| Return Home �Twenty past the hour on this beautiful morning. High will be eighty-five, lows of sixty. I guess autumn is finally here.� I roll over and push the snooze button for the third time. The sleeping pills are yet to wear off. I�m due in the lab in half an hour; the drive takes me ten minutes. I will, yet again, wait until the absolute last minute to roll out of bed and get dressed. I silently pray that the district attorney won�t need my testimony today. The telephone rings, twice, before I answer. �Morning, Kate. You�d better hurry. You�ve got quite a load pilling up here.� �Thanks a lot, Chris. I�ll be there at seven like I am every morning. You and the other boys in blue can just hold on till then.� �OK, but I think you�ll like one of them.� �Whatever. I�ll see you at two, OK?� I hang up and sit on the edge of my bed. Whoever invented mornings should be shot. Fred is scratching at the back door, waiting to be let out. The golden retriever, the only memento from my ex-fianc� that didn�t get burned, is still the best alarm clock in the world. Claire must have gone out last night. Her clothes are scattered in a black trail from the door to the bathroom. I wonder what low-life she brought home with her. I kick her boots out of the doorway of the bathroom we share and close the door. As I stare at my still-tired face, I wonder for the hundredth time that month if I should cut my hair. Chris would hate me for it. I put my contacts in and brush my teeth. With one quick movement, I sweep my hair into a tight bun to keep it out of my face for a few hours. My hair hasn�t been cut since I was an undergrad. I swear the only benefit to working in a lab is the dress code. I pull on a pair of blue scrubs with drawstring pants. While my mother spent the better part of her life in a Miracle bra and business suits, I get to go to work in a sports bra and pajamas. The only times I ever wear heels are on dates and in court. Other than that, I live in my running shoes. I collect a pile of papers and stuff them into a backpack before calling Fred back into the house. �Be good, hon. And don�t wake Claire.� In the car, my cell phone beeps at me that I have two messages. When will these people ever learn that I don�t take office calls after ten or before six? �Hey, Katey bear, just making sure you remembered about lunch today. Two o�clock. I know you hate it, but there�s a great case I want to talk to you about. Love you.� Chris, always the sweetheart. He will never learn to separate business from pleasure. That�s what I get for dating a cop, my mother would tell me. �Dr. Maxwell, it�s Veronica Westing with the District Attorney�s office. I needed to get your insight on the Mortega case. Please give me call as soon as possible. My number�� I hit the delete button. Mortega isn�t one of mine, I think, and even if it is, there will be a message or three for me in the office this morning. Lawyers never learn when to back off. I hit the play button on my CD player as I cruise through traffic. My downtown house is close enough to the hospital to avoid highways, something I demanded when Claire and I started house hunting. Chris can never understand why I insist on living in the city. �What about the crime rate?� he always pesters me. �That�s your job,� I snap back. A lab intern informs me that there are four bodies in the fridge when I enter the cement fortress that is the medical examiner�s office, which is not bad for a Monday morning. Sunday nights are usually a little worse. I suspect we�ll be getting a few people in by Wednesday who died in the hospital rather than surviving their car accidents. I read a short note left for me by one of the other pathologists who prefers working weekends and coming in after nine during the week. �Kate, No fun cases all weekend, just a bunch of drunk drivers and overdoses. Hope you get a neat one. ~ Paul� �So does Paul get his wish, Max?� I ask the intern who is still trailing me. It�s a good thing interns have to do all the grunt work or I would hate having them around. At least they�re better than medical students. �Um, I guess.� He still isn�t used to the sense of humor that comes inherent with the job. Morgue humor, we call it. The place gets to you too much if you can�t look at death and laugh at it. �One gunshot, one apparent suicide, and two DWIs.� �How many times do we have to tell you, Max. There�s no such thing as an �apparent suicide.� It�s not a suicide until I say it is and the cops agree with me.� He mumbled something that resembled an apology. I go to my office to check messages while Paul prepares the first corpse for me. The trash hasn�t been taken out in weeks and clothes were in piles on all sides of the unmade bed. The room reeked of rotting pumpkins and body odor. It�s starting to snow outside and she still has a carved Jack-o�-lantern sitting by her bed. The water to her fish tank hasn�t been cleaned in almost two months and is murky- almost white. Poor fish. This slob who is yet to attend a lecture mocks the five hours I just spent studying. She still expects to pass the semester is the amazing part. I use the toe of my boots to form a path to my meticulously cleaned half of the room. I light a scented candle to cover the stench of her microwave ravioli and set my backpack on my made bed. I move my stuffed cat back to where it belongs, in the center of my bed covering my nightshirt. My right temple begins to throb, so I take a Vicodin. I sit in front of my computer, staring at the screen saver, trying not to let my anger build. The alarm clock starts to ring; it�s time for me to workout. As I do my crunches, I enumerate the things I detest the most about this pig I am forced to share such close quarters with. She never changes the toilet paper in the bathroom and never closes the shower curtain. A layer of mildew is forming at the bottom of the white plastic curtain. She never does laundry or cleans in any way, and never thanks me when I clean our room or the bathroom. She wouldn�t even know what color the carpet was if it weren�t for the fact that I vacuum once a week and shove her clothes under her bed with the head of the vacuum cleaner. She�s fat, lazy, ugly, and