Carnivalesque Pathology

by Krista Lester
© 2009

 

Body is that of a well-nourished, Caucasian male.  71 inches long, weighing 178 pounds.

            In the distance, I heard what sounded like carnival music.  As I listened, I realized I was stiff as a plank from head to toe and, quite literally everywhere else.  And I remembered someone slicing into the flesh at the peak of my scalp, sawing into my head, opening the top of my skull, and extracting my brain.  He weighed it, measured it, stuck it in a lump of wax, cut a tiny portion as thin as a single layer of dead skin, dripped candy-colored dyes onto it, and stared at it through a microscope.  And after that, he cut a gaping hole in the center of my chest.  My erection remained despite the hole in my chest.

            How did I know there was a hole in my chest?  Well, it’s funny.  When you’re dead, there are certain facts of existence that you just know.  Having a hole in your chest is one of those facts. I tried to look at the hole just as Craig put down the scalpel.

“Hey, what’s the big idea?” I asked.

            I swear to you, that man jumped like he’d just seen the ghost of a rabid clown.

            “Woah,” he said, bumping into the table behind him, scattering scalpels and retractors, knocking over empty jars.

            “Why aren’t those things being sanitized?” I asked.  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the empty jars had labels.  “Shouldn’t you sanitize your tools?  Or doesn’t it matter at this point?”

            “Who the hell said that?”

            “It’s just me.  I’d wave, but, you know, rigor mortis.”

            Rigor mortis has set in.  Time of death: approximately three hours before this report.

            “You’re . . . you’re . . .”

            “Dead, apparently.”

            “You’re talking.”

            “Yes, to you,” I said.  I wanted to roll my eyes.

            “How . . .”

            “Don’t start asking me questions.  You need to tell me what’s going on.”

            “Me tell you?” he said, still trying to steady himself amidst the clanging of metal instruments.  I couldn’t see his face, but I knew he was looking for my brain.

            “Well, it’s not like I can tell you anything.  I appear to be dead,” I said.  “And not just a dead person, either.  I’m quickly turning into a pile of useless pieces.”

The table beneath me must have been cold, but I couldn’t feel it any more than I could feel the pain I would have expected if I was alive.  I was sure I was naked except for the white sheet that covered me from the waist down.  From the limited view I had, I couldn’t see it, but I was sure the sheet was pitched like a circus tent a few inches below my waist.  I thought I remembered hearing somewhere that hanging yourself gave you an erection.  But as far as I knew, I hadn’t hanged myself.

            Left lung weighs 475 grams, the right 520 grams.

            Then, I saw a giant merry-go-round sprout inside his brain.  I know, you might say it’s ridiculous because merry-go-rounds don’t just go around sprouting in people’s brains.  Well, I am here to tell you that, in fact, that’s what I saw.

            He began to sing sickening twists of melody that sounded like a commingling of carnival noise and machine guns.

            Doo-doo-doodle-doodle-doo-doo- BANG! - BANG! –

“I think I need a break,” he said.  “I’m going to go to the psych ward.”

“What?  Why?”

“What better way to escape?”

He wasn’t crazy, was he?  How could they let a crazy person cut dead bodies apart?  I had a sudden craving for cotton candy.

“What’s so bad about staying here?” I asked.

“It’s just, I don’t know.  My head hurts.  I feel dizzy.”

He started to back away.

“Where are you going?”

“I just need to think for a minute, okay?”

I listened as he opened and closed to door to the morgue.  It seems a little crazy to escape to the psychiatric ward, doesn’t it?  But I could tell he was as sane as you or me, just another guy hanging out in the psychiatric ward, trying to get away from life in the morgue.

            So, really, it was just another day at work for him.  I imagined him stumbling down the corridor of the psych ward, banging his shoulders into walls, first the left, then the right because the sound of the merry-go-round made him dizzy.  The people who were truly sick went running out of his way because nobody wanted to be hit by a man bumping off walls in the corridor, especially on that floor.  What if he was contagious?  So, people pretty much left him alone.

            He didn’t seem to mind.

