem to understand this better now. I want my replacement to walk in and see this, to be as struck as I am by the profundity of the situation, to be as mind-boggled and awe-struck at the possibility of things they’ve never imagined before.
Each body comes in a little different these days, turned in ways that make anatomy books irrelevant, outdated, written by some subspecies of a culture long since moved on. Limbs twisted out into irregular shapes, orifices blown up and out, sprouting one tragic, sometimes grotesque, art project after another. What was once a random occurrence is now the norm, if that is even the proper word. Man, woman, child, pet…they’ve all become the world’s playthings. Toy vessels caught up in the maelstrom that rages around us now.
It’s hard to pinpoint the first influx of oddities, but I remember one of the first very well. He had only been in office two years before coming into my examining room. I remember watching him on the television month after month, thinking he looked different each time, worse. Like something was physically eating away at him. This was no ordinary graying of the hair on the temples or wrinkling of the skin around the sleepless eyes, this was something else and I’m sure other people saw it as well. Until the President was released into my care, I had no idea how bad things had gotten or how bad they were going to get…
But that was the beginning. I have given up hope that we are nearing the end, but the end of what, I wonder? Is this a new step in an evolutionary staircase? If so, is the staircase leading up or down? Impossible to tell when an autopsy requires garden shears and leather gloves as opposed to latex and a scalpel.
I hear the quiet swish of the examination door behind me. My replacement has arrived. I have been trying to impart my years of knowledge upon him in the span of a month, but even I am at a loss as to how to explain the body bouquet before me. I close my eyes and inhale; the normal, white sterility of the room has been replaced by the aroma of a spring morning. Considering the source, it’s oddly comforting.
“Morning, Doc,” he says, oblivious to the meadow-covered cadaver.
I nod without turning. “Riley.”
“Good weekend?”
“Quiet, but yes.”
He hangs his coat on the wall and tosses his shoulder-bag next to the desk. I hear the buttons on the front of his lab jacket clasp together and soon he’s standing next to me. His cologne is strong, but is soon overpowered by the body. “Wow…” he whispers. “Art project?”
“Body.”
Disbelief. “No.”
“Oh very much yes. He bloomed not five minutes before you walked in. Teenage boy. Damndest thing I’ve ever seen.” Riley reached out to touch one of the lilies, but I swatted his hand away. “Gloves first. Always.”
“Yes sir.”
Once prepped, Riley stands on the other side of the body, eyes wide but observant. A smart kid, but with a tendency to be smart in the mouth sometimes. I have stopped trying to break him of this habit. With this being my last day, I’m more concerned that he sticks to proper procedure than proper social etiquette.
“How is this even possible, Doc?”
I shake my head. “I have a feeling you’ll see more of this kind of thing once I leave. Not necessarily this kind of flowering specifically, but cadavers covered or filled with substances and things our anatomy books and science journals have never seen before. I don’t understand what this influx of strangeness portends, but it feels like it’s happening with more regularity. I would urge you, starting from this moment, to be delicate and deliberate with your note-taking on each body from here on out. You may find it of the utmost urgency later.”
We look up at each other over the floral mound. Tufts of dark hair spill out from beneath his surgical cap. The look in his eyes is one of a man who has just been dropped off a bridge into raging waters.
“The important thing is to remain objective. No matter how bizarre the cadaver or case may be, you *must* be on top of your game, Riley. Too many people depend upon the work done in this basement. Do you understand?”
He swallows. “I do, sir, yes.”
“Good. We do this one together, but you’re the lead. Today, I am *your* assistant. Understand that since we are in such unfamiliar territory here, I don’t know that there is a wrong way to approach this, but I will constantly ask why you are choosing to do something. I want to hear the logic behind your every movement. Now, what would you do first in this situation?”
Riley impresses me over the next hour. Before he touches any of the surgical tools, he examines the flowers, locates their exact phylum and genus, physically examines the human pores that have released them into our presence; he understands the origins of the flowers in the physical world so that he can better understand their strange existence here before us. With hands I once believed indelicate, he clips a single stem and blossom only to have it quickly replaced. The new bud slips up through the old stem and blossoms within seconds. We look up at each other, bemused.
“I’d like to try something,” he says after a brief silence.
“What are you thinking?”
“Treat it like a weed. Or a virus. A cancer, even. Get at the root, expunge the entire source, perhaps prevent another from taking its place.” I nod, wishing I’d thought of it first. “I think that’s a solid idea. Have at it.”
