In Laymon's Terms

We moved along the hallway lined with offices. With it being after midnight most were in darkness. Only death is a twenty-four/seven business: there’d still be new arrivals, so there were two or three orderlies to stash the bodies until the next day, when they’d be ready for collection, or for examination by the coroner. Ammonia spiked your nostrils; the place stank like a school washroom.

In one room a cop and a morgue guy in medic greens sat smoking black ropy-looking cigars over cups of coffee. They were sharing a dirty joke and they leaned back in their chairs to laugh out loud.

The things you see when you are such as we...

Now we passed sets of double doors marked OP 1, OP 2 and so on.

Ham whispered, “This is where they carve the turkey.” He grinned. “Wanna watch?”

I grabbed his arm. “All the lights are out. They won’t be doing any postmortems tonight.”

“Shoot. That’s not fair.”

“Ham...”

“Wait, I can hear something. Sshh. Follow me.”

We’d reached the end of the hallway. Stairs led down to a room with somber oak doors. A sign warned, STRICTLY NO ADMITTANCE.

Ham whistled. “Cool.”

“There’s no one down here,” I told him. “There’ll be nothing to see.”

“You’re kidding? In the County Morgue?”

With cat-like stealth he opened the door, then slipped inside. God help me, I didn’t want to do it, but I know the rules of the Invisible. I had to follow. And I’d have to stop him if he acted contrary to our creed.

The room was a big one. It was in darkness, too. All except for one light, that is. Maybe a reading lamp on a desk. It cast an unhealthy-looking yellow glow in one corner behind a screen.

We both stopped when we heard the male voice. “Oh...oh...ohhhh...that’s the way I like it, baby...that’s it...lift your legs nice and high...oooohhhh...you’re a fucking horny bitch, you know that? Oh boy...got sex smeared all over you...ah, that’s it...to the left, to the left...oh...”

I pulled Ham’s sleeve and whispered, “Come away...don’t go in there.”

But he moved forward. Biting my lip I went with him.

When we saw what was happening behind the screen I felt myself roll back on my heels as if I’d been pushed in the chest.

One of the morgue attendants had slipped down his green drawstring pants. I saw twin moons of buttocks that had the red-yellow dappling of a pizza. The guy was around fifty with close-cropped blond hair.

And he fucked a woman on the desktop. She had long curls that swished over the side of the desk as he tucked into her, pumping his buttocks hard.

“Oh, that’s the business, honey. You whisper dirty words in Joey’s ear...yeah, that’s it. Oh, that’s the thing...”

I screwed up my face as I turned away, not wanting to see an inch more of that disgusting pimple-butt-scape. I noticed that Ham, however, looked closer.

A second later he was back to whisper in my ear. “Shit, oh shit. You’re not going to believe this, Kate.”

“Let’s go, Ham. I don’t like it here. I think I’m going to throw—”

“Listen, that guy’s tooling a dead woman.”

“Oh, God. I feel—”

“And get this, he’s not entering via the doormat...and from the look of her she’s taken a lot of gunshot wounds.”

I closed my eyes. My breath got choked up in my throat. Perspiration ran down inside my T-shirt. God, the smell of this place. The sounds! The squishy sounds as the guy...

“It’s OK,” Ham whispered. “He’s stopped. Look for yourself.”

Yeah, I’m an idiot, aren’t I? I looked.

The mortuary attendant stood back from the woman with the chest full of Uzi rash. She slipped off the desk. The slap of her face against the floor tiles made me flinch.

Then the guy dragged away a sheet that covered another figure on a slab.

“Don’t be impatient, sir,” the man said. “Your turn now. Come on, let’s get you up on all fours...ah, there’s a nice little doggy.”

The stiff on the slab looked as if he’d stepped in front of a truck.

The attendant made cooing noises. “There, sir, let’s just loosen you in the ring department.”

I threw up. The cheese sandwich I’d eaten for supper hit the floor with a loud enough splash to make the attendant look up from his love-object. “Hey, who’s there?”

My puke was invisible.

For a moment. Then suddenly it was there. A Technicolor splatter, stinky and steamy against white tiles.

“Hey, what is this?” The man sounded furious.

I jabbed my hand into Ham’s back. When he turned to me I mouthed, Come on!

This time he followed.

3. RIVERSIDE PARK. NIGHT. WATER RHYMES WITH TORTURE.

Ham Masen shot questions. “How come I couldn’t see myself in the mirror but you see me?”

“It happens like that immediately after the transition. Then your eyes adjust. You’ll be able to see your reflection now.”

“Are my parents Invisibles?”

“Your mother possibly. But it sometimes skips a generation or two.”

“When will I become visible again?”

“Toward dawn.”

“So I shouldn’t be anywhere I shouldn’t when I...?” He fluttered his fingers.

“Right. And remember it’s instantaneous.”

“What happens if I eat?”

“Try it for yourself sometime.”