My Life as a White Trash Zombie (5 page)

Fortunately, Nick seemed to be oblivious to my anxiety. He picked up a scalpel. “The rest is easy. Slice the spinal cord where it connects to the base of the brain—” he said, somehow shoving the brain aside and sticking the scalpel in and around. “—and you’re good to go.” He set the scalpel aside and tipped the brain out into his hands, cradling it carefully.

He turned to me with naked challenge in his eyes. “Want to hold it?”

I froze for several seconds. I did
not
want to hold it, but there was no way I could admit it was because I was afraid I’d start hallucinating and crave it again.

I saw the smirk begin to form on his face.
Oh, hell no.
I was
not
going to let him win this one. Even Dr. Leblanc was watching to see what I was going to do.
It’s a stupid little initiation, that’s all. I can do this.

I stepped forward and stuck my hands out, meeting the challenge in Nick’s eyes with my own. He grinned, placed the thing in my hands. It was slippery and a little mushy—a bit heavier than I expected it to be.
I’m holding a brain in my hands. Holy shit.
An unfamiliar sense of pride began to trickle through me. I’d risen to the challenge. It was a stupid and gross challenge, but I’d done it.

“You can go ahead and put it in the scale,” he said.

I set it carefully in the scale and stepped back. Dr. Leblanc gave me another sly wink, then peered at the numbers on the scale and wrote them on his clipboard. I smiled, absurdly pleased with myself.

Then I quickly grabbed a towel and wiped my hands off before I could give in to the insane urge to lick my fingers.

It was after five P.M. by the time I finally left the morgue and climbed into my Honda. I turned up the volume on my cheap-ass car stereo, slapping the steering wheel in time to the beat as I drove, my mood a lot brighter than I’d expected it would be after my first day on the job.

Okay, so the job was weird, gross, and nothing I’d have ever signed up for on my own. But it was also kinda cool, in a freaky way.

Plus, I hadn’t screwed up. In fact, I’d done all right. I wasn’t used to feeling proud of myself. It was definitely something I could get used to.

After Dr. Leblanc had finished the autopsy I got a crash course in how to sew a body back up—nasty! And, even nastier, I learned that the organs taken out during autopsy didn’t get put back in before the body was sewn up. Instead they went into a big plastic bag and were sent to the funeral home in the body bag, where they’d then be put into the casket between the legs of the dead guy, all covered up with a pretty blanket so that no one at the funeral would know the bag was there. At least that’s what Nick told me. I wasn’t completely sure if he was fucking with me or not.

Once that was all done and we finished cleaning the morgue—which was more scrubbing and mopping than I’d ever done in my
life
—Nick took me to meet the coroner, Dr. Duplessis, and the Chief Investigator, Allen Prejean. The coroner seemed pleasant enough as we went through the “Glad to have you on board” crap that bosses always say, but there was a weird tightness to his smile that made the neurotic part of me wonder if he’d been pressured into hiring me and resented it. Then again, maybe he was always like that.

Allen was a different story, though. I had no doubt he knew about me and my history. That wasn’t me being neurotic either. It was stamped all over his face when we were introduced. He didn’t say anything about being glad to have me on board. Instead it was, “Your background makes you an interesting choice for this position,” delivered in a scowly, gruff voice, and which made Nick give me a funny look. I could only hope that Nick would take that to mean I used to be a secret agent or some shit like that.

But other than the awkwardness of meeting my bosses, pretty much the only ding against me the whole day was the fact that I didn’t have my driver’s license and the human resources lady needed a copy of it, since I was supposed to be a van driver and all.

I made a face as I took the turn onto the highway that led toward my house. I still had no idea what had happened to my purse, which meant I was probably destined to spend my morning at the DMV in Tucker Point. Joy.