He grips the base of the stem and begins to pull slowly. It doesn’t budge at first, but then slowly gives way as slick white roots erupt out of the pore. He holds the blossom in his hand and we wait, we watch. No replacement flower is forthcoming. Riley hoots in excitement and I clap once.
“Well done! Let’s hope the idea sticks for all the others,” I say.
We both begin to pluck the stems. Each one trails behind it a clumped network of the slick white tendrils. That so much non-human material is being pulled from the cadaver is as astounding as the initial visual it provided. Soon, we have one of the empty examination tables full of multi-hued flowers. It takes us close to an entire day, but by the end, the cadaver looks like a cadaver should, albeit with distended, inflamed pores across his entire body. Riley exhales loud and slow as he removes his gloves and wipes his brow of pooled sweat. I pull one of the rolling chairs over to the table and slump down onto it easily, weary and glad that we could finally give the boy some small appearance of normalcy. I’ve explained this to Riley before, that though it is the mortician’s job to make the body perfect again, there’s nothing that says we can’t try to keep it intact for whatever family may come down to our corner of the basement. It’s a respect thing. I desperately hope he remembers long after I’m gone.
“What now?” I ask him across the table. He puts on a new pair of gloves and wheels the utensil table closer.
“Now…the incisions from both shoulders to the sternum and another incision from the sternum down to the pubic bone.”
“For what purpose?”
“So that we can view the internal organs of the deceased. We do this to find any evidence not seen on the outside of the body. It also lets us look at any damage done to the organs that may or may not relate to the death of the deceased in some way.”
“Good. Will you be making a ‘Y’ or ‘T’ cut?”
“A ‘Y,’ I think. I feel that it allows me more room to maneuver and see everything all at once. It may be illusion, but I feel like I’m seeing more all at once with the ‘Y’ incision.”
“That is my preference and thinking for it as well. Before we do that, however, make a hypothesis; considering we just spent the last seven hours removing budding flowers from this boy’s entire epidermal area, what are we likely to see once we open him up? If the outside is so unusual, what kind of internal damage or mutation do you believe we’ll find?”
Riley looks down at the body and strokes his chin. It is a good question and one I don’t know that I’d be able to answer myself. The world has been knocked out of tilt; the things once thought unbelievable and impossible have become possible, have become truth. He and I could have two completely different guesses as to what the boy’s insides look like and it’s possible we’ll both be wrong. We’ve gotten used to being unsurprised by surprises.
Riley opens his mouth to speak, then closes it again as if unsure. He does this twice while staring up and down the length of the cadaver. He shuts his eyes and runs a newly gloved hand along the distended pores of the abdomen. “Considering the unnatural nature of the symptoms, I am hesitant to make a hypothesis. However, I think there is the strong possibility that many of the organs, while no longer working, are being utilized as fertilized bases in the same way as the epidermis.”
“Meaning what, exactly?” I ask, genuinely curious.
“I think we may find another kind of floral ecosystem covering the organs. Perhaps not the same type as the outer layer of skin, but I think the possibility of something else entirely is not out of bounds in this situation.”
“Interesting. I’ll take that idea a step further. I’ll say that the organs have themselves turned into their own form of floral ecosystems, not that they are simply covered in flora.”
Riley looked up. “Do you mean to say that you believe his body has transformed into a kind of postmortem ecosystem? That his lungs have ceased to be lungs and have instead become one kind of vegetative host, his liver another, so on and so on? That he has become, in effect, a host body containing a photosynthetic microcosm?”
“That I do. Loser buys the winner a nice bottle of single-malt?” I ask with a grin over the cadaver.
“You’re on, doc,” he replies with a wink. Riley grips the scalpel from the utensil tray and starts at the right shoulder, slicing through the dead skin slowly across the chest to the breastbone. A second cut from the left shoulder meets the first and then a slow downward stroke towards the pelvic area. Riley’s hands shake imperceptibly as he pulls the skin flaps up and out delicately, exposing the inner workings of the deceased boy. As he peels back the third flap, we let out a collective gasp. We see everything; we understand nothing. My last night in the morgue will be one to remember and one I will recount over and over before my death. However, no one will believe me when I tell them.
“Riley?”
“Yeah, doc?” he whispers back.
“This would be a good time to start taking detailed notes. Very detailed notes.”
“Yeah. Should I go get your single-malt now or should we wait?” he asks.
