Frozen

Time held me green and dying, though I sang in my chains like the sea.

There's a line from a poem written on his arm. It's the only part of him that can be seen, hanging limply from the autopsy table.

A white sheet draped loosely over his body, like a hastily made bed.

The gurney squeaks in the silence while it's wheeled. Like a frail locomotive, its echoes haunt the room's darkened corners and then dissipate like steam. No one is here tonight. Nathan, the head mortician, called in sick. He has a bad case of the flu, which catches quite easily in these cold months. I'm surprised I haven't come down with it yet.

I hadn't ever considered how lonely and cold a morgue feels in the winter, until now. It's the opposite of body heat, you know. You can actually feel the death pulling the warmth out of you, slowing you down, making you numb.

In the 19th century they'd invented waiting mortuaries, prevalent in Europe, Germany mostly, inspired by fears of premature interment. How hopelessly macabre to be employed in such a place. To sit and stare all day at putrefied flesh, inhaling the sick stench of rotting carrion and decay, while attentively watching for signs of life from a crowd of cold cadavers. How cruel and crushing of a concept to the human spirit.

But also, how poetic.

Time held me green and dying, though I sang in my chains like the sea.