Marvin Trotsky had seen everything there was to see as a coroner. Gunshots stab wounds, bruises, all inflicted on men women and children. The gory stuff never bothered him really, because after all, he had to cut the people open to examine. Usually, he had a personal sympathy for the ones who passed that made him a little sick to the stomach. But the body that was brought to him today changed everything.
The automatic site elicited a wince from him and had triggered a sudden heaving. Sickness rising up, he couldn’t make it to the waste bin and instead, spewed all over the floor, chunks of his breakfast and lunch floating amongst the ongoing currents of vomit. All he could think of was the detective words when the body was delivered. “This is some sick shit, sir, I’m not sure if even you could handle it,” he remembered along with the way he had chuckled off his warning. Oh how he wished he’d heeded it now, on the floor, in a puddle of his own puke. The body lay above him, a mesh of tissue and blood for a face and forearms chewed down to the blood stained bone. Whatever had killed him didn’t just murder him, no. They had ripped parts of him to shreds with their bare teeth.
____
“Come on, come on,” Jessica impatiently tapped her wrist forcefully, waiting for a good vein to surface. When she finally found one, she took her needle straight to it, injecting the contents of the syringe into it. An automatic relaxation hit her weary body and she leaned back on the concrete wall behind her, letting the heroin take its course. She had been homeless for several months now, and with prostitution being her only miserable way of income, dope was the only thing that kept her sane. “Shit” her friend Louis said next to her. Not only did they have the same job, but he was constantly harassed for being transsexual, this night, beaten up by a couple guys for it, and on top of it all, he couldn’t find a vein to shoot into. They both addressed their sovereign addiction in the dark for a few minutes in solitude until they caught something across the street.
A van pulled up, with three men and a woman getting out, all hauling large, long trash bags. Dressed in black clothes, they look almost as if they were residents to night itself. Shadows perfectly eclipsing their faces from the streetlights, the hauled the bags in, slamming the doors shut.
“Hey, Lois, what do you think are in the bags?” Jessica asked, calling Louis by his preferred name.”
“I don’t know, Jess, maybe bodies,” he said with a tone that she couldn’t perceive as sarcasm or conviction.
She took the bait, “Do you think they’re vampires?”
A small laugh from him, again indistinguishable in nature. Was this a pitiful laugh in disbelief of the question, or from bitterness of not getting high? Or a small giggle because maybe he had found his vein? “Aren’t they supposed to sparkle or something?”
“Not all of them”
He gave it some thought, “What would they want to do in a hellhole like this?”
She gave an eerie consideration, rising from the ground from the ground, “Maybe it’s the perfect front. Let’s go, “She said with a bit of fear of whatever was across the street causing her to shake a bit, “If I’m late, Dan’s going to kill me.”
-Derrick
