If I have too think about what I had to research to do this, I might just be sick...

"Hey Lewis!"

I turned, keeping my face neutral as a younger doctor ran up to my side. He flipped open one of his many folders and handed me a sheet of paper. An autopsy preliminary, blank. I stopped and held out the sheet, annoyed.

"My shift ended twenty minutes ago, if I'm late one more time, Janet's going to kill me."

The intern backed away, his folders clutched tightly to his chest.

"Dr. Connors said your file pulled the short straw. Nobody likes the looks of this one, the chief wants him in the ground as soon as possible."

The intern ran up the hallway to catch up with another doctor.

Dammit. Janet's going to be furious.

I sighed, frustrated. I was going to retire in two weeks, then this would be over and I could do everything my lovely wife wanted me to do.

I groaned and spun around, back down to the dungeons, as I liked to call them. I hate doing this. My whole career was a childhood dream gone awry. From wanting to be a vet, came across to my parents as a desire to be a doctor. They enrolled me in a myriad of medical camps and from there to a pathologist. How that change ever came up was a mystery to me.

The air became frosty and I hugged my lab coat tighter around me. My breath rose up in small blossoming roses. Jesus it's cold. The sour smell of urine and disinfectant clung to my nostrils, god I hated being a doctor. Twenty-five years of medical science and all I had to look forward to was quitting.

I looked at the sheet and frowned at the small printed numbers, room Six-Six-Six D was almost never used. Pathologists were notoriously superstitious.

I yawned and kicked the door open. God I hated this hospital.

A young man, around twenty was standing in the corner, peering at a calculator. He looked up quickly at the sound of the door slamming shut.

"All right, I want this done quickly. Are you my ATP?" I was in no mood to be polite.

"Yeah. Charlie McCullem"

"You got my statistics?"

"Yes, sir" He held out a chart and a small recorder. I grinned and took the chart.

"Good man. Any evidence in the bag?"

"No sir, looks like shock or blood loss."

"Suicide?" I asked, pulling on some latex gloves.

"I sincerely hope not sir. Maybe you should take a look at him."

I flicked back the covers and took a hasty step backwards. "Jesus!"

My assistant chuckled. "Yeah. I was surprised too."

Empty, glazed brown eyes stared u at me. But what was occupying most of my attention was the grin that had been carved on the poor man's face. It stretched from ear to ear, his lips pulled back to expose yellowing teeth and pasty white gums.

I swallowed the bile that threatened to rise in my throat. "Start the recording."

Charlie nodded and clicked the recorder.

I started the monologue.

"Doctor Peter Lewis performing the autopsy on subject three-three-o' nine. Anatomical Pathology Technologist Charles McCullem presiding as witness and assistant."

I forced myself to stare at those vacant, staring eyes.

"Autopsy on the twenty-forth of October, 2008 authorized by Doctor Nicholas Connors."

I stopped and frowned at the sheet. Autopsies weren't authorized by doctors unless they were family or knew that the subject had no other family.

Something was off, but I shrugged it off. There was a good reason for the discrepancy, no doubt.

I started up again. "Unidentified Caucasian male found on the 'M' train. Brought in at six P.M. Crashed in the ambulance."

Now something was definitely wrong. The subject should have been examined by medical and surgical before being considered for an autopsy. And it was standard procedure to wait three days for the family of the deceased to contact us.

I stared at Charlie who shrugged.

I put the recorder down and pulled a body block from under the gurney. Still taking about the mystery man's height weight and facial features.

"... blood tests and hair, saliva, nail clippings are being processed by the lab. Results will be read later." I felt myself blushing.

I felt incompetent. I was supposed to have the results of the tests by the time I started, but for some reason Connors, a man I despised, had rushed the autopsy.

"The mouth has been torn, not cut, something serrated perhaps."

I pulled the mangled flesh away from the teeth with one gloved hand. "Seems to have missed the major facial artery. Dr. McCullem will you sew it up please?"

"Yes sir."

I pushed the body block under the patient's back. The chest arched upwards, lending me more room for visual and movement. I gasped at what lay before me.

His chest was covered in bruised scars and burns. I gulped down my nausea and continued. None of my subjects had affected me this way before.

'The chest has various lacerations and abrasions. See the photos for more consistent evidence. Some look self inflicted."

I checked the insides of the arms, nothing suspicious. A red mark on the left wrist was all, no cutting, something that I had grown to hate was the site of those horrible scars that people had inflicted upon themselves.

McCullem held up a small rubber band and pointed at the wrist. I grimaced in understanding.

"Early form of self-mutilation, a rubber band on the wrist used to create pain."

I hated when I had to report this, it put a black mark on the people I handled. I had caught my daughter doing it once, I grounded her for almost a year. We don't talk about it anymore, I just don't have the courage.

McCullem was busy on the face, sewing the grin closed. I traced the incision I was about to make and pulled on my mask and visor. Now came the part I hated.

