The Undertaker

He picked up a scalpel and let the light flash off the razor-sharp blade. “I watched Larry do a couple of them down here. Professional interest, of course. First, he opens a vein or two and lets the blood drain out. Not much to it really, and it doesn't take very long. A small incision in a major vein in one of the lower extremities, a couple of shunts, and gravity does the rest. Personally, the system is a bit messy for my taste, but that's why the table is sloped and what the gutters along the sides are for.”

“Look, Ralph, you've got this thing all wrong.”

He completely ignored me. “Then he opens an artery or two up top and pumps in the formaldehyde to flush everything out. Nothing tricky about that either. After he's finished, a couple of clamps, a half dozen stitches, a bit of Crazy Glue, and voila! Finished, except for the makeup and the cosmetic repairs.” Tinkerton looked down and smiled. “Sorry, but we won't be worrying about the artsy stuff tonight.“

Tinkerton reached his hand out and I felt a cold finger touch me at the base of the neck above the collarbone. I jumped as if I had been touched by a high power line. “That's where the carotid artery and the jugular vein are located,” he chuckled softly. “Larry likes using them. Simple and easy to get at, you see.”

His hand moved down and he grabbed my upper arm. I fought him, but with my wrist strapped down it wasn't hard for him to turn it outward. “Now, some embalmers prefer to use the ones here, inside the bicep, but they're a bit harder to get at.”

I strained against the straps, trying to pull my arm away, but it was hopeless.

“Me? Perhaps I'm old fashioned. If I had to choose, I'd pick the femoral artery and vein right here in the hip and groin.” I never saw his hand move, but suddenly his fingers passed lightly across my abdomen and hip and I felt myself shiver. “That's the iliac. It's less obvious, you know, out of sight and out of mind.”

He chuckled as he turned away; tapping the tall metal cylinders and picking up the rubber tube with the big bore steel tube at its end. “Put this baby in an artery and turn on that pump. With twenty pounds of pressure, it doesn't take very long. Everything simple and very painless,” he said with that cold, hard smile again. “Of course, that assumes the subject is dead.” He picked up a can of talcum powder and dusted his hands. He pulled on a pair of disposable latex gloves one at a time, letting the wrist bands snap. “I have been forewarned that when one is working on Californians, one cannot be too careful regarding the transmission of certain diseases, you know.”

When he turned back toward me, he was holding a scalpel, looking down at my body with a cold, almost scientific indifference. I stared up at him, wide-eyed, my eyes following him around the table. I felt his hand on my thigh and I almost took the table with me through the ceiling.

“My, my, but we are touchy tonight, aren't we?” He laughed.

“Touchy? You bastard, I'll show you how touchy I can be.” I bucked, kicked, and rolled from side to side, but it was no use. The straps held me down, but I kept bucking up and down anyway.

Tinkerton stood there with an amused smile and waited me out. “Keep fighting it like that and you're going to hurt yourself,” he said as he laid his hand on my thigh again, ever so gently this time. “Easy, now. Easy. Easy,” he said as he slowly lowered the scalpel toward my stomach. “This may sting a bit.”

I forced myself away from it, drawing further and further back until I couldn't move any more. “You bastard!” I whispered, my eyes riveted on the thin, shining blade as it touched my lower abdomen.

Then he pulled the blade away and looked deep into my eyes. “Now that we have the preliminaries completed and you know precisely where you stand, or where you lay as the case may be… Damn! See what you've done. A few minutes alone with you, and you've already infected me with that God-awful California humor. Yes, I really will miss you, and I'm going to miss you a whole lot faster if you don't tell me who you're working for.”

“I'm not working for anybody and I don't know a damned thing!” I sputtered, incapable of taking my eyes off the glittering blade in his hand. “I saw the obituaries in the newspaper and you guys got me mad, that's all.”

His smile faded and ever so gently, he drew the scalpel across the left side of my lower abdomen. My head shot up. I didn't feel any pain, just a soft touch like a feather. He held up the scalpel and I saw a thin, red coat of blood on the blade. I looked down and saw a shallow, three inch cut across my stomach. I opened my mouth to scream, but I was so terrorized nothing came out.

“That's only the epidermis. It's the outer layer,” he said in a calm, detached voice. “I still have the dermis and the subcutaneous tissue before I reach the artery. So you can bull-shit me two more times before things get really serious and you begin to bleed to death.”