I Work In A Morgue, Last Night The Dead Started Whispering | Part 1
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The cereal bowl hits the tile and shatters into a million pieces at my feet. My entire body freezes, which is good because that means my bladder is frozen too. If it wasn't, I'd probably piss myself right here and now. My ears strain for any signs that I've been hurt, but after a couple of minutes go by and no servant comes into the kitchen with a shotgun, I relax a bit. The old lady said they didn't have staff, but you just never know.

Then I glance down at the shattered bowl at my feet. Why don't rich people use plastic cereal bowls like the rest of us, huh? I guess. Maybe it isn't a cereal bowl. Could be a soup bowl. Or some special bowl for desserts only. Where if you put salad or something else in there, you go straight to hell. But if it's a dessert bowl, then it's really like an ice cream bowl. And ice cream bowls should be plastic too, for fuck's sake. The rich. They live different lives.

I'm planning on changing that. For me, I want a different life too. A rich life. That's why I'm here. By the dim light coming into the kitchen from the security lamp sitting out by the driveway, I take a look at my notes for the 16th time. Third cupboard from the right, closest to the refrigerator. Top shelf, old mug with the dog on it. Behind that, code 7879710. I study the kitchen and all its amenities.

A gas stove with like 12 burners and a griddle. A gajillion copper pots and pans hanging all over an island with a marble top worth more than my Impala. The fridge doors match the cupboard doors, so it takes me a while to track the thing down. I'd spent 20 minutes going from room to room, making sure I was actually in the kitchen, before I realized the fridge was camouflaged. Again, rich people. Why do they hide their fridges?

Are they afraid someone will break in, crack their safe, then make a fucking charcuterie board to go? What the actual fuck? But I have found the fridge and not gotten caught after breaking a ball. So far the night is working out for me. I see the third cupboard from the right, closest to the fridge, and stare up at it. Top shelf, huh?

I can climb up onto the counter, or I can try to find a step stool because my 5'8 frame ain't gonna reach that shelf without a little help. It doesn't take me long to realize I can spend the rest of the night looking for a step stool in a stranger's house. So I place my palms on the counter and boost myself up. I don't need to stand on the counter, luckily. I can reach the top shelf of the cupboard by being on my knees.

Now, the only problem is getting the cupboard open without knocking myself off the counter. I probably should have opened it before hopping up. There's very little wiggle room, but I find just enough to scooch back and be able to swing the cupboard open. Mugs. The whole entire cupboard is filled with mugs. Coffee mugs. Tea mugs with lids. To-go mugs. Copper mugs. Elegant pottery and cheap plain white ceramic.

If it comes in mug form, these rich fuckers apparently have a version. And the top shelf is the worst. Glass mugs. Considering my track record so far, I'm not happy to see so much breakable shit in one cupboard. But slowly, carefully, and with so much concentration that I give myself a headache, I managed to get almost all of the mugs down from the top shelf and onto the counter without dropping a single one. Then there it is.

The mug with a dog's face etched into it. Under the face is the name Daisy. I shove it aside and behind it is really what I'm looking for. The keypad. I reach into the cupboard, double check my note for the 17th time and type in the code. Nothing happens. I read the note. I type the code. Nothing happens. "What the fuck?" I mutter. 7-8-7-9-7-10. I type. I type again. Still nothing.

I stab my finger at the keypad, thinking maybe brute force or intimidation will work. It doesn't. My frustration is building and that's not great. Nothing good comes from me getting frustrated. I have a couple of mugshots to prove it. "Okay, okay, okay," I say to myself, and my voice sounds strange in the deserted kitchen. I read my note. I look at the keypad. I read my note again. I look at the keypad. Then I try to think back at what the old woman told me.

The old dead woman, that is. Alright, so I may have mentioned that I've had a couple run-ins with the law. Yeah, it's true. Nothing major. A little shoplifting here, some petty theft there. I might have driven off without paying for gas once or twice, or six times. There could even be a record of a drunken disorderly charge. Then there's the little thing that may have involved me. An underage girl I could have sworn was 18.

An over-aged woman I could have sworn was 18. A horse trailer and seven or eight llamas. All in all, I have spent about 14 months in the county jail spread over six years, not counting a couple stints in juvie. No prison time, luckily. It helps to be related to the public defender. Cousins take care of each other.

