Conga Line of the Dead

Chapter 2 : Toke lends a hand or bouncing boom-booms on your marble balls

Toke loved watching medical shows that network television had to offer, from ER to Quincy, he loved it all and often though that he himself could have been a doctor back when he was alive. However, now that he found himself walking along the all to well-lit and all too sterile hallways of Aquarius Medical, he noted the way he was feeling in the pit of where his stomach should have been and decided he defiantly hated hospitals. The only thing that made him feel better was the fact that no one could see him, not like it mattered because there didn't seem to be anyone in this wing for some reason.

But the thought that only other dead people could see him, and that he could walk around hundreds of mortals without being noticed made him feel somewhat better. If only he could have done that when he was alive.

He paused a second, finding himself alone in a hallway which to be quite honest looked like every damn hallway in the joint, and looked around.

"Where the hell am I?" he asked himself aloud. "Thanks for nothing Google Maps." A quick glance around and Toke noticed that there was a directory sign hung on the far wall, he walked over to it and noted that the morgue was to his left and down the hallway that had a single door at the end.

He floated down the hallway, passing through the door marked 'Morgue' in black letters and into the room beyond it.

It was a small office; a desk in a corner had a young man in medical gear asleep on top of it, drooling on the dark wood. Toke stood before the sleeping beauty for a moment and noticed a half-eaten glazed doughnut on a stack of coroners' reports. He cracked his transparent knuckled and took the doughnut from its makeshift resting place and stuffed it into his mouth, making smacking noises as he chewed.

A small radio sat to the medical guys left and from it came the familiar tones of Barry Manilow's 'Can't Smile Without You'. He couldn't help but note the irony, especially in this place.

"At least he's good taste in music." he replied to himself.

There was a doorway to the left of the desk, another set of those swinging doors every hospital show seemed to have and Toke made his way into the connecting room through them.

It was the place where they did all the autopsies and stored the bodies, cold metal tables sitting against a wall, one was covered with a cloth, and there was a body under it.

Toke hovered over to it slowly, "Is that you buddy?" he asked. "Hello?"

There was silence for a moment then a low shaky voice asked, "Who is there, who was that?"

It wasn't coming from under the sheet atop the body, but from a dark corner of the room by a far wall.

Toke turned to follow the question and that was when he saw him, the faint features of a man curled up into a ball, hiding in the corner draped in darkness. The man watched with wide eyes as Toke hovered over, the closer he got the more then man began to shake; he was obviously scared out of his mind and with good reason.

Toke held out his hands, he wasn't too sure why but that was what the good guy always did in the movies, and tried to edge closer to the frightened man who hugged his legs tighter into this chest and began to rock back and forth on his heels.

"Who are you? Where am I? What happened to me?" the man continued to rock back and forth. He looked up at Toke, not so much as through him and it made the veteran ghost uneasy for some reason.

The guy had apparently been through a lot, that much Toke was sure and what was about to come wouldn't be any easier to digest. Speaking of digest, Toke was starving but he figured he'd worry about that later.

Toke had to admit that he felt for the guy and that was why he did this type of thing, not like being a dead guardian angel but sort of like the instructor for the newly dead freshman orientation.