Author's Note: This is just a little one-shot that my mind cooked up the other day and I thought I'd like to share it with all of you. I have a feeling it's not the greatest, but please review and let me know what you think anyway.
"Did you know that the rain used in filmmaking isn't actually water, but milk?"
Stella blankly turned her head from the thick beads of warm rainwater coursing down the dirty window to face her coworker. "What?"
"Yeah. Well, there's some water in it. Naturally. But it's mostly milk. Did you know that? Isn't that neat?"
Distracted, the twenty-six year old shook her head and leaned on the broken radiator that was currently blowing gusts of cool air up her shirt. "No. I did not know that."
The obnoxious hourly clock chimed quietly in the corner, signifying the end of Stella Carroll's lunch break. Sighing, she slid off her uncomfortable perch and took one last longing glance out the window. Two stories below her, two white-clothed men were quickly wheeling in a stretcher, their faces red and wind burned and their paces accelerating as they reached the entrance to the hospital.
The only other embalmer on duty, Andrea Phillips, groaned heavily as she peeked over Stella's shoulder out the window. "Just our luck, isn't it? A brand new body that we'll most likely have to stuff and two more still on the shelf from earlier! Man, I hate this work load. I should've been a lawyer."
Stella hated Andrea's loose attitude towards embalming. Or 'stuffing', as she preferred to call it. Honestly, Stella didn't like dealing with dead humans, either, but it was better to use the correct terminology rather than words that sounded more like they dealt with taxidermy than embalming. Not in the mood to chastise one of her few friends, Stella just nodded and left the window.
Still clutching her brown paper bag that carried her half-eaten box of Lean Cuisine, Andrea jabbed the elevator door open and ushered Stella in. Stella looked idly down either direction of the hall for any stragglers and, seeing none, directed the boxy contraption to head to the morgue.
The temperature decreased drastically as the elevator cart descended into the basement. Stella shivered in her light hospital regulation clothing and clutched her thin shirt tightly around her shoulders. Andrea grinned at her, her plump cheeks reflecting the halogen lighting from the ceiling and casting an angelic glow. "Geez, Stell', maybe if you ate more you wouldn't be so cold all the time."
"Yeah," Stella muttered back. "Maybe." Maybe, maybe. Maybe if dissecting people still didn't gross her out, she'd still have an appetite.
Stop lying to yourself, her conscience chided. You know that's just an excuse for why you REALLY won't eat. Because you're still hung over from your little pity party. Stella, honestly, it was so many years ago!
The woman pushed her shoulder-length auburn curls off her shoulder and sighed, crossing her arms over her chest and tapping her feet nervously on the floor as the elevator stalled on the correct floor. The doors slid open to reveal two awkward-looking young men with a stretcher.
"Hello," Stella stepped forward. "Can I help you?"
"Are you in charge here?"
She nodded, dejectedly adding, "I am. Another body?"
The speaker shrugged, his brown eyes sad and weary. "Two. Antonio is bringing down the second. Can we wheel them in?"
Stella agreed, and led the stretcher down the hallway, her drab dress shoes squeaking loudly on the tiled floors and creating an obnoxious, birdlike sound that echoed down the hallway. She attempted to quiet them before admonishing herself, It's not like you can wake the dead. "I don't know if we'll be able to get to both of them today. We're really swamped with work."
"Yeah, well, just take a look at them," the man called out. "They've already been autopsied, we know who they are, we just need to know an estimate on how much time it should take to embalm, if they even can be embalmed, or if they'll need to be cremated."
Stella nodded and unlocked the door to the morgue. The sickening smell of formaldehyde—the smell she still hadn't grown accustomed to, even after four years—filled her senses and she winced, shutting the door behind the men as they wheeled the body in.
The entire aura of the place was not an endearing one, and the men departed quickly prior to debriefing Stella on the state of the bodies and who to contact. She accepted the second corpse soon after, and once she and Andrea had snapped on some plastic gloves, they set to work.
The first body was identified as Adam Tennant. Thankfully, his was totally unrecognizable to her, and she discovered that the cause of death was pancreatic cancer. She covered the man's body a bit ashamedly, and then scolded herself for her bashfulness.
It's okay to stare at people's bodies when your job is to prepare them for the family, Stella reminded herself, shaking off the chills that wracked her body. She hurriedly moved to the next body before Andrea could realize her friend's discomfort.
The sheet was cool beneath her trembling fingers as she ripped it away from the next face. However, that had nothing to do with the fact that her entire body became ice cold upon seeing the next corpse.
Everything seemed to halt, and Stella dropped the sheet. It slid from the stretcher onto the floor and she left it there. "Oh, my God."
"Easy now, just take it easy and you won't get hurt," he muttered, drawing back her skirt and positioning the blade over her chest.
"Please, leave me alone," she whispered, a thick tear sliding down her reddened cheeks. "Please, just--"
"Shut up!"
"Stell'? You okay?"
Stella cleared her throat and pulled her hair out of her face. Andrea's nervous face came into view, and Stella took a breath of air. "I—I'm fine. Andy, I'm going to go get some air, okay? It's a little stuffy in here."
Andrea frowned. "It's raining."
"Not that much. I'll be fine."
"Okay…just don't take too long. We have a lot of work to do."