Which is how I ended up kneeling on a counter in some mini mansion trying not to fling every goddamn mug in front of my face across the kitchen because the goddamn code won't work. You see, after the llama incident and after the underage girl's parents didn't press charges because they knew who their daughter was and the overage woman went back to her husband and three kids, I was given a choice.

work the county morgue's night shift six nights a week for the next three years, or go upstate for a very long time. I asked my cousin if I could think about it for a day or so, and he just shook his head, looked up at the judge who'd pretty much had it with me, and said, "You'll take the deal, your honor. When does he start?" I wasn't exactly thrilled with my cousin for making that choice for me. I mean, sure, I didn't want to go to prison. Who does want to go to prison?

Um, your honor.

"If I could think about it a-" I started to say, but the gavel was already on its way down for a hard whack. After the echoes of the banging gavel had gone quiet, the judge leaned out across his bench and dead-eyed me like I'd never been dead-eyed before. And that's saying something, because people all my life have been dead-eyeing me. "Son, you are a fuck-up," the judge said.

No one in the courtroom snickered at the profanity. We all knew whose courtroom we were in. Judge Elias Hortenstein's. That's whose. "How many times have you been before this bench, Mr. Harmon?" Judge Hortenstein asked. I shrugged, and he banged the gavel twice. "I asked you a question, son," the judge snarled at me. "I'll repeat it, in case you're just hard of hearing and not a complete and total imbecile."

"I heard you, your honor," I said after my cousin nudged me with his elbow. "Good for you, but let me repeat it anyway," the judge said. "How many times have you been before this bench, Mr. Harmon?" I did a little mental math and replied, "Six times, your honor." "No!" he shouted, and I swear he almost threw that gavel at me. "Eleven! Eleven times!" I glanced at my cousin, and he nodded.

"Really?" I asked, leaning in close to my cousin like I had whispered that word, even though I hadn't. "And that's just since you turned eighteen, which was about six years ago!" the judge shouted. "Counselor, remind your client about his idiocy, please!" "You're forgetting the diamond dashes at the buffet last year," he said. "Oh, right," I said. I straightened up and smiled at the judge. "Forgot about the chuck wagon, your honor."

"Well, you won't forget working in the morgue, I can say that for sure," the judge said, and gave his gavel a hard whack. "Six nights a week with the weekly schedule determined by the supervising coroner. You report tomorrow night at 9:00 p.m. on the dot. You will not be a second late, Mr. Harmon, or I will send you upstate without shedding a single tear over it."

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and people helping truckers fill up and get maintenance at our convenient locations. They're part of the more than 300,000 jobs BP supports across the country. Learn more at BP.com/InvestingInAmerica. In my defense, Your Honor, I started to say, but was drowned out by the banging of his gavel. Tomorrow night, the judge shouted at me, 9:00 p.m. sharp or you go to prison. Am I understood, Mr. Harmon?

"Yes, your honor," I said. My cousin elbowed me again. "Uh, thank you. Get the fuck out of my courtroom," the judge snarled, then waved his gavel at the bailiff. "Tully, bring me the next case. Please, let it be something less frustrating, like a good old-fashioned murder or DUI. Or arson. Do we have an arson case?" "No, your honor. Prostitution is up next," Tully said.

The judge shrugged and glared at me while two deputies walked my way. "I'll take prostitution better than this sad sack of shit," the judge said as I was escorted out of the courtroom by two sheriff's deputies and taken half a building away to the county jail where I was processed, released on my own, and expected to report back to the same building the next night at precisely 9:00 PM. Not a second later, I was 15 minutes late. But hey,

Turns out the supervising coroner sniffs formaldehyde and I just happened to walk on him with a dope-soaked rag to his face. So, while he noticed I was 15 minutes late and could have told the judge, we mutually decided that he'd let my tardiness go and I'd let his drug habit go. The guy said, offering me his hand. The hand with the formaldehyde-soaked rag in it.

He dropped that to the floor, wiped his hand on his scrubs, and offered the hand again. "Connor?" I asked as I shook his hand. He nodded. "Connor the coroner?" I asked, trying not to laugh. "And you are Pete the fuck-up," Connor said. "It doesn't rhyme, but it has a ring to it. Do you want me to call you Pete the fuck-up?" "No," I said, a little annoyed that he thought that was an option. "Then don't call me Connor the coroner," he said.

