I just want to make one thing clear: I’m not sick. I think a sick person wouldn’t be able to recognize the difference between right and wrong. I knew what I did was wrong before I did it. I also knew there wouldn’t be any consequences, I suppose. Nobody was ever going to know.
I’m not a deranged person acting out a strange disgusting fantasy. I never really considered doing the thing that I did before I saw her.
I’m not sick.
When you work at the county morgue people often make crude jokes…about um…I guess the tamest word is “fetishes.”
“Why’d you get into this line of work? You into corpses?” (Wink wink)
It’s what men do. They say offensive, disgusting things. I heard someone on TV once call it “locker room talk.” Nobody ever takes it very seriously. It’s not the sort of thing that people talk about in mixed company. People who hang around corpses all day think it’s all for a laugh. Desensitized. The rest of the guys here have perverted senses of humor.
I don’t think I should really say any of the other types of things that people say…they’re…mostly impolite. It’s not just sex stuff either. Everyone thinks they’re so funny with their little ‘jokes.’ I had put up with so much of that and more when I bought my sewing machine. I was excited so I went around telling everyone about it and they just HAD to ruin it.
Make it dirty.
“What are you gonna do Scott? Make a lady suit? Prance around like Buffalo Bill to ‘Goodbye Horses.’ with your cock between your legs?”
That’s something a sick person would do. It’s something sick people would say. It’s not funny.
Really, I liked being around the bodies. People complain and complain and complain until they’re dead. I’ve never once heard a corpse complain. Veronica Sharpe never complained either. This was of course not her real name, i just started calling her that. Veronica was brought in labeled “Jane Doe.”
What I did definitely wasn’t legal but when I saw her I couldn’t help it. She was to be my muse.
When they brought her in, it was during a hurricane and she shouldn’t have been outside. We see a lot of gruesome injuries here but it isn’t often that the person on the stretcher is only partially decapitated. Usually their heads are either all the way on or all the way off. Veronica’s spinal cord was severed by a stop sign that flew unbound from its post in the strong winds. They found her sitting upright against the side of some bushes, the gales of the storm nodding her head rhythmically up and down, as though approving of the pouring rain.
When she was brought in, the winds were still howling at ridiculous speeds. Even this far below ground I listened to them in awe. I sat at my desk in quiet contemplation until the scream of the wind was interrupted by the loud thump of a gurney. The driver haphazardly plowed her through the swinging doors of the morgue with disrespectful abandon. Veronica was someone’s daughter. She could be someone’s mother. She deserved some respect.
“You’ll like this one Scott. Jane Doe, the fuckin idiot.” David said wheeling the gurney in, “fucking outside in this shit, weren’t you dummy?” He grabbed her by a fist of sodden hair and made her head nod in ridiculous pantomime. The gruesome soundtrack outside only added to the macabre scene, for in that moment, between the wailing wind, thunder shook the entire building. The walls trembled sending a few metal pans rattling from one of the shelves to the floor.
I spat angrily at him to get the fuck out. He just laughed at my look of disgust as he left. I’m not very imposing.
From the front you couldn’t tell. She was perfect. A beautiful creature. I don’t mean it in that way. I’m not sick, I told you. I mean that she must have been beautiful in life because she certainly remained that way in death. Her skin was still pink and supple. Her lips red. Her eyelids lightly closed. She looked like she was sleeping. There was little blood in her wound. I figured she must have been out in the rain for a while, washing a good portion of it away. You could see right through her neck and down into her throat like in a science documentary.
That’s why I took her home with me.
I shouldn’t be even telling you this.
I could go to jail.
I started calling Jane Doe “Veronica Sharpe” in the car. She made an exquisite corpse. A beautiful woman should have a beautiful name. She was just perfect, even with her head lolling forward and back with each touch of the brakes as I drove her home.
When I’d gotten her home, I laid her in bed. Beneath the gash in the back of her neck, I nested a handmade travel pillow.
I snapped her picture over and over again as she appeared to rest there. I took them from every angle I could, careful to ensure her wound would not be seen. Once I was satisfied, I removed the pillow and grabbed another of a different style. A couch-throw pillow this time.
She looked so comfortable. She was just perfect. It was hard to remember that she was dead…she wasn’t just sleeping.
Pillows are one of the easiest things there are to sew. My guest room is full of them right now. I made every single one. I need to get rid of them.
I’m not sick.
I’m an entrepreneur.
I made too many of these pillows.
It’s hard to sell pillows on Etsy. They don’t want you to say how comfortable they are. People want you to show them.
How would you plan to do that without a good model?