PST: The Mortuary (1-2)
“Pssst… Some advice, chief: I'd keep it quiet from here on — no need to put any more corpses in the dead book than necessary… especially the femmes. Plus, killing them might draw the caretakers here.”
“I don’t think you mentioned it before… who are these caretakers?” I felt my uneasiness spread.
“They call themselves the ‘Dustmen’. You can’t miss ‘em: They have an obsession with black and rigor mortis of the face. They’re an addled bunch of ghoulish death-worshippers; they believe everybody should die… sooner better than later.” I wondered about the caretakers.
“I'm confused… why do these Dustmen care if I escape?”
“Weren’t you listening?! I said the Dusties believe EVERYBODY'S got to die, sooner better than later. You think the corpses you've seen are happier in the dead book than out of it?” Once started, I found I was full of questions.
“The corpses here… where did they all come from?”
“Death visits the Planes every day, chief. These shamblers are all that’s left of the poor sods who sold their bodies to the caretakers after death.”
“Before you said something about making sure I didn’t kill any female corpses. Why?”
“Wh — are you serious? Look, chief, these dead chits are the last chance for a couple of hardy bashers like us. We need to be chivalrous… no hacking them up for keys, no lopping their limbs off, things like that.”
“Last chance? What are you talking about?”
“Chief, THEY’re dead, WE’re dead… see where I'm going? Eh? Eh?”
“No… no, I don’t, actually.”
“Chief, we already got an opening line with these limping ladies. We've all died at least once: we'll have something to talk about. They'll appreciate men with our kind of death experience.”
“Wait… didn’t you say before that I'm not dead?”
“Well… all right, you might not be dead, but I am. And from where I'm standing, I wouldn’t mind sharing a coffin with some of these fine, sinewy cadavers I see here.” Morte started clacking his teeth, as if in anticipation. “ ‘Course, the caretakers would have to part with them first, and that’s not likely…”
Morte continued, “Look, chief. It’s obvious you’re still a little addled after your kiss with death. So two bits of advice for you: one, if you got questions, ask me, all right?”
“All right… if I have any questions, I’ll ask you.” I lazily responded.
“Second, if you’re half as forgetful as you seem to be, start writing stuff down — whenever you come across something that might be important, jot it down so you don’t forget.”
“If I had that journal I was supposed to have with me, I'd do that.”
“Start a new one, then, chief. No loss. There’s plenty of parchment and ink around here to last you.”
“Hmmmm. All right. It couldn’t hurt… I'll make a new one, then.”
“Use it to keep track of your movements. If you ever start to get cloudy on important things, like who you are… or more importantly, who I am… use it to refresh your memory.”
“All right… I got it. Let’s go.”
The next room was similar to the previous on, albeit cleaner and less gory. At the centre of the room was a metal slab much larger than most of the other slabs and was sitting on a platform that allowed it to be rotated. Blood stains, rust, and other remains cover the surface.
More zombies dragged around, most obviously on tasks set by the Dustmen. A shambling corpse gazed at me with vacant eyes. Her skin is paper-thin, almost wispy… it is like someone draped a sheet of cobwebs across her frame. The number “594” has been scratched onto her forehead with a charcoal pencil.
“So… doing anything later?” I asked, knowing it was a trivial pursuit. The corpse continued to stare at me.
“Psssst. You see the way she was looking at me? Huh? You see that? The way she was following the curve of my occipital bone?” Morte was getting excited, I sensed.
“You mean that blank-eyed beyond-the-grave stare?”
“Wha – are you BLIND?! She was scouting me out! It was shameless the way she WANTED me.”
“I think you and your imagination need some time away from each other.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. When you’ve been dead as long as I have, you know the signals. They may be too SUBTLE for you to pick up on, but that’s why I’ll be spending my nights with some luscious recently-dead chit while you’re standing around goin’ ‘Huh? Whatzz goin’ on? Where’s my muh-muh-memories?’ ”
“Whatever, Morte.” He sure liked to talk.
Another zombie caught my attention. The male corpse was lumbering along a triangular path. Once it reached one of the corners of the triangle, it paused, then turned and staggered towards the next corner. It had “965” tattooed on the side of its skull. As I approached, it halted and stared at me.
“Heh. Looks like someone forgot to tell this sod to stop walking the Rule-of-Three,” Morte commented.
“What do you mean?”
“These corpses don’t have much left in the attic, so they can’t do more than one task at a time… when they’re told to do something, they'll keep doing it until someone tells them to stop. This poor sod probably finished some task, and they forgot to tell him.”
“You said something about the ‘Rule-of-Three’. What did you mean by that?”
“Eh? Well, the Rule-of-Three is one of those ‘laws’ about the Planes, about things tending to happen in threes… or everything’s composed of three parts… or there’s always three choices, and so on and so forth.”
“You don’t sound like you hold much faith in it.”
“It’s a load of wash, if you ask me. If you look for a number, any number, and try to attach some great meaning to it, you’re going to find plenty of coincidences.”
I left the corpse tracing its triangular path and looked for a way out. A menacing door on the wall I was facing was left open. Beyond the door, as I walked closer I could see more cupboards and slabs tightly arranged near the left wall. I entered the next room.
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Glossary:
- Zombie: Zombies are mindless corpses animated by necromancy. Unlike skeletons, zombies still have a great deal of flesh attached to their frame, and this is both an advantage and disadvantage... it makes them tougher and stronger than skeletons, but at the same time, rigor mortis hinders their movement, making them much slower than a normal human being.
- Plane: A Plane is an infinite expanse of existence, separated from other similar expanses by a metaphysical distance rather than a physical one.
