My Job at the Morgue

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Scrolling through the job listings on a local website can be a tedious task. Searching and searching in this shitty job market is even harder when you live in a town of five thousand people.

I was commuting back and forth to college and was in desperate need of some money. I saw a listening that first struck me as an instant "NO." It was a job in a morgue. The thought of working with dead bodies just creeped me out to no end. However, I continued reading the job description, and discovered the job had no interactions with any of the bodies. It basically boiled down to a custodian job.

'A job's a job,' I thought to myself. I called the next day and talked to who I believe was the owner, he insisted I come down that day and get to know the ground of the arena, and just familiarize myself with the place. I was ready within the house and drove down to the small establishment. Mark, the owner, greeted me with a smile at the door and a firm handshake. "You said your name was Jimmy, right?" He asked me kindly.

"Yup, that's right." I told him. He showed me around the entire building. Then led me back to the huge pointless back lawn, that he explained I would have to mow once a week. I didn't mind the idea of that at all. Finally, he finished the tour by entering the building. He gestured to the dim lit room in the corner. "I'm sure you can guess what that room is." He said. I could, I even think I could almost smell the bodies, or maybe the formaldehyde, the first glance of the room was a chilling feeling.

He walked to another small room and took his jingly keys off his hip, he cracked the door and began explaining that this was his office. I took a peek in and saw a desk, a big fan, some papers scattered about, and a mini fridge on his desk; nothing really unusual. He closed the door shortly after, locking it behind him. He motioned around the small middle area of the building, the dirty plastic white tiles of the floor spoke of age and neglect. "You'll have to mop this every night, no big deal, it's a pretty small area." He explained, he tapped his chin, thinking of other tasks. "Take out the trash, hmm, take in some shipments when they come in. Usually they're just boxes of formaldehyde or some new scalpels. Well, I think that's really about it, and any other little odd jobs that might pop up." He finished explaining. "So any questions?" I couldn't really think of anything, I just shook my head and expected him to carry on with the tour. "Alright, good." He said. "Be here tomorrow at 5 PM, and you'll work till around midnight or so. Sound good?"

"Yes, sir." I told him. The next few nights of work went pretty simply, I would come in, straighten up any messes that occurred, mow the yards, and I usually ended up having about two hours to kill by the end of the night. I would just sit on my phone, or watch the little TV he had in the small common area of the building. He never seemed to mind, most of the time he would just stay in his office. He would come out when a new body came in, I remember the first time I saw one. Mark would come out and talk to the police usually, they would roll the body through, and Mark would walk to the dimly lit body room, and shove them on a cart and slide them into the wall, disappearing.

Most of the time, the next day a professional autopsy would be done, either by Mark or an outside doctor of some sort. I worked there for a few weeks and Mark seemed to be pretty friendly, he always would buy me lunch from the local BBQ shop down the road. One day he was discussing the disappointment he had, that all the other workers before me had either quit or moved away. I could tell he almost sounded lonely, like he had absolutely no one in his life. I shared that lunch with him, and I actually felt like we bonded a little bit. He was probably around forty-five, had some graying hair but you could tell it used to be a dark brown. His eyes truly held a sadness in them, even though his voice told a different story.

Mark would usually clean his office and the body room around eight o'clock, the room was small, it had ten racks where the dead bodies could be placed and slid into the wall. He would mop the floor that normally wasn't that dirty, sometimes he would clean the windows to the room. Sometimes he wiped down the metal doors, but ninety percent of the time he was in and out of there in less than five minutes. By nine or ten he would usually leave for maybe fifteen minutes, I think he had a drinking problem. He would come back smelling like whiskey and cigarettes. Like clockwork, at eleven PM he would walk to the corner store down the street and pick up some snacks. He would come back with four of everything. Four yogurts, four small bags of potato chips, four granola bars, four oranges or apples, and four bottles of water. Sometimes the items would change up. He would give me one of each, and then go to his office and put the rest in his mini fridge. Mark always stayed overnight so I imagine he'd get a lot hungrier than I did.

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