City of the Dead

Chapter 9

I placed my mothers' scarf over my nose and mouth as I was ready to perform the autopsy on the warden. Isaac proceeded to do the same and placed his scarf over his nose as well, gloves on hand, and all the tools we needed. I began by cutting all of the clothes off of the warden's corpse, so far his torso seemed to look normal, I then proceeded to cut the pants off, and as I was cutting the fabric, Isaac noticed something.

"Hey, what's that?"

I paused at what I was doing to look where Isaac was pointing at. It was his right ankle, and Isaac noticed an entrance wound. I took a hemostat and tried to see how deep the wound was. But to my surprise, the hemostat trailed up the leg, under the skin. Like something was burrowing up his leg. Could it be Scabies?

"Isaac, can you pass me the scalpel on the tray?"

Isaac handed me the scalpel and I used the blade to follow this burrowing trail, up his leg, past the genitals and up the chest.

"This doesn't look like a normal case of Scabies." I said.

"Is there such a thing as Ancient Egyptian scabies?" Isaac said in a joking manner.

I followed the trail up the neck, around the cheek until there was a superficial wound under the Left eye. It looks like whatever did this, made a new home in his skull.

"Isaac, can you help me open his mouth?"

I grabbed the top of his dental arcade while Isaac pried his bottom jaw open. Once it was open, I took the lamp to see if I could get a better look in there. The man's mouth smelled rotten and his teeth were in horrible condition. I focused more on the left side of his mouth, and I could see a hole under the roof of his mouth, going into the skull. I got up from looking in and said, "I don't think the hit is what killed him and I don't think whatever killed him has left."

I left the tent to grab a saw, hammer and piece of metal from one of the tool kits from the workers near the dig site, when I came back Isaac questioned me. "What are you going to do with that? I positioned the head to look straight to the sky, and said, "Whatever killed the warden, is still in there. I'm going to open his skull and find out."

Isaac's face paled and commented, "I think I'm going to be sick."

I go in with my scalpel to de-skinned the top of the head to expose the skull. I then grabbed the saw and made the first cut into the skull, of course this wasn't going to be easy. I started sawing into the frontal lobe of the skull and when I was able to get a small crease into the skull, I grabbed the hammer and wedged the piece of metal to the skull that I sawed down. With a few hits, you can hear the rest of the skull crack from the pressure. I placed the tools down and pushed my weight towards the piece of metal and just like that the top of the skull was off, along with the warden's brain matter falling along with it.

I covered my nose as I got a whiff of the warden's decaying brain.

"Oh my god, what the hell!" I complained.

"Is that supposed to look like that? said Isaac.

"No, his brain is like mush. Even if that hit would have killed him, it would not have done this. There should have been at least bruising to his brain."

I took a look closer at the mush of brain matter on the table and I was shocked to find what looks to be a bug of some sort.

"Isaac, what did you say about Ancient Egyptian Scabies?"

"Oh don't tell me" as he scoots next to me to see what I'm seeing.

"What the hell is that?" said Isaac

"I don't know, but whatever this thing is, I think it was eating his brain." I said.

"That's disgusting."