hypocritical. The ancient Greeks and Romans killed for less and they were the greatest civilizations in history. Though much of their barbarism has been criticized, they lasted centuries. How long has our culture been around, ten or twenty years? They cleansed the population of useless people. If you do not have a task in life, what is the point of your living? My abdomen begins to burn, as does my forehead. It seems like such a feasible idea. I wake up the next morning without hitting the snooze button and let out a blood-curdling scream. The girls from across the hall rush in through my unlocked door, stopping short at the sight that greets them. She is suspended from a metal pipe, one that the housing office directs that we cannot suspend out bicycles from. One end of an extension cord is tied to the pipe; the other is cutting in to her pasty white flesh, rubbing through a layer of skin and fat. The sound her trachea made when it snapped in half was rather disappointing. I had expected it to sound like breaking through a thick branch, but instead there was a slight pop, nothing more. Of course, the fact that I had music playing rather loudly could have been a factor in this. She really didn�t put up much of a fight, but then she was drunk and a little stoned. That fat cow couldn�t have put up much of a fight against me, anyhow. I stood gaping at the swaying corpse. She is beginning to smell slightly of decay, or maybe that was just the overwhelming odor of her feet. One of the girls grabs for my telephone, trying to call the police, but having a difficult time getting an outside line. The other grabbed me by the hand and let me out of the room. She ran with me to the resident assistant�s room and pounded on the door. The dean of students was very considerate to me, saying that the state of disarray in which my roommate lived made it clear that she no longer valued her life and perhaps it would be better if I finished off the year in my own room. I�m beginning to wish I had thought of this sooner. I love having my own room. Finals are a week away and I cannot get a moment of silence. It�s bad enough that they scream and laugh in the hallway during the rest of the semester, but this is too much. I poke my head out the door. �Can you keep it down, please. I�m trying to study.� Two girls are walking down the hall. One of them giggles; the other looks me over. I�m sure she�s critiquing my slovenly appearance, and possibly my thick glasses. �That�s what the study lounge is for, you know.� I call the resident assistant and tell her about the encounter. �Sorry about them.� She has been very nice to me since my roommate died. I hear her door open and hear her threat of disciplinary actions if they are not quiet. One of the girls calls me a skinny bitch for turning her in. The assistant reminds her that this is a university and the main goal is for education, not for socialization. I�ll give her credit; she handled this better than I will. After about twenty minutes, I hear a loud thud on my door. I go to investigate and see a rotten peach lying at the base of my door. The rank juice is dripping off my doorknob. I try to keep calm as I get a can of Lysol and a paper towel. I am contemplating a number of things while I clean the handle, and then wash my hands. How should she die? When? What should I take? All of these things are very important. I realize later that I do not even wonder if she should die. I�ve kept my roommate�s fish, a very large beta, so I can remember her. I�ve cleaned the tank, though, and added a small statue: a garbage can. When the fish dies, I think I�ll keep the plaster can. Almost two hours later, I hear her singing to herself as she walks down the hall. I wait a few minutes before I leave. She goes upstairs. I�ve noticed needles up there before, along with cigarette butts. I doubt she shoots up, but she probably does smoke up there, so she won�t have to go outside. Lazy and noisy. She does not hear me behind her as she lights up a joint. I suppose that accounts for the laziness. �Why are you so noisy?� She spins around. �What?� �Why do you insist on making so much noise in the halls?� �It�s a free country. I can do whatever I damn well want. Don�t like it? Get a set of earplugs.� �Do you ever consider anyone but yourself?� �Are you trying to teach me manners? Cause you need some yourself.� �No, I�m just trying to understand how someone can make it all the way to college if she still has the manners of a four-year-old child.� She stood, very irate. That was the intention of that comment. I was thinking far worse, but I needed time to get out my knife before she lunged at me. I did not give her the change to slap me. I simply shoved it into her throat. She left herself open to an attack, since she went for the slap with her entire body weight shifted to one foot. Her other hand was too slow to deflect the blow. I had aimed perfectly. It took a few moments for me to get the strength to cut through the entire windpipe, but it was not too difficult. She could not scream for the first time in her life, and I was thrilled. I got a sudden burst of energy. I shove her to the floor and carefully stab in between each of her ribs to pierce through her lungs and diaphragm. I am sitting on top of her, watching her try to breathe in. It does not occur to me to look into her pain-filled, suffering eyes. I am watching the blood pool around her ruined voice box. I am disappointed with myself. I didn�t leave it intact; I had planned on taking the box as a souvenir. It�s just as well that I don�t, since I do not have access to preserving materials. I open her mouth. Her tongue is pierced, as I predicted. After a moment, I managed to unscrew the barbell and slip it into my pocket. I wish I had a needle and thread or a stapler so I could shut her mouth forever, but I suppose I have done enough to make sure she can never make another noise. I wash very carefully. My clothing is already in the Dumpster, shoved into a bag of trash that one of my neighbors left in the hall. After I finish my shower, I leave the water running for a few minutes. I also pour about half a bottle of bleach into the drain, just in case. |