“This, is fucking terrifying,” Mia said, gesturing around at the racks ready to hold some bodies, and cabinets with closed doors, a few of them with name tags indicating they were occupied.
“It’s a morgue.” He shrugged as he stood beside his body, currently covered in a cloth and waiting for the doctor to finish cleaning up before examining. “Most people find them scary.”
“I guess. But, uh, I mean especially now.”
“‘Cause we’re ghosts?”
“‘Cause I keep expecting to run into a ghost!”
He raised a brow. “But… we’re ghosts, too.”
“Yeah, but maybe we’ll run into a scary ghost that kills ghosts, or something, like in the Frighteners? Or maybe a ghost who looks like they did when they died, like in The Sixth Sense? Someone with their face burned off, or–”
“I’m sure there are ghosts around, but apparently we can’t see them.”
Mia’s jaw dropped and her eyes opened wide as she looked around in renewed panic.
“W-What?”
“People die all the time. I haven’t seen anyone naked running around, and neither have you. I’m sure there are other ghosts, assuming everyone who dies turns into a ghost, but apparently we can’t see them.”
“But we can see each other?”
He shrugged. “We died at the same time only a few feet from each other. Might have something to do with it. Or maybe because we know each other, or we’re related, or I dunno. Maybe–”
The doctor came over, humming to herself. Don’t Fear the Reaper? David laughed, earning a cocked brow from his sister.
“Let’s see here,” the doctor said, a short woman, portly, dark skin. He couldn’t see much of her expression with her mask on, but she gave him mom vibes. She pulled the sheet off his decomposing body, pulled out her scalpel, and got to work.
“David,” Mia said. “What’re you doing?”
“Watching?”
“It’s an autopsy!”
“Exactly. You’re not curious?”
“No!”
“You don’t want to know–”
She threw up her hands, her classic ‘let me emotionally process this’ action. The one time he’d told her that’s what she was doing and that it was unnecessary, she’d thrown her hands up, and shoved him. She’d apologized. And then he’d asked if she was on her period — purely from academic curiosity — only to get kicked. They were thirteen, just idiot kids. It was one of his first memories of his sister and him becoming different people, and not just brother and sister.
“I want to know how I died, yes,” she said. “I’m not interested in seeing my insides on my outside, or anyone’s.”
He smiled at her.
“Don’t give me that look, David.”
“It’s just a body. It’s not me.”
“It was you!”
He shrugged, shaking his head. “I’m me. This was me. It’s not anymore.”
“You take intellectualizing a little far, you know?”
“Big word. Learn that in Psych 201?”
She glared at him. Uh oh, that may have been a bit too much. Maybe seeing her body on the other table about to get cut open, really was freaking her out.
But the pathologist was doing David first, and he was not going to miss this. He watched closely as the doctor pulled the cloth off David’s body.
“Subject is nineteen years old. Five feet tall, five inches. One hundred and sixty-five centimeters. Red hair, several inches long, freckles, pale skin. About one week of decomposition in humid warm weather.” The pathologist peeled back his already half open eyelids. David watched. “Green eyes.” The doctor talked louder than someone talking to themselves would. She was recording her voice. A quick peek over at the monitor on the nearby desk showed it was also writing out her words. Speech to text, nice. “Lean and thin, low body fat, and muscular for his size. Deceased was athletic.”
David grinned at Mia. She rolled her eyes. The doc would say the same thing about her too, once it was her turn.
“Deceased looks to be in great health, with no signs of external trauma.” The doctor paused. “Hmm. Genital pubic hair trimmed. Sexually active? Note: contact the school for potential sexually transmitted hazard.”
David groaned and looked at Mia. She groaned too, and rolled her eyes again. The doc would, again, say the same thing about her, and get it wrong again.
The doctor continued, taking notes as she analyzed David’s body. Things got exciting when she took out a scalpel.
“Oh jesus christ.” Mia covered her eyes and looked away.
David watched intently as the pathologist ran the scalpel down his body, and dissected him. And that’s all it was, a dissection. He wasn’t in there anymore, and spending over a week as a ghost wandering around the campus and beyond, naked and ignored, had sealed that in well; plus the panic period once it’d really sunk in, but he was past that now, hopefully.
“No signs of internal trauma. No signs of unusual decay. Organs seem in good health. No obvious cause of death.” The doctor went on, listing off all the ways David shouldn’t be dead, but was, but also crossing off probable diseases. Slowly but surely, the doctor relaxed, apparently no longer thinking David’s body was a bio hazard.
Which David was worried about. Mia didn’t know how long a pathology result would take. David did.