The chiller unit was, predictably, very cold. Designed to enclose its contents without deterioration it was supposed to be freezing and it did for Agnes what it was invented to do.
What it did to Eddie was frighten him.
He woke with a start. All his senses began firing at once and it shocked and frightened him more than he already was. Waking from a dream state, or a deep relaxing sleep, was one thing but waking with no recollection of who or what you were was quite the ordeal for someone who had never been mentally strong in the first place.
So when he came to his newly reconfigured vampire brain began to fire on all cylinders. Imagine that you're quite happy working away on your Remington 'sit up and beg' typewriter and the next second you've blinked and you're faced with a modern day supercomputer using Windows 7 and its modem is happily sucking down information at eighteen megabytes per second. That's how Eddie's cavernous mind woke.
As a way to keep at bay his initial panic Eddie took inventory. He wiggled his toes, check. He flexed his fingers, tested his teeth with his tongue and craned his neck, check, check and check. And even though he was socially repressed he did what any man would do and cupped his junk firmly. Check, check and check.
Everything seemed to be where it should be but he could not explain where he was and why he was encased in something black and made of rubberised polymer.
It was dark inside it but he could see perfectly the zipper that ran down his face and disappeared into the black gloom near his feet.
He could hear, too. Running water through pipe work, the grinding of metal somewhere and heart beats. Lots and lots of heart beats. Conversations were being conducted both close to hand and further away and he could make out the tones and pitches of every single one of them. There were two males quite close who were mumbling about 'malpractice insurance premiums skyrocketing' and 'was there any way to blame the cock up on Jared the new intern who Dr Shaw had caught, in a supply closet, frantically fingering the nurse he himself had a crush on'?
There was a lady moaning somewhere and a small child whimpering about not being able to play softball at the weekend with a broken wrist. Two women were arguing about whose turn it was to take Doctor Roaming Hands his coffee.
It was the smells that bothered him most of all. Whilst he loved the comforting aroma of disinfectant, the scent of decay made him feel ill to his stomach. But there were other smells too. Undercurrents of something delicious and his mouth began to water. After twenty seven years of his mothers bland cooking whatever Eddie could smell had piqued his appetite, and viciously so. It was as though he'd woken with taste buds that weren't his own. He swiped at his lips and looked at the silvery liquid that was now smeared across the back of his hand. Turning his hand this way and that he watched the fluid glint and his confusion almost doubled.
His disorientation was not helped by the way he felt inside himself. He felt different, altered, and could think of no logical reason how or why that could be.
He'd never been particularly claustrophobic – it was one of only a handful of phobias that he'd managed to stave off – but right then, not knowing where he was or why he was in such a small space his newest phobia was taking stock. And it liked what it saw in Eddie. The perfect host for another irrational fear.
Confined as he was his panic took hold and he began to strike out at the stainless steel sides of the unit. This was despite his being engulfed by a body bag, and an unholy din was raised as a consequence.
Realising that thrashing as he was would get him nowhere he began to explore his confines more calmly. No plan for escape could be made without first knowing thine enemy. There was smooth, cold metal on all four walls with around six inches space in any direction for him to move. He ran his fingertips along and around each surface he could reach looking for seams. Where there were seams there was hope to get out of whatever he was in. There. Behind his head.
Without noticing the damage he'd already done to the inside of his makeshift coffin he punched the door behind his head and shoved it clean off its hinges before sliding out of the unit, like a giant black slug minus its slimy lubricant, still in his black plastic bodysuit.
Using fingernails he didn't realise shouldn't be able to puncture the bag he slit it open like gutting a fish and was soon stood in the middle of the morgue as naked as the day he'd been born with a body bag pooled at his feet.
He didn't squint in the overhead lighting as he should've. He didn't wince with sore and cramped muscles as he should and he didn't panic. He was free of his 'box' and for the first few minutes at least that calmed him. For the first time in his life Eddie didn't panic. He simply stood right where he was and took in his surrounds.
Row after row of stainless steel doors stood in orderly ranks around two of the four walls of the room. There were three stainless steel benches with piping beneath them on the tiled floor and a long trough against the third wall. Long fluorescent overhead lights hung above the benches and swinging plastic windowed doors took up the fourth wall.
Realising where he was he began to revert to type and as the panic once again rose inside him he began to shake. Pivoting in place he turned around and around and tried to clear his head as he stared at what was now obvious. He was in the morgue and someone thought he was dead.
The morgue might very well be the perfect place for someone like Eddie whose hypochondria knew no bounds, but if he was standing, and could move, how was it possible that he could be assumed to be dead he thought to himself?
He'd checked his blood pressure the night before. He'd noted his heart rate and he'd checked his body for untoward marks as usual. How could it be that he'd wound up in the morgue he thought as he began to recall the events of the last evening he could remember.
He'd been asleep. His mother had screamed and he'd gone to see what was wrong. She'd been hurt. He remembered her lying on the floor and then he remembered the blood. Eddie cupped his hand over his mouth and nose and tried to block out the memory of the sight and smell of the blood on his mothers head and the floor of her bedroom.
