2005

GRAVEYARD SHIFT

CHAPTER SEVEN – Community Services –

"We will provide, at no charge, licensed funeral directors to address organizations,schools, or groups on the topic of funeral service or related subject matter."

Warning: Autopsy details follow.

"Ever notice how you can never put anything back in a box the way it came?" Xel asked with his weird sense of amusement as Eris crushed, shoved, and jam-packed the now dripping plastic bag of partially thawed fish back into the wobbly carton and slammed on the lid.

She didn't bother to answer him; instead she turned one last time to Zelgadiss and said, "I thought your grandfather made you quit working here."

"He did, but now I'm back," Zelgadiss said dryly.

Xel thought more needed to be said, so he provided the additional material, "Yes, you see, the job Rezo got him had its drawbacks. It didn't work out for him, you might say. It gave him the blues." Xel appeared melancholy a moment, and then broke into a smile. "So, you can tell him for Zelgadiss that he quits, and not in a nice way. And now that he doesn't live with him anymore, he can't tell him what to do. It's his life to live, his way."

"Rezo won't permit it," Eris snapped back, and then stared at the younger man. "Zelgadiss, you should tell your grandfather yourself. He is a changed man."

"So am I." Zelgadiss stepped away. "Goodbye, Eris. Like Valgaav says, we have work to do."

Valgaav had, in fact, already started preparing for the night's autopsy. "Put on your gloves and mask and watch what we do."

Eris left without another word, her future resting on Xelloss' goodwill.

"Note the blood seeping under the skin here and here," Valgaav pointed out as the autopsy was underway. "Not normal."

Zelgadiss watched as Valgaav and Xelloss reduced the cadaver to a wide-open cavity. Aside from observing, his job was to clean up blood spills and follow any other directions.

"This is not unlike field-dressing a deer, if you've ever done that," Valgaav explained, "Except we have to take samples for slides and further testing. The note appended to the work order says this is a court case so anything we can tell them we will."

The dissection began at the neck and proceeded downward, eventually removing all the organs of the trunk in one chunk. Xel identified the arteries in the neck and upper chest, tied a long string to each and then cut them off, leaving the ties so that Vurumagen, who was most likely the one doing the embalming in the morning, could more easily find the arteries for injection of the embalming fluids.

Xel next detached the larynx and esophagus with a swift cut. He yanked the larynx and trachea downward and adroitly used his personal blade to free up the remainder of the chest organs from their attachment at the spine. A couple deft moves and the diaphragm was cut away from the body wall, after which the abdominal organs were pulled out and down. All of the organs remained attached to the body only by the pelvic ligaments, bladder, and rectum. With a single slash with the blade, Xel severed this last connection, and all of the organs were freed in one mass.

"Here you go," Xel said, passing the organ collection to Valgaav.

"I'm going to deal with this in a minute," Valgaav told them as he dumped the organs on the dissecting table mounted over the body's legs. "Watch what Xel does with the brain."

"First, I have to elevate the head so that it's like on a stiff pillow. Here, pull the body block out from under the back," Xel nudged the bewildered Zelgadiss to action. "Yeah, that plastic block. Okay, now place it under the back of the head. Thanks Zelgadiss. Now, I apply my magic touch..."

Xel cut from behind one ear, over the crown of the head, to behind the other ear with a single swipe of his trusty blade. Like with the trunk incisions, it was deep, all the way to the skull. Dividing the skin and soft tissues into a front flap and a rear flap, he tugged hard to force the front flap forward over the body's face, exposing the top and front of the skull.

"This takes some strength," Xel grunted.

Zelgadiss winced. "Uh, yeah. Like being 'scalped'."

One more backward tug at the back flap of skin over the nape of the neck, and he had exposed the whole top hemisphere of the skull. "Right. See that electric saw over there? Yeah, I need it next. It's called a Stryker saw for no good reason. Thanks."

Xel turned on the saw, the buzzing sound bothering Zelgadiss' hyper-sensitive hearing so much that it made him wince, and cut around the equator of the cranium. He shut it off and said, "This cut is tricky. It has to be deep enough to cut all the way through the skull, but not so deep that the brain is cut. I'll let you practice on less important cases, okay?"

