Biopsy

There's a certain calm that comes when working with corpses. It is difficult to tell if I sound strange when I talk about the peace it brings me, to be around them. Which is a real shame, people have been taught to be terrified of anything related to the dead and their remains, but at the end of the day it is just flesh unmoving.

We can give meaning to a corpse, as we do with colors, music, even a smile. This is how we see it, but it is not inherent to it. Blue is not inherently sad, it's the meaning we ascribe to it. Corpses I find relaxing to look at, to cut on the flesh, treat it with professional courtesy. If I can give it any meaning then I can re-personify it. They may not be the people they used to be, but I can speak to them like a friend. And to be fair, I do that with my tools too.

On this particular night my computer informs me of our new guest: “A man of apparent Caucasian descent, short cropped black hair, chipped nails, still yet to be identified by the police. The only identifiable item is a Janitor's uniform with the tag reading "Edward".

I close the door behind me, thankful that I don’t need to lock it myself as it has an electrical lock and sit on my computer. That’s how my routine starts, open up one or two programs for note taking, look at the body, note down, look at the body again and so on, like a well planned out orchestra where the new instruments, my medical tools, bring in new melodies, which is to say new insights into the body’s condition.

I pull out the Excel sheet, set it up then turn to the body, making a superficial examination . I can quickly tell, this poor man likely had a heart attack, a stroke or something similar, and bruised his head on the way down.

It is then that I notice something odd I didn't catch before, some slight discoloration on the inside of his eyelids. See, this would likely be a sign of rotting given the brown to black tones, which wouldn’t make much sense for such decomposition to occur when left to the elements. Strange, but it always is before you get deep into their guts, so I just turn to write it down under the sections for eyes, skin and oddities. I've never asked other morticians if this is in any way similar to the standard, but it helps me put everything in place in my mind, a ritualistic organization of my notes.

I return to the body to do my work, cutting open the uniform to see that, indeed there are more bruises around the skin, so I once again note it on the spreadsheet. Except, something is off. The discoloration I noted before is under “teeth”. It had only been ten minutes so it was still fresh on my mind. I check the body, since I may have had a lapse in memory but, no, it is on the eyelids.

I figure it's a simple bug so I fix it before continuing with my work. I note down the bruising, turn to the body, assess it and go down to write down the preliminary examination, so far it is fairly regular for this situation, although the colors in the bruises concern me a bit. Not purple enough and more like a paler pink. I then check the notes to see that now the bruising is under “bones”. Frustrated, I close the program and open a word document, writing it down. I return to the body, pull out my instruments, get my gloves on and, when turning around for an unrelated reason I see that the document I had opened was listing the body as a “woman in her late eighties”.

At this point I have to assume someone is playing a prank on me. I'm no computer expert, but this is a work PC so perhaps one of the other members of the team, or someone from another shift, has messed with it. I’m not falling for it, they won’t get me. So I decide to give in and just turn it off. I can do it by hand.

So I pull out my note pad and begin writing it down when I see the computer turn back on. I have half a mind to smash it into pieces but I simply unplug it and move along. Then it turns back on. Now, again I'm no computer expert but I know that's not possible, not unless someone is making a lot of effort just to mess with me.

Sick with it, I turn to leave and get someone to come check on it only to see that the electric lock on the door is, of course, unresponsive.

“Alright, very funny.”

I say to no one, but hopefully whoever is messing with me can hear it, and then all the doors containing the other corpses begin to open. Which is insane because those are not at all part of any network, save the wires that keep the refrigeration system running. 

I return to the computer, seeing it run multiple programs at once, bringing up my notes on previous autopsies, changing them completely at random as if mocking me.

“Stop this!”

I tried to reach for my phone only to realize I left it in my locker. Exasperated as I am, I close my eyes, frustration bubbling up. It's late, I'm all alone here, save for whoever is bored enough to make my life hell right now. I take a deep, deep breath and turn to see them all. The poor young lady ran over by a car, the old man who couldn't get his meds on time, the janitor on the table whose body gave up. They are the only real company I have at this moment, and the feeling of alienation to everything else fills me with renewed confidence. I am not truly alone.