I’d lived in this area my entire life. The farthest away I’d ever been was Talladega, Alabama, when I was ten. I lived in Nice, Louisiana, which was probably supposed to sound like the town in France—pronounced “neese”—but everyone around here called it Nice, as in, “Ain’t that nice.” There really wasn’t much about the town that
was
all that nice. It was a teensy little town in the southeast corner of St. Edwards Parish, which wasn’t much more than a big stretch of swamp and marsh in the southeast corner of Louisiana. Nice had a couple of groceries and some hardware stores, a few strip malls with consignment clothing shops and hairdressers, and a scattering of diners, bars, and gas stations. Most people drove the twenty minutes to Tucker Point if they wanted to do any kind of real shopping. We didn’t even have our own police force—the St. Edwards Parish Sheriff’s Office patrolled and answered 911 calls.

The sign for Pillar’s Bar came up on the left, and I slowed, memory abruptly flickering. That’s where I was the other night. I’d gone there with Randy, right? Maybe I left my purse there. I’d just quit my job at Bayou Burger ’cause some lady tried to tell me we’d made her stupid burger wrong and that we had to give her another one. Except she’d already eaten most of the first one so I told her No, and then my boss jumped my ass because the “customer is always right” or some bullshit like that. I’d been in a shit mood after quitting, so I downed a Lortab before going to the bar, and after we got there I went out back and smoked some pot with Terry, the bartender. Randy was doing something to piss me off, so I traded Terry a couple of joints for a couple of Percocet. After that the memory was a lot foggier. . . .

My mood dimmed. I sure as shit didn’t get this job as a van driver because I deserved it. I got it because I nearly overdosed and now someone was trying to teach me a lesson.

Yeah, yeah, the value of life. Just Say No.
Whatever.

I didn’t really know what had happened between going to the bar with Randy and ending up naked on the side of the highway, but I had a feeling it hadn’t been pretty.
Probably a good thing I don’t remember it
, I thought with a sour grimace.

There were only a couple of cars in the parking lot. Another hour or so and it would start filling up with all the people who had shit lives and shit jobs—or no jobs—and who wanted to forget about all that before heading to whatever passed for home. Still, even a couple of cars was too many people for me to face without knowing just how much of an ass I’d made of myself the other night. I kept driving past and simply called the bar instead to see if anyone had seen my purse. No one had turned it in, so either I hadn’t left it there or someone had walked off with it.

I hung up, annoyed, then called Randy. I didn’t really want to go home. Home was where I slept and showered. I didn’t want to hang out there. But Randy wasn’t picking up, and I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.

I need a life
, I sighed.

As I turned into my driveway the crunch of aluminum greeted me—a few hundred beer cans that had been tossed into the driveway over the past several years and which now served as the paving material. Dad used to make the crack that it was cheaper than gravel. His truck was here—a piece of shit Ford that was more bondo than paint—but I didn’t see any fresh empties in the driveway.

However, as I walked up to the house I did see my purse, right in the middle of the porch steps.

I picked it up, mystified. I was certain it hadn’t been here earlier. There was no way I could have missed it, even in my panicked rush this morning. Rifling through quickly, I saw that everything was still there—driver’s license, debit card, and even the thirty-three dollars in cash that I’d stuffed into my wallet before going to the bar.

“Ain’t that some shit,” I murmured. My address was on my license so there wasn’t much mystery of how it had ended up here. I still didn’t know where I’d managed to lose my purse, but at least it had been found by someone honest. More honest than me, I had to admit. I might have made an effort to return the purse, but I would have totally taken the thirty-three dollars.

I guess I was lucky there were people better than me in this world. Not that it took a whole lot to accomplish that.

I swept my gaze around, on the off chance our closest neighbor was outside and had maybe seen something. We lived right off the highway on a mile-long dead end street that had less than a dozen houses along its pothole ridden length. Most of the neighbors couldn’t be seen through the pines from our front porch, but the house across the street was in plain sight. And excellent hearing distance too, to judge by the number of times they’d called the cops on us over the years. Complaints about everything from loud music to the trash in our yard to the occasional yelling matches that my dad and I got into.

Assholes. Then again, maybe I didn’t give that much of a fuck who’d returned my purse.

Dad wasn’t in what passed for our living room. It held a couch and a TV—both of which were almost as old as I was—but it stank of stale beer and cigarettes. I didn’t spend any time in there if I could help it, though that was probably more due to the fact that my dad spent most of his time there than because of the way it smelled.

