"Breathe, Alice. Breathe," I whisper as I hug myself, since I am all I have on this side of life. And I thought my cell was the worst place in the world.
The cold creeps up my spine, fluttering like a winter breeze through my blue shirt and jeans. The cold almost bites at the back of my neck. Goosebumps prickle like devil's grass on my skin.
When I am about to move my legs to get off the roller bed I am on, my bare feet give in to numbness. I have no idea where my shoes are. I fight the stiffness in my back and bend over to rub my feet. As I do, I glimpse a rectangular piece of cardboard attached to a string wrapped around my right toe. I think it's called a toe tag. It's how a coroner or mortician identifies a dead person in the morgue. My heart almost stops. Why am I wearing this? I reach out to flip the toe tag so I can read it:
Name: Alice Pleasant Wonder.
Numbness invades my very soul.
Case: 141898
Then it mentions my hair, skin, and eye color. And finally it says:
Condition: Deceased in a bus accident.
The world around me freezes. It's like someone has a remote control for my beating heart and just clicked the off button. My mouth is dry, my skin is cold and numb, and I can't breathe. Why not? I am dead, after all.
And I thought I was mad.
I snatch the toe tag from its string and pull it close to my moist eyes. My mind advises me to blink and read it all over again. Nothing changes. I am still in the mortuary, reading my own obituary.
How can I be dead? The Pillar wouldn't go so far to scare me. Why would he do that, unless I was imagining all of this? How did I die?
The answer hits me like a freight train when I flip the card. Someone has written something in the back:
P.S. She was driving the bus.
My hands cup my mouth, suppressing a painful scream. It's only for a few seconds before I realize how much I need to free the scream inside me. When I finally do, in my loudest screeching voice, no sound comes out. I think I have lost my ability to speak. Why not? I am dead anyways.
Chapter 11
Iain West Forensic Suite, an extension to the Westminster Public Mortuary, London
Speechlessly, I slide out of the death bag, and carefully get off the steel table.
The morgue's floor is cold as ice. I am barefoot, and I still don't know why. Whoever toe-tagged me decided I don't need shoes anymore, that I should suffer against the cold floor.
I hop like a panicked kangaroo for a few seconds before I realize that I will eventually need some kind of shoes.
Rummaging through the plastic bag I came in, I find nothing. It feels awkward and unsettling searching through my own coffin-like bag of death.
Before my mind scrambles for solutions, my lungs screech from the cold. I cough so hard I am sure something will burst out of my lungs into the air. My back bends forward. My hand clamps to the steel table, preventing me from falling.
Why is my body in such pain? Is this what death feels like?
I cough again, my mouth agape it hurts so badly. The clothes I am wearing aren't helping against this freezing cold. It takes a hard effort to lift up my other hand, as if it's tied down to a weight.
My hand is faintly bluish. I shriek—then cough again.
I manage to straighten my back and then rub my hands together for warmth. I rub them on my body as well.
Then I hop like a kangaroo again. Amazing how much unexpected energy your body can exude when you're in danger.
Relax, Alice. None of this is happening. You're probably not dying. It's just part of the insanity you're enduring.
It occurs to me that if I am not dead yet, it's only a few minutes before I freeze to death in here.
See? How could you freeze to death if you are dead already? Let it go. Confess your madness and it will all subside. Just do what you came here to do. Examine the dead kids' heads.
My inner thoughts freeze to the cold of the floor underneath me. I rub my body even harder and do more of my kangaroo dance.
I really need to find shoes now. I haven't looked hard. I need shoes—and a coat.
I try to rip apart a piece of the plastic bag so I can wrap it around my feet and body. But the bag isn't elastic enough. Of course not. It's durable enough to hold a dead person inside. Why would it cut easily?
I tilt my head. The cold room doesn't offer any visible solutions. It's a huge, rectangular room, reminding me of the corridor in the underground ward in the asylum. I take a long, cold breath to get some oxygen into my head. It hurts, but I need it to think clearer.
The floor is marble all around. The walls are buried behind the endless metallic drawers with corpses inside. There are only three bulbs in the entire place. One is hanging over my head, another a few meters away, and the third is a bit too far. I can't see it—I am too numb to walk that far.
The three bulbs are slightly shaking, as if huffed and puffed by an invisible wind.
Closing my eyes and clenching my teeth, I try not to think about the dead all around me. Thanks to the dim light, I can pretend they don't exist, like all the scary things in the night we dismiss.
The cold attacks my feet again, chilling through my spine. It's getting harder to force my eyelids open.
Seriously, I am not dead. Am I? The tag is some kind of a morbid joke. Right?
I miss the madness of my Tiger Lily. She would have spat some quirky words at me. She would have accused me of being mad and useless, but she would have also hinted to some solution.
I keep walking as fast as I can in the room to get warmth into my body. I am actually limping now. It reminds me of the Pillar's Caucus Race; walking fast inside the morgue, knowing it will get me nowhere.
Where the heck is the door?
I can't find it.
Please tell me I am not mad.
Mad or dead, which is which, and does it really make a difference?
Panting, I stare at the few tables next to me. They are lined with plastic bags of the corpses. Those I stopped by are different. The bags are all labeled with chalk on the surface: Watermelon Murders.
This is what I am here for. Cold or no cold, I have to examine the corpses.
Still tapping my feet to the cold ground, it finally occurs to me to check my jeans pocket for my mobile phone. I guess I was too panicked to look earlier—isolated living in the asylum does this too you; calling someone for help isn't the usual reaction for a person with a Certificate of Insanity.
I find the mobile and pull it out. I am surprised there is a signal inside the morgue. Thank God. With numb fingers, I dial the only number on my contacts.
Beep. Beep.
No one picks up.
I hate those beeps.
My face reddens when the call ends. Some programmed woman's voice tells me that no one is picking up, that I should try later.