Brain Matter

by Clive Carpenter

mouth. I swallowed it.

  Then, I died... happy.

  lunatic

  He awoke… somewhere. He couldn’t see a thing; there was no light wherever he was. And he had no idea where the hell he was or even how he got there. But for some reason, he was just glad to be alive.

  He sat up, head spinning.

  His mouth was dry, yet a strong coppery, salty taste lingered on his tongue. Blood?

  He vomited, either from the pungent odor that overtook his senses or from the pain in his head and chest; he wasn’t sure. Probably both.

  He began groping around to get a sense of his surroundings.

  Whatever he was lying on was cold and hard and as his hands began to grope around he discovered it was metal.

  That’s when he finally realized he was naked and he began to panic, but stopped himself. That would do no good. He decided he would save the panic attack until he found out where he was and why.

  More pain shot through his chest as he sucked in a quick breath when his feet touched the ice-cold, ceramic tile of the floor. His toes tingled and he shivered from the cold air.

  His head swam in a sea of nausea and he vomited again and the pain in his chest was almost unbearable. Now his nose stung from a vicious odor in the air and the smell of his own puke. In the back of his mind, he regretted waking up in the first place.

  Step by step he moved, not knowing where he was going; it was still pitch dark, wherever he was. His toes tested the floor, feeling for any obstacles.

  Something in the atmosphere of the pitch black room changed. He didn’t feel so alone now; someone, or something, was in the room with him. He sped up his search for a way out of the darkness.

  His left hand finally touched something. A small, cold metal platform, waist high. He put some weight against it and it moved. Hearing a squeaky wheel at his feet, he had a feeling he knew what it was: a stainless steel, wheeled surgeon’s tool table. The kind you might find in an operating room or… a morgue. His hands groped the top of the small table but it was bare. He became nervous, now.

  Turning to his right, he bumped into another table. This one was much larger. As his hands slowly roamed the table, he touched something cold and soft like leather.

  He knew instantly what it was: Flesh! Dead human skin!

  His hand instinctively pulled away.

  But he reached out again. It was an arm. His fingers traced along the lifeless appendage from the wrist up toward the shoulder. He stopped when the smooth skin became ragged and torn – a wet depression in the arm where the bicep should be. He kept feeling, his fingers touching something moist and spongy and he knew it had to be bloody muscle and tendons and then he felt… bone.

  He almost pulled his hand back but something urged him on. Something sadistic. A natural, sick curiosity perhaps.

  His sensing of another presence in the room subsided.

  The bone felt odd. Smooth in most places except for several jagged grooves. Six to be exact. They were deep and the bone was splintered at the edge of the last groove. He noted that the first and sixth grooves were deeper than the others.

  He was no medical examiner or doctor, but he surmised quickly that these were bite marks made by an animal. A large animal. The distance between the first and sixth bite marks was just over the distance from his thumb to the tip of his middle finger.

  Fuck! That’s a big animal. A grizzly or a tiger, maybe a shark; whatever the hell it had been, just the thought of trying to fend off a monster like that scared the shit out him. He debated on whether to continue his blind exploration of the body, knowing that this poor soul couldn’t have been done in by just a mere bite on the arm. There had to be more gore waiting for him if he continued. So he kept touching.

  A quick, chilly breeze shot across his skin that made him shiver. He inhaled quickly at the chill and sharp pain, once again, shot through his chest. He wasn’t sure what the cause of the pain was. Maybe he had a few broken ribs. But he had never had any before so he really didn’t know what it should feel like. His attention returned to the body before him, trying to forget about his chest.

  His fingers climbed their way up to the shoulder of the dead person on the table. Then to the neck, where they sank into a gaping, wet hole and touched the exposed spinal column.

  He found the top of the head with his other hand. Working both hands towards each other, every hair on his body stood on end and he nearly vomited again as he discovered that half of the head had been torn off.

  Holding back the vomit, the taste of bile in his mouth gave him an involuntary jolt and he nearly stumbled forward. Catching himself, he realized that his fingers were now knuckle-deep in brain matter.

  What the fuck!?

