Dead bodies?
Let me tell you a little story. I used to work for a lighting maintenance company. The job entailed changing flourescent lamps, replacing ballasts, and cleaning the fixtures. We worked in all sorts of different businesses. The Mayco in the North Hollywood Mall, Boeing, etc. Well one time Wour job was the dental center at USC. On the third floor was the cadaver room where students would work on the bodies. The room seemed huge. There were row upon row of stainless steel tables, each with its own body. Each body was in some different state of dismemberment. Arms with the flesh removed to expose the embalmed muscle and tendon below. Up close they reminded me of Thanksgiving turkey. I would study the faces trying to gain an insight into who they were . They told me little of their lives but spoke volumes about the shells that laid before me.Nothing, there was nothing there, in any of them.Only the expressions on their faces at the moment of termination.There was no attempt by any mortician to disguise agony or repose. In one corner of the room we found a little alcove that house dozens of body parts, mostly heads.We called it the "spare parts room".Now in order to get to the third floor we rode a freight elevator that had doors at either end. We would get in , the elevator would takes us to the third floor, and the south door would open and voila the hall that led to our room of death. One night we got in, rode to the third floor, and the south door opened. We looked in and there was a small squarish room with a cooler opposite the elevator door that housed two bodies. We cautiously entered the room and there on left end of the coolers on the west wall was a stainless steel table unlike the ones in our other room.This one was more like very long and very shallow sink. Upon this table rested a body.It was obviously a male and had died in much pain.His jaws were clinched and his front teeth were still biting into the flesh of his lower lip.His face was a hellish blue.His legs were spread with the knees bent as if he were bearing a child.In each thigh a tube ran from some artery deep in the leg to a machine on the floor.It looked like some sort of pump.We were absolutely intrigued by this room.We turned and left back the way we came and exited the other door and did our job in cadaverland.Being the drug crazed young men that we were we joked about our embalmed friend and one thing led to another and the bet was made.If I bit the dead guy on the nose they'd give me ten bucks.Of course I took them up on the bet.I didn't care and obviously he was in no condition to argue.So we re-entered the embalming room.No one left the elevator other than me this time.I walked over to Mr. Blueface and gazed into his squinting eyes. The pain he had endured was frozen in his features.It is still an incredibly clear vision in my mind whenever I relive the experience.I leaned down and put my mouth close to his snot caked nose.I opened wide and lowered my teeth into position.I closed on the blue flesh ,my lips drawn back to reveal my pearly whites buried into his probiscus.The mayhem that ensued in the elevator was incredible.One of the guys had fallen to the floor and another had taken off running down the hall on the other side.I took the proffered ten spot and calmly walked back to work.So who was sicker, me for biting the dead guy or them for paying me to do it.I'm probably gonna end up in the boiler room for that one.
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