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  "Not everyone shares your convictions," Gaines said. He'd lost his appetite. Not from handling the guts of Laura Mae Greene or touching the cool smoothness of her marbled skin. No, his mother was the aberration. "I know you want to be cremated. That's your choice. But other people need the hope of eternal rest. They need a peaceful image to carry in their hearts as they say good-bye to a loved one."

  "It's all so horrible. Even if the money is good."

  "Poor Father. All those years, thinking you loved him."

  "I did love him. But you're as hard-headed as he was. He could have sold the Home and got on with life, instead of keeping himself buried alive here."

  "So now that he's dead, it's okay to betray him?"

  She stood suddenly, tipping her chair over. Her face was tight from anger, almost a death-mask. "How dare you say that."

  Then she gasped and clutched at her chest. She gripped the edge of the table and leaned forward. "Don't . . . do this . . . to your dear mother," she said.

  Gaines rushed to her side. He found the nitroglycerin pills in her purse and put one under her tongue. "There, there," he said, giving her a glass of water. He led her to a padded chair in the living room.

  She recovered after a few minutes. The color returned to her face. She asked for her wine. Gaines brought it to her, and she sipped until her lips were again pink. "Why are you breaking your poor mother's heart?" she said.

  Gaines said nothing.

  "Why can't you give me one thing to be proud of?"

  He had given her plenty. He was an artist, well-respected in the community. He gave people their final and most important moments. He polished memories.

  But Gaines was at ease with the dead. With the living, who wanted words and emotions and hugs and love, he was out of his element. He'd been born to the family work. Even with Mother's eyes, he still had a funeral face.

  He left her with her wine and pills and bitterness and went upstairs to bed, to think and dream.

  Gaines was alone in the back room.

  Stony Hampton's graveside service had been beautiful. The preacher hit all of Stony's high points while overlooking the man's many sins. The loved ones were practically glowing in their melancholy. Alice Hampton had even thrown herself on the coffin.

  If only she had known that Stony wasn't inside, she might have become a Wadell customer right there on the spot. The tractor lowered the coffin and pushed the red dirt over a four-thousand-dollar casket containing nothing but corrupted air. The granite marker that said "Here Lies" was itself a lie.

  Stony was the proper height and build. The features were a little off, but that would be no problem. With a little polishing, Gaines had a face that would work.

  He went into the walk-in refrigerator, what Father had called the "meat locker." Father was a part of the parlor, as vital to the business as the hearse and the gurneys and the casket catalog. Gaines wouldn't let his memory die. He would not allow the name "Wadell" to be removed from the big sign out front.

  He took a special package from the wire shelves that lined the rear of the cooler. He clutched it to his chest. Laura Mae Greene was the only witness, and her eyes were safely sewn shut. He carried the package to where Stony lay naked and waiting on the stainless steel table.

  Gaines worked into the evening, finishing just as the long fingers of night reached across the sky. The short trip home was difficult because only two of the four legs were walking.

  "What did the doctor say, Mother?"

  "They want to do the operation next month."

  "Wonderful. I'm sure you'll be glad to get it over with."

  "Yes. Then we can leave here."

  Gaines nodded from discomfort of the stiff chair. Mother’s living room was too severe, lacking in personality, just as the funeral parlor had been under her design. "How is your wine?"

  "Very good. Crisp."

  "I'm glad. Can I get you anything else?"

  "You're being pleasant. What brought that on?" Mother's eyes narrowed as she studied Gaines.

  "I've been thinking," he said. "Maybe you're right. If you sell the business, we can start in something else. You put up the money and I'll do the work."

  Mother smiled. "What sort of business?"

  "Anything. Insurance, financial services, you name it."

  "I'm so glad you agree." She looked like she would have kissed him if rising weren’t such an effort. "It's for the best, really."

  "Yes. I want you to be proud."

  "It's what your father would have wanted."

  Gaines' face almost tightened then, at her pretending to know what Father wanted when the man loved the Home more than he had ever loved her. But Gaines knew not to let the rage show. He kept his features calm and somber, drawing on his years of practice.

