Chapter Text
Jarring clanking, of the metallic kind, accompanied by repetitive shuffling cuts through the constant insect-like buzzing of busted fluorescent lights above. Then a snap, then another one, indicating the stretch of unused rubber, before more ear-grating rattling. Within the three perfectly symmetrical rows of light tubes above, two of them on the far right row entirely refused to work.
He had near obsessively lined everything that was needed for the procedure a night before, as he always did without fail. Regardless, his eternally calculative nature ensured multiple verifications were due, hastily rummaging through surgical steel and sterile tissues.
The flipping of pages, a slight grimace on his aged features at the details of death. The mortician's glaciar gaze lingers on the tiny black and white picture attached on the upper right corner of the subject's page, almost as if it were mocking him with her youthful complexion. As big and clear as they appeared, the girl's eyes held an unfathomably deep, lingering sadness in them, the kind that seemed to pierce through your entire being, transcending even the boundaries of photographs. He could swear if he were to peek into her lifeless windows now he would find it there still, like a neverending plague, persisting even in death. Another grimace, now upon looking at her birthdate, then towards her soulless visage mere centimeters away.
The flicker of unstable neon lights does nothing to help her stiff, ghastly appearance on the embalming table as he stands over her unmoving form, pondering deeply. For once, an indefinite number of questions force their way into his burdened mind, scalpel clutched into his dominant hand just a little too tight for comfort, to the point where the rubber material of his glove was audibly whining, the noise stabbing through the permanent, desolate buzzing ambient of the sterile room.
Many a tragedy he had bared witness to along the years spent within his morbid working spaces, and yet he was yet to see something of the nature of the case in front of him. The whole concept of it was simply scandalous, and its particularities were equally as nerve-racking.
Briefly, he remembers barely getting a hold of her relatives after insistently phoning their individual numbers for far more days than it usually was necessary. After a conversation as short-lived as the woman currently lying on the mortuary table, the man decided that they were, for lack of a better word, undeserving. It all became jarringly crystal-clear as they stated their unashamed indifference towards the burial site.
Do what you will, their words relentlessly bounced inside his ringing ears while the twinkling blade of his finely sharpened scalpel hovered above the area of her right shoulder. He recalled how the documents stated that there was no suspicion of foul play and yet nobody bothered to declare her death despite her body being found not even two miles away from her family's backyard. That fact alone singlehandedly confirmed all of his doubts regarding the unsettlingly unbothered nature of her kin who had explicitly requested that no further inquiries shall be conducted into her untimely demise, including a standard autopsy.
He paces around her eternally asleep body, restlessly, as he thinks upon a clear reason for her brash actions. However, taking into consideration the outrageous behavior her own flesh and blood unabashedly exhibited upon receiving the news of her grisly passing, it was safe to rule out quarreling with a lover as a potential motive, amongst other reasons of the same, petty nature. Indeed, this particular case ran far more deeper.
Hesitantly, he reaches out like a disoriented man fully shrouded in darkness and traces the visible marks of the thick rope that encircled her throat like an unforgiving Anaconda snake, touch light as a looming spectre's as if afraid to further break her unfortunate form.
Such a pretty, delicate neck she had, he thinks and it almost induces him blind rage. Not towards her poor carcass, but at what he deemed to be nothing short of unadulterated scum carefully concealing themselves as human and shamelessly walking around into the skin of one. This was in no way natural or usual. No, it was simply unfair.
Loud clanking indicates the scalpel being put on the surgical tray below. The force of it causes the utensil to slide towards the edge, falling and ultimately landing on the cold, tiled ground with an equally as ear-piercing sound. The mortician gives it no mind, instead blankly staring towards the dead woman's pale eyelids as if she were about to get up and start walking again.
But what if, hypothetically, that were to happen?
A most nature-defying thought crosses the man's scheming brain as he rushes to his desk into the nearby room in order to scavenge through various notes and observations he had scribbled over notebooks barely held together by rotten rope and weakened tape. Indeed, this was an unique, isolated case, worthy of being given a second chance. The realization was becoming increasingly apparent with each passing second as he skimmed through jumbled calculations on spotted pages, as tangled and indecipherable for the common man akin to the author's erratic mind. This was, at last, his chance to test his latest triumphs on what seemed like a most compatible subject.
With great might he rushes back into the embalming room, pungent sterile stench hitting his nostrils and barely bothering him as he's long grown used to it, subconsciously assimilating the smell into his sole being as if carrying it on his person at all times.
He picks up her file again in order to check the date and approximate hour of death to confirm his doubts. To most, ten hours since declared dead meant total and utter hopelessness. To him, it only posed as a mere nuisance. Not impossible, but certainly difficult.
A sinister smile tugs at the sharp corners of his mouth for the first time since being faced with his brand new, blank canvas. This time, however, he was to employ an entirely different approach; namely, carefully attempting to put back said canvas until it regained its initial form, breathing life into it instead of taking it apart only to rebuild it for the sake of temporary appearances.
Hushed cackles bounce around into the blank echo of the desolate room as the mortician starts preparing for a procedure completely unlike the one he initially intended on performing. This time, he would succeed. This time, there were no risks. He had all the discretion he could ever wish for.
The flapping of snowy wings and gentle cooing accompany the visceral sound of skin being separated from muscle and muscle from bone, graphically filling up the increasingly strong smelling room while foreign mumbles like unholy mantras said with grotesquely unfathomable glee nauseatingly blur with the rough patting of rain droplets and enraged thunder rattling against the rugged window frames.