When you work with dead bodies, you see things, things that keep you up at night if you think
too much about them.
One time I was transporting the body of an old lady who died in her sleep.
I was at a red light, waiting for it to change, and glanced in the rearview mirror just as
she sat up, the sheet falling from her face.
Muscle spasm.
Things happen.
I knew that even then, but it scared the shit out of me, and that night, as I struggled
to sleep, I convinced myself that she looked at me.
Replaying it in my mind, her head tilted just so, and her dead, vacant eyes seemed to register
a flicker of recognition,
Of course I was imagining it.
A body sitting up is natural.
Hell, a body moaning from under a crisp white sheet is natural too.
When you're sitting next to it alone in a morgue at three in the morning, it's creepy,
but you can explain it.
But what I'm about to tell you...you can't explain.
About ten years ago, I was working as a CNA in a nursing home.
A CNA does all the grunt work nurses are too good for.
Mr. Johnson shit on himself?
Call a CNA.
Mrs. Mathers is four hundred pounds and needs a bed pan shoved under her?
Call a CNA.
You have to be physically strong to do it...and have a strong stomach.
A very strong stomach.
There was this old black lady there, her name was Miss Violet, at least that's what we
called her.
Sweet as pie.
One day, she gets sick.
Everyone who knew anything said it was cancer.
The doctor, on the other hand, said it wasn't, and gave her Tylonel 3 for pain.
For a good week she'd sit on the edge of her bed, rocking back and forth in pain, tears
streaming down her face.
When she'd get up, globs of...God knows what would fall out of her.
I think it was her insides.
The cancer was literally chewing it up and spitting it out.
Terrible.
They finally diagnosed her right and got her on some heavy duty shit, but she was dead
in a week anyway.
I usually worked the graveyard shift, 11pm to 7am.
Unless you've been in a nursing home late at night, with the lights low and the sounds
of moaning, groaning, demented laughter, and screaming occasionally rising down long, dimly
lit corridors, you'll never know what horrible places they can be.
One night, I came in and checked on my patients.
Mr. Avis, a little old WWII vet from California, had been sick all day.
I peeked in at him around 11, saw he was okay (or what passed for it), and then went on
with my round.
I came back at 11:30.
He was dead.
Have you ever touched a dead body?
Their skin is hard and icy, like marble.
That's what Mr. Avis felt like.
I checked his vitals, and sure enough, he was dead.
I called the nurse, she did her thing, and yep, he was dead as a doornail.
I pulled the sheet over his head and went back to the nurses' station, where the night
nurse was calling the mortician.
When she was done, we chatted for a minute, then went about our night.
I was sad to see Mr. Avis go.
It's hard to see these people everyday, and get to know them, only to have them die
on you.
But at the same time, you get used to it.
At around five, the nurse called me to the station.
The mortician, a tall, gaunt man with black hair, was waiting.
He needed help with Mr. Avis, and it fell to me to be the help.
I grabbed an empty gurney and wheeled it down to Mr. Avis's room.
Inside, I switched on the light, pushed the gurney next to the bed, and waited for the
mortician.
When he came in, he told me to remove the sheet from Mr. Avis's body.
I started to pull it down, but stopped, my heart leaping into my throat.
Mr. Avis, his eyes closed and his face slack, was trying to speak, his lips moving as though
he were trying to form words.
No sound escaped.
"Uh, he's trying to talk."
The mortician came over and looked at Mr. Avis.
He made a small hmmmm sound.
"Are you sure he's dead?"
I blinked.
"Yeah, I took his vitals.
He's dead."
The mortician opened his bag and pulled out a stethoscope.
He listened to Mr. Avis's heartbeat, or lack thereof.
He then tried to flex the old man's arm.
Mr. Avis's flesh was gray, mottled, and cold.
His joints were stiff.
Rigor mortis had set in.
"Gas escaping the stomach," the mortician said.
"Help me get him on the gurney."
I looked uncertainly from Mr. Avis to the mortician.
The old man's lips were moving, and to me, it didn't look like something random.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes.
Now come on."
Sighing, I went to Mr. Avis's head and bent to grab him under his shoulders.
That's when the words began.
They were indistinct, garbled, and breathy.
I leaned closer, and heard:
"Holy Mary...mother of God...pray for us sinners..."
I jerked back like I'd been shot, something like hysteria welling within me.
"He's talking," I said, pointing.
