I went to my interview at the medical examiner's office today. It was pretty much what I expected: skin-withering fluorescent lights, antiseptic basements, and lots of clean steel. The smell wasn't even that bad.

Then the interviewers took me downstairs to the cooler, and I saw the dead fat man.

He was mostly covered by a sheet, but I saw enough of him to want to high-tail it out of that fucking place ASAP. As a kid, I thought I was morbid, but over the years that's faded away. The dead fat man convinced me that the only corpses I'm fit to deal with are those drawn by Mike Mignola (vide Hellboy), which are desiccated, eyeless, and far more stylish than the one I saw today. Also present was someone in a body bag, and someone else that I avoided looking at. All the pathologists had finished their autopsies for the day, so I didn't get to peer into the innards of murder victims or old women, but frankly, that's fine by me.

In retrospect, all three or so hours of it, I realize that my initial revulsion was exactly that, initial. For all I know, given enough time in the morgue, I could grow accustomed to dead people, and even consider eviscerating them to be nothing out of the ordinary. However, when I walked into that cooler and saw that lifeless mass that used to be a man, I wanted to bolt. At that moment two grand a month- twice what I make now- was hardly tempting, given that I would spend eight to ten hours a day watching corpses come, be cut into precise bits, and go. I knew that when I went in for the interview I would be faced with some strange shit, and to be honest the morgue wasn't much different than what I'd imagined it would be. Nevertheless, that dead fat man, who I believe was wearing blue shorts, made me very, very happy that I'm alive, and, even now, makes me think twice about accepting the job if it's offered to me.

My online moniker takes on a whole new meaning right now, but should anyone think I'm a hypocrite for calling myself the Corpse but being reluctant to pick up dead folks from crime scenes, just read some Hellboy, where the corpses aren't very fresh and are rendered in ink, instead of flesh and blood.

np: sHEAVY, Synchronized