Stella nodded and fled the room, not realizing until she reached the elevator that she'd abandoned her jacket back in the morgue.
She reached for her cell phone as the elevator opened and she ran outside, but it proved unnecessary when a familiar face greeted her at her car.
"Hello, Lisa."
She swallowed hard. "Excuse me?"
Jackson Rippner smirked at her and Stella abandoned every hope of appearing collected as her entire body shivered in the rain. "How's it going?"
"Listen, sir, I don't mean to be rude, but if you haven't noticed, it's raining, and I'd like to get in my car and go ho--"
"Go to the police? Lisa, I thought you were above that," Jackson hissed quietly. "Or wait, maybe you aren't. Witness Protection, is it?"
"What are you tal--"
Jackson stepped forward, and Stella squealed, ducking away as he reached for her arm. Her foot slid into an ankle-deep puddle, and she collapsed, falling to the pavement and soaking her entire body as she slipped into the water. She attempted to scramble to her feet as Jackson reached out and pulled her effortlessly to her feet, pushing her up against her car.
"Let go of me!"
"Is it really simpler to lie, Lisa, or would you rather just tell me the truth and actually make some progress in your life today?" Jackson snarled, his face dripping wet with rainwater.
"My name isn't--"
Jackson fumbled for the edge of her shirt, pulling the collar down and confirming his claim once and for all. He smiled satisfactorily as Stella's gaze trailed his finger to the hideous red scar dancing across her milky skin. She scowled.
"How dare you," she growled. "How dare you come back into my life again, like this!"
"Like what?" he mocked. "With a flourish? Gee, Lisa, and here I thought that you'd be happy to see your rapist murdered."
She froze, every inch of her body tensing, as Jackson's eyes seemed to recognize that he'd pushed too far. She spoke, her voice calm but tense. "That was not your right," she said. "It was not your place to do that."
"I did it for you," he barked.
"What a lovely gift," Lisa snapped. "A corpse. To what do I owe the honor?"
Jackson's hands gripped her shoulders, pushing her against the window of her car. He ignored her question. "Why are you doing this, Leese? Witness Protection, for Christ's sake."
"When you came out of the hospital, Jack, naturally I was more than a little worried for my safety," Lisa replied. "You aren't exactly an activist for peace."
"And you are?" he snorted. "What makes you think that you're so special that I'd come after you?"
"Maybe the fact that I nearly left you comatose," she fired back.
Jackson's eyes flickered angrily. "You were just another job."
"Then why are you here?"
"To prove a point."
"And what point would that be?"
Jackson smiled. "To prove to you that I can find you no matter where you decide to hide."
Lisa chose that moment to knock her head against his, feeling the hard pressure of his skull on hers, and darted away. She stumbled across the slippery pavement, searching for help, any help.
Her hands fumbled with the knob on the front door of the building, her breathing ragged as she broke inside. She slammed it shut and quickly leaned against it as she peered out into the torrential storm. Through the curtains of rain, she saw the dark form of Jackson's body lying motionless on the blacktop.
Lisa closed her eyes and pulled out her phone, but again, it proved needless as sirens rang through the air.
"They didn't find him," Andrea repeated dumbfoundedly in the break room the next day. "I just don't get it. How could he have made it out of here? The police came as soon as I called them. There is no logical way that he could have escaped with you watching him."
"Please, though," Lisa 'Stella' Reisert sighed to her coworker and confidante. "Please don't repeat what you know to anybody. The community and our employers believe that he was just a random predator. I don't want to have to change locations again."
"I won't," Andrea promised. "I don't want you to leave. God, Stell—Lisa, I'm so sorry. You don't think he'll be back, do you?"
"Not here," Lisa said after consideration. "I don't think he'll return here. He expects me to run away, I know he does. But obviously it's pointless."
"Why do you say that?"
Lisa shrugged, cradling her thermos of coffee in her hands. "He'll always know where I am. That's how our relationship works—if you could call it that. It's cat and mouse." Andrea sighed sympathetically, touching her friend's arm, but Lisa broke away. "I'm going to get back to work."
"Honey, are you sure?"
Lisa grimaced at the familiar inquiry. "I'm positive. I want to move on with my life. It's not a big deal, really." No, not at all. I just thought Jackson Rippner was out of my life for good, courtesy of the Witness Protection Program, and was experiencing a false sense of security when I shouldn't have been. I'll just have to be more careful from now on. More paranoid. After all, that's what sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medications are for. It'll be fine.
The building was quiet in the mid-afternoon lull, and Lisa found her feet tapping to the tedious elevator music as she descended. She realized that, because it was a Saturday, she and Andrea were the only embalmers on duty again, and because of that the floor was deserted.
It was time to return to the ironic task of preparing her rapist for cremation. Hopefully, it wouldn't be his first foray into a fiery pit—Lisa was praying beyond prayer that this man would go to hell. If anyone—even more than Jackson Rippner—he deserved it.
She decided not to preoccupy herself with thoughts of the man's identity. He was just another nameless man needing a preparation for death. Instead, Lisa peeled back the sheet, bracing herself for his infamous face, and was greeted instead was something completely different than the day before. She gasped, stepping backwards as she read the words carved intricately into his chest.
We'll talk soon, Leese. This is not the end.