My voice was shaky even to my own ears.
Darkness passed across the mortician's face.
"No he isn't.
He's dead."
"He's...he's praying!"
Sighing, the mortician leaned over and listened.
I saw his eyes widen.
"You hear it."
The mortician licked his lips and stood up straight.
"Roll him over."
I didn't move.
"Now!"
I swallowed hard and then rolled Mr. Avis onto his side.
The mortician lifted the puke green grown the old man was wearing.
His skin was splotched with pink.
When you die, your heart stops circulating blood, so the blood pools in the lowest parts
of the body.
This is called livor mortis, and appears within a few hours of death.
I let Mr. Avis fall back onto his back.
I leaned over and listened.
"...pray for us sinners...now and at the hour of our death..."
I walked out right then and there.
An old myth I heard says that the soul stays trapped in the body for three days after death.
You're aware the entire time.
I think even to the point of feeling pain.
One time I read that brain activity can sometimes continue in a dead body for hours after the
heart stops.
I wonder if Mr. Avis wasn't still "there" somehow, even though he was dead.
Like maybe he knew his body wasn't working, knew he'd been covered with a sheet for
five hours, and that he was about to be taken away.
Like he knew...and he was praying for it to end...praying so hard inside that he started
to speak.
I'm an orderly at a small psychiatric wing at a hospital in the Pacific North West.
I've been here for a few years, and for the most part I enjoy the job.
I've had a few scary close calls with patients, but those are stories for another time.
The thing I came here to tell you about today started about a week ago, when we got a new
patient.
He was frightening from the very first moment I saw the man, and I don't scare very easily.
He was screaming, and wild-eyed, thrashing and screaming at the unfortunate EMT's who
were escorting him into the ward.
I helped one of the nurses prepare a sedative in a small gauge syringe.
I then moved to help restrain the patient, the nurse jamming the needle through his Bermuda
shorts into his left buttock.
We then maneuvered the man onto a gurney where we could attach his wrists to the rails.
I wheeled the screaming, thrashing man into one of the isolation rooms while the nurse
talked to the men who accompanied him.
After a while he fell quiet, and I peered through the window.
His body was limp against the mattress, but his legs and torso were contorted unnaturally.
I shivered a bit and went about my business.
He woke up some time later, and his shouting and cursing resumed, as did his struggles
against the restraints.
I got chills watching him and went about my routine after a few minutes, mopping the floor
as I made my rounds, keeping my eyes and ears open as I always do.
A few of the other patients seemed to be responding to the new man's cries and I felt a mixture
of fascination and fear as I usually did dealing with the unfortunate souls that we hold here.
I focused on my task and thankfully the rest of the night passed without incident.
When I came in the next day, a group of nurses was standing around the small window where
the medication was dispensed, chattering animatedly.
I approached, fixing my usual professional smile on my face as I walked toward the women.
"What's the word tonight?"
I asked, trying to sound casual, despite the morbid sense of curiosity that had come over
me suddenly.
One of the women, who we will call Janice turned to me.
"That new patient is still under heavy sedation.
He screams every second he's awake.
Doctor Leeds says that he's doing serious damage to his vocal chords, but there's nothing
that seems to calm him besides Thorazine."
Her careworn face was grave while she explained the situation to me and I felt the sympathetic
tug at my heart strings, as anyone would.
The man was clearly out of his mind for one reason or another.
I went about my job, helping to clean up after and move the patients from the day room to
their nightly group therapy sessions, and also assisting with the lock down of the ward.
The old man seemed sedated again as I passed his room, checking the door handle twice being
sure that it was locked tight.
His face was turned toward the small window, slack and relaxed, his mouth hanging open
affording me a view of his rotted, broken teeth.
His tongue, swollen and sort of discolored lolled from between parched, chapped lips.
I felt a small wave of empathy before I continued on my rounds.
It was pretty quiet for a few hours, then a sound, different than before but haunting
in its own unique way found my ears as I strolled along the halls.
The words had a definite rhythm to them, and as I drew nearer and nearer to the sound,
I started to recognize the tune.
"London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down, my fair lady."
Came the words, slightly off-key and somehow the voice held a sweet, childlike quality.
I stopped short of the door to the new patient's room, his singing halted, and it made me hesitate
to peer through the safety glass, but I did it anyway.
The man had slipped one of his hands free somehow, and was working to free his other
wrist as I unfastened the small radio from my belt, calling for security.
