"Wanna hear what happened to me the other day as I was fixing over a corpse?" asked Peter. "Hell, you won't believe it."

   "Another one of your macabre anecdotes," said Frank, and raised his eyes to heaven. They were walking along the hall leading to the dissecting room of the hospital, back from lunch break, and were not in a hurry to go back to work. At the thought of performing an autopsy any stomach would have shown signs of unease, but two old campaigners like them wouldn't turn a hair if asked to eat with their plate on the chest of a dead body. It's like gutting a chicken, all in all, Peter used to say. The first time it can make you feel sick, but then you get used to it. Frank was well inclined to take the gruesome comparison, but he still wondered why his colleague had adopted the expression 'to fix over a corpse' when he talked about his job. It sounded just like something that a necrophiliac could say. "Tell me about it."

   "Okay. I'm standing there, fixing over the corpse, when suddenly the dead guy opens one eye."

   "Only one?"

   "Yeah, that's it, only one. I close it with my finger, and guess what happens?"

   "I'm dying to know it."

   "The damned eye opens again!"

   "He was winking at you," said Frank.

   "I swear it looked so. If he had invited me out to dinner that would have crowned it all," Peter replied. "I close it again, and it goes up like a rolling shutter. At that point I look closely at it, and guess what?"

   "He kissed you?"

   "No, for heaven's sake! He had a glass eye!"

   "You're kidding me."

   "May I drop down dead if I told you a lie," said Peter promptly, casting a glance at the ceiling and putting up his right hand as though he was in a court. "I had to sew the whole damned eyelid, otherwise it would have been a real laughing matter during the vigil!"

   Frank giggled. "How comes these things happen to you only?"

   Peter shrugged. "I don't know, but it's a fact that every time is a surprise. Remember that guy with the artificial leg?"

   Frank grimaced. He remembered the episode very well. "One of these days I'm going to resign. I’d like to matriculate and study medicine. Doctors work upstairs. I can't stand this place anymore."

   "You must be joking," replied his colleague. "Do you know what it means working upstairs? It means listening to moaning and whining all day long. What fun."

   "And you think that fixing over corpses is funny?"

   "No, it's not funny. But at least nobody laments around here!"

   "Oh, that's a one-liner."

   "Are you really thinking about resigning?" asked Peter, looking at him as though another head had just popped out of his colleague's neck.

   "Yes, I am," confirmed Frank.

   "You really wanna leave this job?"

   "As soon as possible."

   "Right now you are hardened to it?"

   Frank smiled. Yes, he was hardened to it. But, hell, he had spent so much time in getting inured to it. That was not the right job for people with a weak stomach, and before finding himself in front of a corpse he had always thought he didn't come under that category. Instead, the first time he had seen Peter dissecting a human body he had vomited an ex-sandwich over the elderly woman laying on the table. Fantastic. Especially with Peter as the master of ceremonies. Peter had given him a cold look (a kind of silent gentle rebuke), and had advised him to go out for a short walk. The short walk could turn into a long walk toward home, that was what Frank had read in Peter's eyes. He had gone out just for five minutes. Then he had entered the room again, as pale and rigid as a marble statue, but determined not to leave the place until the working day was over. And now, as Peter used to say, he was hardened to it.

   "Here we are again," said Peter at that point, and Frank realized they were already in front of the dissecting room.

   They got inside. The smell wafting in the air wasn't different from the one saturating the rest of the hospital: the same strong effluvium of medicinal substances and disinfectants. The atmosphere was an entirely different matter. There was no room for wait and hope. Everything was over. Nothing was left but a deep silence and two male nurses in charge of the... cold stores.

   Peter switched on the light. The neon of the ceiling lit up five tables on which the dead bodies had been laid and covered with a white sheet. Frank pointed out the first table on the right. "Let's start with that one."

   "Very good, let's start with that one," agreed Peter. He got closer to the table, raised the sheet and took a look at the corpse. "Pleased to meet you, Mister… Mister?"

   Frank took what Peter called the visitor's book and searched for the corpse's personal file. "This is Mister..." Swishing of pages. "Mister Benjamin Clayton. Twenty-four years old. Student. He committed suicide."

   "When did they find him?" asked Peter while removing the sheet.