Charlie pulled the surgery tools to my right and I picked out the scalpel.

"I'm making the incision now. We're going for the heart. Subject seems to have died from shock, as no other serious damage has been done to the body."

I traced a narrow 'Y' in the center of the victim's chest, wincing as it went over bruised flesh. It was a shallow cut, a tracery for later work. Blood welled out of the cuts I had made. I frowned at the substance. Gravity should have pulled the blood downwards by now. I shrugged it off, the sheet did say the the man had only been dead, for what, two, three hours.

I couldn't help but wonder what Janet would say, I missed our anniversary last week, but that had been purely bad luck. There was always someone who needed to be cut open, especially with Gotham as it had become.

Suddenly I realized something was definitely wrong. There was too much blood, it was everywhere, running in rivers over my hands and arms, pooling on the table and floor, so much.

"Christ, I think he's still alive." I whispered it as I dropped my tools, horrified at what I had just done."

I could feel the hysteria building, I had to do something.

Shit, what the hell do you do when this happens?

"Fuck! Charlie! Gauze! And get me a doctor!" I thrust a hand out, waiting for some gauze. It never came.

I whipped around. "McCul-"

I stopped, what was Charlie doing? The assistant was holding the subject's hand, looking horrified.

No. The patient was holding him.

"Christ." It was a whisper, it didn't seem like mine. The bloody scalpel clattered to the floor, dropped by my numb fingers.

The subject sat up, the body block slipped to the floor, and a dead man looked at me. Only half of his face had been sewn shut, leaving the other side drooping on torn muscles. It was like looking at a dummy only half finished.

"You...I-...What?"

Charlie was still staring at the apparition, his face white, his eyes fairly popping out of his head. It would have been a comical scene if not for the dried blood and the single minded, abject, animal terror that was stamped across the young pathologist's face..

The large curtains of skin that I had just sliced hung like forgotten laundry from the man's torso, there was a wink of white rib bones under the hospitals bright lights.

The face seemed to have changed, the peaceful, if horrified face had been twisted, new wrinkles had appeared. The subject was angry. No, the man was angry.

"Why'd you stop doc?" He asked, his world horribly slurred, his stitches ripping apart and fresh blood dribbling down his face. "I was just starting to enjoy it."

The eyes of the undead corpse flickered again, and he was just a scared man now, out of his depth. "Wha'?" He reached up one hand carefully tracing the disfigured flesh, stopping where the flesh hung off in a slimy flap.

I was still watching him, my mind seemed to have shut down. He was dead. He should still be on the table. That's where people stayed, that was how the world should be.

It was till staring into space as if lost in thought, his hand on the stitches that McCullem had so studiously wound. They were pink with a thread of light green running through the length.

He was like some strange creature off a different planet, alien.

But his expression was that of a child, a small, terrified boy who didn't know what he had done to deserve a punishment.

And then under my gaze he... changed. That was the only way to describe it. Now there was someone smiling, the muscles hadn't shifted a centimeter but now there was malevolent evil in the scars and stitches on the man's face.

The creature on the autopsy table twitched a hand, the hand that grasped McCullem's. The ATP let out a high pitch scream, through which I could hear the decisive snap of breaking bone. Charlie collapsed to the floor, cradling a hand that had been twisted completely around and bent so far forward that his fingertips were kissing the hair on his fore-arm. . The scream went on and on, yet I still couldn't move.

This just didn't happen, not in my world, the world that said I was retiring two weeks from now, the world that had room only for a wife and kids, a boring job and a smelly hospital.

So this... thing that was sitting on the autopsy table, it wasn't real, couldn't be.

And then it was gone, and there was a kid again, in a man's body. Small and helpless, it pleaded with me. I backed away. I could deal with dead bodies, the live ones were a completely different matter all together. Charlie's scream had trailed of into a whimper, A hiccupping sob that echoed around the small, cold cell.

And then the creature fainted.

It was a simple motion, a loud crunch and flesh hit metal and then it was just me, a body and a crying intern.

I don't know how long I stood there. How long it took me to move. My head hurt. I just couldn't take in what had just happened.

I could do this, I was a doctor for Christ sake.

"Charlie, get your ass up to the lobby and tell some damn doctors to get down here now. I don't care what the hell they're doing."

I didn't look at my assistant as he scrambled up and burst his way out of the room, still half screaming about his hand.

I approached the body warily; he wasn't going to catch me like he did McCullem. He looked dead, but that had fooled me before. He wasn't that scary when he was unconscious. Still like a mutant alien and a deranged murder victim than the creature that had sat up only moments earlier.

I picked up the thread and needle that had been used before. I had no anesthesia, I had never had to use it before. I began to sew. It was somehow worse when I knew that someone was live, that the flesh that I was mending was alive, that it was shivering and puckering and that the hair's were sensitive to the touch. He could feel me.