  "Are you ready for dinner? I've set the table," he said. Try not to smile, try not to smile. Even though this is your best work ever, your highest art, your most polished memory.

  "Why, thank you, dear."

  He helped her from the chair. The dining room lights spilled from the doorway. Gaines' vision blurred for a moment. His eyes were moist with joy.

  As they turned the corner, they were met by the smell of meat. Not from the food piled on the plates. No. The smell came from their dinner guest.

  Mother gasped, not comprehending. Then, when she finally came to accept the impossible sight before her, she tried to reel away, screaming, but Gaines held her firmly. Perhaps her heart was already giving out just from the strain of having her dead husband grinning across the table. But Gaines was taking no chances.

  He pulled on the almost-invisible threads beside the doorjamb. As the threads tightened in the small eye-hooks screwed in the ceiling, Father raised his flaccid but well-preserved hand in greeting and his jellied eyes opened. And Mother's eyes closed for the final time.

  Due to her strict Southern Baptist beliefs, Alice Hampton would be terribly upset if she knew that Stony was going to be cremated. But someone’s body had to be in the box that Wadell Funeral Home shipped to the crematorium in Asheville. Besides, Alice had her memories, thanks to Gaines and his craftsmanship.

  And the men who rolled the body into the fires wouldn't stop to check the sex of the corpse. Why should they care whether the label said "Virginia Marie Wadell" or "James Rothrock Hampton"? To the corpse-burners, dead was dead and ashes were ashes. And a job was a job.

  They had no respect. Unlike Gaines.

  He had handled Mother's funeral arrangements himself, insisting that the Wadells were a family and always took care of their own. Everyone understood. Why shouldn't a son give his mother a last loving farewell? Gaines performed his magic, and the funeral was beautiful. Over two hundred attended, and all of them wiped away tears.

  Except Gaines. He never cried at a service. He had kept his head bowed in perfect reverence. He solemnly shook the hands of the mourners. Though he was a firm believer in burial, he would follow mother's wishes and have her remains cremated. At least that's what he told the family friends.

  But now they were gone, the last condolences bestowed, and Gaines had the parlor all to himself again.

  He turned on the light in the back room. The work table gleamed with antiseptic purity, a chrome altar. His tools and blades and brushes were lined to one side, awaiting his masterful touch. A small shiver wended through his gut, a thrill of ownership, a rush of pride.

  He trembled as he opened the refrigerator. A fog of condensation surrounded him as he stepped into the cool air of the vault. He went to the shelf where he kept the flesh he had peeled from Father's face. Underneath the shelf was a three-gallon container nearly full of blood. He lifted it onto the gurney and rolled it out into the light.

  He lifted the sheet. Her eyes were gone, those eyes that had no Wadell in them. He had probably overlooked some tiny shred of her damaged heart when he had removed it. Perhaps some scrap of intestine had escaped his scalpel. He would open her up again to check, before he drained the embalming fluid
and replaced it with Father's blood.

  He would make her proud. He would make her a Wadell. He would not rest until she was fit for rest herself. If not tonight, he had tomorrow and forever.

  And when she was finally perfect, then he would allow himself to weep.

  THE END

  Gateway Drug Table of Contents

  Master Table of Contents

  ###

  The Cutting Room

  By Shane Jiraiya Cummings

  Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae.

  The plaque gleamed, caught on the cusp of shadows and fluorescent light. Burnished copper letters. Stark Roman font.

  "This is the place where death delights to help the living." Parrish's recital of the phrase was now ritual as he donned the second pair of latex gloves. They snapped into place with a satisfying echo that hung in the air. Smells of rubber and disinfectants clung to the place, thinly masking the stench of decay.

  The plaque had been there for as long as he could remember, even before the tenure of crazy old Doc Kaufmann, who once famously ate a cadaver’s eyeball, and perversely, taught him everything he knew about forensic pathology.

  "Doctor Parrish?" The diener said, throwing his concentration into turmoil.

  "What is it, err... Greg, wasn’t it?"