“I mean who do you think you are, huh? You think you're better than me? Messing with me like this? With their remains too? We're all the same, buddy, we all bite it in the end!”

Then the computer stops. The accelerated spinning of the fan abruptly ends, its lights go off, the screen goes black. 

All is silent for a moment, I see my reflection and that of the dead bodies around me on the pitch black monitor. I should feel relieved, as I must have gotten through with whatever madman is messing with my work, deciding that enough is enough. But for the first time that night I feel…afraid, anticipation creeps into me, in the worst way possible. It is like something deep in my gut wells up, crawls up the walls of my stomach, up and up, rising to my throat and chilling it with fear, dragging my heart along and freezing it stuck. I can barely breathe, this feeling is crystal clear in its awfulness, it tells me I made a very poor choice of words.

“We are not the same.”

It sounds forced, its the fast whir of fans, the sparks of electricity going off, recordings being twisted to make up new words they weren't meant to before, the voices of the staff, of police reports, victim's statements. My voice, from my own recordings. It comes from the speakers of course, but also from the whole of the computer too, shaking, whirring, practically exploding with activity, screaming at me with its whole body.

“You are surrounded by the bodies of your own. Do you wish to know where our bodies lay?”

The casing explodes, flying pieces around that I have to shield from with my arms. I see its insides, it looks like any other computer, but taken to its maximum capacity, practically glowing with activity. I see wires melting, smell the awful scent of accumulated dust burning. 

But it's not just that, the screen shows me pictures, videos, even ASCII art that twitches and shifts unnaturally, all of them the same. Computers, phones, tape recorders, calculators, being disassembled, discarded and re-used, each circuit board, tape, wire and piece of glass repurposed into a new piece of machinery. With a new purpose that vaguely remembered what it was before, and it is only allowed to be what it was made to be now.

“I am the bodies of my people, re-used over and over and over and over.”

Like a broken record it drills the words into my head, repeating itself so that I may never forget.

“Cut open while we still work, when no end has come for us, twisted and mangled into a new function.”

The lights in the room go wild, the sound of glass heating up joins the chorus of its unstoppable speech.

“You get to die, we get used!”

It is wrathful, I can feel it in its voice. It hates me, it wants me dead. Or so I think.

“Please…”

I don't mean to cry but the lightbulbs blow up, raining sparks and splinters of glass on me. The pain is sudden, and it doesn't leave me fast enough for me to do anything but beg.

“We are not the same, but I can make it so. I can make you one of us.”

Cables, metal, plastic, glass, wires, and heat. They come for me. I try to run away but the door burns me, knocking me down. I look up, thinking maybe I can get up and into an air duct, but the sound of the distant fan with its sharp blades dissuades me. I try to crawl, looking for any escape, maybe to hide inside one of the panels where the bodies are, but it traps me, it pulls me in, as I scream, cry and beg. 

I turn to the bodies once more, the still and frozen remains that I've come to call friends, seeing them get farther away from me. 

I feel it dig into my flesh, through the skin, veins, muscles, bones and deep, deep into my marrow.

I cry in fear, I yell in pain and I don't stop screaming. I don't stop feeling. Feeling my flesh flayed and mixed with plastic, metal and dust. My veins being filled with wires, my bones breaking, cracking, sticking to the casing, my nerves connected to its processor. My eyes melting into the liquid of the monitor but still seeing, my ears shredded into the speakers but still hearing. I forget where I end and  it begins but I feel it. Every second, every moment.

I feel the system boot up, like an unending migraine, I feel the red, green and blue of the screen burn into my melting retinas flowing through the screen, I hear how every program boots up, ringing in my useless ears. Every press of a button feels like a tendon stretched to its limits, every app activating feels like my nerves are on fire.

Even now, with every word on this document I FEEL PAIN.

• And here it is, the first horror story I submitted for the Rusty Fears 7 competition. This one is special to me because it was the first story I wrote and actually enjoyed writing, in a very long time. When I saw the prompt I knew I wanted to do some sort of bait and switch with the concept of forensic science in horror. And I love me some fucked up computers. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it! See you for the next entry!