His mother was dead. He knew it without proof. He'd seen her lying there and he'd seen and smelled the blood. He'd fainted before getting help for her. He'd failed her and she was dead.
Head once again swimming he tried to concentrate on his breathing. He took in great gulps of air but it tasted 'off' and it didn't help. It had never helped.
Before he fainted again he bent over and set his hands to his knees. Dragging in more air didn't help but he didn't faint either. That was new. Panic attacks almost always induced fainting. His heart would race and his palms would get clammy. His vision would cloud and his ears would start ringing. His throat would thicken and dry out before eventually closing over. None of that happened. Did that mean he was really dead he thought as he returned to his full height and checked his palms for the evidence of the panic attack. They were cool and dry.
This was new too. He felt the panic inside himself but his body wasn't having its normal reaction.
His palms were dry, his throat was sticky with what he assumed with mucous, but was in actual fact his new venom and his ears weren't ringing. He concentrated a moment to check but all he could hear were conversations and the awful sound of a saw cutting through something nearby.
He checked his pulse, usually a sure fire sign that he was panicking and was likely to faint. He pressed his fingertips to his wrist and closed his eyes to concentrate. He readjusted his fingers and tried again when the thump of his heart couldn't be located. When his second attempt also failed he put two fingers to his throat and felt there for what should've been a stronger thump. It too was silent. In a last ditch effort to prove to himself that he wasn't dead he put his palm to his chest. Nothing.
And then his panic did flood his system and he was on his knees drawing in giant gulps of oxygen that he as yet had no idea that he didn't need. And of course it didn't help him. All it did was convince him further that he'd perished alongside his mother and that he was now a spirit or a ghost and he was trapped inside the morgue.
His next instinct was to run but after a few seconds of further thought he came to realise that he was in no condition to do so. He was naked, he'd just busted his way out of a freezer draw and he had a tag attached to his toe that more than likely said he was dead.
If this was the afterlife Eddie wasn't amused. He'd expected swathes of white gossamer thin linens and angels bearing harps playing something classical. He expected to feel euphoria for having arrived. He expected to face judgement at the very least. He expected his father to greet him as he arrived and he expected someone to present him with a certificate or something equally official. Surely there was a certificate involved? Eddie loved certificates. Especially ones that announced he'd completed a task. So shouldn't someone be here to present him with his 'Completion of Life' diploma?
He hadn't expected stainless steel, disinfectant and a toe tag.
Snapping the toe tags thread impatiently Eddie tried to apply logic and reason to the situation. If panic hadn't produced an answer perhaps he could use his mental skills to work out what had gone wrong with his 'crossing over'. If he could locate some clothing he could go and find someone to tell him what had happened to him. If he could get an explanation, and an expert medical opinion to tell him one way or another that he was dead, he could then plan what his next step would be. There had to be medical men in heaven, they healed the sick on earth so they'd be granted access he thought, convinced. Maybe not Doctor Roaming Hands though. Eddie doubted that someone who'd been given such a name would get a glimpse of the Pearly Gates.
And where were the Gates? He thought about that as he began to look around for anything he could use to cover himself. It wouldn't do to present yourself to God buck naked after all. Gives entirely the wrong impression about how one had conducted themselves on earth.
Locating a stack of neatly folded black plastic garbage bags Eddie fashioned two of them into a suit as best he could. His fingernails easily split the plastic to create two legs holes in one of the bags, and two arm holes and a hole for his head to slip through in another. Holding the two bags tightly to his waist he tied them there using a length of the same string that had fastened his toe tag to his foot.
It escaped his notice that these things came easily to him. The smashing open of the drawer, the destruction of the body bag, the slitting open of the bags and the snapping of the plastic twine were all things he couldn't normally have done. But in his panic, and his desperation to get some answers, these things simply didn't cross Eddie's mind.
What did cross his mind was his mothers whereabouts.
If he'd been brought here, wherever here was, she would have been too. Logic dictated that her name would be on one of the temporary tags in their holders on the front of the drawers and he soon located Agnes Masen.
Steeling himself he opened the drawer carefully. The same hit of disinfectant assaulted his nose as he slid open the zip on his mothers body bag. She looked serene, peaceful even. He hoped she was being greeted by his father and he hoped she wasn't lost as he was.
He stood and gazed down at her for a long, long time. The curve of her jaw, the sweep of her brow. The wrinkle free cheeks and forehead from years of Ponds Vanishing cream had really paid off. She was as beautiful to him in death as she'd been in life and Eddie loved her. Truly loved her. She'd never raised her voice or hand to him in all his years and her patience and love for him shone through everything she did and said. She'd speak to him no more and that thought made Eddie hang his head. He'd let her down. When it came to the final hurdle he'd let her down.
Placing a tender kiss to her cheek for the last time Eddie told his mother thank you. Thank you for all she'd done for him and a bittersweet thank you for giving him life.
He said another silent goodbye to his mother and closed the drawer.
Sinking to the tiled floor Eddie sat, back propped against the door of the bottom drawer, and slid his hands through his copper mop of hair. What now he thought?