Zelgadiss nodded. It might take some skill, but nothing he couldn't handle.

"See how the cut is not totally straight but has a notch here so that the skull top won't slide off the bottom half of the skull after everything is sewn back up," Valgaav pointed out.

Zelgadiss was impressed. "I hadn't even noticed, you did that so fast, Xel."

Xel smiled, and then slowly lifted off the skull top, drawing out the odd combination of a sucking sound and the sound of rubbing two halves of a coconut. "Here, you can hold onto that for me."

Zelgadiss took the offering gingerly and returned Xel's smile with a smirk of his own, "Oh, thanks."

He examined the bone fragment in his hand, turning in back and forth, noticing that the outer membrane coverings of the brain coated the inside of the skull top. He smiled to find that he felt a healthy detachment to the entire proceedings this time. He hadn't felt queasy at all, yet. Work was also distracting him from his miserable self-absorption. He hadn't thought about his own problems; his abortive relationship with Filia, in particular, had been forgotten for an entire hour.

Xel cleared his throat to get Zelgadiss' attention off the piece of skull in his hand and on the task at hand. "Ahem! Okay, so the top of the brain is now fully exposed. After the chore of getting to it, it's a relatively easy matter to get the brain out. There are no tough ligaments that hold the brain in, so really all that needs to be done is to cut the spinal cord. See? Presto! The brain is then easily lifted out."

Valgaav pointed Zelgadiss in the direction of the wall of jars, "Get one from the top with the blank labels and mark the outside with the code off the toe tag and bring it here."

"What's in it?" Zelgadiss asked as he unscrewed the lid.

"Formalin," Valgaav said while Xelloss carefully hung the soft brain in the jar with a string support, "which is a 10 solution of formaldehyde gas in buffered water. Since we have only one of these to do tonight, we'll setup more specimen jars and I'll show you how to measure right and where the supplies are stored."

Xel went on, "Since the brain is very soft and easily deformable, it will hang in the jar for a couple weeks. Formaldehyde 'fixes' the tissue, not only preserving it from decay, but also causing it to become much firmer and easier to handle without messing it up."

"What's with the string?"

"That's to prevent it from having a flattened side from lying in the bottom of the jar because the brain is heavier than water and therefore sinks."

"Now for the worst part," Valgaav sighed audibly. "It's going to start getting messy and smelly, so, you know, be aware of that."

At the dissection table, Valgaav first isolated the esophagus from the rest of the chest organs. He picked up a pair of scissors and cut the chest organs away from the abdominal organs and esophagus. As he separated the lungs from the heart and trachea, Xel stepped in. "Let me?"

"Sure." Valgaav stepped aside, explaining to Zelgadiss, "He wants to show off his knife skills."

"Well, I am good." Xel quickly recorded the lungs' weight, then sliced it like loaves of bread into sections about one centimeter thick using his foot-long, sharp knife in only a few seconds elapsed time.

"I'm further impressed," Zelgadiss said. He stepped closer to observe Xel's technique, imagining if he could perfect the use of his knife, someday. "Remind me to let you cut the roast."

"We're having a roast tonight...er...when we get home?" Xel looked pleased.

"Yeah, it's the only thing I can cook, that and baked potatoes and a salad." Zelgadiss blushed at the attention he was drawing from his two friends all of a sudden.

"Sounds good to me," Xel said. "I nominate you our in-house cook."

"I second it," Valgaav chuckled. "We're mostly can, box, frozen, and take-out kind of cooks. Real food will be a nice change."

"And you'll be surprised at how hungry you'll be after this, too."

Zelgadiss regarded Xelloss with a skeptical eye. "I'll be surprised if I have any appetite left."

"Let's get this job done with," Valgaav requested. As much as he liked his older cousin, he found that Xel tried his patience much of the time.

He weighed the heart and then opened it along the pathway of normal blood flow using the scissors. "Xel prefers to use the bread knife because, while it takes more skill and care, it is much faster and gives more attractive cut edges than when scissors are used, but I'm doing it my way tonight."

