“Don’t worry. This won’t hurt,” he says and grins at the old lady’s stony face. Sonny makes the Y-shaped incision from shoulder to shoulder and down to the pubic bone. Smooth as slicing warm butter. The layers of fat and muscle and the internal organs reveal themselves and glisten under the bright lights.
The morgue is cold, but the stainless steel shines. It’s far cheerier than his new place with U-Haul boxes stacked against walls and a Wal-Mart air mattress. Not much else except for the Angry Orchard bottles lining the kitchenette counter.
He lifts out each organ with great care. Weighs it. Slices it. Scrutinizes it. He could probably just examine the heart. All indications are that her heart was the trouble. He could determine cause of death, write his report, and be done, but then he’d have to think about something other than livers, gallbladders, stomachs, spleens, kidneys, lungs.
“Siri, play Led Zeppelin.” The morgue swells with music. Sonny’s energy surges.
“Siri, play Marvin Gay. . . .”
“Siri, play Van Halen.”
He puts the old lady’s heart on the scale. 160 grams. Oh, boy. He looks the organ over. Oh, yeah. Withered.
“Hey, you don’t have a boyfriend named Jake, do you?” he asks the old lady. “Buff guy. A private trainer. Makes house calls.”
He looks at her lying there eviscerated. “Feeling kind of hollow?”
He freezes. Winces. I needed something to make me feel less empty.
“Hey, your name isn’t Liz, is it?”
The old lady keeps her mouth shut tight.
He looks at the chart. “Ethel.” He nods. “Toxic, are you?”
His hand tremors. Angry Orchard is calling.
Sonny starts putting the organs back inside the old lady.
“Siri, play Heart.”
When he picks up the withered heart, he gives it a squeeze and then lays it gently in the open chest cavity. “You’re welcome.”
Mark Spencer is the author of six novels, three collections of short stories, and two history books. His work has received the Faulkner Society Faulkner Award for the Novel, the Omaha Prize for the Novel, the Bradshaw Book Award, the Cairns/St. Andrews Press Short Fiction Award, and four Special Mentions in Pushcart Prize.
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