We both succumb to nervous laughter as Riley grabs the camera and starts snapping detailed pictures. I look up at the clock. I had planned on being home by now, sitting down to a celebratory dinner with my wife, but this was far too interesting to leave now.
“Finish taking photographic evidence, then go and grab that bottle while I call my wife to let her know I’ll be late.”
Riley looks up in shock. “Are you messing with me? A test of sorts?”
I shake my head, smile. “Not at all. It appears that it will be a long night and this,” I say, waving my hand over the body, “is far too interesting to leave alone tonight. Wouldn’t you agree…Doc?”
Adam "Bucho" Rodenberger is a recent MFA in Writing graduate from the University of San Francisco. He is working on several large projects, but is mostly focused on a collection of surreal / post-apocalyptic short stories titled "Scaring the Stars Into Submission."
(A Prologue to 'Scaring the Stars Into Submission')
…a white lily blooms up slowly from between the blue lips of a dead boy. It is fitting, perhaps, that this is how my tenure here ends, that my long career of deaths stacked upon each other ends on the final image of a blossoming flower whose roots, I imagine, spread out deep inside the cadaver on the table. For the briefest of moments, I allow myself to visualize the thin tendrils snaking down into the lungs to tickle the alveoli.
The boy is not quite a teenager. He is old enough to be in that awkward place where one finds themselves before ever truly finding themselves – that place where confidence wavers like long blades of summer grass – around others the same age. Minus the normal discoloration of a lifeless body, he is pale and seems to have spent little to no time out in the sun, which makes the lily’s appearance all the more stark and shocking. Its pure white petals against his washed out dermis is a contrast I’m sure to never forget.
He is neither skinny nor muscular, but somewhere in between. I’m guessing he may play an indoor sport or simply has a high metabolism; his physique has tone, but not due to spending hours in a weight room. Appropriately manicured nails on both the toes and the fingers, no obvious injuries from childhood are apparent and no scars to speak of. He is sixty-five inches in length and weighs approximately one hundred and thirteen pounds, give or take for swelling and decomposition.
I move my hands up his right calf and notice out of the corner of my eye another lily sprouting, oh so slow, from his left ear. This one is pale pink and it opens, timid, unfurling its petals as if to test the surrounding air first. It is a delicate and careful unwrapping of a strange gift from an even stranger place. This time, I imagine its tendril-like roots finding purchase around the tympanic membrane, but originating deep inside the snail-shaped cochlea. If the boy were alive, would he be able to describe the sound of blooming?
Another lily, of lightest blue, stems from his other ear. Two more erupt from the mouth and one from each nostril, all different hues. It is spring-time in fast forward, a nature movie splayed out on my table with each scene faster than the previous one. Tiny lily buds poke through his pores and fatten, spreading outward easily from the decay into beauty. He is no longer a cadaver; he is an ecosystem, a compost pile returning his skin to the earth that bore him. After several long minutes, it is not so much a body on my examining table as it is a mound of someone’s perfect garden. The explosion of color erupting from him is astounding, but that it is coming from within him forces me to sit and take stock of the moment.
I sit on the metal rolling chair, stunned. The lilies have made a grave of him, an altar of flora and fauna smothering him in color as if painted on and left to mummify below their stems and stamens. His is certainly not the first death I’ve seen that has evolved into a post-mortem surreality, but this is probably the most poetic I’ve ever witnessed. I feel like allowing myself, for the first time in forty-seven years, to sob uncontrollably at the majesty of this tiny living meadow on my examination table.
I almost want to leave him there in peace for the examiner replacing me as a matter of respect. I don’t want to cut this boy open now. I want to leave him be. I want to leave him for the generation coming after me, I want them to see what death has become over the last decade. I want them to understand that death is not as easy as it used to be and that the living seem to understand this better now. I want my replacement to walk in and see this, to be as struck as I am by the profundity of the situation, to be as mind-boggled and awe-struck at the possibility of things they’ve never imagined before.
Each body comes in a little different these days, turned in ways that make anatomy books irrelevant, outdated, written by some subspecies of a culture long since moved on. Limbs twisted out into irregular shapes, orifices blown up and out, sprouting one tragic, sometimes grotesque, art project after another. What was once a random occurrence is now the norm, if that is even the proper word. Man, woman, child, pet…they’ve all become the world’s playthings. Toy vessels caught up in the maelstrom that rages around us now.