He moved quickly, opening the larynx and trachea longitudinally from the rear and then examined the interior. All the while he was marking the chart with notes, recording his findings as he went along. "Nothing notable yet. I'm dissecting the thyroid gland away from the trachea with scissors," he murmured.

Zel watched him weigh the plump gland and cut it into thin slices.

"Sometimes the parathyroid glands are easy to find, other times impossible," Xel noted. "I keep thinking we had something going on this weekend, starting in the evening. Any clues?"

Valgaav turned over the abdominal organ bloc, so that the back side was up. "The adrenal glands are located in the fatty tissue over the kidneys and are difficult to find. Got them. Here, you can remove and weigh them. We got that audition to go to, for one."

"That's right! Thanks to your little girlfriend," Xel muttered under his breath.

"She's not my girlfriend. Hardly know her."

"You're being defensive, which is a sure sign of something going on," Xel continued to tease.

"What girl's that?" Zelgadiss wanted to know.

Xel opened his mouth, but one glare from his cousin and he edited his comment, "I guess...that's a secret."

Valgaav felt warmth creep up his neck, "It's no secret. Amelia arranged an audition for us for a local play. She's trying to get us jobs. Damn, I wish we'd never started that stupid lie."

Zelgadiss did his math and came up with the disturbing conclusion that Xel thought Valgaav liked Amelia. He wondered if he should warn Valgaav not to feel too bad if she didn't feel the same way. Amelia had a crush on him—or not. Zelgadiss felt a tightening in his chest as he recalled her horrified stare and whispered words to Lina when she first saw his new face: "He's so scary and suspicious looking!"

No, he decided that he no longer stood in anybody's way to go for the girl of their choice. He was no longer going to be a player. No one would ever want to touch him. His eyes came back into focus when Xel tapped him on the shoulder while waving his long knife in the air under his nose.

"The best of us," Xel said with a smirky smile, "are able to make every cut with one long slicing action. To saw back and forth with the blade leaves irregularities on the cut surface, which are often distracting on specimen photographs. So the idea is to use an extremely sharp, long blade that can get through a 2000-gram liver in one graceful slice. This is my very own blade which I maintain myself and will let no one else use."

Valgaav snorted at Zelgadiss' look of disbelief, "Just watch when he leaves tonight. He typically carries it around in a leather sheath in his briefcase."

The knife was dangerous enough looking, but seemed average to Zelgadiss until he noticed that it was adorned with a red stone at the hilt. He watched Xel's work with fascination. He imagined some attacker entering their workroom at night and then Xelloss, who was not a particularly tough or strong looking individual, would defend them all with one desperate but skillful slash of the bread knife, almost cutting the assailant in half. He shuddered.

"You okay?" Valgaav asked him.

Zelgadiss nodded and watched in silence as Xel carved the liver; his slicing with the bread knife making amazingly delicate cuts for its long, unwieldy-looking blade.

"What comes next," Valgaav told Zelgadiss, "is we strip the intestines from the mesentery using scissors..."

"The pussy method," Xel inserted.

"... or bread knife..."

"The macho method," Xel insisted.

Valgaav carried the tangle of intestines to the sink where he opened them under running water so that all the feces and undigested food were cleaned out.

"As one might imagine, this step is extremely malodorous," Xel added by way of unnecessary commentary.

"Gods...no kidding," Zelgadiss gagged. The material in the sink smelled like a pleasant combination of crap and puke. It was actually so terrible that Zelgadiss worried that he would be sick.

"Yeah, talk about 'shit work'," Xel laughed.

Valgaav continued to wash off the internal surface of the bowel, and then carried it back to the dissecting tray where he examined it and made a few notes. "Next time, Zelgadiss gets to 'run the gut,' beginner's work."

Zelgadiss had his reflexes under control and nodded. "Fine. I'm turning up the fan."

The stomach was opened along its greater curvature.

"More internal bleeding," Valgaav muttered. "Write than down for me."