It was far worse than mere disgust, it was power, and control, I had influence over someone else's life.

And I didn't like it.

I finished the chest slices and had begun on the other side of the patient's mouth when the doctors came in. I know what it must have looked like. I was soaked in blood, the floor was covered in the deep maroon liquid and the man I was working on looked like a patched up doll. It was bizarre. Frankenstein and his monster.

"God, Lewis, what the hell happened?"

I stepped forward, my hands shaking, my heart thumping with shock, recovering-fear, and rage.

"Connors sent a live one down, he authorized an autopsy not an hour after the body was brought in! He didn't even wait for identification; he didn't even officially name him as a John Doe."

I was ranting but my fear and frustration had burst it's dam. I might have killed a man tonight. "He assigned me this case twenty minutes after my shift had ended. This guy just sat up and bent my APT's arm in half. I had prepped him for a chest cavity exposure when he woke up. And why hasn-"

"Lewis calm down, we'll handle this."

"Damn right you are, and I'm filing a report on Connors' incompetence."

A white coat separated itself from the mass of doctors. It was Dr. Nicholas Connors raised his voice to be heard over the clamor of the murmuring medics. "I did not call the time of death; I followed precautionary steps to-"

"You followed procedure like a drunken donkey; I have the authorization sheet here, with your signature on the dotted line." I reached for the autopsy sheet, but froze as a hand gripped my elbow.

"Doc?" The words were slurred, distorted by the flayed flesh that had been haphazardly stitched back to the creatures face.

The other doctors were shouting for a gurney, but I was frozen looking into a dead man's face.

"I'm not dead you stupid fuck." It was weak and garbled through stiff mutilated flesh but the high voice was gone, the whining, laughing spirit had left

I felt a sort of relief at the profanity, it was human and therefore familiar.

"Sir?"

That was doctor Connors, his thick commanding voice had gone to a higher register. I didn't blame him, after all this man looked as if he had gone through a wood chipper. Bruises colored his skin in colorful blotches. Scratches, long deep scratches that were obviously caused by the man himself ran in long deep ridges across his chest and arms. And the stitches, a large 'Y' started from his shoulder blades to his stomach. That was me, I had done that to a man I had never met. I had carved up someone who was alive. Who could feel every single stroke of my scalpel, who would feel them for a long time if he survived the blood loss and infection that was sure to come.

And finally the mouth. It was uncomfortably wide, a gaping slimy squirming pack of shredded skin. He had a handsome face above the nose line. Brown eyes and his hair was a deep golden brown.

Such an angelic face, no older that thirty, no younger than twenty. About my son's age.

Dr. Connors cleared his throat and continued. "Sir, please lie down. You've lost a lot of blood and you need some real medical care."

I shot a glare at my rival, he was going to place the blame on me, I knew it. And what was ouir mystery man doing up? He had just lost almost five pints of blood, that was just about enough to put anyone in a coffin or at least in a coma.

But slipping in and out of consciousness after sustaining the shock of being first brutally attacked and then sliced open once more because of a paper trail mistake. I'd kill Connors.

The patient groaned and eased himself onto his back, sliding a little in his old blood. He had probably fainted again. I knew he was going to die, probably in agonizing pain.

I had basically flayed a man alive, an innocent man who had already had so much done to him. He was going to die of infection and there was nothing this underfunded hospital could do.

I had killed someone.

The squeaky gurney was rolled in quickly and it took six doctors and interns to move the guy onto the rolling table. I stared hard at Connors, I wanted him to look at the man he had killed, the dead man that still breathed.

"They were taking him out the door when it happened, at first I thought the wheel had stuck, two burly doctors were straining to push the trolley but it didn't budge.

The man was gripping the doorway. "You know..." The creature was back, the voice had that slimy strength. It ran up my spine in little creeping shivers. "I never said goodbye did I Doctor Lewis?"

I had backed into a wall, the other doctors didn't seem to think anything was wrong.

"Sir, we need to get you up to a room. You're in bad shape."

There's a long dark chuckle, I can't see his face but I know it's got that crazy expression. He's going to do something much worse than break an interns arm.

The doctor on the right went down first, the bastard creep zombie creature had palmed my scalpel. I think we were all frozen, even the doctror whose throat had been cut was still staring, incredulously at nothing.

And then with all of us watching he picked up a hacksaw, the saw that I use to break through to the chest cavity. And then I start to scream.

Nobody escaped, nobody but Dr. Connors.

He's the one who shuts the door.

And I'm the last one to get butchered. And I can't scrabble up the walls.

Can't scratch myself away

I just end up with bloody fingers.

And I scream.

BTW. ATP is short for Anatomical Pathology Technologist. See, I did do my research. Turns out you should never ever look up autopsy on google images. Sorry E you were right... I should have listened, the experience has scarred me forever and I shall never doubt you again...

It's been an interesting week. I hope that I never have to go through it again.