--------------

~*~
I. Postcards From Seattle
~*~
The images never faded out.
The first dead body sprawled out for all to see.

Whether it on the sidewalk at the start of
mid-day traffic, or drifting
by the pier.

Or in a basement.

Or as Tim can recall, night after night,
in an alley
covered in rain.

And blood.

He should just stop.
End it,
No more decomposing
corpses.

No more late night
visits
to parents.

Siblings.
Aunts, uncles.
Teachers, friends.

He should do it,
He should.

He could do it.

Quitting Homicide.
Seemed very easy,

in his head.

Run away from the past.

Tim sits on an uncushioned stool, in the far
corner of the room, rooting
through dusty folders.

Looking up occasionally, to watch little or no
remorse as another body
is sliced open.

See, he could stop feeling.
See, he could separate his feelings.

He could separate....that part of himself.

He still wasn't sure if why he was here.
Why was he stationed in the ME's, doing the grunt
work of Frank
Pembleton?

Partners and Friends.
Associates.
Assistant and Boss.

Making him look for Postcards from Seattle
Or some nonsense like that.

ID 'em with
dental records.
DNA.

All and all,
it seemed an intimate thing.
Cadaver and ME

Nothing rolled around his head more...

Risley Tucker is dead.

Bayliss felt an all too familiar loneliness,
though, this time
unaccompanied by fear.

No more fear.
No more victims.
No more sleepless ni...

He bears no resemblance to Tucker, about 20 years
his junior.

The pit deepened and darkened around the
detective. He didn't even know
this man's name.
A part of him doesn't even care.

That part
Still attached to Adena.

That part
Still with the Araber in the Box.

It's another dead body.
Not Tucker*
Some guy with a past.
Criminal or otherwise, Tim can't feel a thing.

Why couldn't he?
In the entombed cold, watching.
Feeding off the moment.

Those memories that never
leave.

Little girl
Wounded

Killed by
a stranger, a friend.

An Araber?

After the fact, this was.
The case was over,
But it was still compelling to be here.

Scheiner's hands grappled with the larynx,
pulling it down.
Cut.
Detachments of the spine
quick slice,
Cut away
from body wall
diaphragm organ.

An opened trunk.

divided link.
Slice
Open.

Myra, Schiener's diener, steps away from the
dissecting tray, keeping an
awkward tab on Bayliss' flickering expressions. "You
okay, Detective?"

So many hours on a stakeout,
And he stands here.

A shiver passes over Tim. "Yeah. Fine." Bayliss
notices his increasing
perversities in this autopsy.

He watches steadily as
the spleen rocks back and forth with momentum on
the scale. The red
pointer jumps, shakes, wobbles.
The ME, the most dispassionate of humans, records
the numbers discarding
the organ into a jar.

All morbid curiosities must be taken aside, so
the job can begin.

Shake it off.
Make it
go away.

But it can't. His mind displaces all tendencies
of natural compassion
for this victim.

Only hours ago he saw the news.

Risley Tucker is dead.

The idea should bead off of him like water.

But it can't. This death has meaning.
Meaning he tried explaining to Kay.

He'd stop being who he was.

He never wanted to stop
caring.

It would change him.
He'd be
just
where he is right...
Now.

He'd like to have been there.
Standing over the man's body, jotting down the
particulars of the
scene...Knowing it was a just death.

An unfair dying
for a man like that.

In a bed.
In a comfortable,
dry
warmth.

These feelings are cold. They are limiting.
They are insensitive.
They are in no way Tim Bayliss.

Almost suddenly,

The smell
The smell of dead flesh, stands in the air.
Sticks to the walls.

Sticks to his lungs.

It comes full circle.
He is who he is.

Nothing can hurt that.
Nothing.

Not even death.

So, he
tries a focal point.

Those nearly tangible
Meanings.

Words.
Jumbles on the page,

names.
Names.

He finds a link.
A name.
A identity.

Cook.

Scurrying his files, he blinks himself
Into a steady dimension.

Tim gradually gets to his feet and stares
straight ahead.

The room is spinning and swirling
as he gives his
Thanks to Myra.

Taking a final look,
as John Doe's

pancreas
is
sectioned.

Heads to the door, still wondering if
California
was still a good idea.