Without thinking my other hand moved into the pocket of my slacks, withdrawing the key
ring from it, my fingers searching for the correct key, fitting it into the lock and
twisting rapidly.
I stepped into the room and tried to get the man's attention, but he continued to unfasten
the padded cuff attached to the rail of the gurney.
I stepped forward to interrupt his attempt at freedom, and his head turned toward me,
stopping me in my tracks.
His eyes, they were inhuman.
Not dilated but pure obsidian, even the sclera tinted dark.
His lips were twisted into a feral, almost doglike snarl.
"If you touch me, I'll pull your guts out through your asshole."
The patient said, calm and collected, so unlike the raving, screaming lunatic he had been
in the days and hours previous.
I was happy to hear the heavy footfalls echoing down the hallway outside, a group of guards
and nurses flooding the room.
We managed to get him restrained again, though he bit one of the nurses.
His teeth, despite their decayed state had taken a small chunk of flesh from her wrist.
He spit the blood and bit of skin at one of the guards even while the man was spraying
him in the face with pepper spray.
I had to leave, gagging, eyes stinging with tears and not just because of the noxious
spray in the air.
Blood was everywhere.
They stayed in the room with the raving, screaming man, who at this point was cursing people
out rather than just inarticulately screeching as he had before.
I shivered while I waited for the others to exit the room, feeling faint from the sight
of the vivid crimson fluid splashed around the sterile white room.
Eventually the man was quiet and the group left the room, the nurse who had been bit
pressing a blood soaked towel against her wound with all the pressure she could stand.
One of the security guards escorted her to the Emergency floor of the hospital, and the
rest of us were understandably on edge the rest of the night.
I overheard the nurses talking about having one of the doctors authorize a higher level
of restraint, and the thought of wrestling the man into a straight jacket wasn't appealing
to me, if I'm honest with myself as well as you guys.
I wasn't sure that the man was actually under the effects of the sedative.
The eyes had spooked me, and the crazy thing is that nobody else seemed to notice it, or
if they did, they were keeping it to themselves, just like I was, at least for the moment.
The woman who got bit quit that night, so I'll probably never know if she saw it or
not.
I think I'm finally getting up the nerve to ask Janice if she saw his eyes.
His behavior only got worse after that night, and it hit another sort of zenith if you will,
last night.
I was again walking the halls, I think I was actually just about to take a break, not having
slept well the night before and being slightly exhausted because of it.
The man's guttural howls and chattering screams were echoing around the corner, and I dreaded
walking by the room, but it had to be done.
I also didn't really want to look in on the patient, but again, I had to.
His back was ached against the mattress, twisting and writhing, legs and arms thrashing as much
as they could.
At least he wasn't saying actual words this time.
I wrote down the number of patients in the ward and checked out with Janice for my lunch
break, the man's screams ringing in my ears even as I ate my sandwich in the sparsely
populated cafeteria.
There was something wrong with the sound, it was dark, primal.
I shivered and stared at the buzzing, harsh bulbs behind the thin plastic cover, just
to remind myself of where I was.
I got up, suddenly no longer hungry, disposing of the remnants of my food.
I still had twenty minutes before I had to be back on the ward so I walked to the elevator,
taking it down to the ground floor, following the signs to the small smoking shelter.
I bummed a cigarette from a security guard who was taking a break as well, and he asked
me about the incident a few nights before.
I could feel myself sweating as I told him the story, whether that was from the memory
or the nicotine I'm unsure.
I don't usually smoke, but the added stress I felt at the time was extreme, and I couldn't
drink and do this job.
The urge to drink did come up, and it has lingered for a while.
I took the stairs up to the ward, prolonging returning to work as many seconds as I could.
I also took a pit stop in the bathroom as well, urinating and washing my face before
examining my reflection in the mirror.
I looked like walking Death, and felt about the same.
The patient's threat and screams echoed through my mind as I stared at myself, and I shuddered
again.
I walked back to the day room, and posted up until I had to make a count again, watching
an old cartoon on the large flat screen mounted on the far wall.
I got up and got moving, checking in on all the occupied rooms, purposely starting as
far from our new resident as possible.
At least he hadn't been screaming when I was in the day room.
The cold chill that was starting to become familiar crept up my spine as I checked in
on the last patient around the corner from the man, and that's when I heard it.
