Chapter Text
The story started in a deceptively banal way, with a comment about the weather;
“It’s an awful storm we’re having tonight, isn’t it?”
Malcom stopped, casting a wary eye towards the voice. A gentleman in a beige coroner’s smock had entered the foyer, the shutters of the corridor still swinging behind him. Dark eyes flicked appraisingly over Malcom first, and then the wrapped corpse he had deposited on the counter. An edge of dry warning crept into his tone as he replied, “Yeah, nothing like these Norden winters.”
The mortician hummed in sympathetic agreement, coming over to examine the corpse. He lifted a gloved hand to pick at the damp shroud and examine what was below. Malcom’ knuckles ghosted over the handle of the barbed dusters in his pocket. “It’s a delivery for Herr Brandt. The good doctor only, sensitive stuff, ‘m afraid.” He cut in, an asymmetric, charming quirk across his lips.
The man drew back from the shroud with an apologetic smile, “I’m afraid Herr Brandt is not here tonight, no one else is, actually.” He smoothed his gloved hands over the front of his smock, “It’s the storm, no one wants to be at work in this awful weather, yet there is still work to be done. I’ll be filling in for Herr Brandt, whatever… arrangement you have with him, I will uphold.”
The mortician gestured down the corridor for Malcom to follow and disappeared through the creaking shutters. Malcom could feel something uncanny cloying the air. With the storm-damp corpse hefted over a shoulder, he followed. He knew this part of the night well. Gas lamps flickered in utilitarian brackets along the wall and cast irregular patterns along the regular tiles. His footsteps echoed wetly along the corridor. The clatter of sleet was muffled by the thick stone of the building, but the chill and damp of Elendhaven’s winter storms had followed them.
“So you’re… filling in for Herr Brandt? Funny, he didn’t mention having an assistant. How long have you worked here?” Malcom hefted the corpse onto the autopsy table and stepped back with folded arms. He leant against the sinks jutting out of the far wall, the old brass pipes whistling echoes of the storm winds outside.
“Not long, but I’m quite familiar with the theory of it all. It’s important to treat the dead gently, you never know when they might wake up.” The mortician’s eyes flicked to him, thinking twice and stifling a wink.
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t want to be waking up in the pieces this fellow is about to find himself in. And, you know, the dead waking up would be a problem for everyone.”
“Yes, especially the poor coroner,” he replied, lips quirking in an attempt at humour.
Malcom offered a dry smile in return, “did Herr Brandt tell you about our arrangement?”
“He told me enough.” Came the stilted response with another shaky smile.
“Then, you won’t mind if I stay until the job’s done?” Malcom’ voice cooled in the chemical-laced air, banishing the lingering fumes to the peripherals of their senses.
“Of course not.” He acquiesced quickly, “Besides, if anyone does wake up, I know there are capable hands nearby.”
“Oh doctor, you’re too kind,” He flashed the mortician an easy, charming smile, “Really, I swear I’ve seen you somewhere before. Have we met?”
“Ah, I’ve been told that a lot, I must have one of those forgettable faces,” The man replied, an awkward laugh lighting his tone. It sat strangely against the old stains across his smock, and the blood-crusted grouting below the operation table.
He wasn’t sure how anyone could forget him. He was tall, with a slender and fine-boned build the dust-toned coroner’s uniform clung to unfairly flatteringly. His eyes were black as the ocean and long hair the colour of blood. His hands worked a scalpel like a musician’s, dancing leganto across they keys of the corpse’s ribs. “Don’t think that’s quite the case. There’s something more, a power in the name,”
The mortician hummed, “Something like that, perhaps. If there’s power in a name it must be a great gift, and a powerful one at that. So, tell me, what name would suit me?”
Malcom studied the black gaze the mortician fixed him with, drawn into the depths. They held no trace of pupil or iris, just a dark, smooth lens calmer than the heaving darkness of the ocean. Like the void between stars, his subconscious whispered, and when the light hit it just right, a lone pinprick of life cut through the emptiness.
Or the stillness found beyond the grave.
“Carrion,” The word was so quiet he wasn’t sure it could be heard, “Carrion. You look like a Carrion.” The name tingled on Malcom’ tongue, lingering warm and desperate against his split lip like the breath shared after a kiss.
The man, Carrion now, cracked a smile across his thin, almost bloodless lips. “Carrion,” He repeated, trying it out, tasting the syllables and whispering them back into the gloomy morgue to trail away like incense smoke. “I like it, it feels good. If I’m to be a thing with a name, I’d like to have a name that is remembered. Do you mind terribly if I keep it?”
“Oh-of course not.” He stuttered inelegantly. Malcom stumbled over the mortician’s phrasing; ‘a thing with a name’. He shook it off, and in an attempt to regain some of his charm; added, “What sort of man do I look like?”
“Oh, you?” Carrion smiled warmly, eyes glinting with knowledge of something he had no right to in the stagnant kerosene light, “Why, that’s an easy answer. Your name is Malcom.”