"We are lucky tonight," Xel commented as he scribbled the note.

"We are?" Zelgadiss asked while holding his nose. The smell of gastric acid would prove to be unforgettable.

Valgaav weighed it and again took slices for examination. "He means that the patient hadn't eaten solid food in a while. If he had, the contents of the stomach would have discouraged you from eating any stews or soups for a long time."

The pancreas was removed from the duodenum, weighed, sliced, and examined. The duodenum was opened longitudinally, washed out, and examined internally. The esophagus was similarly treated with dispatch.

"These are the kidneys," Valgaav said as he removed, weighed, halved lengthwise, and examined the solid organs. "This is the urinary bladder." And he repeated the procedure.

"If this were a female patient, the ovaries and uterus would be removed, cut in half, and examined. Since it's a male, the testes are checked and if they are enlarged, as they are in this case, it's necessary to remove them. So I pull'em up into the abdomen by traction on the spermatic cord, cut them off, halve them, and prepare them for examination."

"Ouch," Zelgadiss hissed with a sharp intake of air.

"Almost done," Xel reassured him.

"The aorta and its major abdominal branches get opened longitudinally and examined," Valgaav said.

"Uh, this place is a mess," Zelgadiss said. "Guess I'd better get cracking."

Toward the end of the autopsy procedure, the room was not a pretty sight. Valgaav wasn't particularly neat when he worked the dissection area.

"It's a legend that old-time pathologists were so neat that they'd perform the entire procedure in a tux right before an evening at the opera. Pathologists are noted for their love of classical music and fine art," Xel told him as he helped pull out a few sponges for Zelgadiss. "As you can see, the modern prosector, which I guess is the closest title Valgaav might have, is not that refined."

The autopsy table around the patient was covered with blood, and some had dripped onto the floor.

While trying to ignore Xel as best he could, Valgaav focused on the task at hand, but they were right—it was getting foul. "We try to keep blood on the floor to a minimum so no one slips and falls," Valgaav said as he tore off a handful of paper towels, dropped them on the floor, and rubbed at the floor with his shoe.

The hanging meat scales used to weigh the organs were covered and dripping with blood. The pen Valgaav had used to write organ weights on the clipboard was also smeared with blood, as was the clipboard itself, which was an especially unappetizing juxtaposition.

However, none of it bothered Valgaav enough to call for a cleaning session. "Yeah, you can get to that in a minute, but first I wanna show you what happens to all the organ samples I've taken. The samples I took of most of the organs are for later microscopic examination, as you probably figured. Sections of the organs, optimally about three millimeters in thickness, get cut and placed in labeled plastic cassettes. What I'm doing here now is placing the cassettes in small jars of formalin for fixation. Before we go tonight, we'll 'process' them all in a machine overnight. That removes all the water from the specimens and replaces it with paraffin wax. See, first we'll take out the 'runs' from the morning, put them on the 'ready' shelf, and then take ours and place them like so and turn it on. That's that. Permanent microscopic sections can be cut from the paraffin sections, mounted on glass slides, stained, cover-slipped, and examined microscopically. We don't do that here. If the case wants all that done, we send off our jars and let the investigative teams have them. I mean, we can, but they gotta verify our work anyway so why bother? I'm no pathologist, but Xel graduated as one."

That was news to Zelgadiss, and it meant that Xel was at least 22 years old.

"What do you do with the other stuff?" Zelgadiss asked. He scanned the piles of 'guts' and parts lying about in horror that he might be expected to 'do' something about them.

"We have more 'save jars' for additional small slices of the major organs, typically these one-quart or the one-pint jars filled with formalin. That includes the brain. We don't dissect it here at all. We keep the save jar for a variable length of time, but at least until the case is 'signed out,' which is when the final written report is prepared. In the case of those bodies labeled 'cc' for 'court case', we keep them until an investigating officer picks them up. We usually just bag all the tissues that need disposed of and dump them in the tub over there marked 'for incineration.' It's in the basement."

"Bag, tub, basement," Zelgadiss intoned to keep his own sanity intact.

