Cliff and Gary were the only two guests who had the nerve to choose the morgue. Obviously, none of the guests had ever seen a partially digested human body before, and none of them particularly wanted to. But, at the same time, they felt they could at least handle it on some basic level.
Cliff was a chef, which meant he’d done his fair share of animal butchering. Cutting open a snake couldn’t be all that dissimilar, could it? And he’d seen plenty of partially digested fish inside of other fish when cutting and breaking them down into eight-ounce fillets.
But it turned out they would not have to extract the body from the snake at all. When they got to the morgue, Jessica’s body was already laid out on the metal table, and it didn’t even look partially digested in any noticeable way. Which made sense, since it had only just been swallowed by the snake moments before the discovery.
“Where do you want to start?” Cliff asked.
“Outside in, like gutting a deer,” Gary said, picking up a scalpel.
“Wait. Don’t you think we should do an external exam before making cuts?”
“What are we, some sort of team now?”
“Well, there are two of us and one body, so, yeah, it may help if we work together. Somewhat, at least,” Cliff said.
Gary tossed down the scalpel with almost childish emphasis and sighed.
“Fine,” he said.
They got to work looking over the body for any physical evidence. There weren’t any noticeable external injuries. But when Cliff opened her eyes, both he and Gary noticed that they were extremely red and bloodshot.
“Weird,” Cliff said.
Gary didn’t respond.
They moved on to the nose and mouth. And that’s when things got even more interesting. When they pried open her jaw, they were shocked by what they found inside her mouth and throat.
“Jeeesus Christ,” Gary said lowly.
The inside of Jessica’s mouth was practically shredded, like a slow-cooked chuck roast. There were cuts and gashes everywhere on her cheeks and roof of her mouth. Her tongue was almost completely severed, held in place by just a thin piece of skin. Shards of glass poked out at all angles, from her cheeks, jaw, and roof of her mouth.
“How did this happen?” Cliff asked. “How could it?”
Gary shook his head. Then he picked up the scalpel and made an incision in her neck. Cliff watched as the old janitor moved with surprising deftness. Inside of her throat was more glass and clots of thick blood and spit.
“It’s almost like she ate glass or something,” Cliff said.
Gary looked at him but didn’t say anything.
“Why would she do that?” Cliff asked.
If he expected Gary to give him a quick and easy answer, he didn’t get one. Instead, the question was met with another stoic look. It seemed pretty obvious to Cliff in that moment that if Gary indeed was developing any theories, he wasn’t going to share them.
He realized he would need to start developing some of his own if he hoped to survive again.