It’s hard to pinpoint the first influx of oddities, but I remember one of the first very well. He had only been in office two years before coming into my examining room. I remember watching him on the television month after month, thinking he looked different each time, worse. Like something was physically eating away at him. This was no ordinary graying of the hair on the temples or wrinkling of the skin around the sleepless eyes, this was something else and I’m sure other people saw it as well. Until the President was released into my care, I had no idea how bad things had gotten or how bad they were going to get…
But that was the beginning. I have given up hope that we are nearing the end, but the end of what, I wonder? Is this a new step in an evolutionary staircase? If so, is the staircase leading up or down? Impossible to tell when an autopsy requires garden shears and leather gloves as opposed to latex and a scalpel.
I hear the quiet swish of the examination door behind me. My replacement has arrived. I have been trying to impart my years of knowledge upon him in the span of a month, but even I am at a loss as to how to explain the body bouquet before me. I close my eyes and inhale; the normal, white sterility of the room has been replaced by the aroma of a spring morning. Considering the source, it’s oddly comforting.
“Morning, Doc,” he says, oblivious to the meadow-covered cadaver.
I nod without turning. “Riley.”
“Good weekend?”
“Quiet, but yes.”
He hangs his coat on the wall and tosses his shoulder-bag next to the desk. I hear the buttons on the front of his lab jacket clasp together and soon he’s standing next to me. His cologne is strong, but is soon overpowered by the body. “Wow…” he whispers. “Art project?”
“Body.”
Disbelief. “No.”
“Oh very much yes. He bloomed not five minutes before you walked in. Teenage boy. Damndest thing I’ve ever seen.” Riley reached out to touch one of the lilies, but I swatted his hand away. “Gloves first. Always.”
“Yes sir.”
Once prepped, Riley stands on the other side of the body, eyes wide but observant. A smart kid, but with a tendency to be smart in the mouth sometimes. I have stopped trying to break him of this habit. With this being my last day, I’m more concerned that he sticks to proper procedure than proper social etiquette.
“How is this even possible, Doc?”
I shake my head. “I have a feeling you’ll see more of this kind of thing once I leave. Not necessarily this kind of flowering specifically, but cadavers covered or filled with substances and things our anatomy books and science journals have never seen before. I don’t understand what this influx of strangeness portends, but it feels like it’s happening with more regularity. I would urge you, starting from this moment, to be delicate and deliberate with your note-taking on each body from here on out. You may find it of the utmost urgency later.”
We look up at each other over the floral mound. Tufts of dark hair spill out from beneath his surgical cap. The look in his eyes is one of a man who has just been dropped off a bridge into raging waters.
“The important thing is to remain objective. No matter how bizarre the cadaver or case may be, you *must* be on top of your game, Riley. Too many people depend upon the work done in this basement. Do you understand?”
He swallows. “I do, sir, yes.”
“Good. We do this one together, but you’re the lead. Today, I am *your* assistant. Understand that since we are in such unfamiliar territory here, I don’t know that there is a wrong way to approach this, but I will constantly ask why you are choosing to do something. I want to hear the logic behind your every movement. Now, what would you do first in this situation?”
Riley impresses me over the next hour. Before he touches any of the surgical tools, he examines the flowers, locates their exact phylum and genus, physically examines the human pores that have released them into our presence; he understands the origins of the flowers in the physical world so that he can better understand their strange existence here before us. With hands I once believed indelicate, he clips a single stem and blossom only to have it quickly replaced. The new bud slips up through the old stem and blossoms within seconds. We look up at each other, bemused.
“I’d like to try something,” he says after a brief silence.
“What are you thinking?”
“Treat it like a weed. Or a virus. A cancer, even. Get at the root, expunge the entire source, perhaps prevent another from taking its place.” I nod, wishing I’d thought of it first. “I think that’s a solid idea. Have at it.”
He grips the base of the stem and begins to pull slowly. It doesn’t budge at first, but then slowly gives way as slick white roots erupt out of the pore. He holds the blossom in his hand and we wait, we watch. No replacement flower is forthcoming. Riley hoots in excitement and I clap once.
“Well done! Let’s hope the idea sticks for all the others,” I say.
