Attending to the Dead

[unreliable narrator]

I started work as a morgue-technician back in July, mainly doing menial tasks like transferring the bodies of the recently departed from the wards to the cooler as discretely as possible. The nurses always performed the Last Offices, washing them down and packing any leaking orifices before wrapping the cadaver in a linen sheet. Then they’d just ring down and say, “Hey Stewart, got one for ‘Ward 13’”and I’d be on my way.

All that changed after the meteorite. What used to be a fairly solitary, sombre vocation has become altogether more… hazardous. The dead don’t just lie there anymore.

[unseentangerine]

lol,
"Here's you ninepence."
"I'm not dead, I'm not dead."
"He says he not dead."
"No, he'll be stone dead in a moment."
"I don't want to go on the cart."
"You're not foolin' anybody."
"I feel happy! I feel happy!"
(cudgel to the head)

[unreliable narrator]

Ni!