Victoria Williams: 0077

Alright I’m trying to write a story about someone who works in a morgue by day, and sells off the bodies to mysterious clients who all have research purposes and alibis and things, and by night, returns home and serves up cold beans to her family who are the real cadavers in all of this: and btw this is a good time to mention that I only learned the correct meaning of the word cadaver because Mrs. Winters kept referring to her husband’s cadaver, especially with repeated reference to its head – so what was I supposed to think?

Anyway, here in the present I answer the phones at work and say, “City morgue.” And whoever’s at the end of the line tells me he’s looking for a body – but a body with shining hair, and slightly imperfect skin, and an almost aquiline nose, and maybe a tattoo – look, if you want to be specific, a body that looks like the moon and the heavens have been thrown into a blender with some rose-hips and a little molasses and beaten together into a fine paste, then poured into a mould and left to freeze in the snow. (But not one of the slightly green and stinky ones like last time.) And I say, “Speaking.” Ha! But no, seriously, I get a sum of money out of them, and I always make sure we can come to an agreement. I take it on faith that most people have scientific purposes.