   "This morning. He died a week ago," Frank answered. He automatically turned on his heels and walked to the other side of the room to take a metal bowl.

   "You've been very unkind, Mister Clayton," said Peter. "You should have informed someone you had decided to blow your brains out. They would have found you long before, and that would have saved us this mess."

   "Yeah, right, you've been very unkind," repeated Frank. "What about sending a telegram to your relatives? A telegram, for God's sake."

   "Right, a telegram," agreed Peter. "I'm going to shoot myself. Stop. Call the police so they'll come and recover my body. Stop," he said, trying to imitate a robot's voice. He looked at what was left of Benjamin Clayton's head and grimaced. He took a pair of latex gloves from a drawer, put them on, and then waited for Frank to get closer with the bowl. He began to whistle the tune of the seven dwarfs going to work while he extracted generous handfuls of little white worms out of the chest and down to the pelvis of the corpse, and placed them into the metal bowl.

   "Are you going fishing next Sunday by any chance?" he asked Frank.

   "Jesus..."

   Peter stopped for a while to observe pensively the inside of the corpse. "Hell, I've got a feeling I broke up a fucking banquet," he commented on.

   "Hurry up, we have a lot of work to do," Frank spurred him, shaking slightly the bowl which was almost full to the brim. "I want to get rid of these nice creatures before they start thinking about me as their next client."

   "I bet he didn't want his organ to be donate to other people," said Peter, ignoring the complaint of his colleague. "He wanted to be found in this condition."

   "I think you're right, he didn't want to donate his organs," said Frank. With his finger he pushed back a couple of worms that were trying to escape from the bowl. "A suicidal can't be interested in helping other people. He doesn't care about his own life, and certainly doesn't care about the rest of the world."

   "Listen to you," said Peter, sinking his hands into the filthy mixture of rotten meat and worms. "My dear Ben, I do believe my colleague is giving you a lecture. Such a pity these pretty organs of yours can't be transplanted into another person. Such a pity. If only they had found you before these little rascals began to run about in your body... It would have been too late to donate them just the same, but not too late to have your heart or your liver sent to the faculty of medicine for those interesting anatomy lessons. That's what happens, didn't you know it? Your liver might be put into a pot full of formalin, surrounded by a bunch of aspiring doctor Kildare. And if the teacher had asked some questions, you wouldn't have been the inquired, but the subject of the inquiring!"

   "Are you finished?" asked Frank tiredly. "You want me to leave you guys alone?"

   Peter dropped the last handful of worms into the bowl. Then he raised his eyes and flashed a sour sneer. "Every time they send us a stuffed corpse I am the one who stands this side of the table, mind you. If I have to put up with this bloody mess, I have the sacrosanct right to work off my frustration a little, if you don't mind."

   Frank cast a conceited glance at him, but said nothing. As soon as his colleague got rid of his dirty gloves by dropping them into the bowl, he turned his back on him and walked to the specially provided container to throw away the whole matter. The worms, heedless about the transfer of the mess, kept on feeding undeterred. Peter also turned round and took another pair of gloves from the drawer.

   "Hey," said the voice.

   "Hey, what?" asked Peter.

   "Hey, what?" echoed Frank from the other side of the room, working carefully to empty the bowl.

   "You said 'hey'. I heard you," said Peter.

   "No, it's you who said 'hey'."

"   I didn't say a word."

   "Stop playing pranks on me, Peter."

   "What are you talking about?"

   Frank put the clean bowl on the shelf and turned his face towards Peter. "Are you making fun of me?"

   Peter looked at him, and when their eyes met none of them was smiling.

   "So what?" Frank pressed upon.

   Peter kept silent, looking fixedly at him. He screwed up his eyes as if to try and read his mind. "Somebody talked, Frank. And it wasn't me."

   His colleague put on a sarcastic smile. "I wasn't either. Was it our stuffed friend?"

   "It could be. Perhaps he has something to say about the lecture I gave him."

   Frank turned round again to take some small bottles and a scalpel. "Too much silence is no good for the brain," he said. "One of these days I'll bring a radio down here, so we'll have some music to listen to."

   "Well, my brain is working pretty well," replied Peter as he turned to the desk to check the blank form he was supposed to fill up after the whole operation was over. "But I wouldn't mind some mus..."

   "Hey," said the voice.

