DNR (Do Not Reanimate)

Chapter 2 - Clean-Up On Aisle Twelve

I wished I'd eaten. Anything to dilute the acid taste of bile.

A date with the piss-spattered, graffiti-ridden porcelain throne of a Seven-Eleven bathroom was the last place I expected to end up.

I would've used the toilet of the CVS next door, but it was coated in a veneer of blood, guts, and fecal matter.

I know Amelia was in a rush, but the least she could've done was give me a heads up. "Hey Miles, this isn't your run of the mill medical emergency. The patient actually projectile shit out his own intestines then tried to get up and walk away."

It's poor form to not warn a guy before seeing a dead body, but it was a smart move on her part. If she'd led with that, I probably wouldn't have come.

"Miles, are you okay in there?"

"Just peachy, I think I ate some bad sushi," I replied, the thought of raw fish wrapped in seaweed making me retch into the toilet again.

I gargled and rinsed some sink water to wash the taste of stomach acid out of my mouth.

I exited the bathroom to see Amelia, a look of apology on her face. If I kept having to look at her naked compassion, I was going to Ralph again. I pushed past her and left the Seven-Eleven. A cheerful 'ding' announced my departure.

The rain pitter-pattered like usual, and people scurried across the sidewalk like it was any other day, like there wasn't a corpse twenty feet away from them. I'm not sure it would've made any difference even if they knew.
People tend to keep their head down when bad things were happening all around them. It's easier to look at the two feet in front of you than the chaos of the universe. I envied their ignorance, but I was long past the point of no return.

I took a deep breath and re-entered the CVS. Round two with the dead body.

Fluorescent lights on the brink of needing to be changed hung on the ceiling. Speckled grey tile spread out as far as the eye could see. If I didn't know any better, I would've used the word antiseptic. In the three checkout lines and twelves aisles of groceries, I couldn't see another living being. Half-empty shopping carts and haphazardly discarded groceries were strewn about the room. The whole scene looked like it had been arranged to look like a post-apocalyptic grocery story.

The only sounds in the room were the thrumming of the lights, the endless revolutions of the checkout counter treadmill trying to cycle ring up a box of Cocoa Puffs, and a muffled scraping coming from Aisle Twelve.

Aisle Twelve. The frozen meats section. A calmer, more collected version of myself would've found the irony amusing, but instead it almost sent me packing back to the Seven-Eleven.

I surveyed the room looking for somebody to share the experience, but even Amelia had elected to stay outside this time around. She motioned for me to get a move on. I needed to take a look before the police arrived. They aren't too keen on borderline criminal civilians edging in on their turf.

I urged my feet to carry my body forward. At Aisle Eleven, I felt my body start to shiver, only part of it was the cold emanating from the freezer.

The victim was a male in hospital scrubs that used to be a pleasant sky blue. They were far less pleasant with viscera and crap splattered all over them. The guy had been tall, well over six feet. His body was curled in a semi-fetal position. The bits of his skin that were unstained were corpse white, but I suspected that would've been the case even if he wasn't dead. The weather-inappropriate sandals and shoulder length, brown hair pulled into a braid suggested he'd been a human of the granola variety. I had to get closer to check, but he was definitely a human, no tell-tale signs of magical origin. He'd just been killed by magic.