            When he had walked to the end of the hallway and back again, Craig stopped his one-man parade and leaned against the door to the stairwell.  I imagined him contemplating how much he didn’t want to go back to the morgue.  But his break was over.

            I was waiting.

            As he leaned more of his weight against it, the door opened and he sang into the emptiness.  I heard his steps descending further, nearing me one step at a time to the beat of that familiar music.

Extremities free from abrasions or contusions.

When he came back into the morgue, I wasn’t sure if he’d ever been gone.

“So, do you have a name?” he asked.

            “Russ.”

            “Are you sure?”

            “Of course, I’m sure.  Why wouldn’t I be sure?”

            “You don’t seem sure about many other things.  Least of all, I’d think you could tell me why you can talk, but you didn’t know the answer to that, now, did you?”

            “I don’t know why I can talk to you.  Why can you talk to me?”

            “I don’t know.”

            We stopped talking.  There was too much to say.

            “What do we know about each other?”

            We looked at one another through deadened eyes.

“You’re the first corpse that’s spoken to me.”

            But, you see, I wasn’t really speaking to him.  I was thinking.  He was hearing my words in his head like thoughts, which was really weird because my brain was sitting in seventeen pieces on the table behind him.

            “Are you sure you’re dead?” he asked.

            “Do I look alive to you?”

            “No.”

            “Well, that combined with the hole in my chest and the pallid color of my skin ought to suggest that I am, indeed, dead.”

            “Why aren’t your lips moving?” he asked.

            “Haven’t we been through this?  Rigor mortis.”

            “Right.”

            “You’ve heard of it, haven’t you?”

            “Of course I have.  I’m a coroner.  That’s what I know.”

            In his head, he was reliving his childhood, eating drippy ice cream cones in the sun of a summer’s day, laughing, screaming, not knowing if the fear of careening through the air on a dangerous ride was terrifying or exciting.  And then he was riding the merry-go-round, whipping the horse’s ass with the leather strap that was meant to be a seatbelt.

            “What’s with the carnival?” I asked.

            “What?”

            “The carnival.  What’s with it?”

            “What carnival?”

            He tried to play dumb, but he couldn’t hide from me.  You would think he would have caught on by then.

            “Listen, Craig--”

            “How do you know my name?  Did we know each other before you . . . ?”

            That was when I realized he was right.  I wasn’t sure if his name was Craig.  I wasn’t sure if my name was Russ. I wasn’t sure if he was a coroner who liked to escape to the psychiatric ward for his breaks.  Maybe I’d made it all up.  Maybe I’d thought it into his mind and somehow hypnotized him into thinking he was really a Craig.

“You didn’t know me until you stuck that damn scalpel in my chest,” I said.

            “But I had to.  That’s my job.”

            “It’s your job?  Who told you to go around sticking sharp objects into me?  Who told you to cut an H in my flesh, saw through my sternum, and crack half my ribs?  I didn’t donate my body to science.  What the hell am I doing here?”

            Body lacks remarkable scars.  Consistent with healthy person aged thirty-six.

He looked like he needed to take another walk to the psych ward.  Something seemed to be bothering him.  I tried to convince myself that it was just the shock of speaking to a corpse.  It probably wasn’t fair of me to burst out of myself like I did, but what was I supposed to do?  Would you have lain there silently, waiting for him to cut you into a million confetti-colored slices of flesh?  I don’t think so, thank you very much.

            “Craig?”

            He opened his mouth and lost his voice.

            “Do you need to take a walk?  Will it make you feel better to go see some of the people in the psych ward?”

            “Huh?  Oh, no.  I’m fine.  I think . . . I just . . .”

            “Out with it, man.  What’s the problem?”

            “Can you . . . ?  I don’t see many talking cadavers.  I need an explanation.”

            “What makes you think I know more than you do?”

            “You’re the one destroying the way the world works.”

            “I’m not destroying anything here.”

            “How can that be possible?”

            He was trying to argue with a dead man.  I’ve always wondered if that has ever struck him as funny.

            “I’m newly dead,” I said.  “You can’t expect me to know everything already.”

            “Well, you were alive.  So, you know this is not normal for those of us who are still living.”

