I like to imagine that when the medical examiner in the broward county ME office first cut into my subcutaneous tissue covering my chest blood began to pool where the scalpel separated the walls of flesh ,but we both know or at least now you do that no blood pooled,there were no screams and there was no great sense of emotion except that I was between him and his lunch hour. He began his dictation with a low near bored tone “the autopsy of john doe case number 27A-112 has begun at eleven forty five am” to tell the story of how I became case number 27A-112 we have to roll back the clock two days to september sixth.
the florida sky was a flat blue field with no remorse for me, and the fact that I was sweating through a 40 dollar button down shirt that hugged me in all the wrong ways, making my hands slick with the body's dew pull and pry at the idea of being comfortable all stuffed into a brown leather perfect when it was new that dissected me into two pieces and all this was tied together wiith black wool pants then rode to low to stay up and hung to high to make sense I guess you could say I was in my was in my subways best.
lungs held in a blue plastic bag sitting in a shallow metal pan weigh five hundred and fifty grams stained black with tar and green with shrubs, with the texture of a kitchen sponge that been used and washed closer to the trashcan than a dirty dish, three pounds a stomach filled with holes and scored from acid that burned to strong and stretched from being filled with materials meant to fill a space and one bullet.
I was walking along the three mile trail i had been making for the past two years that began at the publix two miles south of where I lived to the panera bread one mile north where I ended my day and began my night, I also happen sell drugs to supplement my income. Why not tell shit i'm already dead what are you going to do call the cops. so with my cracked black nokia flip I called Granny-L and made my regular order for fifty shirts Untucking my forty dollar cage I picked up my pace pushing to be through the front doors of my night job.
After my shift was over I took an uber home, I let out a sigh of relief stepping out of a wrinkle covered born again christians nisan, who had been telling me I was going to hell for the last six minutes and then I smile and wave so she will leave. The neighborhood was oddly quiet, but instead of looking around or taking a walk around the block like I usually do when it's quiet I take my keys out and walk up to my front door. When I looked down to force my key into the deadbolt I hear footsteps followed by metal clicks. I turned but before I could see the person who was rushing me I was swallowed by a curtain of darkness.
The M.E. described it as “a heavy blow to the back of the cranium with what appears to be an instrument resembling a pipe or metal tube that caused bruising and swelling of the brain but does not appear to be the cause of death”. After dictating this he peers closer to the bullet hole in my lower abdomen prodding the now cold flesh with his gloved hand and finding nothing remarkable he moves to check the bruising on my ribs and deciding with no mending visible happened close to the time of death.
A hard slap woke me from the crimson halls of a forced dream and the smell of freshly turned dirt and turpentine washed over and around me. Turning my head I apraised where I was and my eyes fell on the face of my captor, he was about six feet tall pasty white skin and brown hair with a black sweat suit on and rubber ducky yellow rubber gloves covered his hands. But what had made me turn from fearful to angry was when I looked up at him I saw his face and in that moment knew I was dead. The next two hours began with a three kicks to my abdomen and a long throaty laugh. I wasn't so much angry that I was going to die, I never planned on living past twenty three anyway it was that he was going to enjoy killing me. I am not saying that i was going to kill myself I just never had any real interest in the act of living, never really felt alive in the first place. So in the moments following the kicks to the chest I began to heckle my killer, which shortly have me a bullet lodged in my lower abdomen and a slow long bleed into darkness. The M.E. finished my autopsy at twelve forty five, my life and my death was worth one hour of his time which concluded with “john doe’s cause of death appears to be extreme loss of blood through the gunshot wound to the lower abdomen” . when the police found me , I mean my body it was in the parking lot behind long john silvers with no clothes and wrapped in a clear plastic shower curtain and taped to it was a note written in black sharpie saying , this is body of a sinner who deserved to die because he defied god's plan for man to be with woman . apparently following the election I was the fifth body that was found so far with a similar note taped to me. Is this what makes us great again. My killer has not been found and I followed his other John Doe’s into numbered county graves on a sunny tuesday afternoon.
