Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ How to Be Dead ❯ Riddle Wrapped in an Enigma ( Chapter 2 )

Part 2 "Riddle Wrapped in an Enigma"

Duo heard the knock at the back door and, with a little foresight, he would have immediately labeled it as trouble and ignored it completely. Even without that future knowledge, he made a skeptical face. It had to be some damned kid trying to pull a prank on him—no one ever came to the morgue by the back steps. Bodies came through the front only, that was policy. So naturally, he walked to the back door expecting only some obnoxious kid with a rattling spray can.

The thick, square windows lit up again with bluish-white lightning and the overcast heavens rumbled in the black. As he walked down the short corridor to the double doors, he could see the never-ending buckets of rain falling, highlighted by a distant white streetlight. A second later, another bolt of lightning slithered across the sky, branching out into the underbelly of the clouds. He squinted at the glass as he drew closer, trying to look through the rain-coated window, when the culprit who was responsible for pulling him from his comfortable spot for a game of ding-dong-ditch stood up. He seemed to almost just appear in the window.

Duo saw only the shadowed face, obscured by a baseball cap and dark clothing, but the entire stance was that of secrecy, of being caught red-handed in something undesirable. The person caught sight of Duo approaching and rushed down the stairs toward the back alley.

It was not a feeling that Duo liked. A wave of defensive tension filled him—he was all alone in the downtown morgue, on the lonely graveyard shift—so naturally he rushed toward the door and yelled at the intruder.

"Hey! What are you doing out here? Hey!"

It only seemed to spur the shadow of a man on and he began his escape down the rain-soaked alleyway. A flash of honey blonde hair swung in a long ponytail under the cap. A girl? Duo swore as he struggled with the locked door and only managed to shove it open when the culprit had already turned the corner, the water from the puddles spitting up at her feet as she disappeared in the sheets of rain and the darkness of midnight.

"Hey!" Duo yelled after her, leaning out the door and scoffing as she disappeared in a hurry. "Yeah, real funny, missy! It’s way past your bedtime, princess!" He shook his head, feeling a chill from the cold air run through him to the bone.

He took a step forward to glance around the door, keeping an eye out for any troublesome companions she might have conveniently lurking in the shadows, when the door hit something.

Sudden images of someone crouched behind the door, knife at the ready jumped to mind. With considerably less courage than before, the lone worker peeked his head around the door. He found himself squinting in the onslaught of rain at a body lying at the top of the stairs, wrapped up in a crinkled blue tarp. The rain poured down upon it like bullets, also silently striking the pale, dead hand that protruded, clutching lifelessly at nothing.

Duo looked to the right, then to the left. He looked at the tarp-covered body and ran his eyes up and down it crookedly.

"She could have left a note. Even orphans get at least that much."

~*~

The door opened again a few minutes later and the wheels of the stretcher clacked as it was rolled out onto the stoop in the pouring rain. Duo pushed it to the side, curled the raincoat around him, and half-way closed the door, shivering from the cold as he looked down. The body still lay there, fully dead. It wasn’t really about to go anywhere.

"And who would?" he muttered to no one. "Nobody in this weather, that’s for sure."

As the thunderstorm raged on, threatening to obscure the only sources of light with thick sheets of rain, Duo crouched down, cursing to himself. There were puddles of water pooling in the folds and creases of the tarp and streaming from the edges down the stairs. And now that he was closer, with a growing grimace, he could see the traces of blood on the exposed white fingertips. The nails were ragged and torn. There’d either been a struggle, or he’d bitten his fingernails to death.

Duo frowned down at it. What could have happened to this poor person to merit them some kind of awful death and then to be unceremoniously dumped on the back steps of a morgue? What, they weren’t even important enough to be at least dropped off in front?

The shivering morgue worker realized that it was probably not a natural death, seeing how it hadn’t come in a ambulance, and that it was probably not a very good idea to even get involved if it did indeed turn out to be murder—he’d be in deep shit if his supervisor caught wind—but he felt a little sympathy for the poor thing nonetheless. The least he could do was get it inside.

He shifted a little closer, leaned down and sniffed. At least the body wasn’t starting to rot. Then it would just be shit out of luck. He made a policy of avoiding decomposing bodies whenever he could, and it wasn’t really his responsibility if the body didn’t arrive with the ambulance or police.

At the same time, another bolt of lightning flashed, and the consequential thunder roared, but somehow it seemed even angrier, and the rolling purr stretched clean across the dark sky, even rumbled in the earth. Duo glanced up, then adjusted the hood over his head before he started to lift the twisted body off the concrete.

"You know, you’re damned lucky I’ve got nothing better to do, else I would have just left you for the next shift, and you probably wouldn’t have been a happy camper then. I’m just too nice for my own damn good," he grumbled to himself.

He had his arms scooped under the shoulder and the leg, cautiously—he didn’t want to get it wet, thus speeding up the rotting process, but the more pressing reason was that he didn’t think he could really stand the sight of a dead body if it wasn’t on a sterile operating table, tagged, and in plenty of light. He was a mere mortal, after all, and who the hell liked looking at corpses?

He prepared himself to pick it up, let out a deep breath, and tensed his muscles to lift.

"Oof! Christ!" he let out as he struggled against the weight, managing with a little less than ease to raise the covered cadaver up to chest level and quickly turn around. The body flopped onto the stretcher, which was drenched by the rain now, and the wheels rattled.

Duo straightened out with a rush of air out of his lungs. "You’re heavy for being such a scrawny thing, man!" he complained, tapping his fist against his back and cracking it. He looked over at the pale arm that hung down from underneath the tarp as it lay bonelessly on the stretcher.

"You must have had some courteous murderer, pal, and I’m being pretty generous to ya, too," he told the body. "You’d better say ‘thank you,’ man. This isn’t in my job description. Plus, I’m probably going to have nightmares from this, so you had better be worth it," he muttered.

He dutifully turned the stretcher around and faced the doorway. But before he started to wheel the unwanted present inside, he hesitated, catching sight of something dark on the white and fairly muscular arm that hung over the side. He reached out to look at it more closely—it seemed like a tattoo of some kind, but it was impossible make out. He came close enough to see and squinted, more confused than unable to see.

7 7

What the hell did that mean? Reaching out without knowing it, he stopped himself a moment later.

"Ah, shit! What am I thinking?" he squeaked suddenly, drawing his hand back and shaking it out. "I have no idea where this guy has been—I need gloves, dammit!"

He made a slightly twisted up face and put his hands securely on the stretcher to push it inside, very grateful to be coming inside from the pouring rain.