   Peter's hand stopped in mid air, hovering above the sheet of paper, then it landed slowly on the desk. He opened his mouth to say something, but Frank was faster than him.

   "Hey, hey, hey," said Frank. "This time I heard you right, sly boots."

   "Hey, you guys," called the voice.

   Frank turned round abruptly, and so did his colleague, both of them thinking about wicked abuse to hurl to each other. But this time their eyes didn't meet, because between them was the corpse of Benjamin Clayton sitting on the table for his autopsy.

   "Hey," repeated Benjamin, and moved the lower half of his tattered face. Peter saw a piece of tongue torn to shreds, and a white and pink heap, which was all that remained of his gums and teeth. The corpse half-closed his eyes to focus the person he was gazing at. A yellowish fluid came out of them, slipped down his cheek, and finally ended its journey by dripping on the dead body's naked thighs. "Hey, you guys."

   "Good Lord, Jesus Christ, Blessed Virgin!" cried out Frank. The small bottles and the scalpel he was holding fell on the ground with a crash of shattered glass and a thin clang. When the late Benjamin Clayton turned towards him, Frank leapt backward and banged his back violently against the set of shelves behind him.

   "What's the matter with you?" asked Benjamin, drawling painfully his words. The shot he had fired into his own mouth hadn't damaged his vocal cords, but the rest of the apparatus for the correct sound emission had gone to the dogs. "You never saw a corpse?"

   Frank shook his head, but couldn't force himself to open his mouth to say yes, he had seen many corpses, but never a moving and talking one. He looked at Peter to check if he was still standing, and saw his colleague near the desk, in a clear state of shock.

   "Peter?" Benjamin called him. "Your name is Peter, isn't it?"

   Peter nodded, then shook his head, and finally nodded again. He truly believed he had lost his mental capacity. His rational powers were temporarily out of order, and that was for sure. He was seeing what he was seeing, okay, but it ought to be all a dream, because dead people were just dead people and they didn't make questions, right?

   "Thanks for taking that big load off my stomach." Benjamin lowered his head and touched carefully the chasm that worms had dug in his body. "Look at me. Look at the state I'm in. Now I know what dead cats lying on the edge of the roads feel like."

   Isn't it everybody's dream? To understand what a cat rotting slowly feels like after being run over by a car? Peter felt like replying in a crazy moment of absurd euphoria. He dropped the idea of talking to him just after he had conceived it.

   "I shouldn't be here, I know it well," admitted the deceased. "I mean, I shouldn't move and talk. It's only that... God, you won't ever believe it."

   Frank was tempted to tell him that, for his own part, he couldn't believe what he was seeing either. He thought about closing his eyes, taking a deep breath, counting to three, and then hoping for it to be a nasty trick of his lively imagination. The trouble was that the very thought of closing his eyes terrorized him. God only knew what that kind of Frankenstein's monster could do while he was temporarily blind.

   "I... I don't know how..." Benjamin looked bewildered as he tried to find the right words to express his thoughts. His eyes shift from Peter, who shivered instantly, to Frank, who drew back as much as possible against the shelves.

   "You'll think I'm an idiot," said Benjamin, "but the truth is I've forgotten to leave a goodbye note. That's it, I said it."

   Peter frowned, completely wrong-footed. And when he looked at Frank it was like watching himself in a mirror.

   "I need your help," said Benjamin. "I must write down something to my family. Do you understand?"

   Peter and Frank remained silent.

   "Please, there's not so much time left," said Benjamin, and tapped two fingers on his left wrist as if to show an invisible watch. "I can't wait any longer, I'm going to turn into dust soon. I despise this body, I had no intention of getting back inside it, but the fact is my stupid head messed up everything. How could I be so potty? I forgot to leave a message before killing myself. It's sheer madness."

   Madness, right, I've got it, thought Peter. That's what me and Frank will run into if we don't get out of here right now.

   "It happens," said Frank in a low voice. Then he grimaced as though the words had come out without his permission.

   "Thanks for your sympathy. Now I'd like to get down from this table. Who's gonna give me a hand?"

   Silence.

   Benjamin stared at Peter and reached out a hand. Some shreds of rotten meat fell down from the boy's putrescent body. Peter stepped back, found the desk behind him, and began to push it towards the wall with his buttocks. The piece of furniture produced a creaking sound as it slipped on the marble floor, and the noise echoed throughout the room.

