Page 25 of Formaldehyde

I leave the lid off and get to work on collecting the body parts, moving completely on autopilot, like I have no control over my being. I’ve managed to sever a pair of arms and legs, both from different women who have found themselves in the mortuary. One of the mothers of one of the women, requested an embalming for her daughter but I told her that the car accident that she was in was too severe, that her body was too broken for me to fix. It broke her heart even more but she agreed to a cremation instead, leaving me with the perfect opportunity to chop off her half decent arm and keep it for myself. All the while, the rest of her was burning until all that was left was sizzling ash in a plastic tub.

Mr Wilson has been none the wiser to my late night antics. In fact, he’s blissfully unaware, I think, of the missing body parts but I fear it won’t be long before he finds out. He’s a clever man and he’s known me all my life. I know he’ll catch me one day but I can only hope that he stays on my side.

He’d want what’s best for me, and Alina is what’s best for me. He has to know that.

He has to. There’s no other option for me. Alina is my endgame. She’s all I have left.

Slipping a fresh pair of gloves on, I wheel over a small table from the corner of the cold storage room and place it next to the table that Alina is laying on. On top of the table sits various autopsy instruments, tools that I’ve used on hundreds of corpses, deadly weapons that have sliced and diced people and now, these weapons will pick apart my sister and then stitch her back together.

Shuffling around the table, the plastic sheeting that I laid on the floor crinkles under my boots with every step as I make my way over to the boxes of limbs. Two legs, toes pointing to the ceiling poke out of the box, they’re wrapped in plastic to keep them clean and I use the scalpel on the table to slice through the bag. A musty, wet dog smell breaks through the slice in the bag and I scrunch my nose up in disgust. Hopefully if I air them out long enough, the smell will subside.

I grab the leg by the ankle and pull it free from the bag, then I place it on the table next to Alina and repeat the same process for the other leg, then the two arms. Each limb varies in colour and size, one of the legs is a rich olive colour. It’s probably seen the sun countless times, ran along beaches and tripped over a couple of times too.

Each limb, no doubt, holds a lot of memories but I don’t care to ponder on it. They’re going to serve me a purpose and that’s all.

Once I have the arms and legs placed where I want them, I get to work on removing Alina’s. She’s already lost one leg which I threw in with a corpse that was due for cremation, so I make a start on removing her other leg. It’s already falling away from her decaying body, but just to help it out, I use the scalpel to cut away the thin pieces of flesh like deli meat and nick the spaghetti-like tendons. They snap like taut elastic, and once I have the skin separated, I place the scalpel down onto the small table beside me and grab the bone saw.

With brute force, I shove the blade into the ball joint and begin sawing away at the bone. Serrated teeth as sharp as a dog's canines bite through the marrow, slipping easily through the white sinew. Beads of sweat gather across my brow and I can feel droplets trailing down my back but I don’t give in. I refuse to quit.

Alina will be perfect once I’m done.

She’ll be perfect.

After a couple of minutes, I finally manage to detach Alina’s leg, leaving her limbless from the waist down then I move onto her arms. Those were a lot easier to cut off, her bones were a lot frailer and softer to bite through with the bone saw.

I place the saw onto the table and step back for a moment to catch my breath and catalog all the blood that’s gathered on the plastic sheet.

“I need to cauterise the wounds.” I mumble to myself and grab the small blowtorch I brought down with me earlier. Pressing down on the trigger, a blue flame bursts out, heating the side of my face.

Keeping a hold of the trigger, I bring the flame to the open wound, starting with the legs. Like melted fat, the scorching heat eats away at the flesh, causing it to bubble and char, and the smell of cooked meat tingles its way up into my nose.

Immediately my stomach grumbles at the familiar scent but I shove it back down. Now is not the time to give into that temptation. This is already fucking weird and no matter how good Alina’s meat smells, I have a job to do.

I press on with cauterising each wound until each limb hole is perfectly charred and no longer bleeding, then I release the trigger and place the blowtorch back down before turning my gaze back to Alina, who's now just a torso and a head. Even resembling a chicken nugget, she’s perfect. Her skin glistens under the light and flecks of dried blood are smattered across her pale, translucent flesh. A golden halo spreads over her shoulders from her hair but I can’t help but notice how it’s now peeling away from her scalp, like her body is forcing everything to fall away from her.

Rejecting itself.

I’m not too sure how I’ll fix her hair yet. Maybe I could try and sew a fresh scalp onto her skull. Alina always loved her blonde hair, and so do I, but maybe she’d like to try a different colour. I should ask her if that’s what she would like.

Stepping closer to her limbless torso, I brush a piece of stray hair away from her face and tuck it behind her ear that’s starting to peel away from the side of her head. The strands catch in the flap every time I try to place it behind her ear.

Stupid fucking ear.

In the end, and with frustration heavy on my mind, I grab the thin skin of her ear and peel it away from her head, then throw it onto the plastic sheet.

She doesn’t need both ears anyway.

“I hope you love my creation, pretty dead girl. You already look so fucking beautiful.” I whisper against her hair, then leave a trail of soft kisses across her cheek and down to her lips. In all this time I’ve had Alina in my care, I’ve never kissed her and I’m not entirely sure why but now I want to.

I want to know if they feel the same way they did before she left me. Her lips are still pretty plump for now, but there’s prominent cracks in the centre and slight peeling in the corners. Still, that doesn’t deter me. Leaning over, I take her jaw in my hand and turn her face then I brush my lips against hers, whereas mine are soft, hers are dry so I run my tongue over the plump flesh to moisten them before dipping it inside her mouth.

My tongue brushes over the ridges of her teeth until it finds her tongue that’s cold and tough, like the rubber sole of a shoe. I trace the fleshy-inside of her mouth and seal our lips together.

Immediately our last moments together flash across my mind and I can feel the ghost of her hands gripping my hair tightly, pulling me closer to her. I groan into her mouth and grind against the edge of the table, feeling my cock grow harder and thicker against the zipper of my pants. I’ve already come once, and now I need it again.

I keep my lips sealed to Alina’s and trail my hand from her jaw, down between the valley of her breasts, over her stomach and down towards her pussy. There’s no need for me to spread her legs, seeing as though she doesn’t have any so I’m granted easy access. Once I reach that forbidden fruit, I swirl the pads of my fingers through the smattering of dark hair and down towards her cold clit, then I spread her open before dipping my fingers inside.

She sucks me in like a tight vacuum and I groan into her mouth again before pulling away and nibbling on her bottom lip. The flesh is tender and mushy between my teeth and I have to be careful not to bite too hard in case I tear her bottom lip off.