I cautiously peeked through the open door to his bedroom, relieved to see that he was asleep. Passed out, more likely, to judge by the empty beer cans on the nightstand and the bottle of Jack Daniels out in the kitchen. I stood there for a few seconds to make sure his chest was actually going up and down and decided against going in and tugging the blanket over him. More chance that he’d wake up from the movement of the blanket than from being cold. And we got along a lot better when he was like this.

I turned away, headed to the kitchen, found a package of macaroni and cheese and a clean bowl. I thought briefly about watching some TV while I ate, maybe smoke a joint, but decided I didn’t want to risk waking my dad up with either. Instead I scarfed down the mac and cheese, dumped the bowl into the sink with the other dirty dishes and headed to the bathroom to take the epic shower I’d promised myself earlier. It ended up only being a few minutes of “epic-ness” thanks to our ancient water heater, but it was enough to get me feeling less gross.

Toweling my hair dry, I headed to my room and glanced at the clock. It wasn’t even six P.M. yet, but I wanted to get to bed nice and early. I sure as shit didn’t want to oversleep again. I got down on my hands and knees and reached up under my bed, feeling for the pill bottle wedged between the springs. I pulled it out, pried the top off, shook a bunch of pills out into my hand. There were six or seven different kinds, but I knew them well enough that I didn’t need them to be in separate, labeled prescription bottles. Good thing, since I didn’t have prescriptions for any of them.

Resisting the urge to snag the Vicodin out, I settled for a Xanax instead. I only had the one Vicodin, and there was no sense wasting it when all I really wanted was some help getting to sleep. I returned the other pills back to the bottle, replaced it in its hiding spot, and washed the Xanax down with a beer from the mini-fridge in my room.

Flipping off the lights, I crawled under my blankets and waited for the lovely wave of relaxation to wash over me.

Twenty minutes later I was still wide awake.

By six-thirty I was forced to admit that whatever I’d taken must not have been Xanax.

I scowled into the darkness. Well, this sucked
.
Since I didn’t know what the hell I
had
taken, I didn’t dare try to see if something else would do the trick. I’d hit my OD quota for the month already, thank you.

I stubbornly stayed in bed. At some point after eight I finally fell asleep, still waiting for the Xanax to kick in.

Despite the failure of Xanax, I managed to get a good night’s sleep, and actually got out of bed when my alarm went off. As soon as I made it in to work, my training began in earnest. Nick was an obsessive-compulsive, anal-retentive jerk with no social skills, but he took his job damn seriously and was hell bent on making sure I was totally prepared for anything. For the rest of the week I was drilled, instructed, trained, and learned to fucking death, but I gritted my teeth, managed to keep from bitch-slapping Nick, and actually got the hang of the whole thing faster than I ever expected. It helped that there wasn’t much about the job that was particularly difficult or complicated. The van drivers were also called bodysnatchers, and that’s basically what our job was: Go to the death scene, grab the dead person, stuff’em into a body bag. And if there were ever any doubts or questions, the investigator was there to clear things up.

I’d braced myself for all sorts of gross or weird stuff when it came to the dead people. Rotten bodies, bizarre suicides, that sort of thing. I was ready for it. I was determined not to freak out, no matter what.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the cops.

Cops everywhere, and me trying to keep from looking all guilty and spastic every time one happened to glance my way. I kept having to remind myself I wasn’t in trouble, wasn’t being hassled—I had no reason to instantly get all defensive. And for the most part the cops and detectives ignored me, or at least didn’t give me anything more than the grunt and nod that they gave various other non-cop types who happened to be on the scene.

I’d been on the job for a whole four days before I managed to run into the two detectives who knew exactly what kind of loser I was.

It was Detective Abadie who recognized me first. We were in the front yard of a two-story house in a nice-as-hell gated subdivision. The overweight and out of shape guy who owned the house had apparently decided that having a half-million dollar house meant that he couldn’t afford to hire someone to clean out his gutters. Now he was dead with what looked to me like a broken neck after the ladder had slipped. He’d taken the plunge into his fancy landscaping—complete with rock garden. But hey, his fucking gutters were clean.