A soft sound, almost indistinct at this distance, and as my steps carried me closer, I heard
what I can only describe as a female child giggling.
The sound made me stop for a full five seconds, frozen in place and hyperventilating.
I broke my paralysis somehow and took another step forward.
I peered through the window, and saw the man sitting upright on his gurney, feet and arms
free, though the restraints were buckled.
He stared at me through the window, and smiled, raising a hand to wave at me.
I started for my radio again and that's when I was struck by the sensation of an ice pick
driving through my right eye.
My hand froze above the radio no matter how hard I tried to grab it.
No sound exited my throat when I tried to call for help.
My abdomen quivered and the pain intensified, causing me to scream.
That drew attention and I felt an invisible wave crash into my body, throwing me to the
floor, knocking me loopy, but I was still conscious as Janice and another nurse helped
me to my feet.
The man cackled as they called security, helping me into the Nurse's Station, where I quit,
not giving a reason, or answering any questions as I collected my stuff.
I don't believe in demons, I don't think, but I may have met one.
I noticed the itch the first time I met Ivy.
She sat next to me in psychology the first day of class.
We started talking about music or something and everything felt really comfortable.
Except for the irritable itch.
At the time it was only a mere inconvenience confined to my left arm.
I thought it was just dry skin.
A few weeks later Ivy and I were watching a movie in my living room when she noticed
me itching the spot.
She told me I should get it looked at by my school nurse.
I'm not the kind of guy who takes care of himself but I agreed to anyway to make her
happy.
The nurse told me I was showing symptoms of ringworm.
She told me to buy some Lotrimin at the Walgreens and rub it on my arm two times a day and that
I'll be fine in a few weeks.
A few weeks passed.
I wasn't very disciplined about applying the cream.
I'd do it for a while then miss a day and it would be worse than it's ever been.
And it spread.
First to my other arm, then both legs, and up and down my chest and back.
Spotted Red circles covering my body.
It itched and it burned.
I was fed up and even tried to bleach the infected parts.
That just made it come back bolder and redder.
Ivy and I got really close the next couple months.
We stopped dressing up for dates as much and spent more time watching movies in my living
room.
I took her to my favorite "spot" and told her I loved her and she said it back.
All this time my ringworm only got worse.
It would be foolish at this point not to acknowledge a correlation with how close I became with
Ivy and how much the rash grew.
But I didn't want to stop being with Ivy, and it was worth the constant itch and burning
on my skin.
Ringworm is contagious but only if skin to skin contact is made with the rash, so we
held off anything too physical until I could get rid of the rash.
But like most 20 year olds we couldn't wait.
It was one of those nights when we finished watching a movie and were kissing on my couch
when she suggested we take it up to my bedroom.
Things were getting really heated and before either of us had any wits about us, our clothes
were on the other side of the room.
This was both of our first times and I couldn't comprehend how I was feeling such intense
euphoria.
As we both finished it was that feeling but magnified to an even greater intensity, my
whole body felt free and relaxed, like it hadn't for months.
Ivy screamed, but this time out of pain, not pleasure.
When I opened my eyes I saw what was making me feel so good, and it wasn't Ivy.
Around 30 big ass red worms with orange gue were escaping out of all the rings on my body
and were digging their way into Ivy's skin.
Ivy and I immediately pulled apart but the worms pulled our bodies back together.
We struggled to separate but it was like trying to escape from under a pile of rocks.
They were too strong.
Ivy screamed and bled as the worms bit through her and claimed their spot under her skin.
I felt guilty because of how good it felt.
The holes the worms were leaving on their way out of my skin felt like relaxing acupuncture
and when I bled out onto Ivy it felt like a sweet release.
When the worms finally left my body and were in hers I felt like mountains were lifted
off my shoulders.
I'd never felt this good.
But Ivy was on my bed in pain.
The last of the worms were wiggling their way inside of her and we tried grabbing the
ends and pulling them out but they were too strong.
She tried reaching into the holes they left on her skin but they swam too far inside and
she only ripped her skin open more.
I took her to the emergency room but the nurse just told her to pick up some Lotrimin from
Walgreens and that it would be better in a few weeks.
Ivy broke up with me.
It wasn't that she was mad about the incident, because she knew it was as much my fault as
hers.
I think she just wasn't the same with the ringworm and she didn't love me like she
used to.
I spent a month being sad until a pretty girl sat next to me my first day of biology.
I said hi and itched my arm.
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