Crypts & Cannibals: A Collection of Short Horror Stories

The Cannibal in the Morgue {Part 1 of 6}

The paramedics flopped the disfigured body awkwardly onto the examination table, chuckling and yapping rudely about the damage the steering wheel had inflicted on her misshapen fake breasts.

Dr. Marcus Arilio shooed the obnoxious paramedics out of his morgue. Such vile attitudes toward auto accident victims, indeed any victim, was not to be tolerated.

To an untrained eye, the cause of her death might appear obvious. After all, if your car slams into a brick wall at 90 MPH, you're very likely to die. However, an accident like that also raises questions. Detective Famalo ordered the autopsy of Marta Skyksamenski immediately.

Once the door had sealed behind the paramedics, Dr. Arilio began his work. His hands moved automatically, positioning the body on the table correctly, snipping quickly to remove the bloodied clothing, and drawing samples of bodily fluids.

His magnifying glass moved meticulously, scrutinizing every inch of the poor naked woman. With nothing more than Detective Famalo's "something feels off, I don't think that this is just an accident," to work from, Dr. Arilio committed to being extra thorough.

He wheeled the instruments of his trade next to the body, selecting his favorite scalpel to begin.

"Perfect," he mouthed as he ran his left hand over the mangled body.

The song of his scalpel sang its opening lines, followed by an odious symphony of savaging instruments, bone saw, forceps, scissors, and the like. Organs extracted and weighed, more samples collected, each step of the process meticulously dictated into the microphone hanging from the ceiling.

Detective Famalo gagged gratingly as she walked into the morgue glaring at him. "Smells like hell itself in here," she proclaimed while attempting to suppress a cough. "And you look like the devil himself. You are the sloppiest butcher I have ever seen."

Dr. Arilio looked down at his scrubs, chuckling to himself at the unknown irony in her words. Blood and bits of the woman formed grotesque patterns where the various power instruments had scattered them. His sleeves were coated black almost to the elbows from blood and bodily fluids.

"We'll know for sure when the lab results come back," Dr. Arilio announced tritely as he tried to brush some of the drying bits from his chest, "Everything here points to massive blunt force trauma with the damage to the head, the likely immediate cause of death."

Detective Famalo turned and rushed to the door, "Let me know when you have the lab results and clean this place up."

Dr. Arilio followed her, but only to the door. When he was certain she was gone, he opened the door and looked down the long hospital basement corridor. Empty.

He peeled off his latex gloves and picked up his large gym bag. The stench of sweat made his nose scrunch as he dug beneath his damp, musty workout clothes. The soft-sided cooler fit perfectly snug in the bottom of the bag and had more than enough room if he didn't get too greedy.

He carefully carved a small, fist-sized chunk of muscle from the woman's mangled thigh, removed her entire left bicep, and carefully dissected what could become two perfect roasts from her hindquarters. One of the kidneys and the liver joined the muscles inside the cooler. He returned to his official duties and replaced all the other organs in her body, except for the heart.

The woman's heart was gorgeous, thought Dr. Arilio if such a thing can be said about a heart. He'd never tried heart before; there's a first for everything. He packed it into the cooler gingerly and replaced the cooler in the bottom of his gym bag.

Clumps of gauze and other pliable trash were replaced for missing muscle. His overly pristine stitches closed the lacerations hiding any evidence that elements from the inside were missing. It didn't matter that much. A closed casket or cremation was more than likely, so the risk was minimal and acceptable.

To be continued...