   "Please, somebody help me," said Peter. "I can't do it on my own. I'm going to break into pieces on the floor. Please."

   "I can't… I c-c-can't..." stammered Peter, and shook his head vigorously.

   Benjamin turned to Frank. Frank flattened himself against the shelves until his back hurt badly. After that horrible experience he would have to deal with four painful bruises stamped on his back. He shook his head in turn, thinking that not even the winning ticket of the national lottery could persuade him to get closer to the corpse and touch it. And if ever something could convince him to do such a thing, the whole matter would end up with his transfer to the local madhouse.

   Benjamin lowered his head, deeply disappointed. "Guys," he said. "I know I'm a sad spectacle, but if you don't help me to write that note, I won't rest in peace. It's important for me. Very important. I need to say goodbye to my family."

   Peter and Frank kept on shaking slowly their heads to stress their categorical refusal to get closer to him.

   Benjamin looked at the floor beneath his white cold feet to estimate his chances to touch the ground and be able to stand. He let out a weak moan of frustration.

   "I'm scared," he said. "I'm so weak and tired... I can't do it without your help. Please, give me a hand."

   "I'll w-w-write f-f-for you..." Peter said. He was persuaded he was about to lost the power of speech. "You j-j-just s-s-stay th-there." If that was a nightmare, then all he had to do to chase it away was to please Mister Clayton and put an end to it once and for all.

   "Will you do it for me? Really?" asked Benjamin in a hopefully tone.

   Peter nodded, suddenly a little scared by the thought the boy might jump down, run to him, and hug him to thank him. That would send him straight to the madhouse, together with Frank. He turned round and bent over the desk to grab the first sheet of paper within reach. On the table there was only the form for the autopsy of the boy (well, what was left of the boy). He thought about writing in the space marked OBSERVATIONS a sentence like this: ‘The boy, who died a week ago, wants to write to his parents’, but then he realized he didn't hold a pen. In the hands of confusion, he reached out a hand and took one. He turned the sheet over to utilize the white side, and waited for the dead boy's drawling voice to start dictating.

   Benjamin coughed to clear his throat. Both his eyes slipped out of the hollows which held them with a liquid noise, hanged at the end of their optic nerve like two grotesque earrings for a while, and then fell on the ground. Squish, squish.

   Frank, who was looking at the corpse's nape, didn't have the pleasure to watch the pretty show. Peter, instead, had to bite the inner side of his cheeks to keep himself from screaming like a raving mad. He had turned to Benjamin when he had heard him coughing, and had seen the whole scene.

   "Oh, God, I can't see anymore," Benjamin murmured.

   "Gggghh..." was Peter's comment. He had managed to turn a scream into a moan of disgust. His cheeks were bleeding, but he had the feeling he was biting two pieces of rubber.

   "Guys?" called Benjamin. "Still there? Please, don't go away. It's so dark in here. Peter? Write down what I say. I wanna get out of this body. Write and don't stop me 'til I'm through."

   "Ok-k-kay," Peter answered, and looked at the sheet again. "I'm r-r-ready."

   "Forgive me for what I've done," Benjamin said. "Please, don't hate me, because I need your love." He paused to give Peter the time to write everything down.

   Peter struggled on the sheet of paper like a schoolboy dealing with letters for the first time. His hand was shaking, so his handwriting looked just like an electrocardiogram.

   "Did you write it?" asked the boy. Peter answered affirmatively, and Benjamin resumed his dictating. "I'm not asking you to understand my gesture, but I'm asking you to understand me. Can you underline ‘me’, please? I put off my death many times, because I hated the thought of you suffering for it. Did you write it?"

   "... suffering for it," repeated Peter, and finished the sentence with a full stop that holed the paper.

   "But I can't go on like this. I can't live a life I don't want to live just to save you a sorrow. I'm living in pain for you not to feel pain: that's not fair." Benjamin stopped and waited.

   "I'm done," said Peter. Now his hand wasn't shaking so hard, but his handwriting hadn't improved at all. Nobody could decipher it but he himself.

   "I can't live a life of regrets," said Benjamin. "I can't wake up every morning and think I won't do what I'd like to do, and I won't be the man I'd like to be. I'm unsatisfied, and frustrated and... sad."

