howdy! here's chapter 2! it's not as long as chapter 1, obviously, but I hope you enjoy!
Chapter Two: Body Language
The Burger Binge was the classic small town diner. Neon lights decorated both the inside and the outside of the restaurant, and the checkered tiles and plush red booths gave it a distinct 1950's feel. The jukebox in the back corner only played songs that had come out before my friends and I were born, and even the waitresses were dressed up in classic 50's attire. We, of course, didn't go for the aesthetic. We went for all-day breakfast.
Aside from being the most authentic post-modern dining experience in town, The Burger Binge was also the only place that served breakfast after noon. This was most likely because, despite the restaurant's title, the burgers were crap, and they needed to make their money somehow. So, that's where we would waste our time whenever we were bored and hungry after twelve p.m. (we never went to The Burger Binge for breakfast before noon, because the fun of all-day breakfast was stripped away if you ate it at the same time that everyone else was, anyway).
Despite the plate of pancakes growing soggy in front of me, I couldn't help but watch Daphne. She'd lost the cherry somewhere at the bottom of her strawberry milkshake, and was using her two straws to try and grab it. Her ginger hair fell around her face as she leaned over the sticky pink drink, and her tongue poked out of the corner of her mouth.
The other thing distracting me was my dad. It seemed obvious to everyone at the hotel this morning that that man hadn't been killed by an animal. The unspoken truth had hung through the air like a dense fog, and my father seemed to be the only one not caught in the haze. He'd texted me a few minutes prior, just to let me know that the autopsy had been completely normal, and that the investigation had been officially closed. That had bothered me, for some reason. I wondered if my dad even wanted the truth. I wondered if he would have been grateful if I found it for him.
Daphne had a grasp on the cherry now, and lifted it slowly out of the milkshake. Just as she was about to clear the rim of the glass, it slipped away from her straws and splashed back to the bottom of the drink. I snickered at her.
Daphne glanced in my direction, tossing her hair over her shoulder so she could face me. She giggled softly before turning back to her work. I tapped her calf with my foot, and I watched her smile again as I felt the wheel of her skate spin against my leg.
"Alright," Velma declared. "I think we can all agree that what happened at the hotel was weird, right? I mean- you guys don't really think an animal killed that guy."
Shaggy cleared his throat. "Do I think an animal killed him? No. Do I care to find out who did? Unsurprisingly, also no."
"Why not?" Daphne said, dropping her straws into her milkshake and leaning forward. "Aren't you even a little interested in what's going on?"
Before Shaggy had time to reply, Velma interjected again. "Man, what I wouldn't give to get a look at that body."
Shaggy and Daphne both looked at Velma in horror, but I was starting to hop on the bandwagon. I could only imagine how my father would feel if I found out what happened to that councilman. I'd be a hero- not just to my dad, but to the entire town.
"Let's do it." I announced without thinking.
Now even Velma was shocked. All of their talk had been hypothetical, but I was ready to spring this plan into action.
"Seriously," I continued. "Guys, this can be our big thing! The grand adventure to end a month-long saga of boredom! Come on, what do you say?"
They all stared blankly at me.
"Dude," Shaggy cried, "If you want an adventure, we'll take a road trip- Hell, let's go stay the night in the Lizzie Borden House! You're talking about, what, catching a murderer?"
"We don't know for sure that he was murdered." I offered, "I'm just suggesting that we sneak into the morgue later tonight and check out his body! If everything's normal like my dad said, we'll leave it alone. I promise."
Shaggy didn't seem impressed.
"You want to go play with corpses," He muttered, burying his face in his hands. "Fred Jones wants to get his sick kicks by desecrating the dead."
Shaggy had always served as the wet blanket to our more abstract ideas. His mother, a Filipino immigrant, had worked hard all her life to support herself in America- until she met his father, an older man who came from even older money. When Shaggy's dad died, he did everything he could to block out his image. He even went as far as to change his name- which had once been Norville, an indication of the high society from which he came. The past few years had been hard for Shaggy, but they left him with two important philosophies:
1) Life sucks, and then it's over.
2) Don't mess with the dead.
I hoped to break both of those philosophies before the night was through.
"All in favor?" I asked, raising my hand. Daphne and Velma each raised their hand as well. We all turned to Shaggy.
