Till Death

Chapter 0: The New One

"Shh... Breathe... Just... breathe..." And there the voices came. These were the same voices Anthony tells me not to listen to, says they're like angels, 'Oh, they'll be protecting you, alright. But that's your soul, not your fate. In this life you'll want things, need things. You choose. That's your fate. To choose. So, it's either that or they'll take it from you, too.'

I choose. Except I don't know who to listen to, it's like the devil and angel on left and right, life behind me and death in-front. Literally. Because as I looked at the new one on my table, fresh off the scene, wounds all over her life-ridden, soulless body, her corpse, was it literally death faced before me. Or was it I facing before death? The answer was subjective. As were the voices. As was Anthony. For all we know, and for all I cared, we could all be dead at any moment, facing death's embodiments, its agents at any second. But who'd be left to examine us then?

"Breathe..."

Like this lovely lady.

I start with a ruler and sharpie, drawing lines all over her pale skin, marking ends, recording sets of bones, teeth, regions of hair; their length, height, weight... There's not a hint that doesn't fascinate me. Nor is there one that doesn't satisfy. Like the fact that she doesn't smile much; and I know so because upon reading her file, it was in its contents that I find that she had just turned 30-years-old no more than two weeks before the time of her death, before this very night where I am now cutting her open with a scalpel. Unmarried, in accounting, minimum wage. What could make her smile, in fact, how can she? How can anyone in such misery. I'm being empathic now, this isn't professional, nor is this respecting the dead.

"Breathe..." I am an agent of death.

For all we know, her life might have actually been happy. Fulfilled. We can't base an entire soul on fact.

I also find fascinating the traces of formalin, and the classic formaldehyde, along with glyoxal and bronopol I discovered all over her face; which are chemicals usually found in skin-care products. And if just in case they weren't skin-care products, then perhaps they'd be war products, as they are also, fun fact, found in bombs. So, a woman who works in accounting, or more technically on the 5th floor of an accounting firm that grants her 12 hours of work each day from 10 to 10 and one day off work, wears a facial cream, all the more logical as to hide the paleness, the dark circles. It is a tiring profession, and even more so of a life if there had been any children in it. Except children are a rather relieving factor to bear in a considerably stressful life. But that shouldn't stop anyone from applying Avon facial foam and a green-tea facemask on-routine.

But that's for the detectives to solve. Her psychology is not my concern, her life is theirs to figure out. Mine is her death.

The woman is tall, again a subjective matter, not what one would call an opinion as much as the other would call a fact, but the fact that she stood on 5'6 - if a man were 5'6, I wouldn't, no less most of us, would even at least consider him tall. So really, in subjectivity, she was tall for a girl. Anyway, by the time I finished listening to the feminist audiobook had I been done marking the spots, where the stabs had been struck and the angles they've been set from. There are usually two kinds of corpses I would typically like to refer to; the fresh cases, and the failed ones. Fresh being those straight from the scene, confirmed dead on the spot where all it took was a pulse-read of 0 BPM; and failed being those who were still alive upon arrival of police authorities but couldn't make it despite medical attention.

She was a fresh case. Body still warm from the outside, slowly cooling down. The inside, however, was a different matter. You see, this woman was stabbed on the same spot roughly 12 times. And she was on her knees while happened. A mere hint from a mere indicator which were knees. Apparently, even in death, some muscles could still move. Some call it muscle memory, muscles fulfilling its last act. All these types of cases just need a certain something to trigger it. The tendons underneath her knees were stretching back and worth, meaning it had been in a fixated position during the time of her death, and this kind of movement never occurs to corpses that lay or stood before death. Meaning only one thing, she was on her knees.