Postmortem Novels & Stories

Ashleigh looked at her mother in confusion, "He is too." "What?" "Find him... he'll tell you." "Where?" "Where would you go?" •••A long while later••• Ashleigh walked into the cemetery and went to her father's grave with a few cleaning products in a bucket. "Hi dad," she smiled. "My friends tell me I should really stop doing this but... it's my way of... reminding myself that you're gone and just give myself time to think about things. Even think out loud, without being judged."

I stood there for hours, praying to die. Until my neighbor, Mr. Collins, came in the morning to look for Jack. I don't remember exactly what happened. I remember waking up the next day in the hospital. I hated the fact that I was still alive and Jack didn't. I wanted to die more than anything. They had killed my whole life. One shot changed everything. One night changed my life completely. It took more than 6 months before I was able to shake off the incident. I had nightmares every night.

He tossed the black soiled tissue into the trash bin next to the bed, with the others before giving me an expression I couldn’t read. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked off at the far wall. “redire a mortuis.” “What?” “It means ‘to come back from the dead.’ In latin.” He turned to me with a level of fierceness that I didn’t know how to handle. I wasn’t sure if I should be worried that he would lash out at me or if this would be a conversation that would actually be helpful in terms of getting information about what his true motives were.

Quickly, she scrambled up the pile of rubble blocking her path. Just as she reached the top, her human nose picked up the scent of her Alpha and mate, Jason. Even though he had rejected her as soon as the mate bond surfaced on her 18th birthday, his unique smell of peppermint tea and cedarwood still made her blood sing and pulse race.

“I don’t want to.” I look down at my hands, shifting my focus onto them. “I don’t want to either.” We had to go collect the Post Mortem Examination report. Shedim had told me that as soon as they found Kira lying in the ditch, they took her to the hospital but she was pronounced dead on scene. After that, naturally, they had to call her parents from the ID that was in her purse. Once her dad found out that she had died, he immediately requested that she be cremated because it was her only desire.

"Someone call an ambulance. Call somebody. Call—" She fumbled her phone out with shaking hands. It hit the floor. She tried to pick it up. She tried again, and again, and couldn't manage it. Mrs. Hayes stepped forward to help and Mama shoved her away. "Daisy isn't dead. Daisy isn't dead." "Her organs had been failing for some time," the medic said quietly. "None of you noticed anything wrong?" "It would have been an extremely painful death. Bruising over the whole body, even light pressure would have been agonizing. Constant nosebleeds. The pain in her organs would have been like being repeatedly struck by something blunt. By the end, she would have been struggling to breathe."

The system had appeared that morning when I nearly starved to death. Gloria and Joanne exchanged glances. "You might not know this, Henry, but when your father left, he told us that his system will disappear after he completes his mission," Joanne said. "You might have hallucinated your encounter with his system." I shook my head. "No. That can't be. It was definitely Dad's system. Please leave me alone, Dr. Kerry. Just let me die." Joanne's face twisted into an upset expression when I insisted that I wanted to die. She tried to suppress her emotions, but she ultimately failed and said, "You won't be the judge on whether you had a hallucination or not. We'll be sending you to a psychologist.

He walked to the adjacent ward and opened the door, but there was no sign of me. Frowning, he went to the nurses' station. "Where is patient 807? She just had kidney surgery. She shouldn't be moving around." The nurse checked the computer and replied calmly, "Patient 807, Jocelyn Pryce… was declared deceased at 5:20 p.m. this afternoon."

The language of forms, authority, committees, and people who can turn murder into a term with three capital letters and a reporting structure. —DECAY vector within projected tolerance, monitoring ongoing— —recovery of unaccounted assets remains priority— —reacquire, do not neutralize— —account for off-roster personnel pending review— —public narrative to hold zoonotic origin pending stabilization— Maya reads it once. Then again.

“Dr. Leylla Marie Monroe?” I forced myself to clear my throat. “Yes, sir.” “Following this hospital’s protocol,” he said, his tone cold and robotic, “and based on the deceased family’s consent to conduct a postmortem in order to determine the mystery surrounding the untimely death of Miriam,” he paused, fixing his cold eyes on me. A bead of sweat dropped down my head, awaiting my verdict.