  "Gary, sir. The body’s been prepped."

  "I can see that." He spared a glance while adjusting his gloves.

  A young woman lay naked upon the slab. Her breasts were thrust out, courtesy of the body block jammed between her shoulder blades. The lines of her ribs and the hollow of her chest lay exposed under the intensity of the low-slung bar lamp.

  He stopped fiddling with his gloves as he stood mesmerised, tracing with his eyes the waves of her raven hair as they ate the light and shimmered with the glut. His gaze lingered on the curve of her breasts, coquettishly angled by her position on the slab. Noting the fullness of her nipples—hard, dark lumps contrasting to her pallid skin—he silently thanked the powers-that-be for his good fortune. An attractive woman, even a dead one, was better than the grisly parade that usually passed through his life and his morgue.

  "The bread knife’s not here," Gary said, "do you want me to go get one?"

  "That won’t be necessary." His eyes swept the room a final time before settling on the leather case placed by the door. His leather case.

  Gary was all rangy limbs and awkward angles as he hovered by the corpse. The low bar lamp brought his apron and the folds of his scrub suit into sharp focus, obscuring his face in the feathery darkness beyond. He looked more like a butcher’s clumsy apprentice than a morgue diener.

  Dr. Parrish shook his head as he took possession of the case. "Greg, shouldn’t you be doing something?"

  "Umm ... oh, right. And it’s Gary, sir." He paused a moment longer before shuffling off to fetch the tape recorder.

  As he laid the case upon the aluminium trolley next to the corpse, Parrish heard the assistant mutter something from the far corner of the room. It was a smallish room lined with metal, which amplified every sound.

  Brushing aside his irritation, he withdrew his personal serrated bread knife—a surgical version of the household knife, ideal for slicing organs—and placed it on the trolley next to the electric Stryker saw and the scissor-like enterotome. After storing his leather case at the foot of the trolley, he surveyed his tools, waiting for the assistant to return.

  He picked up the scalpel, checking to see if it was fitted with a #22 blade. The mavericks in Emergency sometimes raided the morgue supplies for their own ends, especially the larger sized scalpel blades. Satisfied, he replaced it, and moved to caress the Hagedorn needle when the diener returned with the recorder.

  "Put it down." Parrish noted the diener’s awkwardness.

  Gary flinched, placing the recorder on the scales which dangled above the end of the autopsy table. The scales bobbed up and down, the needle settling to 272 grams.

  "Not there." Parrish sighed from behind his surgical mask.

  Snatching the tape recorder up with child-like indignity, Gary then leaned across the exposed corpse and dropped it onto the trolley with a clatter. He couldn’t resist stealing a glance at the breasts as he pulled back and straightened.

  "Idiot," Parrish muttered, more concerned by the tape recorder dropping onto his knife than the lecherous behaviour of his assistant.

  "Tell me, diener—it was Greg wasn’t it—do you know what we do now?"

  "Gary, doctor."

  "Well?"

  "We ... umm ... make the first incision?"

  "No, diener, we don’t."

  Gary flushed. His hovering hands, drawn up like effeminate claws, spoke volumes of his inexperience.

  "We confirm the identity," Parrish said after the silence wasn’t filled. "Get the paperwork while I inspect the tag."

  He watched the diener shuffle off to the filing cabinet before moving to the woman’s feet. He prided himself on efficiency and precise movements, navigating around the table without raising a sound. He stooped by the corpse’s big toe and read the name on the tag quietly to himself.

  "What was the subject’s name?"

  Gary startled at the sudden question, almost dropping the clipboard. "Umm ... Natasha."

  "Umm Natasha who, diener?" Parrish was tired of having his time wasted by this fool.

  "Natasha Kohl, Doctor. From out of town. Lived in Berlin, Germany."

  "What were you doing here, all that way from home?" Parrish asked of the corpse. "Now, diener, we’ve established this is the correct body. How do we proceed?"

  "The first incision?"

  "No ..."

  Again, the diener paused awkwardly beside the autopsy table, clutching the clipboard across his chest like a shield.

