Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ How to Be Dead ❯ Corpse is a State of Mind ( Chapter 3 )

Part 3 "Corpse is a State of Mind"

"I’d better be getting a little something for this when pay day rolls around. Retrieving the dead bodies from alleyways is for the cops and necrophiliacs, not me; I’m just the guy who has to fix them up for their nice funeral. And considering the manner of your arrival, buddy," he told the covered corpse in a conversational tone as he patted his foot, walking around the table to find his tools, "there’s probably not going to be a whole many attending."

He laughed to himself at the poor cadaver’s expense as he passed by, reaching for the drawer full of clean gloves. With a sadistic tint to his smile, he pulled them over his hands with a sharp snap as he let go, taunting the dead body just a little.

Hey, a morgue is no lively place, by any stretch. I’ve gotta have my fun somehow or another.

Pulling a white apron over his head and tying it behind his back, Duo shuffled around on the cold, cement floors for a few seconds, finishing the knot, making sure that he wouldn’t get blood on his uniform again. Strolling into the Laundromat with a basket full of bloodied shirts never quite made the impression he was looking for, and just getting the stains out was enough pain in itself. His footsteps echoed back to the closed door leading out to the reception area as he turned around, pulling his braided hair securely over his shoulder and even brushing back some of his stray strands. He caught his breath in his throat, somehow upset about the lethargic trickle of blood that began to drip from the table to the drain at the foot than he would have thought. But it was a dead body, and he worked at the morgue. Blood was a necessary evil in his line of work.

He readjusted his gloves, pulling them just a little further up his forearm. Under the dripping, and now bloodstained tarp was a dead body that had once been someone living, family to someone, maybe even a lover and best friend. He owed it to the poor fool to at least if any teary-eyed loved ones happened to show up looking for him—but not really wanting to find him in a temperature-controlled steel box in the wall.

"Alright, pal," he told the corpse as he wheeled the petite metal cart housing the examination tools over with him, keeping it close to his hip. "Time to get to know each other better."

He ripped off the tarp with few theatrics, listening to the collected water drip off it and down into the build-in drain at the foot of the examination table. Tossing it to the floor, out of the way, Duo saw for the first time the murder victim’s pale white face under the stark white lights. He opened his mouth in amazement, letting forth a low, impressed whistle between his lips as he moved the tousled, dark bangs out of the defunct face to more fully grasp its beauty.

"My, my," Duo wondered out loud. "What you’d look like with a little color in ya, I wonder?"

His latex covered fingertips traced the almond-shaped eyes, unable to help himself, and then traced the thick, stern brows above them, free of whatever stress that had harassed him before his death. His very untimely death.

His young face was ashen white but nearly perfectly sculpted: a small, Asian nose, enticingly high, exotic cheekbones that added to the exquisite shape of his face, and a pair of thin, bloodstained lips set in a peaceful expression. The dark, chocolate brown hair splayed out around that face in a ragged corona and the long, muscular neck didn’t make him any tougher on the eyes, either.

"You’re just another fantastic lady killer, aren’t you, pal? Well, you were, that is."

He took away his hand to examine the rest of the body and had to make sure the air-conditioning was working than once—Christ, this was one very good-looking but very deceased guy, his entire body covered with nicks and cuts and bruises and dried blood. And what a body it must have been when it had been living, breathing, and moving, he thought to himself. He shamelessly ran his eyes up and down again.

"I’m quite the lucky guy today. Usually I get the fat ones," Duo chuckled as he ambled alongside the table.

He trailed his gloved hand down the pale skin of his nearest leg, stopping just short of the grievous gash halfway down that perfected thigh. It was as if someone had simply slapped it down and taken a kitchen knife to it, creating a ragged, vividly red slash that encompassed his whole leg. Like they’d sawed at it. Duo let out a little admiring hiss at the injury.

Beneath the stark industrial lights, the amount of blood on the cadaver was shockingly relieved against the ashen white skin, and Duo traced a trail of blood slowly dripping away from the leg wound. He squinted at it for a second. That was too much blood. He surmised that the nicking of his femoral artery was what had bled him to death in the first place, if he wasn’t already killed by some other method, judging by the extent of the other various injuries scattered across his body—bruises, cuts, gashes, and even what appeared to be a glancing blow from a gunshot.

Duo made a twisted face as he leaned over the naked cadaver, his black work clothes opposed by the white apron he wore, staring critically at the steady trickle of blood on the gleaming examination table.

"You’re not supposed to do that. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, my friend, but you’re dead as a doornail. And you should be pretty much bled out."