He picked up the rag and stuffed it in the front pocket of his scrubs. Then he walked over to a small desk that sat outside a set of double doors. There was a blue bundle there, and Connor threw the blue bundle at me. Change into these, he said. I caught the bundle and frowned down at it.

"I'm not a doctor or a nurse or anything," I said as I stared at the set of scrubs he'd tossed me. "That doesn't matter," he said, and plopped down into the folding chair behind the desk. "Everyone wears scrubs. Do I have to?" I asked. "Can't I just wear what I have on?" I looked down at my jeans and t-shirt. The jeans were an old pair, and the t-shirt had the words "Abnoxious AF" on it. It was a birthday gift from my grandma.

"Do you know where you are?" Connor asked. "Do you know where you are?" I mocked and aimed my chin at the rag-made bulge in his pocket. "Fuck you," Connor said, then sneered. "And while the t-shirt may be an accurate uniform for you, you are now working in the county morgue. That means you will be dealing with dead bodies. And dead bodies tend to leak fluids. A lot of fluids."

I looked down at the scrubs, up at the double doors, down at the scrubs, then over at Connor. "I thought you drained the bodies of all the blood and shit," I said. "What fluids do they have left? This is a morgue, not a funeral home," Connor said. "You're thinking of embalming, and we don't do that here. What we do here is we take in the bodies, help determine the cause of death, maybe do an autopsy if it's warranted, or if the family requests it,

Then once everything is on the up and up, that's when we send the body to Jones' funeral home. And they take it from there." "You don't always do an autopsy?" I asked. "I thought that was the law." "Stop believing television," Connor said, then stabbed a finger out at me. "And put your fucking scrubs on. I want to get you through your orientation and then not talk to you the rest of the night. The sooner you are dressed, the sooner I don't have to deal with you anymore."

I may be an obnoxious asshole, but Connor's a real dick. I'll just put that out there right now. Fine, I said and held up the scrubs. Where's the restroom? That door there, Connor said and pointed past me. I looked over my shoulder and saw a single door with all the bathroom symbols on the wall next to it, including a shower symbol. And that was a great sign to see.

My water had been shut off the day before the whole llama thing, so knowing there was a shower at work was awesome. "Dude!" Connor snapped. "Scrubs! Now!" I went and got changed. There was a set of lockers in the restroom too, so I stuffed my clothes in there after getting dressed in the scrubs. Of course, I went through all the other lockers, but there wasn't much in there. Connor had his clothes and shoes in a locker, which made me wonder if I needed different shoes too.

That was all. He must have had his phone and wallet on him. His car keys too. The rest of the lockers were empty. When I returned to the desk, Connor was scrolling on his phone and laughing at something. "Fucking cats, man," he said, and tucked his phone into his breast pocket then stood up. "Alright loser, let's get this over with. I have somewhere to be in about three hours."

"Somewhere to be?" I asked. "Aren't you supposed to be here all night with me?" "Aren't you supposed to be here all night with me?" He mocked in a whiny voice that sounded way worse than my voice had when I mocked him. "I'll be where I'll be when I am there, got it?" I shook my head. "No, that's really confusing." He sighed. "You will stay here all night. If anyone asks, I was here all night too. Do you see now how this works?"

"What if a body comes in?" I asked. "That's what I'm about to show you!" He snapped. "Jesus, Pete! Did one of those llamas kick you in the head or something?" "You heard about that?" I asked. "Everyone heard about it," Connor said. "You were caught with a naked 16-year-old and a naked 37-year-old at a truck stop trying to sell stolen llamas. The story made the rounds."

"I thought she was eighteen," I said. "Well, she was obviously sixteen," Connor said. "I mean the other chick," I said. Connor stared at me for a long while then shook his head, turned, and walked through the double doors. "Come on!" he shouted when I failed to join him. "Okay, so here is where I admit something. Dead bodies freak me out a little, or a lot. Yeah, more like that. They freak me out a lot.

When I was eight, I walked into the garage. It was summer break and the garage was like really hot. It was even hotter because my mom's station wagon was running. Man, it stank in there. I started coughing right away, waving my hand around to get the fumes out of my face. Even though I was eight, I managed to get the garage door open. It was a manual, didn't have an automatic opener because my dad was too cheap to buy one.

That's what my mom said, at least. So, I was huffing and puffing to get the garage door open and almost passed out. Actually, I think I did pass out for a few seconds. Because the next thing I remember is our across-the-street neighbor, Mr. Huffman, shaking me by the shoulder. I was on the concrete and my lungs and head kinda hurt. Where's your mama? He asked. I shrugged as I slowly sat up.