We both begin to pluck the stems. Each one trails behind it a clumped network of the slick white tendrils. That so much non-human material is being pulled from the cadaver is as astounding as the initial visual it provided. Soon, we have one of the empty examination tables full of multi-hued flowers. It takes us close to an entire day, but by the end, the cadaver looks like a cadaver should, albeit with distended, inflamed pores across his entire body. Riley exhales loud and slow as he removes his gloves and wipes his brow of pooled sweat. I pull one of the rolling chairs over to the table and slump down onto it easily, weary and glad that we could finally give the boy some small appearance of normalcy. I’ve explained this to Riley before, that though it is the mortician’s job to make the body perfect again, there’s nothing that says we can’t try to keep it intact for whatever family may come down to our corner of the basement. It’s a respect thing. I desperately hope he remembers long after I’m gone.
“What now?” I ask him across the table. He puts on a new pair of gloves and wheels the utensil table closer.
“Now…the incisions from both shoulders to the sternum and another incision from the sternum down to the pubic bone.”
“For what purpose?”
“So that we can view the internal organs of the deceased. We do this to find any evidence not seen on the outside of the body. It also lets us look at any damage done to the organs that may or may not relate to the death of the deceased in some way.”
“Good. Will you be making a ‘Y’ or ‘T’ cut?”
“A ‘Y,’ I think. I feel that it allows me more room to maneuver and see everything all at once. It may be illusion, but I feel like I’m seeing more all at once with the ‘Y’ incision.”
“That is my preference and thinking for it as well. Before we do that, however, make a hypothesis; considering we just spent the last seven hours removing budding flowers from this boy’s entire epidermal area, what are we likely to see once we open him up? If the outside is so unusual, what kind of internal damage or mutation do you believe we’ll find?”
Riley looks down at the body and strokes his chin. It is a good question and one I don’t know that I’d be able to answer myself. The world has been knocked out of tilt; the things once thought unbelievable and impossible have become possible, have become truth. He and I could have two completely different guesses as to what the boy’s insides look like and it’s possible we’ll both be wrong. We’ve gotten used to being unsurprised by surprises.
Riley opens his mouth to speak, then closes it again as if unsure. He does this twice while staring up and down the length of the cadaver. He shuts his eyes and runs a newly gloved hand along the distended pores of the abdomen. “Considering the unnatural nature of the symptoms, I am hesitant to make a hypothesis. However, I think there is the strong possibility that many of the organs, while no longer working, are being utilized as fertilized bases in the same way as the epidermis.”
“Meaning what, exactly?” I ask, genuinely curious.
“I think we may find another kind of floral ecosystem covering the organs. Perhaps not the same type as the outer layer of skin, but I think the possibility of something else entirely is not out of bounds in this situation.”
“Interesting. I’ll take that idea a step further. I’ll say that the organs have themselves turned into their own form of floral ecosystems, not that they are simply covered in flora.”
Riley looked up. “Do you mean to say that you believe his body has transformed into a kind of postmortem ecosystem? That his lungs have ceased to be lungs and have instead become one kind of vegetative host, his liver another, so on and so on? That he has become, in effect, a host body containing a photosynthetic microcosm?”
“That I do. Loser buys the winner a nice bottle of single-malt?” I ask with a grin over the cadaver.
“You’re on, doc,” he replies with a wink. Riley grips the scalpel from the utensil tray and starts at the right shoulder, slicing through the dead skin slowly across the chest to the breastbone. A second cut from the left shoulder meets the first and then a slow downward stroke towards the pelvic area. Riley’s hands shake imperceptibly as he pulls the skin flaps up and out delicately, exposing the inner workings of the deceased boy. As he peels back the third flap, we let out a collective gasp. We see everything; we understand nothing. My last night in the morgue will be one to remember and one I will recount over and over before my death. However, no one will believe me when I tell them.
“Riley?”
“Yeah, doc?” he whispers back.
“This would be a good time to start taking detailed notes. Very detailed notes.”
“Yeah. Should I go get your single-malt now or should we wait?” he asks.
We both succumb to nervous laughter as Riley grabs the camera and starts snapping detailed pictures. I look up at the clock. I had planned on being home by now, sitting down to a celebratory dinner with my wife, but this was far too interesting to leave now.
“Finish taking photographic evidence, then go and grab that bottle while I call my wife to let her know I’ll be late.”
Riley looks up in shock. “Are you messing with me? A test of sorts?”
I shake my head, smile. “Not at all. It appears that it will be a long night and this,” I say, waving my hand over the body, “is far too interesting to leave alone tonight. Wouldn’t you agree…Doc?”
Adam "Bucho" Rodenberger is a recent MFA in Writing graduate from the University of San Francisco. He is working on several large projects, but is mostly focused on a collection of surreal / post-apocalyptic short stories titled "Scaring the Stars Into Submission."