I stood outside the metal double doors. Being in a morgue at 11:30 in the evening didn’t excite me at all. If it wasn’t so important I wouldn’t have come here tonight. It’s not that I was scared of dead bodies, far from it. After all, what can a dead person do to me? And so I went inside and turned on the lights. It revealed a huge room with only the color of white and silver. Gurneys were aligned in neat rows and there were a dozen or more sinks. Farther into the room, on the left side, walls were the color of shiny silver. They were freezers that stored dead bodies, but to me it looked more like file cabinets. On the right side were gurneys where dead bodies in zippered bags lay. Earlier today I stood beside a medical examiner and helped him prep and perform autopsy on a dead body. Funny how a while ago this place was filled w/ dead bodies opened up. This time it was clean as it can ever be. But the smell of formaldehyde seemed to never leave this place. The smell of death was always there.
I stood and glanced around the huge room before me. I need to go get my keys, otherwise how would I be able to get inside my apartment. Of all the places, why had I left it here? As I’ve said, it wasn’t that I was scared of dead bodies, but after a day of slicing and weighing dead people’s body parts I felt a slight apprehension.
I went straight to the office and looked for my keys. They said they left it here but it wasn’t. Where the hell was it? As I was busy overturning everything in that place, I suddenly heard a clanking sound outside. I stood still, waiting for another sound just to make sure I didn’t imagine what I heard. The place was starting to give me the creeps. Again, another clanking sound. I called out and waited for an answer. When none came, I tiptoed outside to see where the noise was coming from.
The door was closed and there was no sign of movement anywhere. If one of the morgue technicians was there, he should have answered when I called out. I turned around and started walking towards the office. Better search for my keys so I can leave already. But before I reached the office, something caught my eye. I stood frozen as I saw one of the zippered bags was open. I felt my skin tingle and my heart beat faster.
No corpse there. Where was it then?
I scanned the room and there to my left was the corpse I was looking for. He was really pale and had a blank but menacing look on his face. It reminded me of zombies I see on Resident Evil minus the oozing gory and disgusting blood and body fluids. He looked at me and started walking towards my direction, scalpel in hand. That was enough for me to forget about my missing keys. I immediately ran towards the exit. I thought morgues should be on hospital basements, not on the top floor for goodness sake. This makes it hard to get away from a zombie wanting to slice me up. I glanced back as I was running towards the elevator, the corpse was out of the morgue and was walking fast towards me.
I saw one of the elevator doors closing and ran inside, I sat slumped on the elevator floor. Before the doors finally closed, I still saw the dead man walking towards the elevator. I leaned on the elevator’s wall and sighed. My hands were still shaking and cold sweat trailed along my forehead. Was that even real or did I just drink too much?
“Are you okay?” I suppressed a scream and saw I wasn’t alone in the elevator. A woman wearing white was there too. One of the doctors I thought. I felt relieved knowing I wasn’t the only living soul in that place. She held out her hand and helped me stand.
“I thought I saw someone walking towards the elevator? One of the morgue technician perhaps. Why did you close the door in such a hurry?”
“Uh..The one you saw..He’s… “ I stopped. This person will only think I’m crazy. I shrugged and smiled meekly instead.
She was looking at me, obviously waiting for a reply.
“You might think I’m crazy but the one you saw there, he’s not one of the morgue technicians. You didn’t see it but there was a tag on his toe. That means he’s already dead. I don’t even understand why he can still walk” I explained. This woman will totally think I’m crazy.
“I see. A toe tag.” She paused and lifted her right foot a little higher to show me what was there. I was so preoccupied with what happened to me I didn’t realize that I was on the top floor, there was no place this woman could’ve come from but on the same floor as I was. I slowly focused my gaze on her bare foot.
“Just like this one?” She asked.
