u/LeftPrize9838 — reddlx

It is a bit odd that the body never quit twitching. It just laid there spasming in the bask of its own blood, mouth open uttering a silent scream into the stars. There above it hung a similarly shaking man, yet he still possessed a soul. Out of his fingers slipped the dripping, incriminating knife. They had never met each other, let alone spoken, and now one was dead by the blade of the other, between the metal monoliths of Brooklyn.
All he could do was freeze, so when the police told him to, he had to do very little, but when it became time to move, he could not. The police shouted at him, yet his eyes still affixed to the bleeding body, its last facets of life coursing through it, its visage fluxing and contracting, fingers pinching in and out. In a single blink, one last yell, the metal hilt of the pistol slamming against his skull, and his eyes closing… closing… black.

…

The paramedics came, hauling the body, shadowed by a tarp, on the stretcher into the red and white van. Though the body could not hear, it shuttered through the noise. Sirens blaring at every corner, lights piercing through the bystanders windows. Though the cover did much to shield the details to the curious eye, it still oozed blood all down the alley, leaving a stain into the previously grey pavement.
The driver slid away into the black sheet of the night, their beaming blue and red lights now shuttered and their sirens muzzled. The two people in the front, one driving, one tagging along, remained oblivious to the writhing body. If writhing meant semblance of life, why had they treated it as dead? It shook all the way until they landed at the hospital, where they would… take care of the corpse. Take it apart, see what happened all though it was dreadfully clear. A knife in the heart certainly stops it in a beat.
As the paramedics removed the stretcher from the double doors of the ambulance, all they could “see” was the thing squirming beneath the yellow plastic. They pushed it into the hospital, the door’s motor whirring as it allowed entry. Their speed indicated very little urgency, a leisurely stroll through the park of white corridors, pushing it through rows and rows of doors, until finally the last where lay a single white bed in the middle of the room. They tore the blanket off of the body, and were blank with what they saw. Out of the eyes, blood ran down its face, its mouth gurgling up bits and clots of it. The medics stood over it, stone-faced and blank, worried little as though they had seen this medical atrocity before. They strapped the body down to the table so it would stop its writhing. The paramedics exited the door they left as a surgeon came in, covered in blue scrubs and latex. He grabbed a scalpel, examined down, and right below the ribcage began an incision. Down, down and down the scalpel went, carrying with it a deep valley of blood. Cutting through and past the navel, the blade took a violent turn, carving to the right and then all the way to the tip of the first incision. Very quietly and precisely the surgeon took off the limp piece of skin, setting it to the side. Underneath, was a gory mess. The intestines, which usually were arranged in a ladder-way on top of each other, were now wrapped into a knot no larger than a tennis ball. The pancreas is a hardened, crusting piece of coal.
Even with the image embedded into his brain, the surgeon’s psyche remained untouched. Merely another ghost in the swarm of spirits. He placed down his bloody tool onto the table near him, replacing it with a long, thick, hook like tool. He wrapped the hook around the lowest rung of the man’s rib cage, and in a quick, precise moment, he jerked up. The ribcage and all the skin surrounding it ripped open. Blood sprayed over the walls in a thick red glaze. The surgeon, now wrapped in gore, wiped off the blood from his eyes, just in time to see the man's heart bouncing in the chest cavity. Faster and faster it went, until it pinged against a shard of the removed ribcage, tearing open. Blood spewed and spewed, over the ceiling against the viewing glass. Two small and succinct pops rang through, the man's eyes nothing but a memory, now a fountain, spraying directly up. Out of his mouth, there was still more. A solid stream just adding to the now pooling layer. It rose, and rose, at first at the ankles, shins, knees. The surgeon couldn’t move, the blood was too heavy, too dense, and for the first time he felt fear. Fear for his life yet he knew he couldn’t leave. So he flailed, trying to take steps yet his legs were stuck. In a moment he fell, his face now directly in the liquid. He couldn’t breathe, the only thing entering his lungs more and more blood. And it continued to rise, up and past the window until his back was pressed against the ceiling in an eternal coffin of blood.
Outside of this room, passing down the hallway, the windows, like these, were now stained red by the pressing blood. Each kid with their own two bodies accompanying them in their tombs. In the waiting room they were packed shoulder to shoulder, waiting for something that would never come. The entire hospital was now a cemetary; the rooms, coffins.