He then put one hand on either side of the nearly severed thigh to help further examine the femoral artery, which seemed to be the source of the inexplicable red liquid. As he felt the fine muscle tone between his fingers, lifting the appendage just for the kicks of it and putting one hand under the foot to display it fully, in all its ruptured glory, he lifted an eyebrow and glanced over to the pale, motionless face.

"What a shame," he muttered, turning his attention back to the beautiful extremity again. "I work so hard for my scrawny legs, and here you come, dropped, dead as dead can get, on my doorstep with the heavenly legs I’ve always dreamed of. Not fair. If you were alive, I think I’d have to envy you," he offered the dead body with a chuckle as he dropped the appendage, shaking his head. "And maybe take you out for dinner."

The room was silent around them, him and the cadaver, the doors with the misted, square windows set at chest level shut, the walls enclosing them full of dead bodies and tiny, gleaming, steel doors. The storm still rumbled outside, like the dissatisfied voicing of some horrible beast in the skies, the lightning his teeth bared in frustration. Every few seconds or so, in increasing proximity to one another, the rolls of thunder would vibrate in the very building, up through the cement into Duo’s living toes, through the metal and into the pale cadaver. He remained there silently for a minute, looking bemusedly at the white skin of the leg he held, not saying a thing for once to the body.

And out in the reception, the television screen flickered once, dimmed, flickered again, and finally came back to life just as the credits began rolling, one final frame of a white and terrified face blackening out to the dramatic crescendo of music.

Duo snapped from his mild reverie, shaking his head, staring blankly down at the cadaver. He had to laugh at himself, at growing so absent-minded. "I’d better hurry before you decompose, huh?" he asked the corpse, thankfully not expecting any sort of answer.

As he turned his head, he noticed a little blood weeping from the corner of the anonymous body’s mouth—a little internal backup, he labeled it, and simply wiped it away. It didn’t become him at all. Duo smiled to himself as he started some more small talk with the cadaver—he was lonely, so sue him. He’d become preoccupied, forgotten about the blood, and it was slowly but steadily increasing without his notice.

As he was reaching for a tool at his hip, he went rambling on to his lifeless friend, as if coaxing him through an uncomfortable procedure at some clinic. "Don’t get me wrong, I like you and all, but you know what would really suck? If you just suddenly sprang back to life and scared the living daylights out of me," he joked.

Though he truly meant it only as one, he still hesitated and looked over at the cadaver, awaiting him to shoot bolt upright on the table, taking in a horrific gasp of air, eyes wide—what color would they be, anyway?—but he didn’t move and remained completely dead.

Giving a theatric sigh of relief and grinning, he just patted the body on the leg and reached over for an instrument to start his examination. He bit at his lip as he tried to pick out the right one. "Thanks, man. I’d like to stay out of a cheaply made horror movie tonight, if you wouldn’t mind—"

"Would you mind if I asked you to sew up my leg in exchange, then?"

"FUCK!"

Duo screamed, hearing the voice whispering near his ear, brushing the fine hairs just near his ear, hot, tangible, and very much alive. His entire body flung itself backward with the eruption of shock that began pouring through him like fire, as if someone had just poured boiling water down his mouth and pinched it close. The scalpel in his hand went flying backward, striking the wall with a violent sound and clattering to the tiled floors. The floor flew up to catch him and he was instantaneously scrabbling backwards on hands and knees, filled with his blind reaction, eyes wide. He was sure he was going to have to crawl back and get his heart, because it felt like it had been forcibly propelled out of his mouth. It was beating so fast it was one terrific throb throughout his body.

Only when his back hit the wall, almost forceful enough to bruise it, did his senses catch up and tell his brain that he was staring at the beautiful corpse sitting up on the examining table, lit under the fluorescent lights like some twisted messiah in a corona of white. He blinked at Duo once, then twice.

"Well, will you?" he asked.

Duo could not breathe as his jaws worked to catch the air. Fish-like.

He could do nothing before the dead body moved, as if to hop off the table. But then he had plenty of energy to frantically snatch up the scalpel lying at his side, fling it at the moving, talking, blinking body, and bury it in the side of his head. A strangled sound escaped him as he finally managed that breath and bolted up, flinging himself for the door for what felt like a matter of life and death. It fell a tad short, though, and Duo Maxwell gracefully fell to the floor, bashing his forehead squarely into the tiles, earning him a row of perfectly proportioned imprints from the tiles across the face and a trip into unconsciousness.