   Peter looked up from the sheet and gazed at the boy. Benjamin was crying. He had covered his face with his right hand, and the skin of his elbow had torn, showing flash and bones. The scene could easily wring another moan out of Peter's lips, but this time something deep down of his heart looked beyond the horror, and for a moment Benjamin Clayton was no longer a rotting obscenity, but only a person suffering deeply.

   "I'm sorry," Peter whispered. He looked at Frank and saw a little pity on his colleague's face. Just a little, but it was there.

   Benjamin removed his hand from his face and two pieces of flesh departed from his cheek. The boy whimpered painfully. "I wanna get out, I wanna get out, I can't bear this any longer..."

   "C'mon, Ben, just go on with your message. What do you want me to write?" asked Peter. He felt the need to reassure and comfort the boy, but the only thing he could do was to be a good scribe. "Just tell me what..."

   "Write this: I love you all. Goodbye."

   Peter wrote it down and then checked out the sentence. He put down the pen.

   "Make sure my parents read it," said Benjamin. "You can say you found it inside a pocket of my trousers or something like that."

   "I wrote it... I wrote it on the form for your... autopsy," Peter murmured in an apologizing tone.

   "Write it down again on a new sheet then."

   "What about your handwriting? They'll see it's not yours." I'm talking with a corpse, he thought. God Almighty, I'm chatting carelessly with a dead person.

   "Typewrite it," said Benjamin. He lowered his head. "Now I'm out of here. I really can't stand this..." He pointed at himself with a gesture of his hand. "The coffin will be closed, I suppose."

   "The coffin?"

   "During the vigil," Benjamin explained. "It'll be closed, am I right?"

   Peter's face lit up at once. "Oh, yeah. The coffin. Sure. Closed. You're not... You're not..."

   "Presentable," said the boy. He smiled weakly at Peter. Peter had to choke back a scream. "I really think you're right: I should have sent a telegram before shooting myself," he said.

   Peter goggled. On the edge of his personal abyss of madness, he was tempted to jump right into it and kiss his sanity goodbye.

   "Yes," confirmed Benjamin, "I heard you when you said that. Next time be more careful when you talk to a corpse. He might be listening to you." He sighed. "Now I have to go. Thanks a lot, guys. I'm sorry I dirtied the floor. My eyes... My eyes... I whish... If you could..."

   "We'll put them back into place," said Peter on the verge of a schizophrenic laughter. "No problem."

   Benjamin looked relieved. He lay down on the table very slowly. "Is my posture the same as before?" he asked.

   "Perfect," Frank answered. Now that the corpse wasn't sitting anymore he felt a little better and could talk again.

   "Frank," said the boy. "Now you can unglue yourself from those shelves. I didn't mean to scare you. I'm sorry."

   "Forget it." Frank relaxed a little and moved away from the shelves. He felt like laughing, laughing madly. He looked at the corpse and waited. Now Benjamin was motionless. He cast an interrogative look at Peter. Peter shrugged and did the same. They waited for a while. Nothing happened. Benjamin was gone for good, this time.

   Frank began to move toward the door, followed by his colleague. Now they both wanted to get out of there. Next move would be to step into the first bar on the way and drink until they faint. That was the only way to digest the event. If ever there was an ‘event’ to digest. Never heard about ‘collective hallucination’?

   They reach the door together. Benjamin's voice made them jump with fright as they put their hands on the door handle.

   "You were wondering whether I wanted to donate my organs or not", he said. "The truth is I didn't want to give them away. But it's also true that I didn't think it would take so long to my relatives to find me." He paused a little, then he added: "I think my beloved family doesn't care about me so much, all in all. They started to worry after a week they hadn't see me around. A week! Can you believe it? I whish you tore that note up."

   Peter and Frank opened the door and stepped out in the hall. They closed it violently behind them. They simply stood there, paralyzed, waiting for the door handle to move, for the door to open.

   "Have you seen something?" Frank asked, as pale as a ghost.

   "Why, there was something to see?"

   "Forget it."

   "You don't need to say it twice."

   The door handle didn't move. No sounds from the inside.

   "I’m going to resign today," said Peter.

   "Me too."

   They began to walk. Then they quickened their pace. As soon as they turned the corner they began running like hell