The old man looked past me and then hurried by. I heard him gasp and start saying, "Oh Lord! Oh heavens! Oh Lord!" over and over. I mean, the garage stank, but not that bad. When the police and paramedics got there, they wrapped me in blankets and set me on the edge of one of the ambulances until my dad arrived.

He cried and screamed and yelled, and then collapsed onto the driveway as four gurneys were wheeled away to three other ambulances that had shown up. All of the gurneys had sheets pulled up over them. Once they were loaded up and the ambulances were gone, the sheriff helped my dad to his feet, then handed him a piece of paper. My dad read it, shook his head, read it again, then looked over at me. I waved.

My lungs and head were feeling a lot better, and one of the paramedics had given me a Capri Sun. It was watermelon, which was my second favorite flavor. My dad folded up that paper and put it in his pocket, then walked over to me to tell me that my mom and my three sisters were dead. I didn't know how to handle that, so I just shrugged and looked at the garage.

"Can I have a popsicle?" I asked, as I threw the empty Capri Sun down onto the street. "A popsicle?" my dad asked. "Yeah." I said and pointed at the garage. "I was going to get a popsicle from the freezer, but I didn't get one. Can I have one now?" "Your mother and sisters are dead, and you want a popsicle?" he asked me. "Yeah." I replied and nodded. "Grape." Grape was my first favorite flavor of anything.

"Jesus Christ, Peter!" my dad said and rubbed his face. "What is wrong with you?" I shrugged. "Let's get you inside." My dad said and reached for me. I jerked away. "I don't want to go inside. I want a popsicle," I said. "A grape popsicle. Kids process things differently," a paramedic said, and my dad laughed. "No, no, this is Peter's." He said and laughed again.

"Jesus himself could come down, and he'd still want a popsicle!" "Great," I said. "He's in shock," the paramedic said. "No, he's just a little asshole," Dad said. Then he pulled the paper out of his pocket. "Do you know what my wife wrote?" he asked the paramedic. A couple of other paramedics started to get closer, the same with some sheriff's deputies.

I didn't blame them. My dad sounded weird and was kind of freaking out. Even eight-year-old me could see that. "I'll read it to you," my dad said, and then he did. He read that note in front of everyone. "Dear Jasper," my dad read, "I am sorry to do this to you, but I can't be here anymore. I've tried to tell you so many times, but you wouldn't listen. The world is a cruel place, and you are one of the crueler parts of it.

So I am leaving you forever, and I am taking our girls with me. There is no way I'll let them be part of this cruelty. There is no way I'll let you raise them to be just three more stupid women in this cruel world. That is not going to happen. So I am ending it for all of us." He stopped reading and looked up at me. Then he continued, "But Peter is an asshole, so you can have him. The two of you deserve each other.

"Good luck in hell, fuckers, because I know neither of you will reach us here in heaven. Even if the boy's name is Peter, he won't be getting through the pearly gates. I know it and you know it. Yours truly, Misty." "Fucking hell," one of the deputies said and walked off. "Oh," the paramedic who had argued with my dad said. "I see. Can I have my great popsicle now?" I asked. My dad pointed at me, then dropped the paper and walked off.

I watched him cross over overgrown lawn to our front door. He paused for a second but didn't look back. Then he opened the front door and walked inside our house. The paramedic took the blanket off me and helped me down onto the street. He looked me up and down and tried to smile. Then he walked me up to my porch. "My partner gave your dad a list of resources," he said to me. "They'll help with the grief.

Then he handed me his card. "But call me if you ever need to talk to someone, alright?" "Okay." I said and took the card. "Can I have my great popsicle now?" I'm pretty sure the guy ended up changing his phone number after the 12th or 13th time I called him to ask if I could ride in the ambulance with the siren on. So, after all that, dead bodies aren't my thing. I do like great popsicles though. I mean, who doesn't? Although, I never did get one that night.

"Peter!" Connor shouted. "Pull your head out of your ass and get in here now or I'm calling the fucking judge!" A debate raged in my head. It was a genuine debate. Go to prison or see dead bodies. "You're looking at no less than five years," Connor said and grinned at me from the double doors. He pulled his phone out of his pocket. "All I have to do is make the call. I was told there are no second chances, so you can't stupid your way out of this one."

