Are There Any Controversies Around Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers?

I die in the basement after being burned by acid. My family doesn't recognize me, and they don't call the cops. My mother picks up the scalpel that hasn't been used in years and debones me. My father excitedly mixes my skeleton with concrete and turns me into an exquisite statue. My sister uses the sculpture she's made out of my flesh and portrays herself as a genius sculptor whom everyone admires. Later, the sculpture is shattered, revealing half a broken finger inside. That's when everyone panics.

On Mom's death anniversary, drug dealers break into the cemetery and take me away. To get revenge on my brother, Zack Smith—a forensic pathologist—they torture me until there isn't even a single uninjured spot left on my body. I hold on for almost three days, barely surviving, until I finally get a chance to call him for help. However, Zack replied, "Why didn't they kill you for good? A jinx like you who killed your own mother shouldn't be allowed to live!" When the drug dealers notice my action, they shatter all of my bones. The next day, a janitor discovers several large bags of human remains in the trash can. Zack painstakingly reassembles my body back together with his own hands—yet he fails to recognize that it's me, his younger sister he always claims to hate. When the drug dealers are finally arrested, he descends into madness.

My husband has a PhD in medicine. He's fair, just, and kind… until the day his true love kills someone in an accident. He uses all the medical knowledge he has to help her get off scot-free. He turns the corpse into preserved specimens and displays them in his lab. When he's dealing with the corpse, he sees that there's an embryo in the womb. He's always been calm and composed, but he can't stop his heart from racing at the sight. What he doesn't know is that the corpse is mine, and the embryo is his child…

A high-profile rape case rocks Corvessa City. During the autopsy, I examine the deceased's private area as part of the standard procedure. My wife, a police captain, blows up in front of the onlookers. "Don't we have a female medical examiner in our unit? Do you realize you're re-victimizing the deceased? And your wife is standing right here. Are you really that desperate?" The crowd turns on me in a heartbeat. Bowing to public pressure, the department suspends me and tells me to keep reporting in at my own expense. I hand in my resignation on the spot. Without me, nobody in Corvessa City is going to crack this case.

There are monsters in this world. And they used to be us. Now it's time to euthanize to survive in a hospice where Emily, a woman haunted by her past, only wants to do her job and be the best mother possible. Post-infection Chicago. Christmas. Inside The Hospice, Emily and her fellow nurses do their rounds. Here, men and women live out their final days in comfort, segregated from society, and are then humanely terminated before fate turns them into marrow-craving monsters known as ‘Smilers.’ Outside these imposing walls, rabid protesters swarm with signs, caught up in the heat of their hatred. Emily, a woman haunted by her past, only wants to do her job and be the best mother possible. But in a world where mortality means nothing, where guns are drawn in fear and nobody seems safe anymore – at what cost will this pursuit come? And through it all, the soon to be dead remain silent, ever smiling. Such is their curse. It won't be long before that snow-speckled ground will be salted by blood. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

After I, Wynn Jaffe, the Chief Forensic Pathologist, submitted my request to transfer into a clerical position, everyone in the department lit up with joy and approved it unanimously. Everyone except my boyfriend’s childhood friend, Yvette Hans, the rookie forensic doctor who called herself the ‘corpse whisperer,’ completely broke down. She burst into my office, grabbed onto my white coat with both hands with reddened eyes. “Senior, your skills may be outdated, but I truly hope you’ll stay and keep speaking up for the victims!” I coldly shrugged off her hand, packed my things, and walked away. In my previous life, she claimed herself as the ‘corpse whisperer,’ someone who could commune with the dead, hear their murmurs, and know what happened to them before they died. I worked tirelessly on every autopsy, dissecting, analyzing, and revising my reports. She only needed a single glance at the body to recite my entire report word-for-word. The victims’ families treated her like a saint, while they sneered at me, accusing me of disrespecting the dead. I could not accept it. I poured everything I had into every examination, but she always beat me to it, revealing the truth before I could. In the end, an extreme group of grieving family members, convinced I desecrated a corpse, kidnapped me, dismembered me, and dumped my remains in the wilderness. When I opened my eyes again, I had been reborn back to the very day Yvette first claimed she was a corpse whisperer.