This place was always a seething well of pain for me, and this morning was no different; of course, my irascibility factor being off the scale as it was didn’t help matters at all. I had started hearing the voices of the dead-screams mostly-the moment we turned onto Clark Avenue. Staving them off became a somewhat violent internal struggle as soon as we entered the building.

I sought refuge from the ethereal by embracing the mundane. I occupied my mind with trivial tasks in order to erect a mental barrier-anything from mutely reciting the alphabet in reverse to intensely pondering a shadow on the wall. At one point, I even found myself wondering about the holiday cards. Considering that the clientele of a morgue are normally beyond any need for celebration, they seemed out of place to me. I reached down and flipped one of the greetings partially open to reveal the inscription, which showed it to be from a sales rep at Stryker Corporation, a well-known maker of medical implements. I checked another and saw that the sender was a local wholesaler of surgical supplies.

I guess I had been over thinking the situation. Of course, in my agitated state, perhaps I was not truly thinking at all.

Unfortunately, seeing the names of the companies led me to dwell on such things as powered bone saws and stainless steel scalpels, which in turn brought back memories of post-mortems I’d witnessed first hand. Fearful cries from the other side rose in volume for a brief moment as I rushed to switch channels on my thoughts before they could suck me in.