The door swung open, and Nathan jumped. Sully snorted at him. Pale, hairy, a drawn out face-Sully looked exactly what a morgue attendant should look like. As usual, he wore his bloody apron. Little things were stuck to it on this occasion, and Nathan had no desire to know what they were.
“Got the envelope?”
Nathan handed it to Sully. The dour man stuck it in his back pocket, then bent down and handed Nathan a medium sized Styrofoam box, the lid sealed with tape.
It was steaming.
Nathan held it away from his body, trying not to sniff the rising fumes. Sully laughed.
“Get a move on. You don’t want to have it with you when it thaws and wakes up.”
The color drained from Nathan’s face, and Sully slammed the door. Sully always messed around with him like that. There couldn’t be something actually alive in there.
Right?
Nathan didn’t want to find out. He hurried to his car, placed the box on the roof as he opened the door, and when he went to grab the package it slid out of his hands and hit the ground.
Nathan yelled in surprise. This was the worst thing that had ever happened in his twenty-three years of life.
The package landed on its corner. The impact caused the top to pop off, flapping open like a hinge, the tape still stuck to one edge.
The steam slowly dissipated, revealing the thing inside the box.
Nathan stared down in horror. It was worse than anything he could have imagined. His mind screamed at him to run away, but his legs remained locked and his eyes couldn’t tear away from the nightmare before him.
It was a human head.
The head was severed under the jaw line, packed in smoking dry ice. Two curly wires were stuck in the tear ducts of its open eyes, the other ends attached to a large lantern battery.
And it was opening and closing its mouth.
The scream was in his lungs, filling them, but he couldn’t get it out of his throat. He was so terrified he couldn’t exhale.
There was a soft, rhythmic click click click as the head’s upper and lower teeth met, as if it was chewing.
Or trying to speak.
“Whoops.”
Nathan turned and saw Sully standing next to him. The scream finally came out, but it was more like an asthmatic wheeze, so high-pitched only dogs could hear it.
Sully bent down and picked up the box, holding it under Nathan’s face.
“See? You woke him up. Now it must feed on the blood of the living.”
Nathan’s bladder let loose and the blood drained from his head. He was about to pass out.
Sully snapped the lid on and put the box in the back seat.
“You okay, kid?”
“… it’s… it’s… still alive…”
Sully laughed and clapped Nathan on the shoulder. “It’s not alive. Some doctor’s going to use it for experimental research. The battery keeps a small electric charge in the brain so the tissue doesn’t decay, and the jaw moving is just a reflex.”
Nathan began to sob. Sully frowned, clearly embarrassed.
“Look, kid, it’s no big deal. No harm done. You want to come in, get cleaned up?”
Nathan shook his head, his hand reaching into his wet jeans for his car keys. Sully took out the envelope Nathan had given him and removed a fifty dollar bill. He shoved it in Nathan’s vest pocket.
“Here, have a nice dinner on me.”
Nathan mumbled a thanks. It was automatic. He didn’t feel thankful at all.
“If there’s anything left, pick up something for our friend here. Maybe he’d like a pack of gum.”
Sully opened his jaw and clicked his teeth together, doing an eerie imitation of the head.
Nathan climbed into the car, oblivious to Sulley’s laughter. He drove in a daze, way over the speed limit, paying no attention to traffic signals. When he got back to headquarters Nathan quit on the spot, and demanded they remove the box from his back seat and take it to DruTech themselves.
The next day he got a job delivering pizzas.
Jack Kilborn
Disturb
Bill had never been to a funeral where it hadn’t rained.
Today was no exception. He huddled under an umbrella, Theena clutching his arm hard enough to bruise it, trying to remain calm while the minister’s droning voice got lost in the wind.
There had been a wake earlier, loud and good natured, pharmaceutical people mingling with politicians, investors, family members. But it was all bad for Bill. The closed casket brought back memories of his wife’s funeral, and several colleagues he hadn’t seen since then felt the need to ask how he was coping.
Theena hadn’t said a word since this morning, when she apologized for not putting on any make-up. Her nonstop crying since then was the reason why.
But he’d managed to stay strong through the wake, for Theena, for himself. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could last. When he’d learned that the funeral was being held at St. Matthew’s it took all of his will power not to walk out on Theena.
He looked to his right, again, over the rows of graves, to a barren tree on a hill a hundred yards away.
His wife was buried under that tree.
Bill hadn’t visited her once since she’d been interred. The scene had been very much like this one, support people mumbling meaningless words of sympathy in the rain.
A procession had formed before Dr. Nikos’s casket, mourners pulling flowers from an arrangement and setting them on top. Bill tried to ease Theena into line, but she refused to move. The people standing to their left had to walk around them.
Finally, adorned with flora, the coffin was lowered into the muddy earth. Theena wailed, a sound like a tortured ghost, and collapsed onto the ground. Bill knelt next to her, cradling her head, feeling his wife watch them from the hill.
Several people came by, including the minister, offering their assistance. Theena simply sobbed. After a while, she and Bill were the only ones left.
The wind got worse, stinging as it slapped their faces. Bill’s pants were soaked to the thigh. He could imagine how cold Theena was, in a black skirt, sitting on the ground in a little ball.
“We have to get you inside.”
“No.”
“Theena, you’ll get sick out here.”
“I’m not leaving Daddy.”
Bill tried to lift her by the armpits, but she fought him. He had an irrational impulse to slap her, make her get up so he could leave, and that made him feel even guiltier than he already was.
“I want to put a flower on his casket.”
She allowed Bill to help her up, and they approached the grave.
The hole was already filling with water. So cold and wet and alone. Awful.
Theena picked a rose and dropped it. The flower bounced indifferently off the casket and fell alongside. Theena shook herself free of Bill’s arms and ran, across the cemetery, towards the parking lot, her face in her hands.
Bill watched her go. He wanted to follow, but his feet had something else in mind. They took him in the other direction, up the hill.
Kristen’s headstone was black marble. All it listed was her full name, her birth date, her death date. The carver had asked Bill if he wanted anything else, a phrase or line.
To sum up a person’s life in one phrase had seemed so pathetic at the time, and Bill had passed. Now he wished he’d put something, anything there, to set it apart from all of the other nondescript graves, rows and rows of them.
“I’m sorry, Kristen. I’m so sorry.”
He cried, letting it all out, sobbing with his whole body like Theena had. He was so overwhelmed with grief that he didn’t notice the two men approach him from behind.
“Well, lookee here, Franco. It’s the Doc’s wife.”
Bill spun around. It was the two thugs who’d almost killed him the day before.
“It’s nice that you visit her, ain’t it Franco?”
Franco put out a palm and shoved Bill backwards. Bill tripped over his wife’s stone and landed hard on his butt.