"I think mother's place just dumps the leftovers back into the empty cavity to help fill it back up," Xel said.

"That's because you don't deal with the Cepheid people like we do. Everything's gotta be done to their standards or they won't do business with you."

Zelgadiss said, "But this is the White Shrine capital. What business is it of the Cepheid people to tell the rest how to run things?"

"They have some big financial backers, that's why," Valgaav answered him.

"Gaav wants their bucks. He doesn't have to bend to their will, but then he'd lose the money he needs so much for his wild and crazy activities, right Valgaav?" Xel smiled with an unreadable look.

"Something like that," Valgaav said, looking at Zelgadiss. "Dad travels most the time, although I expect him home anytime. Not that he'll stay with us; he'll just stop in to say hello and probably meet you."

"So what do we do with...the body?" Zelgadiss asked. He wasn't even going to begin to agonize about a visit from Gaav yet.

"Let's close it up!" Xel chortled at his friend's anxious expression. "You didn't think we were just going to leave it like this tonight?"

Indeed, the body was now an empty shell, with no larynx, chest organs, abdominal organs, pelvic organs, or brain. The front of the rib cage was also missing. The scalp was pulled down over the face, and the whole top of the head was gone.

"The first one I saw was like this," Zelgadiss said in his defense.

"That's because the earlier shift is made up of a bunch of worthless morons," Xel told him as he started replacing the top of the skull and pulling the scalp back over. "Hand me the twine, my good man," Xel asked while pointing out the ball of thick twine and the still-bloody scissors. "Wipe those off too, while you're at it."

He threaded a fat needle and expertly sewed up the wound using the type of stitch used to cover baseballs, leaving a line going from behind the ears over the back of the skull, so that when the head rested on a pillow in the casket, the wound would not be visible. "I just know that I'm forgetting something happening later today or...I don't know."

Zelgadiss helped place the chest plate back over the chest, and then Xel sewed the body wall, again with baseball stitches, so that the final wound resembled a 'Y'.

"Nothing you told me about," Valgaav assured him.

"Me neither. Ummm, the whole trunk is collapsed, especially the chest since the chest plate was not reattached to the ribs," Zelgadiss pointed out. "It's not right."

Xel knew that his lack of seriousness, especially while on the job, irked his cousin. He enjoyed tormenting Valgaav. He thought, maybe, that it was because Valgaav was like the younger brother he had never had. A funny thought came to mind, his eyes twinkled with amusement, and he asked, "Remember how I asked earlier how it was that you couldn't put anything back in a box the way it came?"

Zelgadiss smiled. He noticed that Xel traded off being the 'source of all knowledge' with being the comedian and that Valgaav put up with him, just barely. Zel guessed that Xelloss had pushed him too far tonight with one too many of his amusing anecdotes.

"That's not what he means, dipwad," Valgaav snorted at him. "Okay, on the work order papers it doesn't say if the body is to be embalmed or not, so we stitch it closed. The family may not have decided what to do; otherwise we could wash it down and stuff the body cavity with filler to re-expand the body to roughly normal contours. Saves time, if we know," Valgaav said. "Okay, Zelgadiss, get the hose and sponge there and clean it all off. Cover it with the sheet and roll it into the keep."

He and Xel were labeling and moving specimen jars when Zelgadiss returned. He automatically wiped down all the surfaces with a disinfectant, and cleaned up the autopsy suite with a mop and bucket. Valgaav finished up the notes concerning his findings.

"Normally we can put away one of these babies in under two hours, assuming it's a fairly straightforward case we're not interrupted," Xel said with pride.

"What makes one complicated?"

"Oh, detailed explorations and special dissections like exploring the bile ducts, removing the eyes, or spinal cord. Gods, we had one take us nearly four hours once, didn't we Valgaav?"

"I try to forget."

"What do I do with these?" Zelgadiss indicated the sink of instruments: a scalpel, the bread knife, and scissors.

"Rinse them off, then use the pick-ups to put them in the tray with disinfectant."

"Pick-ups? You mean 'forceps'?"