~~*~~

~*~
II. Prelude to an Afterlife
~*~

These simple prospects are at oftentimes
over-looked:

We live. [we breathe, we blink, we cry, we think...]
We die.

We end up here.
In the middle of
Circumstance.
(It's a rarity; murder)

It's a rarity in rage.

It's winter in Baltimore. [I remember I was found
in the snow]

Though, you'd never know it was from down here.
Light never peeks in. The clock readily stands at
3.

3 AM
3 PM

I can see everything.
The walls, coated in their own
skin.

Pale greens and
Nauseous yellows.

Pasty white.

The metal tray beneath me still shifts an inch,
as tepid fluids leave
me. Putting the Y-incision and bone cutter aside,
this isn't an all bad
situation.

It's a hollow feeling, liken to getting high.
Everything's fuzzy.

Drip.
Drain.
Drip...drip...drip...

The chest plate is long gone, and I'm left with
recirculating air
pushing through my excavated form.

Heart and lungs
On a table.
And I'm left empty.

I never realized this was possible.
Hell, I still can't.
I don't understand.
I can hear everything. I can feel...

I can hear the footfalls of John Munch
approaching, followed in by the
partner du jour, Mike Kellerman, close in as the
diener palms my spleen.

Their walk-in is well timed.
They've momentarily missed the single slash which
set my organs free.

Ah, freedom.

This nameless diener, no more 4 years older than
me, hands this
"grouping" to the famed ME.
Who, with grace and civility, has handed my
innards to a dissecting
table.

Both detectives curse the abhorrence of the
display, wishing they'd
waited to disturb us.
That part of me resting on the tray, wishes that
too.

Juli Cox chatters on with the two, as if I am
nothing
Without substance, without
Past.

The Lady in Red.
Without future.
Widow in Black.

She pulls a selective object from the organ bloc.

A bullet. A tiny spectacle of metal.

Words pass through,
cut the air swiftly.

Kellerman grins, offering dinner.
Juli Cox gives a curt retort.

Nothing is repeated; the walls have no ears.
Munch isn't listening. And
no one can hear me...

Munch juggles with the varying thoughts,
questions and ideas floating in
his animate brain.
He asks them, one by one.
Cox answers them, trying her best to sound
Just as professional as he does

...Believing she could do what they do.
Given the chance, of course.

My doubts on her instincts grow with each passing
syllable.
I am bored to death...ha ha ha...

I wish she'd sew the skin back.

Something.
This feels greatly surreal.
Too much to be a dream.

But
Time is a constant.
A variable.
A thread.

Now, I'm just some measurement of guts and stored blood.
Bones attached to flesh.

Ha. Ha. Ha.
Life as Jane Doe.
Autopsy 8 on a Tuesday afternoon.

This woman's fingers still maneuver about my
insides, my lifeless
tissue, trying to explain to these Murder Jockeys
the mysticism of a
single shot.

It's trajectory, it's direction.
It's almost grand tear through my spinal column.
The pivoting curl to my heart.
The downward crossover through a lung and liver.

One in a million.
One bullet.

And I, a restless solitary being among the
still living, as
I
lie here
As they joke about my luck.
[So, I do amuse you?]

I lie here allowing her hands deeper access into
my bloodless body.
Manipulating her instrument, through and around
intricate veins and
tubing.

The scalpel is freezing as she pokes around in
there!

This bitch peels some fatty tissue from muscle,
to illustrate her point.
Whatever, in hell her point may be.

It doesn't matter ya know.
I'm dead
What good is she doing me?

I'd laugh if I could.
Scream,
if my larynx
were functional.

Oh, I would love to scare the shit out of them!

Especially her.

She's been fumbling like this for the last
fifteen minutes.
I honestly doubt she knows what she's doing.
Cox didn't even make the first cut; not in her
job description.

Strumming against, the lividity of my bladder,
she completes her walk
through and sighs.

Poor baby.
Try my fate, Darling.
Tell me, how rough it is.

You lie here.
You let some stranger
Rape your insides.

Ahh...
Oh!

A burst of light!
Tunneling to me in darkness.

It reforms
what I can see.

With a shading
of grey and cloudy
cover.

The voices fade
They get quiet.

Whisperings.
Visions go hazy.

This is
The End, isn't it?

A Prelude
To
Silence.

**The End**