Groaning, Shaggy put his head down on the table, covering his face with his hands. We watched him skeptically, until finally, he slowly lifted one arm into the air.
The closest street lamp to the morgue was about eight yards down the road, leaving the back door lit with nothing more than a soft yellow glow. There was a light breeze which caused nearby bushes to rustle as though they had come alive with the twilight. Shaggy bounced nervously as he held up the flashlight, constantly darting his head from one direction to the next. He was convinced that we were going to get caught. Even if we had, we would have gotten off with nothing more than a slap to the wrist. Being the mayor's son carried certain perks.
Daphne pulled her bobby pins out of the lock, and pushed the heavy iron door open. The morgue was deserted. The only sound came from a dripping faucet somewhere in the distance, and the only sources of light (aside from our flashlight) were the exit signs, which cast a red hue upon the room.
We walked gingerly across the tiled floor, careful not to make a sound. The room couldn't have been warmer than forty degrees, causing us all to shiver in our summer clothes. Velma ran her hands along the stainless steel drawers, which cast warped reflections back at us, as though were in a funhouse.
"What did you say the man's name was?" Velma asked, pulling open one of the drawers. She glanced at the toe-tag before putting the body back.
I tried to remember the name my father had given me. "Adams..." I recalled, "Steven Adams."
Velma pulled open another drawer and glanced at the toe tag.
"Bingo." She remarked, before sliding the drawer all the way out to reveal the man's mangled corpse. She then turned to Shaggy and I. "Well, boys, let's get this poor unfortunate on a gurney."
In TV and movies, cops always talk about the first time they saw a dead body as something that would scar them for the rest of their lives. Maybe it was because I'd never known the man when he was alive, or perhaps in was the inhuman state of his remains, but regardless, I didn't feel the same. This man was just an object to me- like the dummy body at the beginning of a crime show.
His skin was cold, grey, and puffy like that of a Tim Burton character. Deep gashes and claw marks covered his entire body, with chunks of flesh even missing out of his torso and legs. Despite the gory mess, a Y shaped incision decorated his chest, which had been sewed up with string.
Shaggy and I lifted the body off of the gurney and up onto a stainless steel examining table. Shaggy did his best not to look at the man, gagging every time he caught a glimpse of the corpse. The reaction was warranted, I supposed.
Velma approached the table, now dressed in an apron she'd found somewhere in the morgue's many back rooms. She snapped on a pair of latex gloves and adjusted her headband before leaning over the body.
First, she gave the corpse a routine once-over, she had explained. She looked for any external anomalies, examined the exterior of the many large wounds, and looked in the man's eyes, which she had to pry open. It wasn't until he opened the man's mouth that her face lit up with a mischievous smile.
She beckoned us over, and Daphne and I leaned in towards the man's face- Shaggy had refused. With the handle of a scalpel, she directed our attention to faint black stains that resides on the man's teeth a and gums.
"Poison?" I asked, glancing up at Velma as she continued to poke around inside the man's throat.
"It's possible," she murmured, before snapping her head up. "I'm still convinced the wounds were what killed him, but this does warrant further investigation."
"So, what?" Shaggy asked, purposefully facing away from us- and the body we crowded around, "How do you figure out what poisoned him?"
"Simple," Velma smiled, looking as giddy as ever, "We open him back up!"
Velma snipped open the threads that held the man's incisions closed, opening up his body to reveal several mangled organs to the group. Since the man had clearly ingested something strange, she had wisely opted to examine his stomach first. A large gash made it easy to pour out the contents into a glass vile, where she could more easily determine what the man had swallowed. The pile of sludge was more revolting than the corpse itself, and appeared normal to Daphne and I- but Velma's trained eyes sparkled as they caught sight of something strange.
"Check it out'" She sang, dipping a gloved finger into the gunk, "look at all this black powder. Based on the way it's clumped together, I'd say it was some sort of hallucinogenic drug."
"Okay," Daphne offered, raising an eyebrow. "What does that have to do with him looking like he got caught in a blender?"
"I don't know..."
Velma hummed over the powder to herself, until we heard a sudden noise in the other room, and saw the beam of a flashlight shining from down the hallway.
yowza! stay tuned for chapter 3, which i'll try and post this weekend! (spoiler alert: the fraphne will officially begin!)