"Only scriptwriters say 'forceps'," Valgaav replied, finally breaking a smile.

"Right, you actor-types should know," Zelgadiss retorted.

"Yeah, okay, so we have time to teach you how to make up specimen jars and stuff."

While the three of them worked, Zelgadiss began to speculate about his life, the job, and about what they had just done. He hadn't thought about his drastically changed appearance for half an hour at least. This was certainly a place for a freaky guy like him to be hidden away from curious eyes. So, it seemed he had fallen into a new home, job, and friends– what amounted to a new life, and the summer wasn't even halfway over yet. It was smelly and ugly work at times, but with guys like these to be with it was okay and maybe he could solve a mystery or two? Which reminded him of the work they had just completed...

"So, what you think killed that guy?" he asked.

"Well, we know what didn't, right?" Xel asked in return. "No knife or gun shot wounds, bruises, lacerations, or anything like that."

"Right."

"The heart looked okay, no arterial blockages, nothing obvious on any of the intact organs. What do you think, Valgaav?"

"Tests will tell. From what I can figure from the few scraps of information attached here by the hospital, it's a case against a doctor proving the patient got improper treatment. Ah...it mentions he had heart problems and was given coumadin."

"Can I use the computer over there?" Zelgadiss asked.

"Sure," said and showed him how to power it up.

In a few minutes, Zelgadiss had some information for them. "Hey, this is interesting. Listen: 'Drugs that are helpful in therapeutic doses may be deadly when taken in excess. For example, coumadin is a beta-blocker used to calm and slow the heart , and it's often thought of as a blood thinner used to prevent blood clots. Drug interaction is another risk. If you're using the blood thinner coumadin, combining it with aspirin or Tylenol can lead to an increased risk of bleeding. Over-dosage effects, such as too much anticoagulant, producing bleeding into the skin, or a mixture of too much aspirin with Coumadin, leading to a dose-related rash, are seen. Hair loss as a result of heparin or Coumadin is also seen.'"

"So, the doctor may have made a mistake and over-prescribed for this guy or not told him to avoid aspirins or something. The family may have a case. The samples we took will be able to determine the amount of that stuff in him," Valgaav said.

"We noticed the internal bleeding, but who could tell about the hair with a bald guy?" Xel pondered the possibilities. "Hold on...go back...What's that about rat poison?"

Zel checked the search items and discovered one about dogs dying from eating rat poison containing coumadin. "You're right. It is the active ingredient in many rat poisons and may cause heavy bleeding and death if too much is taken. It's been around a long time. 'In the early 20th century, bis-hydroxycoumarin was discovered after livestock had eaten spoiled sweet clover and died of a hemorrhagic disease. Although it is no longer is used primarily as a rodenticide, several long-acting coumarin derivatives are used for this purpose and can produce profound and prolonged anticoagulation.'"

"Maybe someone fed him rat poison to kill him knowing that it might be masked by his medical condition?" Xel grinned. "Look up how we can test for that poison!"

Valgaav interrupted, "That would be in this text up here, and not on the internet." He hauled down an over-sized book and spent a few minutes thumbing through it. "It's not too hard. You any good in high school chemistry, Zelgadiss?"

"Yeah, I'm going to college to major in...that is, Rezo wanted me to study it in college."

Xelloss pushed Zelgadiss at the book while Valgaav dove for the Bunsen burner and one of his specimen jars. "It starts with the liver..."

Less than an hour later, Zelgadiss was delighted to be able to prove his worth to his two friends after feeling like the useless observer all night. "Okay, so it says if this dissolves in alcohol and turns pink, it was the rat poison."

"Drink up!" Xel giggled as he doused the beaker's contents with the alcohol.

"Pink it is!" they all cheered.

Valgaav was especially pleased to be able to record something of value on the 'check-out form' and Zelgadiss felt better about himself than he had since his accident. There was hope for him somehow.

"Can we leave now?" Xel sighed. He could only tolerate waiting for the others to complete their tedious work a short time.

Valgaav was ripping off his coveralls by way of an answer. "So how long will it take to get that roast ready?"

