Dark Places

Fair of Face, Black of Heart

Of course, the darkest place of all is in a murderer's heart.

So they say.

The lifeblood that pumps around the body of a killer must be tainted. It must be a deeper shade of scarlet. Edging from deep red to black, night slipping into the liquid like a shadow drifting across the lawn as the sun sets beyond the horizon.

Would it be thicker than normal? Crawling rather than running through the veins and arteries? The evil of a murderer making it more viscous to match the viciousness of the deed?

No.

It isn't.

Blood is blood. Well, depending on which type of monkey you are, of course. Still, it's all blood. If you're a saint or a sinner, a monster or Mother Theresa, your own particular vintage of claret is much the same as the next person's. Granted, if you're dead, you'll be laying in a pool of it, as it seeps to the bottom of your body.

Well, if you're not walking around anymore, why should the blood? Not that it walks, exactly...

Jack laughed to himself. As a mortuary technician, his audience to these little jokes was less than lively. At least, he thought, he found himself funny. Sometimes he would have to stop what he was doing, hold the knife, as he made some mental quip or other that would set him off giggling.

It gained him a reputation as being a little odd. Laughing in the face of Death, whilst cutting open a cadaver, was frowned upon for some reason. But Jack would laugh at a funeral. In the most serious of situations, he couldn't help but have to suppress a snigger. It was his defence mechanism.

Well, it was nerves to be honest. The dead made him nervous.

One might think that a job in a mortuary might be an odd choice for such a man. One would be correct, but Jack had always thought himself to be somewhat left of centre. He was a loner, preferring the company of his thoughts to the chaotic ones of others. Thus he held the camaraderie of the deceased in high regard, however uneasy they might make him feel.

At least, though they didn't laugh at his jokes, neither did they deride his offbeat sense of humour.

He gave them names. Not necessarily the same ones as on the forms and wrist bands, but names anyway. He called them what he thought they looked like, believing they would have been that little touch lighter during life if only their name had matched their face. An Edward might have become a John. A Susan could be an Yvonne. They didn't seem to mind the change. They never complained, at any rate.

It had happened four years earlier. He'd only been a technician for a few months and was still getting used to being 'hands-in' with the cadavers.

He disliked the word. Cadaver sounded like the bodies were remnants, left over from a hyena's feasting. He preferred corpse. It at least gave some humanity to the person into whom he was placing his hands.

The body was that of a young man. He'd been brought in the night before. A crime had been committed, but Jack wasn't, as yet, a party to the particulars. He was there to photograph and to sample. He made the deep 'Y' incision and removed the ribcage, cutting it along the sides so that it would lift like the lid to a treasure chest, revealing the jewels hidden beneath.

He weighed and measured, and he made things ready for the pathologist.

Jack didn't aspire to that position. He didn't want the responsibility of giving causes or making choices and decisions. He was happy being the hand that helped. He enjoyed opening up the body to tell its tales and the closing of the curtains after the story was told.