So I cut them...

So, I cut them...

So this is what it's like?...death?…. I took my blade and slashed him from the left…where is the blood?...I held it even tighter and then I slashed him from the right… Still nothing…then I went straight for the center of his chest and cut him. I cut him deep, clean, and down to his pelvis. There, I did it…but where was the blood, there was supposed to be blood.

I guess I had imagined something more, like a horror flick, but there was nothing…but numbness…. I cut him deeper, waiting for his entrails to spill out in an unrecognizable gelatinous heap on the floor. But they didn't. It was quiet, really quiet; nothing but the buzz of the fluorescent bulb that flickered overhead. My hands were so numb that I struggled to hold on to my blade. I was cold… And he was dead.

But then slowly the blood came; in the form of a deep red river flowing down to the vortex at the end of the table. Their skin feels like rubber, that's why the first cuts are easy, it isn't until you get inside when the reality of it hits you. So, for as long as you are able, you imagine them as rubber dummies, then you can make it farther.

But the smell eventually finds you. The older ones have a stench all there own. But children…. don't….. smell. The sharper your blade the easier it goes. But, it is when the smell hits you that you can't go back. The stench of blood and bleach was enough in itself, but the decay… the decay is something different…You remember that smell.

You don't look at the faces, you don't because they will become etched in your mind, then you have become invested... you get attached, and attached is the last thing you want. You focus on the concrete, the facts, so you know why you are there in the first place….you can get what you came for and leave. If you get attached, you can't cut them.

Death comes unexpected, uninvited to most, but for me…I knew what I was getting into… long before they knew. Unlike them, I signed up for this. One by one they come and go, another number another specimen received, you try not to make the names stick, keep it numerical, it's safer that way.

It is hard at first. I remember, the first time…I saw a dead body… The blonde 6 year old girl with the curls… and the bruises. They told me it wasn't a good idea for her to be my first, but it had to happen eventually. I stayed the entire time, weighed the heart, measured the bruises. Some things stick with you, the pink ribbon, the smell of the formalin…seeing her brain …literally liquefied to the point it had to be poured out. Some things you just never forget.

Everyday you become more and more distant; you reach a point where you cease to be a part of the human race altogether. You feel like a monster, for not feeling, but it comes with the territory. You wonder how you manage to coincide with the land of the living at all.

After awhile you begin to hate them… for putting you through this, for making you carry this burden. You begin to hate them. It is easier to hate them…You put the blame on them, so you can dismiss them. Some are easier to dismiss, the man who pickled himself with alcohol to the point that his liver was so diseased it fell apart in your hands. You hate him, so you don't have to picture the wife and 3 kids he left behind. Sometimes you hate the living, for sending this one to you…the 23 year old mother of 5… you measure the multitude of scars on her wrists… you start to wonder how many times they filled her with charcoal… fighting to bring her back to a life she clearly didn't want. You hear the cries for help, in every scar, and wonder why no one else did…why, was she not worth noticing? So you hate... so you don't have to care.

You try not to take it home with you, but you do. The 30 something mom, who one day found a lump, and although she knew she was already at stage 4, she still managed to paint her face... so her kids wouldn't see the ever increasing color of death. The next day, you're standing over a co-ed who thought he had nothing to look forward to... and you try not to feel anything as you struggle to piece his face back together... so his parents won't have to remember that kind of reality.

Everyday it gets harder to hide it, to distance yourself... but everyday you go back. It becomes less of a job and more of an obligation. You are here because they need you. The living need you to do what they can't. They don't want to remember the tumors or the accident. So you take it, you take it and you bury it inside you. You do this because nobody else can. You bury it away so deep you think it can't surface, but it does.

You find your mind wandering; fleeting thoughts and questions …….But you can't answer them. And you shouldn't….so you cut…and they bleed…and death finds you... time and again…..you begin to welcome death….you begin to need them more than they need you…death, becomes the only thing that reminds you how to live. So you pick up your blade, and you cut...