"If the timer on the oven worked right, about twenty minutes for me to get everything on the table," Zelgadiss was saying as he dried his hands and discarded his coveralls to the 'dirty' bag, but he was talking to an empty room. Xel and Valgaav were already in the car and pulling up outside the building.

"Hey!" Xel shouted out his window. "Hurry up with that door!"

"How did you get out so fast? It's like you two just transported instantly to out here!"

"Magic," Xel grinned.

"I'll get it!" Xel scooted to the front door, dragging a t-shirt over his head as he went.

"I brought the DVD's and all that," Lina paused, looking over the young man's unkempt hair and sleepy eyes. "You forgot, didn't ya?"

Xelloss hunted through his scattered wits faster than a search engine in order to prove her wrong. "Ahhh..." then his face relaxed into its familiar smile, "Anime club, right? Tonight?"

"That's right. So, you have snacks already? I smell something good, what is it?"

"Good? Oh, that would be Zelgadiss' roast. He made a terrific dinner, which we had before you had breakfast. But, say, ah... I do need to go get a few more things, would you like to go with me and..."

"Pick them out? Sure would! That way I'll be sure you get enough, and we don't have much time. Oh, hi Zelly. Been up long?" Lina grinned at the closed-eyed boy. She still couldn't get over how different he looked, although she thought the change was exhilaratingly interesting.

"Lina? Damnit, I knew I heard your voice but I thought I was having a bad dream," he quipped in return.

"Lina and I are going to pick out the snacks for anime club," Xel said, "So make sure Valgaav is dressed when he comes out, okay? Oh, and answer the door!" The last part he yelled as he and Lina swept down the walkway to the garage where his car was safely parked.

Zelgadiss had no time to argue; they were gone. He had been in hiding from everyone except for his two roommates, Lina, Gourry (once), Amelia, and Filia's aborted visit. He had no idea who might come through the door, and he dreaded it. "Valgaav! Val! You have to get up!" he yelled and banged on the bedroom door.

"Go'way."

"No, people are coming and you have to get dressed. Anime club!"

Val lurched to the door and whipped it open, "Enemy club? What kinda f—ing thing are you talking about? I don't gotta get up for two more hours, dipshit!"

"It's almost five o-clock, asshole, so get up and answer the door."

"You answer the door. I ain't your servant. You got two legs and arms just like me, only mine are going back to bed and yours aren't." And with that final thought, Valgaav slammed shut his door.

"But, but... what if it's Amelia? I don't know, I think blue's her favorite color, but other than that... What if she figures it's just me and her here?" Zelgadiss waited by the door.

Now, Zel only had hints that Valgaav might like Amelia, and had neglected to notice that his two friends possibly found one another mutually attractive. He had been too busy schmoozing with Filia that night at the party. Since then he hadn't noticed anything of the world around him but him and his problems, so what he had said was meant to be centered on his fear that she might bolt at the sight of 'Alien Zel'.

Valgaav, on the other hand thought Zelgadiss was trying egg him on, that he had figured Val might like her and that Zel having lost Filia might move on Amelia next. Valgaav wasn't at all sure how he felt about that, but he had no sense of humor concerning Amelia. Slowly the door opened. "You better be outta my way when I come out there," he growled.

Zelgadiss didn't know what he had said to anger the guy, but deciding that it was the waking him up part, he brushed it off as 'bad mood' and ambled off.

Meanwhile, Lina and Xelloss were having a great time loading up a grocery cart with goodies and exchanging 'hit points', as Lina called numbers of times they connected on something.

"Don't you just hate it when people behind you in a supermarket line dash ahead of you to a counter just opening up?" Xelloss asked as something similar was happening to them.

"Hey, you! Yeah, you in the polka dot shirt. We were, like, next in line, not you. See? Yeah, I'm still talking to you, Bub. We are in the front and you, being behind us, were able to jump over the little chain and get to the next line before us, but unless you want me to clean your clock, you'd better move aside!"

Lina made enough of a commotion to embarrass the man to the point that he fell back to the end of the longest line there was.

