Page 19 of Melancholia

But it really is empty.

For a moment I just stare at the shelf, nonplussed, before dropping to my knees on the tile floor. The cabinet there is mostly solid underneath, but I still reach under the lip of the wooden door anyway, searching along the floor in search of the tool.

“What the heck?” I murmur under my breath, popping up again. “Where⁠—”

A sound meets my ears. High-pitched, almost clanging, like when metal hits a hard surface. My gaze jerks up from where I’m kneeling, traveling down the short hallway between the embalming room and the body storage room where the incinerator lives.

Something rolls across the floor on the other side of the open double doors, catching the light from the hallway even though the room beyond is dark.

The trocar, I realize as a shiver goes down my spine.

I have never in my life believed in ghosts. Well, real ghosts, anyway. But right now I can’t help wondering if, after all these years, I’m not so crazy after all. Maybe I am seeing ghosts. Otherwise, I can only assume I’m hallucinating the trocar going missing from its shelf and currently rolling across the floor near where the bodies go.

I’m not going down there.

No way in hell am I⁠—

“Everyone is going to think you’re crazy if you call the cops for this.” The voice that whispers in my ear, standing just behind me where I can’t see, makes me shudder.

“Please, not tonight,” I whisper, keeping my eyes forward. “Didn’t you hear me earlier? I can’t deal with you tonight.”

I can hear her soft chuckle. “Cecil will think you’re on drugs. Or drinking. After all, you’re already a danger to yourself in his mind…” I swear I feel long fingers stroking the insides of my wrists where the scars have long-since healed enough to be less noticeable. But Cecil noticed them. God, he noticed them so fast and I’d thought he was going to fire me.

“Stop.” My voice is soft, trembling, and I push anxiously to my feet. “Not tonight.” There’s nothing else for me to say. There are only so many ways I can beg her to go away. None of which she’ll listen to if she doesn’t want to.

Or rather, if I don’t want her to. As my therapist constantly reminds me to tell myself in these situations.

In spite of, or maybe because of, the voice in my ear, I do it anyway. I make the stupid decision to stride down the hallway toward the body storage room; its doors yawning open to present the dark abyss beyond.

This is stupid. I’m being stupid, and there has to be some kind of explanation for the trocar rolling around down here. That’s what I tell myself with every step until finally I’m at the end of the hall that’s never ever felt this long before.

“You’re fine,” I whisper as I bend, reaching my hand out for the tool. “Everything is fine. You’re going to figure out what’s going on, and—” The moment my fingers close around the metal, there’s a sound in the darkness to my left. Scrabbling, like claws on the tile floor, and in the light from the open doors, I can just see movement barreling toward me.

I don’t have a chance to get out of the way. I’m not quick enough to avoid the monstrous black creature that suddenly pounces on me, drawing a scream from my throat as it snarls in my face.

This is how I’m going to die, I think to myself as my mind reels and I cover my head with my hands. I’m going to get eaten by some escaped zoo monster that found its way into the mortuary and is now resource guarding a fucking trocar. I’m going to die, and it’s going to be an awful way to go.

Teeth snap and I whimper as my heart races. Time seems to slow down, and my brain registers everything. The discomfort of my legs curled up to my chest. The creature’s hot breath inches from my face.

Fear.

Then, from somewhere else in the darkness, a voice suddenly states one word, calm and even.

“Aus.” The word is sharp and commanding. An order, not a question. ‘Ow-ss,’ the man sounded like he’d said, and my brain works in overdrive trying to figure out what the hell that means. Or if it should matter to me in my current position.

The creature suddenly pulls backward, all signs of aggression fading. I’m able to sit up in a rush, scrambling to my feet with the trocar held in one hand like a weapon. “W-what. What’s—” Somehow I manage to jerk myself toward the door, and my hands hit the wall shaking, inches from the switch that I work to flip on fast.

Light floods the room, and the monstrous, fanged creature becomes slightly less biblically accurate.

I know that dog.

I know the other one, too, that’s lounging under the body drawers, panting as it watches me. Their names escape my mind at the moment as my brain reboots and tries to figure out what the hell is going on.

“Sorry about that.” The person speaking doesn’t seem very sorry, and I whirl around, nearly stumbling, to see the figure leaning against the edge of the incinerator like he owns it.

“Amir?” I whisper over the pounding of my heart. “But why are you…” I glance down at his dogs, neither of whom looks like they’d ever been about to tear my throat out. The one closest to me even wags his tail like he wants to say hi.

But I think tonight, I’ll keep my distance from the German Shepherds.