            “How do I know what’s normal?  How do I know you’re not some twisted figment of my dead imagination?  You’re the one with the doo-doo-doodle-doodle running through your head.  Have you ever considered that you might be insane?”

            “I’m not insane.  I’m just trying to do my job.  Most corpses don’t make it this difficult.”

            “Oh, now I’m interfering with your job.  Next, I’ll bet you’re going to tell me your job is more important than figuring out what’s going on here.  Come on, now, we need to figure this out.”

            Appendix is present.  Pancreas is tawny pink.  No calcification.

            “Fine, let’s think about this rationally.  I’m alive.  You’re dead.  Am I right so far?” he asked.

            “Sounds right.”

            “I’m talking.  That’s normal.  You’re talking.  That’s not.”

            “Now, wait a minute.  Am I really talking if I’m not moving my lips?”

            “You’re not moving your lips?  Oh yeah.”

            “What do you do when you’re down here?  Aren’t you supposed to be inspecting the bodies closely?  Don’t you think you should have noticed that I wasn’t moving my lips?  Besides, we already discussed this.”

            I knew I was being obnoxious.  I couldn’t help it.  I was in a lot of pain.  I hurt like someone had pulled the floor out from under me, and I could only wait to feel myself falling, spinning, waiting for the inevitable crunching, grinding, failing motor of a merry-go-round.

            “I’m good at my job,” he said.

“Well, you’re not good enough.”

I regretted saying it right away.  Then I started trying to figure out if the carnival song had a name.  It suddenly seemed strange that I would know the song so well, well enough to associate it with everything I’d ever known about carnivals.  I wondered if other people thought of the exact same song in relation to carnivals.  Surely they did.  The more I thought about it, the more disgusted I became.  How could people know a song so closely, so intimately, and not even know its name? You would think I would have had more important things on my mind.  Then again, you would think my brain would have been on something more important than a table.

“I know,” he said.

External genitalia consistent with circumcised adult male.

“Hey. . . .”  I was going to apologize.

“I know,” he said again.  “I’m trying.  I’m doing all I can.”

            “You’re not very good at your job, are you?”

            “Why would I be?  You’re not very good at your job either.”

            “What?  I’m dead.  I don’t have a job.”

            “Sure you do.”

            “What are you talking about?”

            “You could at least tell me what it’s like to die.  What did it feel like?  Where are you now?”

            “I’m talking to you right here in the morgue.”

The smell of popcorn made me remember what hunger used to feel like.

            “Yeah, but are you really here?  Are you trying to get to heaven?  Are you making up for what you did during your lifetime?  Is there some kind of retribution for everything you did wrong in your life, everything everyone wanted you to do and you couldn’t fulfill?  Are you trying to make up for the time your wife asked you to do something and you were so tired from your job that you couldn’t even respond, and despite the fact that you were falling over about to die, you felt guilty that you couldn’t help her out?  Why did you feel guilty?  How did you die?  There are too many questions, too much time to spend thinking and wondering and wishing and . . . are you really just . . . here?”

            He looked dumbfounded, like he was absolutely incapable of understanding that I didn’t have all the answers.

            “What makes you think I can answer anything for you?  What makes you think you can just start asking me questions?  I’m the one who should be asking you how I died.  You want answers?  Well, here you go.  I don’t know how I died, okay?  I don’t know why I’m here.  I wasn’t met in a gateway between life and death by someone who explained to me what I’m supposed to do now.  You would think there would have been someone standing there waiting for me, ready to tell me why I would end up here on your table, trying to explain to you why I don’t know how I died.  But, no.  There was no one.  There was nothing.  There’s just me, here, on this table, and you coming in here with all that nonsense in your head about escaping to a place where everything is wonderful and perfect.”

            “What are you talking about?”

            “Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s going on with you.  I remember life.  I’m not an idiot.  And for some reason, I seem to be able to read your mind.  So, there you go.  Telepathy.  There’s an answer for you, something about being dead.  And if you’re about to ask me why, you can just go stick that scalpel into your own eyeball because it would accomplish precisely as much good.”