  The dead person’s entire bottom jaw was missing, leaving a vast gap between the throat and base of the skull and he felt the bile rising in his throat again when his fingers skimmed over the tongue, feeling the unmistakable texture of taste buds. The side of the skull closest to him was gone. His fingers got tangled in the matted hair and dug into more exposed brain matter, feeling it gather under his finger nails. He could feel the slimy remnants of ocular fluid and mucous when he found the eye cavity.

  He thanked God he couldn’t actually see this poor, horribly mutilated soul. He felt pretty confident that he probably would have passed out from the sight.

  He felt the need to wash his hands, now, and groped for anything. He came to a wall and felt along it for a light switch.

  Found it.

  A sharp *CLICK* and his vision was flooded with bright fluorescent light. He stood still until his eyes adjusted.

  When his vision returned, he saw that the body he had been groping was not the only one in the room. And, sure enough, he had to fight the overwhelming urge to pass out from the sight as each body he glanced over was in worse shape the one before it.

  The large room was obviously used for autopsies and he figured he must be in the medical examiner’s ward of a hospital. There were six other tables, besides the one he had been on, and they all held nude, uncovered bodies. They all had apparently suffered the same fate: mutilated by a large animal. One was missing both legs from the hips down. Another had a huge chunk of torso missing, the chest cavity hollowed out; its innards gone.

  Yet, another had been placed on its stomach to display that all of the skin on its back had been shredded off by the animal’s claws; the rib cage exposed showing several bones splintered and broken. One was even missing its head and the fact that he couldn’t see it anywhere in the room told him that they must have been unable to find it.

  The site overwhelmed him and he vomited, yet again. The pain is his chest drove him to his knees.

  What the hell happened to these people? Had they been part of a camping group overpowered by a grizzly? Was he a member of the group, too? His brain swam in a sea of clouded confusion. He couldn’t remember a damned thing.

  Then, it hit him...

  Wait a fucking minute! This was a morgue! Only dead people are brought here and left in the dark. So why the hell wasn’t he dead? Or was he thought to have been dead when they brought him in? Yes. That had to be it! But if he had been wheeled in dead, possibly part of this group, then…

  Something in his gut knotted up. Somehow, he was afraid to get a look at himself. What kind of mutilations would he discover on his own body?

  He spotted a mirror on the far wall near a sink. He approached it, washing his hands before even glancing into the mirror. He felt dizzy and he gagged, nearly vomiting again, straining his chest and shooting the pain to every nerve ending in his body.

  Slowly, his eyes turned to the mirror. What he saw shocked him - he looked normal. Nothing out of place… except for the seven bullet holes in his chest. No doubt the source of his pain.

  The sounds of gunfire and visions muzzle flashes flickered in his memory.

  His head jerked backward as if he had been punched in the face as he remembered hiding in the darkness when the shooting started. He
was still unclear where he had been or what it was that had lured him there. But the reason for his being shot at was right on the edge of his memory. It was just too vague.

  The bullet holes weren’t as large as he would have imagined and they were beginning to itch; the familiar kind of itch you get when a wound is healing.

  Wait another minute! Seven slugs and he was still alive? He turned around and got a look at his back in the mirror. Five big, sucking exit wounds. As he watched, they began to heal on their own.

  Then, he remembered very clearly what was happening.

  He could feel the remaining two slugs still in his chest. Big deal. His body would eventually expel them naturally.

  He had been shot many times before, more than he could remember and long since before the time of Christ. Arrows, crossbow bolts, muskets, bullets. Nothing had ever stopped him before. It was just the problem of his memory every time it happened; it always took a while for him to regain it.

  In all his time roaming the earth through the ages, this was his first time ever waking up in a morgue. He couldn’t be sure how long it had been since his body was brought here, but judging by the rapid healing of his wounds, he knew it wouldn’t be long before it happened again. His weak cells would be replaced by those much stronger, more vicious; his senses heightened and a thousand times more alert; his strength equal to that of fifty men.

  The time had come. Slivers of sharp pain raced through his brain, embracing his body.

  His