He thumbed the phone and put it to his ear. "I'm coming, Dick!" I yelled and stomped over to him. "Gonna move or what?" He ended the call, put the phone in his pocket, and held one of the doors open for me. I stepped into the morgue and my life changed forever. "7879710." I mumble as I enter the numbers into the keypad over and over and over. It still doesn't do a damn thing.

I feel like I could pound the world into pieces. At the very least, I could pound every goddamn mug into a million pieces. Then it hits me. Pound! Now, the old woman didn't say anything about the pound sign. But then she wasn't exactly all there when I questioned her. So I don't totally blame her if something important was left out. I blame her about 70%. Sure, just not 100%. 7-8, 7-9, 7-10. Pound.

A light flashes green on the keypad, and I hear a loud click. And, once again, nothing happens. There's no little door that swings out from inside the cupboard. No panel moves aside. Just a very loud click from somewhere in the kitchen. I must have done it wrong. 7-8-7-9-7-10 pound. A loud click. But I don't know from where! What? The old bitch couldn't have told me there was more to this than just the goddamn code?!

She couldn't have clued me in on what happens after I hear the click? Dumb old broad. I'm glad she's dead. 7'8", 7'9", 7'10", pound. Click. Nope. Still can't tell where it's coming from. I swear. When I get back to the morgue, I'm gonna wring that bitch's neck. Not that it'd do much good. It's a slow night, Connor says, pointing to the four empty metal tables in the morgue. No one has come in yet.

He walked past the tables to the far wall, where there were three rows of four lockers. And not like the lockers in the restroom. Nope. These had doors that were about three feet square with heavy-duty handles on them. Kinda like handles to walk-in coolers at restaurants. I worked at McDonald's for a week and a half, so I know what a restaurant walk-in cooler handle looks like. Okay, I lied.

I only worked there for three days before I had a disagreement with the manager over how much food I was allowed to eat during my break and how much food I was allowed to take home at night. Turns out it's zero, which, to this day, seems unreasonable to me. Connor grabbed one of those handles and pulled the door open. A long metal drawer slid out automatically and I found myself staring at a naked man.

Most of his right leg was gone, and he had this huge Y scar on his chest and belly. "Chainsaw accident," Connor said. "We had to do an autopsy for insurance purposes. Looks like he was high on meth, and he decided to cut down his neighbor's tree. We've all been there," I said and laughed. "Have we?" Connor asked with a sneer. "I think we have, ragman," I said. He frowned, but didn't say anything. Then he waved me over.

I didn't budge. He waved harder. I didn't budge harder. "Get your fucking ass over here so I can show you something," he said. His hand hovered close to his pocket where his phone was. "Fine," I said, and took three steps closer. He growled, so I took three more steps. "See this tag?" he asked, and pointed to the tag on the guy's only remaining big toe. "This is an intake tag,

"When a body comes into the morgue, we take down the information from the paramedics and then write it on a tag like this. We do this first before we do anything else." "Do you know why?" "Because he can't write it himself?" I asked. "No," Connor said in a more irritated tone. "Because if things get chaotic, we need to make sure there's no mix-ups with the bodies."

Identification is our first priority. So we fill out the tag, place it on his or her toe. Then we start filling out the rest of the intake forms. How many forms are there? I asked. A few, he said, and shoved the drawer back into the locker, then closed the door. I'll show you. And he did. He showed me all five of the forms I'd have to fill out every single time a body came in.

I'd dropped out of high school to avoid paperwork bullshit like that, and there I was, filling out forms like some office drone. I mean, sure, the office was a morgue, and there were dead people everywhere, but you get what I'm saying, right? By the time it was midnight, I'd practiced filling out toe tags and forms on the morgue's one computer for nearly three hours straight. I was exhausted and ready for a break.

"What time is lunch, or whatever you call it here?" I asked. Connor laughed as he hesitated by the restroom door. "Lunch is whenever you want," he said, then disappeared inside the restroom. When he came out, he was dressed in his regular clothes, his car keys in his hand. "I'll be back before your shift is over," he said.

"If anyone comes by, which they won't, and asks you where I am, you just say I'm dealing with a bad burrito, find out what they want, and tell them you'll give me the message." "Okay," I said. "If a body comes in, tell them the same thing and do exactly what I just showed you." He continued. "Can you do that? Toe-tag first," I said and gave him a thumbs up. Then I smiled and held up my hand higher. "Huh, the thumb is just the hand's big toe."

