Val H. The Cadaver

[The Cadaver]

Val H.

Slitten flesh and God-evaded persons are laden across the many metal-clad tables of the noisome Morgue. A slight sour air pervades the area surrounding the palace of dissection. However, once the entrance is unsealed, whoever unlucky enough to have shown the slightest curiosity in entering the Morgue is profaned with the acrid scent of copper and decaying tissue, insofar that they may wish to abstain from smelling altogether. Thus, not many are left willing to enter the Morgue. Only through deontology, one man still brought the Morgue company; his name is unimportant, he shall only be known as “The Doctor”. By the end of this story, you may find the title of ‘madman’ to be more fitting. The Doctor found at a young age to exhibit a frightening curiosity in death; primarily, the human body after the extinguishment of life. After a decade and 3 years of study and fieldwork, the Doctor found himself receiving his title and aforementioned employment. For the years the Doctor was employed under original management, he maintained an indefectible status among his coworkers and managers; always entering the Morgue on time and rarely refusing arduous overtime. Many years before this maddening story, the Doctor’s coworkers refused their work – no longer finding their joy in caring for the dead husks of once lively humans. Management soon found that the Morgue didn’t reap the profits it once proudly turned out, thus, they pawned off the building. Without fail, the Doctor immediately enlisted himself among those who would buy the building; not necessarily a Herculean task, as not many would like to remodel what’s already been claimed as the house of death. Through the many years of loneliness throughout the

stone walls of the Morgue, the Doctor worked tirelessly. He was never employed as a mortician among the city or law enforcement, but rather a nomad of physiology. He sliced through the corpses he obtained with fine precision; his craft could be considered more artistic than scientific. Never were his subjects of study criminals or medical overstock, but rather those he “collected” throughout the years – friends, pets, and even citizens were his acquiescent cattle. Nevertheless, the Doctor was never met with resistance as the courts of the city never considered him to be fit for a crime. Over the years until the modern-day, the Doctor’s work became more depraved and wicked: carving the bodies into fleshy statues or creating sinful amalgamations of limbs and tissue. One day, this hermit discovered something within himself, something terrifying. Choked by the veil of scientific advancement, the Doctor began refusing what little sleep he already obtained; he began searching for a constant source of cadavers to fulfill his sick pleasures. He began researching the occult and voodoo, but not for the magic, but for the bodily manipulation. He devised a theory: “A corpse can be reanimated simply by connecting the nerve-endings of an already living human to that of a dead one, thus allowing the living one to ‘puppeteer’ the corpse.” Obviously insane and quixotic was this theory, though no one was left who would tell him otherwise. After months of study and trial, the Doctor was growing into his ancient years, although he nay claimed boredom of his study. He became slow and weak, finding his sewing and slicing to be atrophying like the muscles he once sliced with precision and beauty. This is where he found his magnum opus to be: he was to sew himself inside a fresh, young corpse and to connect the nerve-endings to that of himself, effectively living a second life.

Now, this Doctor was in the market for the prime cadaver, and soon he discovered his perfect candidate: a tall, relatively fit man in his early 30s, he was olive-skinned with deep auburn hair and matching eyes. The Doctor found his method of neutralizing the victim via blunt force trauma to the temple to

be the best method of murder in this scenario. The Doctor brought his subject back to the Morgue; he underwent his regular process of embalming and study, although this time around, he employed extreme precision when cutting around the nerves of the subject and making sure to carefully remove the organs and tissue. After this process in which he had undergone hundreds of times, he soon found himself slicing into his own skin, slowly tying each nerve to that of his flesh-puppet. He wore the corpse’s skin as if it were a coat, slowly devising a way to effectively sew himself inside and cut off the string. Through sheer luck, he was able to sew himself inside, not without oversight, however. The Doctor found himself so tied up in the prime work that he nay considered how to keep his skin suit from rot. Days passed where the Doctor assimilated into this suit; but rather than simply connect with it, he never found his consciousness to become it. Simply, he was a madman in the skin of another, failing in the discovery of his unnatural self-preservation for his morbid fetishism. He found himself growing resentful of his suit, finding himself close to cutting it off of him daily. Once this 6-day stint of torture finally drove him madder than he already was, he found himself in his lab late at night, bringing a scalpel to his outer flesh. Slowly, the Doctor cut at his suit, trying to relieve his body of it. The pain was immense, as the shaking of the old Doctor revealed his talent to be all but relieved, simply being a once upstanding doctor now turned inane old man. Through the long process, his wrists, chest, legs and other parts bled immensely, although this wasn’t enough to stop the Doctor. Only after he was able to relieve himself of his long-hated suit was he able to register the more immediate threat: his death. This was futile, however, as the waterfall of blood pouring out of his body made him weaker than he already was. The expired wrappings proved useless in his safety, thus assuring him of his impending doom.

Before expiring, the Doctor pondered his situation, what had brought him here. The pursuit of science? The allure of the

Morgue? Or simply his morbid curiosity turned fate. He never got the chance to decide, as his body refused to live no longer, extinguishing itself of light. As with all other corpses in the Morgue, he became a husk once lit.