  "Try, the external examination," Parrish instructed.

  Gary nodded.

  "I take it you’ve not performed many autopsies before, then, diener?" Parrish emphasised the assistant’s title. "Stop cradling that clipboard, get over here, and activate the tape recorder."

  Gary scurried to comply, uncertain of where to offload the clipboard.

  "Wait," said Parrish. "On second thought, read me the cause of death."

  Gary froze mid-step, then returned to studying the file.

  "Umm ... says 'Cause of death: Unknown.'"

  "What? Incompetent fools. Any injuries listed?"

  "Nope."

  "Are there any notes, then?" Parrish waved his hand for emphasis.

  "Says 'Rigor has not set in at time of admission.'"

  "When was that? This morning?"

  "Umm ... hang on." Gary scanned the file with darting eyes.

  "Out of the way, fool!" Parrish nudged the assistant away and commandeered the clipboard. Gary half retreated, half stumbled against the wall.

  Propping his lanky frame on the handle of a body storage vault, he shot the doctor a glare laced with indignation and shock. Parrish was too absorbed in the file to take notice.

  "This is ridiculous," Parrish fumed. "Not a skerrick of information to be found. I’m examining blind."

  He tossed the clipboard at the open filing cabinet. It smacked off the side of the cabinet and clattered to the ground as Parrish circled around the body and resumed position next to his tools.

  Gary scampered over to retrieve the fallen clipboard while Parrish commenced the external examination.

  "Do you know what 'diener' means, Greg?" Parrish’s eyes never left the corpse.

  "Gary," said the diener, shaking his head as he shunted the cabinet door closed. The metallic echo reverberated through the room.

  "It’s German," Parrish dropped back into measured tones. "Those Germans are an industrious people. A good sense of order. They were the first to perform autopsies, you know." He bent low, hovering his face bare inches above the woman’s chest. "'Diener' means 'servant,' Greg. Do you like the sound of that?" His eyes sparkled as he looked up from his inspection and met the diener’s sullen glare.
/>   Parrish flicked on the tape recorder as he drew himself to full height. "Stratton Memorial Hospital, autopsy in morgue examination room two," he said aloud. "Subject’s name is Natasha Kohl. Female Caucasian. Approximately thirty years of age. Estimated cause of death: unknown. Dr. Hamilton Parrish MD is prosecutor." He paused, glancing at Gary again. "What’s your surname?"

  "Timms."

  "And the diener." Parrish spat the word at Gary. "Is Greg Timms."

  "Gary." The assistant muttered.

  "Time is two-thirty-nine pm, and I have commenced the external examination."

  Parrish moved around to her feet once more. He placed his hands on the aluminium slab either side of her legs and began his task. His gaze soon drifted upward, taking in her calves and thighs.

  He swivelled first to the left, then to the right, following the table’s moulded blood groove up the expanse of her legs. With her torso pushed out by the body block and the table angled downward to facilitate blood flow, he had a prime view of her curves and the sparse hair of her pubic region. He savoured the sight, knowing tomorrow would bring a decomposing drunk or a messy railway suicide.

  "Subject appears to bear no obvious signs of trauma," he spoke into the recorder. "Her skin is very white. Unusually so."

  Gary had crept closer, floating behind Doctor Parrish.

  "I’m examining her legs for injuries or needle marks." Parrish started at the toes, wedging them apart while holding the foot closer to the light. It was true. No rigor mortis. Her limbs were still supple, even after lying in the morgue for hours. Her state prevented a guess as to the time of death. The case grew more intriguing by the moment.

  He worked his way upward, inspecting knees and thighs for signs of the unusual. He paused at her crotch, sifting through her pubic hair. He pried her legs apart like an easy hooker, and spread her labia wide.

  "Unusual," he said into the air, keeping a calm voice despite an accelerating heart. "If I didn’t know better, I’d say her body is exhibiting signs atypical of a corpse. As if she only died this very moment. There is ..." He coughed, cleared his throat. "A surprising amount of vaginal fluid."