"Jesus fucking Christ," Connor said and left. "Bye," I said, and he flipped me off as he opened the door to the stairwell. I waited about 15 minutes to make sure he was really gone, then I got to work. The morgue wasn't exactly a hospital, but it still had plenty of expensive looking shit that I knew I could get good prices on. So I spent the next hour taking inventory of everything that I could possibly get away with hawking.

Which wasn't much, really. There wasn't jack shit in the way of supplies out by the desk. Trust me, I checked. So my eyes kept wandering to the double doors. That's where all the magic happened. So that's probably where all the expensive equipment was. But that meant going into a room where dead bodies were being stored like sides of beef. Very comfortable sides of beef in their own beds.

Or, really, they were more like those Japanese travelers who have to stay in coffin hotels. You know, the kind where all they get is like a tube for a bed and no actual room? I stalled for another hour before I decided to go for it and see what I could find in there. I pushed open the double doors and the overhead lights automatically flickered to life. It didn't take me long to realize that a morgue isn't exactly filled with riches and shit.

There was some machinery, but I didn't know what it did so I left it alone. There were some crazy looking steel tools, like these huge scissors that could take my head off, and clamp thingies that probably could hold a house together in a hurricane. But Norris at the pawn shop wasn't going to touch any of it. It wouldn't exactly take the sheriff long to connect the dots about where the tools came from when those things showed up on the wall behind the pawn shop's register. So, stealing shit was a no-go.

At least I killed some more time. Just as I was pushing the double doors open to leave, I heard something that made me shiver. "Hello?" I called when I turned around to face the lockers. "Is someone in here?" It was a stupid question, I know, but I wasn't sure what else to say. I could have sworn I heard something, kinda like a person shifting in bed, except if the bed was made of stainless steel, and the person was a corpse.

I waited, but the noise didn't repeat itself, so I left and went to sit back down at the desk. It was probably four in the morning when the hand grabbed my shoulder and I screamed. "Calm your shit down," Connor said, giving me a shove. "And get out of my chair." "Huh? What?" I asked, as I tried to shake the sleep from my head. "When did you get back?" "Just now, moron," Connor said and gave me another shove. "Move."

"My legs are asleep," I said. "Give me a second. Get up or I get you up," Connor said and cracked his knuckles. "Geez, man, chill," I said, and somehow managed to get myself up out of the chair without falling over. I did stumble a little and grab onto Connor's arm to keep my balance. He smelled like discount whiskey, discount cigarettes, and discount sex. "You've been having fun," I said as he shoved me aside and sat down.

"Fuck off," Connor said, and pulled his phone from his pocket as he kicked his feet up on the desk. "Go sit your ass down over there." He nodded at a row of chairs that must be for people waiting to identify a body or something. I shrugged and went and sat down, crossing my arms over my chest as I slouched in the chair. Then I glanced at the double doors. "You ever hear anything when you're in here?" I asked Connor. He ignored me and kept scrolling on his phone.

"'Because I was in there earlier. I swear I heard something move in one of the lockers,' I continued. "'You didn't hear anything,' Connor said without looking at me. "'No, I think I did,' I said. He glanced up from his phone and fixed me with a cold, hard stare. "'Listen up, because I'll only say this once,' he said then paused a really long time. "'I think he was going for dramatic effect.'

It may have been dramatic coming from anyone else, but coming from Connor, it was just him being a dick. "You gotta actually say it, man," I said. "Working the night shift can be a bitch," Connor said. "You get tired, you get bored, your mind starts filling in the gaps. You think you hear shit, but you aren't hearing anything. It's all in your imagination." I watched him for a second, then shook my head. "What aren't you telling me?" I asked.

A look of surprise fell across Connor's face. Then he grinned and went back to looking at his phone. "You know what? I tried," Connor said. "You can hear whatever and believe whatever you want. Doesn't matter much to me. This is my last night shift. I'm sorry, what the fuck now?" I asked and sat up straight. "How is this your last night shift?" Connor frowned and scrunched up his face as he studied me. Then he shook his head as if I was the saddest sack of shit he'd ever seen.

"Do you think it takes two people to do this job?" he asked. "Well, no, but…" I just sort of left that "but" hanging there. "I'm moving to the day shift now that Berger is retired," Connor said. "That's why you got assigned the night shift. There's a vacancy." "But I'm not trained!" I exclaimed in a voice an octave higher than I would have liked. "Do you know what to do when a body comes in?" Connor asked. "Toe tag then forms," I said.

