Page 21 of Formaldehyde

“Fuck.” I groan through gritted teeth as I milk myself dry until I’m fully spent. Once the last of my orgasm has splashed against my skin, I click off the video and grab a handful of tissues from the box on the bedside unit to clean myself up with, then throw them into the bin with the rest of my filthy orgasms.

Euphoria leaves as quickly as it came, and now I’m left in the deafening silence again. My thoughts are heavy and sharp as they rattle around in my mind.

I’m nervous about seeing my sister after so long. I know she’s here in the cold storage unit we have, I specifically asked Mr Wilson to swap her body with a look-alike for the funeral. To tell my dad and her friends, attending the funeral that she was too battered to be embalmed. They were clueless to my requests and thought nothing of it. I couldn’t deal with the thought of Alina not being earth side with me, to have her body burnt or six feet under in the cold soil. She wasn’t meant for that. She’s meant to be mine, forever.

Lifting my hand, I grip the bridge of my nose between my fingers to ease the tension I can feel brewing there before swinging my legs over to the edge of the bed and letting my head hang heavy between my shoulders. Tiredness settles in my bones and I groan at the ache in my limbs.

I’m just so fucking tired but the urge to see Alina, to touch her cold skin overthrows any negative thoughts I’m having.

After a scalding shower, I quickly get dressed and head downstairs. Mr Wilson left a voicemail on the answering machine early this morning to let me know that he would be taking a couple of days holiday. It would seem my idea of finishing work early yesterday has given him the push he needed to accept that he needed some time off.

That man works far too hard for his age, and it’s the perfect opportunity to have some alone time with Alina.

I delete the message from the machine and quickly scour over the calendar for today, noting that I only have two cremations, and my father’s bagged up guts, to complete.

Maybe the higher powers, if you believe in that shit, are on my side for once. I don’t deserve it, but I’d like to think so.

Clicking off the calendar, I go through the motions of scrubbing the autopsy room, removing any essence of my father from the space and then move onto the cremations I need to do. The day seems to fly by in a blur, exhaustion threatens my weary eyes but as I stand in the middle of the room where cold bodies line the walls, I can feel the pull of Alina around my soul. Her claws deep inside my chest as she yanks me towards the door that leads down into the basement, the door I’ve been frightened to open until now.

Without my dad’s chains wrapped around my throat, nothing is standing in my way from seeing Alina anymore. So I follow that strong pull and allow it to guide me towards the door and down the concrete steps. My boots scuff against any loose stones that lay on the floor, alongside the damp smell of wet brick.

A single bulb hangs from the low ceiling. I run my hand against the bare brick until my fingers find the light switch. Flicking it on, the bulb flickers to life to reveal a metal table sitting dead centre in the room and a metal door on the far wall.

I stop in my tracks. Frozen in time as my eyes roam over the pristine table, then towards the door that seems to taunt me and I swear I can hear my sister calling for me from behind it.

“Ethan, is that you?”

My breath stutters as I take slow steps towards the door. Even in death, Alina has this hold over me that I’ll never break free from. She’ll consume me for the rest of my days.

Once I reach the door, I gingerly lift my hand and place it on the handle. It’s cold to the touch, ice fills my bloodstream and without a second thought, I push down on the handle then pull the door open. Plumes of cold smoke slither out of the frozen room and gather around my feet before disappearing into the air. It’s freezing down here but I can feel the sweat gathering across my brows. The coldness bites at my skin with its razor sharp teeth and immediately my eyes land on the cardboard box that’s sitting on top of a metal table.

Alina is here.

She’s right in front of me, after all these years.

She’s inside that box.

My feet seem to move on their own accord across the small space towards the box. Boots scraping across the floor, hands eager to lift the lid. Desperate to reveal my beautiful gift that lies sleeping inside.

I don’t give myself a chance to back out from the decision and slip my fingers under the cardboard lid, lifting it with eagerness to uncover my sister's corpse.

There she lies before me, all blue-tinged and cold.

Alina’s lashes lay gentle across her marbled cheeks and I can’t stop my gaze from traveling over her peaceful face.

Mr Wilson has done a perfect job of patching up the chunks of flesh that were missing on her face from the tarmac. He must have used skin grafts from other areas of her body to fix the wounds she had littered all over her body. A few have faded due to the cold temperatures, but many are still prominent on her frozen body.

A large gash cuts straight across her perky tits, probably from when the bonnet of the car crushed her chest. There’s also wounds across her arms and legs that have been sewn up like a patchwork doll.

Instantly a thought passes through my mind. I have my very own living dead doll. A perfect play thing.

My pretty dead girl.

Lifting my hand from the box, I carefully trail the pad of my index finger over her blonde hair. Small specks of ice gather in the strands that now feel like straw but it doesn’t stop me from diving deeper into the locks, nails scraping across her frozen scalp.

I close my eyes and imagine her groaning from the sensation of my hand in her hair. Watching her stormy eyes roll into the back of her head as I massage her scalp. Something sharp and metal brushes against my fingers, there’s a few of them in a perfect row around the back of her head.

Staples.