"What was that you were saying?" she asked Xelloss. "Oh, yeah..." She turned her ruby gaze upon the folks wheeling their cart behind her. "And I go ballistic when the people behind you in the supermarket run their cart into the back of your ankle."

The cart behind them rolled to another checkout counter.

"Can I ask you a question?" the cashier asked her.

"Oh, and don'tcha hate it when people ask 'Can I ask you a question?' I mean, didn't they just do that?"

Xelloss, who was getting into the moment, laughed, "Yes! They must be related to the people who point at their wrist while asking for the time."

Lina told the cashier that she didn't care what kind of bag he put the groceries in as long as they went into something fast.

And the easy conversation didn't stop there. On the drive back to his house, Xelloss wondered, "Have you ever noticed that the tiny red string on the Band-Aid wrapper never works for you, or is that just me?"

"No, it's there just to torment you into adding a paper cut to whatever other mess you're trying to squelch the blood flow from. Hey! What's that idiot honking his horn for? Doesn't he see the kid in the crosswalk, or does he think we oughta just run him down so as to accommodate his heavy-footedness?"

"I don't think that's a word... 'heavy-foot-ed-ness', though I could be wrong. But in any case, yes, that's a bother. Oh, yeah and there's always a car riding your tail when you're slowing down to find an address, too."

Lina laughed, "Yeah, I guess we run into the same imbeciles even in our different circles."

"Well, that or we are rather special; kinda like the two ice cubes that won't pop out of the tray."

Lina looked to see if he was being serious but couldn't tell because he usually wore an innocuous-looking smile. She decided that he was and twisted his words to fit along the same lines as their previous ones, and agreed, "That's another one of life's irritations: There are always one or two ice cubes that get stuck and you have to crack them up or bang on them or something to get them out of the tray."

"Sometimes it's more trouble than it's worth," he said meaningfully, "and sometimes it's not."

"You are not your typical actor-type, you know?" Lina narrowed her eyes to really get a good look at him in profile. He was really very attractive and that made her uncomfortable suddenly.

"Oh? Well, you are not your typical medieval sorceress adventurer, either."

"What? I'm not one at all, but I gotta say that sounds pretty cool. Oh, I get it...that's what you meant, huh? Does that mean you're not really an actor? I'm...ah...going to college in fall, what ever that makes me."

"I see. And yes, I'm not much of an actor, but I was right about you."

"Xelloss...?"

"Call me Xel."

"Xelloss, you are one strange guy."

"Ah, I'll take that as a compliment, coming from the other ice cube holding onto her place in the tray against all odds." He pressed the automatic garage door opener, wheeled the BMW into its allotted space, and turned off the engine.

A bare light bulb overhanging the step up into the house was all the illumination they had. Lina looked over to see that Xelloss was watching her. "What?"

He turned to face her partway, resting one arm on the back of his seat and the other across the steering wheel. "I would really like to kiss you, Lina, but I feel that I must warn you first."

That caught her off guard. She wasn't sure how to respond, so she asked with caution, "Warn me about what?"

"About me," he lowered his voice to a soft purr and moved closer to her. "Once I start, I might not be able to stop."

"Start what? You think I'm gonna buy a line like that? What makes you think I want to have you within an inch of my person, huh? I already got a ... ah..." but Lina was unable to articulate 'boyfriend.' Was Gourry actually that to her? She didn't know.

"Because you don't want to melt before we have a chance."

"You still working that ice cube metaphor?" There was a note of relief in her voice.

"Are you still fighting for the upper hand?"

He was so close by that she could feel his body's warmth added to her own and to the already warm day's, causing her to become testy. "Yes, I mean... no. I'm always on top."

"That's all I wanted to know." He leaned the final few inches into her, kissed her on the tip of her nose, and pulled away to grab two sacks of food. "I'm flexible."

Lina felt the blood rush to her face. What had she said? "That wasn't what I meant, whatever you're thinking. Hey, come back here! I just wanna clarify what was going on just now!"

But he was already inside the kitchen, chuckling at her confusion.

End Graveyard Shift, Chapter 7