            As soon as I closed my mouth, I felt guilty.  I knew I had offended him, and I didn’t know why I’d done it.  He was the only person I could see, the only person who could see me, listen to me, talk to me.  If he left the morgue, there would be no other way for me to communicate, and there were so many things that needed to be said.

            Craig stared at me with a curious look.

            “Oh, come on,” I said.  “It doesn’t talk a genius to see that you can’t stand being alive.”

            Heart weighs 420 grams.  Papillary muscles consistent with healthy adult male.

            “So, why?” I asked.  “Why do you want to kill yourself?”

            He stopped me before I could ask again.

            “Why not?” he said.  “What’s here for me?”

            “Are you serious?” I asked.

            “Yeah, I want you to tell me.  Why should I live?”

            I stared back at him, hoping he could see the depths of my lifeless eyes.

            “I have nothing to say to that.”

            He looked at me accusingly.

            “What could possibly be so terrible about being dead?  Look.”

            He raised his scalpel above his head and let gravity carry the weight of it down into my thigh.  At least, that’s what it looked like.

            “Feel that?” he asked.  “You can’t feel it.  You’re dead.”

            “Yeah, so?”

            He raised his hands above his head and wiggled his fingers so I could see his hands were empty.  “The scalpel is still in your leg.  If you were alive, that would hurt like hell, but you’re not, so you can’t even feel it.”

            “How do I know it’s really in my leg?  How do I know you didn’t just set it down on the table by my leg?”

            “You’re just going to have to trust me.”

            I heard dripping from an invisible faucet.  The sound of the drips echoed through the morgue like a voice screaming helplessly into the void.

            Brain weighs 1526 grams.  Grey and white brain matter is unremarkable.

            “So what if it doesn’t hurt?  You think it’s fun sitting here watching you cut me apart?  I can see everything you’re doing, and you think it doesn’t hurt just because I can’t feel it?  How long have you been alive, anyway?  If you think pain is something you only feel when a sharp object is thrust into your leg, then you have a hell of a lot more living to do.”

            “You can’t talk to me that way.  You’re the one who knew I was so distraught about the thought of living for much longer that I have seriously considered suicide every hour of every day since . . .”

            “Since when?  Since you saw that I might not be having such a great time?  Since you saw that it might be nice to be able to have some twisted state employee shove sharp objects into you without being able to feel it?  Since you saw that I know just about as little as you do?  Since you noticed that I can talk to you, know what you think, react to you, even though I’m dead?  Let’s go back a little bit.  See, I know what it’s like to want to kill yourself.  I thought about it.  Hell, I might even have done it.  I don’t remember.  Maybe you could tell me.  The point is, is that . . . I don’t know.  So, what happened to you, anyway, that made your life so horrible, huh?”

            “I don’t know.”

            I saw colored lights like sprawling fireworks pinwheeling through the darkness.  Voices laughed, fingers pointed.  People in pairs at the edge of the lights lived through ups and down, arounds and arounds, the excitement, the fear, the thrill that came and went to be forgotten the moment that it ended.

            “If you can’t talk to a dead guy about it, who the hell can you talk to?”

            “It’s not important, not something to bring up in casual conversation.”

            “Casual conversation?  When was this ever a casual conversation?  You’re talking to a dead guy and you think the circumstances surrounding this are casual?  How could it not be important?  It’s your specific circumstances that make your pain seem real.  Maybe you should kill yourself.  You’re not much good for anything, are you?”

            “Of course not.  I’m not good for anything.  The how and why, that’s not important.  Isn’t it enough to just know I’m human?  Isn’t it enough to know life is painful?  We’re all here to die.  Why does it matter when?  I might as well die soon.”

            “So you can be like me?”

            “I still don’t see how it’s so bad.”

            “When have you ever been able to escape far enough that you truly felt like you left everything behind?  There’s always something you’ve forgotten, something you couldn’t know.”

Body is free of foreign substances.  No indication of regular substance abuse.