He responded, But what if something goes wrong? I asked. What's going to go wrong? Connor replied, pointing at the double doors. They're already dead. Yeah, but if you aren't... I started to say...

"You want training? Okay, here is some training," Connor said as he yanked his feet off the desk and stood up. "You ready?" "Yeah, sure," I said and stood up with him. He walked us over to a single door and opened it. I already knew what was in there because I'd searched the place. Cleaning supplies. Connor threw a mop at me, then kicked the mop bucket in my direction.

It rolled on wobbly wheels out of the locker and slowly collided with the opposite wall. "Do you know how to mop a floor?" he asked. "Yeah, I know how to mop a floor," I said. "I did. I've had a lot of experience mopping floors." "Great," Connor said and pointed at the double doors. "Go mop. In there. Once you are finished, then you are fully trained." I glared at him, but he didn't care.

He returned to the desk, leaving me standing there with a mop in my hand. "There's a mop sink in there," Connor said, pulling his phone back out. "Phil, mop, rinse, repeat. Got it? How often do I mop?" I asked, gripping the handle tight. I so wanted to break the mop over his head.

"Is there a schedule?" "Yeah, it's called every single night," Connor said. "Now leave me alone and go mop, Peaky Boy. I want that floor in there to sparkle for our guests, fucker." I mumbled under my breath as I fetched the mop bucket, shoved the mop into it, and rolled it over to the double doors. A shiver ran up and down my spine as I leaned my shoulder against the double doors and pushed them open.

I've got a system, and I'm a little closer to figuring out where the click is coming from. All I have to do is punch in the code, then shove myself off the counter real fast and stand very still when I land. I've heard the click several times, and I know it's coming from the general area of the pantry, if you can call it a pantry. I've been in many marts that are less stocked than this pantry is. One more time, I say.

Then I punch in the code, shove off the counter, land like a fucking cat on the floor and listen. Click. 100% the pantry. For the millionth time, I walk into the pantry and start searching the walls. I have to admit, I've been lazy and haven't taken all the groceries off the shelves yet. There are just so many. But this time I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna go the extra mile.

After all, the old woman said that her treasure was here, and I'm a guy who likes treasure. As I yank boxes of dried pasta and cans of tomato sauce from the shelves, I think about what the treasure might be. Gold? Maybe jewelry? Possibly really valuable paintings or one of those Ming vases? Who knows? What I do know is this chick was loaded. So if she says there's treasure, then it has to be some seriously valuable shit.

With the shelves finally empty, I slowly run my fingers along the back walls. I test every shelf to see if maybe it's loose. I knock and knock, trying to hear something hollow behind the walls. But after 15 minutes of searching, I get frustrated and shove my fists against my temples to try to ward off the headache that's building. Okay, it was more like 5 minutes of searching, but still.

After I lower my fists, I just stand there and stare at all the food at my feet. Then I see a box of mac and cheese, the good kind, with the squeezy cheese that comes out of a silver packet. Seeing that box of mac and cheese makes me think about how the timer on my stove is broken, so I never know exactly how long to boil the noodles. A lot of times, I'll just count off the minutes in my head, except I always get lost and forget how many minutes I've counted.

Maybe I lost track of whether I unlocked or locked whatever the keypad is connected to. I mean, it's possible, right? I kick my way through the groceries and back into the kitchen. I climb that stupid counter and I key in the code. I hear the click. Then I hurry my ass back into the pantry and start my search again. This time, I find it. Kinda on accident.

As I'm looking for something, anything, I turn too fast and trip over a box of cereal. Trying to get my balance, I step to the side and slip on a can of cream of mushroom soup. Then as I'm falling backward, my hand shoots out and I grab hold of the shelves on the back wall. The shelves and the wall move a little as my weight yanks on them.

I still fall on my ass though, and land directly onto a big bag of white rice. The bag pops, rice flies everywhere, but I don't care. All I care about is that the back shelves are now about an inch away from the wall. I'm staring at the gap right now, carefully, so I don't have another grocery mishap. I get to my feet and inspect the gap. There's just enough room to fit my fingers through, so I do. Then I pull. It doesn't move.