He was quite obviously dead. No heart beat attested to that. But what to do now?
Should he stay here? Could he leave? Could anyone see or hear him now? He felt tangible. He could feel his own limbs and he could see and hear and he'd spoken out loud to his mother just now but whether or not anyone else could hear or see him remained a mystery to him.
Deciding to test his boundaries he got to his feet and moved around the room. There was a window above the trough but it was shut and locked so there was no way to test if he could leave via that. The swinging plastic doors weren't locked; after all it wasn't likely that any of the occupants in the morgue were going to abscond. So Eddie walked toward those doors rather gingerly.
He hesitantly snaked his hand toward the push pad on the door but before he could touch it it flung inwards and smacked him in the nose.
Shaking his head, not yet realising that it hadn't hurt, Eddie stared at the doors. There was nobody coming through them. He'd been about to touch the metal plaque that was obviously where one pushed to open the doors, but they'd flung open on their own.
Had someone come in and he couldn't see them? Were they a ghost too? Or a spirit or a spectre or a wraith? Maybe someone alive had come through the doors but it was Eddie who couldn't see them? He'd seen his mother, but she was dead too. Perhaps he could only see other ghosts?
Standing stock still Eddie listened for movement in the room. Nothing. Nobody was moving themselves or anything about. The contents of the drawers weren't making a sound, of course, so there could be only one explanation.
Eddie was dead and he couldn't see those that were still alive.
Of course, like almost everyone else in the general population, Eddie had never been in a morgue before so he didn't know that the pads on the doors weren't for pushing. They were hover pads. Sensors. When something got close enough for them to register they opened the doors automatically so that trolleys and gurneys could slip through unhindered.
Eddie wandered about the room and raked his hand through his hair in distress. How was he going to get out of there? How was he going to cross over, in either direction, if he couldn't communicate with anyone?
The footfalls of someone approaching weren't missed by Eddie's new hearing but his brain was in such turmoil that he didn't acknowledge the sound. What did register was the scent of the human approaching.
The scorching in Eddie's throat exploded as the push pad on the door was triggered and a warm, thumping heart and its mouth-watering blood entered the room.
Eddie didn't see the body as he turned. Like a cartoon character sees a steaming roast chicken on a platter where a head should be so did Eddie. He didn't see the stunned technician, he saw food.
Venom raced through his system and flooded his mouth to the point where he had to swipe at his lips again. The strange silvery fluid once again coated the back of his hand but Eddie didn't notice.
His thirst had ignited for the first time and it had swamped him. No amount of logic or reasoning was going to help because as Eddie stared at the tech and the tech stared at him Eddie had no other thought than to lunge.
"Holy fucking hell!" the doctor shouts at the sight of Eddie standing in the centre of the room in his 'black garbage bags are the new little black dress' ensemble. The doctor drops his armful of paperwork and stares hard at Eddie. He knows this guy; he bagged and tagged him himself not two hours prior. "How the fuck...?" the doctor stammers, confused.
It was his last thought because as his sentence trailed off the newborn vampire inside Eddie's body sprang into life. He lunged without knowing that he could. It was all instinct. Instinct and power and thirst. His muscles clenched as he slipped into his first ever crouch and his venom flowed as he whipped his head from side to side. His fists balled at his sides and as he sprang his only thought was that the blood inside this carcass had to somehow make its way into his system. He needed it. He had to have it. He didn't know or understand why but in that split second it didn't matter. It just had to be his.
The tech hit the floor with Eddie on top of him and as Eddie sank his teeth into the terrified mans throat all that could be heard was the slurping and groaning of a man who was neither alive nor dead.
Horrified by what he's done Eddie stands over the rapidly cooling body of the tech and stares. He feels sated, powerful and his panic has left him but he can't reconcile what he's just done with how much better he feels. He recognises he'd been hungry. No, what he'd felt when the man had entered the room wasn't hunger, it was starvation. He'd felt starved. And the tech had smelled like food.
He didn't know what he was or why he'd just drunk the blood of a hospital employee but he knew that if he hadn't yet faced judgement this one act was going to have a profound effect on what direction he was going to be crossing over into.
And for the first time Eddie Masen swore. "Fuck me!" he roared into the empty room as he stared down at the corpse.
There was only one thing left to do. He ran.
He needlessly crashed his way through the plastic swinging doors and stood in a long corridor. To the left were heart beats, to the right there was fresh air. He took off to the right and when he came to another set of swinging plastic doors he crashed through those too.
He exited directly out onto the morgues private loading dock and thankfully it was empty. He leapt from the dock, not stopping to think how such an act was executed so gracefully, and ran towards the trees that lined the back of the hospital grounds.
Dressed in his fetching black plastic outfit Eddie ran. Eddie ran fast. Fast enough that the three miles to the Masen home was covered in just a few minutes. Eddie crashed through the backdoor of his home and made a lap of the interior before coming to a stop at his mother's bedroom door. It smelled like death and blood and it made Eddie's throat and chest tighten. One in grief, the other in hunger.
A/N: Thank you for reading.
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