Dead Emerald

The shovel went in and dirt came out, then it went back in and more loose earth came out with it. A pale glow surrounded the dark, night shrouded world around the invading shovel as it penetrated the plot below and the man controlling it hummed a tune as he worked. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple and he felt the moisture begin to collect in his red eyebrows. Taking the back of his coat sleeve he wiped away the sweat and continued to work.

He, as one could assume, was a grave robber, but not just any grave robber. He wasn't after the valuables and glittering gems that could have possibly been hidden away from the living world; no he was after something much more precious than that: he was a body snatcher and he was after the corpses.

Sure, the price that paid out from selling off any valuables dug up could be a pretty penny when it was all said and done, but it really would be nothing compared to the pay out that a medical school could offer for a fresh corpse ripe for students to dissect and to learn from.

At first he felt unsettled and rightfully wrong for committing such a crime, but over time he began to justify it by convincing himself that he was doing the world a service: supplying up and coming doctors and medical schools with the necessary tools to further medical education, which in turn would help save lives. He thought that surely what he was doing wasn't all that bad if the end result was lives saved. He figured he wasn't harming anyone, the people he dug up were dead, and they weren't using the rich resource of their bodies anymore so he thought, well why not?

After some time he finally hit theoretical gold and the shovel made a deep thud sound as it penetrated the earth. Excitement filled him up from within, beginning in the pit of his belly and volcanically rising up to the back of his throat. He quickly began to clear the remaining soil from the lid of the coffin and lifted the lid. Inside was a beautiful young woman no more than 23 years old. She wore a lovely emerald green silk dress that was accented with webs of lace around the cuffs and neck line, a string of pearls were laced around her neck. She had locks of golden silk for hair that was pulled up into a delicate bun on top of her head, she had long dark lashes and a pointed and delicate face, her skin still retained a porcelain glow that surely held a rose tint in life. The man thought she looked like a beautiful porcelain doll he had maybe seen once in a store window display.

The man stood there over her beautiful corpse and admired her from the light of his lantern. The sleeping world around him felt oddly still, the crickets sang a tad softer than normal, and he felt that something was off. He almost didn't feel right taking this young woman to become a classroom assignment and for a split second he considered closing the lid and leaving her in peace. However, his original plot overcame and snipped the budding idea of leaving this woman at rest like a gardener would snip a wilted rose. He then gently tucked his fingers under her delicate body and lifted her up and out of her hole.

She was surprisingly heavy for a petite woman, but he figured it probably had something to do with how the body begins to decompose. Although he had never ran into that particular issue before with the other bodies he had harvested, he did know all bodies decomposed at individual and unique rates, so he dismissed it. He also noticed that she was surprisingly soft and malleable for a corpse who had died three days before and she didn't smell of decay in the slightest. She retained a sweet fragrance of rose and buttermilk, not a hint of death at all. The man set her down on the grass beside the hole and stood over her for several moments, half expecting her eyes to flutter open and for her to tell him about the most peculiar dream that she had; but she did not. She lay cold and still just as she had when he had found her and the man turned to replace the earth from where he took it before the light of dawn gave them away.

Once the grave had been put back together dew had started to form on the grass and on the silk strands of hair of the young corpse. He studied her body for a moment again, thinking to himself how she looked like a sleeping fairy, perfect, delicate, and whimsical. He stood there for a moment before a bird song brought him from his trance and he quickly gathered his tools and lifted the body of the young dead woman up in his arms like she was a sleeping lover of his that he was taking back to bed. He took a step forward and stopped, he wondered what her name was and he glanced back to her gravestone which read: