Why do certain bodies remain unclaimed despite clear identification, and what causes the temperature fluctuations in the restricted cold storage units? Which autopsy reports keep disappearing from the files, and why does the night attendant refuse to work alone? What's behind those drawer numbers that don't match the official records?
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The only way I’d be caught without makeup is if my radio fell in the bathtub while I was taking a bath and electrocuted me and I was in between makeup at home. I hope my husband would slap a little lipstick on me before he took me to the morgue.
― Dolly Parton
Dr. Silas Hendrick had worked the night shift at Mercy General’s morgue for three years, but he’d never seen anything quite like the John Doe wheeled in that Tuesday evening. The body was unusually preserved despite being found after two weeks in the river, skin still supple and unmarked by decay. What troubled him most were the eyes---they hadn’t clouded over like they should have.
As Silas began his preliminary examination, he noticed something odd about the corpse’s cellular structure under the microscope. The tissue samples showed signs of activity, tiny movements that shouldn’t exist in dead matter. He attributed it to his exhaustion and continued working, making careful notes about the strange star-shaped scarring across the subject’s chest.
Around 3 AM, the fluorescent lights began their familiar flicker. Silas had grown accustomed to the building’s electrical quirks, but tonight something felt different. The temperature in the room seemed to drop with each pulse of darkness, and he could swear he heard a wet, sliding sound coming from somewhere behind the wall of refrigerated units.
When he turned back to continue his work, the body was gone. Not moved---gone entirely. The examination table was dry, spotless, as if no corpse had ever been there. But the drains in the floor had begun to overflow with a thick, dark substance that pulsed with its own rhythm. Silas backed toward the exit, his breath forming clouds in the suddenly frigid air.
The last thing he remembered before the lights went out completely was seeing dozens of pale hands emerging from every drain in the room, reaching upward with fingers that bent in ways human joints never could. In the morning, the janitor found only Silas’s clipboard and a wet trail leading from the examination room to the storm drains beneath the building.