            The carnival music grew louder and Craig’s face looked increasingly distracted.  He seemed taken away from everything in the morgue, all the thoughts we were trying to sort out.  I watched him as a child, running along beside the merry-go-round, jumping onto the platform before anyone could stop him.  I watched him climb onto a horse with great effort, go up and down, up and down, laughing and crying.  I watched the carefree innocence, knowing it will be destroyed, and I thought for a moment that I must have been in hell.

            “Why are you here?” I asked.  “Do you have a family to support?  Do you have a carnival to fund?  What is it?  Why do you do this to yourself?”

            “Why am I here?  You mean, why do I work?”

            “Yeah, why?”

            “To help people.”

            “Yeah?”

            “To give people answers.”

            “Really?  Then, why am I here?”

            He looked at my form on the table.  He looked from left to right, then circled his gaze clockwise.  He reached to the table, picked up a notebook, and started flipping through pages.  He shook his head.

            “I don’t know,” he said.  “I don’t know anything.”  He tossed his hands in the air, leaving the notebook to flutter to the ground, an inconsequential pile of notes from a lifetime of observations.  “You know more than me, and your brain is six feet away from you.”

He started wringing his hands in front of his stomach.  A smear of blood on the hip of his scrubs distracted me so that I almost didn’t see him wipe the corner of his eye with the dull end of his scalpel.  He pulled it away from his face and looked at the tear dangle on the handle for a second before it plummeted to the ground.

            For some reason, I expected the impact to sound like a cannon shooting someone through the air.

He twisted the scalpel between his hands, then wiped my blood from the blade with a single, latex-gloved finger.  Then he rubbed his thumb and fingers together and watched the blood swirl around and around.

Fragmentary vegetable material present in stomach.  No swallowed blood.

There were things I didn’t know.  I mean, I didn’t know how I died.  I didn’t know who’d decided that I needed an autopsy.  I didn’t know how I knew Craig’s name before I’d even spoken to him.  But I knew what he meant when he rubbed the blood off his blade.  The reason was in the act, in the tenderness he used to manipulate the life essence, the nostalgic look that would have been a whimper if it had been an utterance.

            I wanted to say something reassuring, I guess, but nothing came to mind.  I mean, who was I to try and comfort him?  When you’re looking for comfort, a corpse is about the last place you might look.  So, I waited until it was clear he had nothing more to say.

            “What do you learn about the people you study?” I asked, hoping he’d suddenly realize the meaning of his existence and simultaneously stumble upon some secret of my death if I’d only keep quiet for a minute.

            “Just facts.  Blood type.  Cause of death.  Bruised bones.  Diseased organs.  You know, useless stuff.  Good for nothing.”

            “Is it really good for nothing?” I asked.  “Is it really useless?”

            “Of course, it is.  It’s just as useless as all these dead bodies.  Even you.  And the sick thing is that I have to go on living with the knowledge that all this. . . .”  He swept his arms around to indicate the glory of the morgue.  His voice quivered and died.  His head hung to his chest, and he looked perplexed as he peered into the open cavity where my chest used to be.

            He bent down to pick up the notebook again.  Flipping through page after page of scribbles, he started muttering, “Nothing here.  Nothing at all.  Organs, blood, skin, bones, nothing that shows it.”

            “Nothing that shows what?”

            He looked at me with tears in his eyes and a look of horrified disbelief.

            We stared at each other and understood.

            “All I ever wanted was to escape,” I said.

            “I know.”

            He said nothing about what he didn’t know.  He saw pain in the inanimate objects that used to be my life.  He saw a physical manifestation of the flipside of life.

            I tried to remember the moment it all changed, but I couldn’t.  I tried to remember the sense that I was falling, a crack, a twinge of fear, a realization, anything from the fulcrum, the nexus, that single moment without pain, reflection, consuming indefinable dread.  But I couldn’t remember.  It was like trying to reach the center of the universe.  And at the center, I saw, I experienced, I felt . . . that I wasn’t sure I’d seen it or not.

            Craig opened his mouth and started muttering again.  “Life, death, life, death.”  He scribbled in his notebook.  “I study and study, think and think, and this is where I get.”

            Body shows no abnormalities.  Organs free of disease.  Cause of death: life.

            I joined him on the merry-go-round in his head.