I pull again. It's stuck. I can't get it open and it's about to drive me crazy. I take a step back and almost fall on my ass again. Then I realize there's so much shit on the floor that I'll never get the shelves to move. I could say I carefully remove all the groceries from the pantry, but that's a lie. Instead, I open the pantry door wide and just start flinging shit out into the kitchen until the pantry's floor is clear enough for me to try again.

With my fingers in the gap, I brace my feet and pull hard. Then I go flying back as the entire wall swivels out to reveal a fucking door with a keypad. "Are you shitting me?" I snarl. After dumping the mopped water a third time, I finally finished cleaning the morgue's floor. That was one dirty floor. I doubt Connor had mopped it in weeks. Gross.

I shut the water off, turned the bucket upside down, and let it drain in the mop sink just inside and to the left of the double doors. Then I stretched and reached over to push the doors open. That's when I heard the noise again and froze. It was hard to tell exactly where the noise came from, but considering I could see everything in the room, there were really only a few options. The drawers. "Hey, Connor?" I called. No answer. "Dude!" I shouted. Still no answer.

I took a super fast look through one of the windows in the double doors and saw that the desk was unoccupied. "Connor!" I yelled again. No response at all. The noise came again and I almost lost my shit. Then after a few seconds, I laughed. What the hell was I thinking? That a body had come back to life? That's a bit of a stretch, even for me. The noise I heard was probably a vent or something. Yeah, a vent. The morgue had all kinds of vents.

vents make noise when the air turns off and on except i knew it wasn't because i heard it again and it was no vent it sounded like whispering no way it couldn't be whispering i glanced back out of the door's window and still no connor he was probably taking a wicked after drinking all that cheap whiskey the sound stopped this i said and shoved through the doors connor

"What?" Connor yelled when he came out of the restroom. "What are you shouting about? I heard something in there." I said. "I know it." "So what?" Connor asked and sat back down at the desk. "So what?" I responded and pointed at the double doors. "I've only been doing this job for a few hours, but I'm pretty fucking sure you shouldn't hear noises coming from the drawers in there." Connor shrugged. I stared at him. After a few seconds, he looked over at me inside.

"Fine," he said as he stood up. "Let's go have a look." "What?" I asked as he moved past me and went to the double doors. "What kind of look? You said that there was a noise coming from the drawers," Connor said. "So let's open the drawers." He slipped into the morgue, leaving me alone by the desk. "Come on!" he yelled. I hesitated, then took a deep breath and followed him in.

Connor already had half the drawers open. Bodies of various sizes, shapes, genders, and ages all stared up blankly at the ceiling lights. It wasn't a pretty sight. Although, I did get to see some boobies that would have been nice if they weren't, you know, dead. Which one was whispering? Connor asked as he finished pulling out all the drawers. He held his arms out and looked from drawer to drawer to drawer.

"Is it that one? The little girl who was hit by a car?" "I don't know," I said. "Or him?" Connor asked, and pointed at an old man who was missing his right ear. "Did you ever meet Mr. Lawrence? The old guy who ran the newsstand?" "What's a newsstand?" I asked. "Is that like one of those stands for your phone?" Connor blinked at me then shook his head. "You're an idiot," he said and started to leave. But something rattled in my brain, then finally settled down.

I grabbed his arm as he was about to pass me. "Hold on," I said as he tried to get free of my hand. I gripped harder. "What did you say? I asked if you knew who Mr. Lawrence was," he said. "Which you obviously don't, since you think a newsstand is what you put a phone on to read the news. Makes sense," I said. "But that's not what I mean. Before that, what did you say?" "I don't know, Pete," Connor said and jerked his arm away. "Leave me alone, okay?"

"No," I said and followed him out as he pushed through the doors. "You asked me which one was whispering." "Okay, so what?" Connor said and shrugged. He was about to sit back down at the desk when I said, "I didn't mention whispering. I said I heard a noise." Connor froze halfway to sitting, then he sat down quickly. "No, I didn't," he said.

Before he could get his phone out, I walked over to that desk and smacked him upside the head. "Hey!" he yelled, putting a palm to the spot where I whacked him. "What the fuck? You asked me which one was whispering," I said and clenched a fist. "I heard you say it. Deny it again, and I'll beat the living shit out of you." Connor didn't say anything. He sat there for a long while then shook his head. "You know what? Fuck it," he said, and turned in his seat to face me.

Sit your ass down and I'll tell you all about it. All about what? I asked. The whispering. He said. You're gonna get the whole story.