The Coroner

The coroner was drunk that night.  I remember how he slurred his words as he sagged in the doorway. “Another corpsh,” he said and then flung his hat and coat toward a chair in the corner.  I wondered how he was able to hold himself upright; his large belly swung left, then right as he staggered toward the autopsy table, swinging like a crazed clock pendulum, threatening to throw him to the ground with its inertia.  He came to rest at the table’s edge and grappled the overhanging light to catch himself.

“Another night, another godammm corpsh!”  he spat.  As the light stopped its swinging he studied the corpse on the table for a moment and then declared, “Shuishide.  Death by shelf terminashun.”

“But, boss!” I objected as I handed him his scalpel.  He hadn’t bothered to scrub in; he never did.  “Those wounds,” I pointed to each one –the punctures in the hands, the legs, the abdomen, and the jagged cut across the throat, so deep that spine was exposed to the light, “were clearly not self inflicted…”

He snorted at me, withdrew a flask from his shirt pocket and took a drink.  When he’d finished, he wiped his face with his sleeve and replaced flask.  “Well then, let’s get started.” With the scalpel in his right hand he stood poised over the body, ready to make the Y-incision that would begin the procedure.

And I heard a loud voice proclaiming, “Who is worthy to break the seals and to open the scroll?” But no one was found, not in heaven, or on the earth, or under the earth.  No one, especially not the drunkard standing in front of me reeking of booze and sweat and cheap cologne, was worthy to open it. And I wept because there was no one worthy to open the corpse and to look inside.

The coroner looked up and me and said, “Stop your shnivelling, you push!”  And then he began cutting the body.  His cuts weren’t the cleanest cuts – he hesitated and twitched as he cut clumsily through the dead flesh.  Suddenly he paused and pulled his hands away from the corpse.  I watched as a pained but vacant expression washed over his face. 

And then he belched, loud and long.  He belched and then blew the alcoholic fumes in my face.  “Ha!” he laughed, and turned back to his cutting.