After/Birth

Strip-lights trembled an embryonic darkness as Kyisis cut through a pungency of offal-stink and the line of anxious hospital staff. Every face battling with it-couldn’t-happen-here acceptance. 

“Excuse the mess, Detective,” the uniformed Corban joked, lifting the crime scene tape. 

Kyisis’ feet broke the white, powdery line at the threshold to the old operating room. 

“Salt,” Corban revealed. “She spread a circle of it round the room.”

Kyisis fed his gaze on the corpse in the center of the dimly lit chamber; a distraction from the horror show on its walls. 

“Suicide?” he asked, frowning. 

“Come see,” Corban directed. 

Kyisis stepped through the pooling blood, cradling his nose. The body wore hospital orderly robes, was young — even pretty — once. Her abdomen was ripped open. 

“Looks—”

“—Like somethin’ ate its way out, right?” Corban said, grinning sardonically. “And what’s with all that shit on the walls?”

Kyisis forced his eyes upwards. Someone had woven a copper-lattice hemisphere onto the central ceiling light, reaching down on all sides like the crinolines of some vast, antebellum dress. It gave the room a domed feeling that belied the once-straight tiling of the blood-spattered walls. But it was what was grafted onto the copper dome lattice that compelled Kyisis to cover his nose again. 

Flesh. Black and brownish yellow. In places, some chunks fought to retain their rounded, disk-like shapes; elsewhere, others had succumbed entirely to the pull of time and rot. They were the source of the offal stench: the corpse-reek that delivered the room to his sickening pall; Kyisis’ stomach itched with it. 

“Near as we can figure, she’s been bringin’ ‘em down here for months,” Corban said, gesturing to the bound flesh. 

“We know what they are?” Kyisis asked. 

Corban nodded over to the two forensics officers in coveralls snapping away with the expensive camera. 

“Lizzie Borden over there says they’re placentas,” Corban declared, running his hand down his fat gut. “Wild, huh?”

“Why would anyone do that?” Kyisis asked. 

“Might have something to do with this,” the female forensics officer replied. 

Lizzie Bordan, Corban? Asshole. 

Kyisis stepped around the corpse, trying not to see the reverent anguish imprinted on her face. The forensics guy groaned, then flashed another shot and the room was birthed in an oversaturation of unforgiving light. 

“What we got?” Kyisis asked, stooping down to see. 

It was a journal of sorts. A decoupage of newspaper articles and hastily scrawled notes. Stories of pregnant girls bleeding out in parking lots; doctors dealing in illegal, backstreet abortions; the summonings of some insane, revenging pen in many scripts and languages. But — on the open page, in English — ritualistic words screamed out: ‘Five Must Die To Bring Its Birth. 

“What do you think it means?” Lizzie asked, massaging her abdomen and wincing slightly. 

“You eat a bad burrito too?” Corban spouted, doubling over and clutching his gut. 

The tormented squeal of an oversaturating flash gave form to shadows. It was then that Kyisis felt the itching of his stomach start to bite.