Kraken: Revenge by Blood and Ink (fragment)

Cassandra “Kraken” Corred is a twenty-three-year-old professional athlete who receives unsettling news about her younger sister. After traveling to her hometown, she experiences a strange vision that ravaged her mind, leaving her suspicious towards the truth. Conflicted, she starts to question the veracity of the facts, but she is forced to take a pause from her quest and answer a call from an uncanny creature.

The morgue was in the basement of the East Wing. The set of descending stairs, ended abruptly in front of a red metal door. Cassandra opened it, revealing a long corridor lit by neon that couldn’t stick on the white stucco of the walls, making the aisle uncomfortably bright. The smell of chemicals tickled her nostrils and Cassandra stopped for a sneeze. But she barely made two more steps and sneezed again. This time she felt the need to shake her body in satisfaction. Nothing out of the ordinary so far. She continued down the corridor and opened a second door that led into a room with lockers, hooks, and benches. The scent persisted. She walked across the room towards a yellow door bearing a screwed in PVC plaque with the name “Morgue” etched and painted over the gouges. The odor increased with every step, serving as a confirmation that she was going in the right direction.

The moment Cassandra opened the door, the pungent smell of formalin mixed with strong cleansing chemicals barged into her nose, stinging, and carving down her throat until the first layer of tears emerged. But she stepped inside, just for her eyes to stop directly over the table where a naked body was lying. The dead man’s belly looked more like a balloon about to burst and the mud and rotten leaves in his hair could only mean that he spent some time in the river before he was washed ashore. There were violent gnaw marks on his left shoulder that tore most of his flesh and muscles down to the bone. The wounds spread all the way up to his ear – which was half missing, along with a strip of his hair and flesh. The water he was found in prevented the blood from coagulating over the wound by cleaning it, leaving everything exposed down to the white of the bone. With the absence of dark blood, Cassandra had the impression that she was staring at a true scale human made of wax and brought to a realism by the stuck leaves and mud stains.

She turned away from the cadaver and looked at the wall behind, giving her mind a pause to adjust to the view. It took a moment for the decaying body to lose its power over her gut and remain at the level of visual memories. She didn’t manage to do it without cleaning her throat from the acid debris throbbed by her stomach.

The medical examiner was sitting on a stool next to the table, halfway through a chicken sandwich, and about to take a sip from a coppery flask. At the sight of the visitor, he paused midair and started to study her back from top to bottom, left and right, with his lips slowly stretching into a grin as a result of his mind roaming free.

“You must be Cassandra.” The medical examiner broke the silence before the flask reached his lips. Cassandra turned when she heard her name. After he had enough of the content inside and eyed the remaining liquid through the small opening, he shoved the flask in between the man’s thighs so close to his groins that his fingers almost touched the victim’s genitalia. He, then, made use of the dead man’s legs to hold the flask in place, while he screwed back the cap.

“Never have I guessed that underneath such an impeccable body lies a frail stomach.” His words slipped out quickly, hiding no hints of being a lie.

“Never have I guessed that underneath such a shriveled body lies a repulsive character.” Cassandra replied with disgust. All of the sudden, his act seemed less disturbing next to his persona. “And you must be Francis.” Cassandra spat his name through still twisted lips.

“Charon.” His face turned from serious to a harrowing-to-watch smile in a snap of a finger. “Charon, if you will.”

“I see…” Cassandra felt her lips smile. The word tickled a mystical ego in her and she remembered Aiden’s words: and I name it after what you’ll become: a demigod. 

“Indeed, you do…” He ran his tongue behind the lips to clean the food. “Help yourself.” He pointed out at the folder laying on the desk without taking his eyes off her. He walked them shamelessly all over her body, with surgical precision not to miss any detail.

“I would appreciate it if you’d stop doing that.” Cassandra said coldly.

Francis shrugged with the excuse of one that might suffer from a condition and it’s beyond his power. Her anger roared within like the flames inside the kiln. And now, she was thinking whether this repulsion she felt was because of the dead body lying on the table or because of him. He had an unsettling face: lustrously skin that was both stretched and wrinkled with narrow waves around the moving features on his face. He was shaved clean, which increased the ambiguity of his age. But the overall tired composure, and a discreet wiggle in his neck, brought him closer to a century than five decades. That, and the fully white hair. But the obsessive habits of using skin treatment products and time spent in front of the mirror in the morning betrayed some fears. Or it might be that he’s simply miser and can’t get tired of money.

She took the printed results and started to go over them.

“Was there any diener that assisted you?” Cassandra asked, still flipping through pages back and forth.

“No, there was only me.” Francis replied. But his tone changed. The chair suddenly became uncomfortable, and he needed to find another position. The smile on his lips now was dictated, rather than instinctive.

“And why is that?” Cassandra closed the file and looked straight at him.

“After more than fifty years of doing this job, don’t you think I can handle one girl? Besides, she had such a lithe body, that I could maneuver her the way I wanted….” He let a creep of a smile stretch his thin moist lips.

It’s a bait! It’s a bait to snap! Cassandra poured cold waters from her rationale over the raging flames that burst out from her broken heart. With great ease, her mind imagined herself launching at the man, her fingers clamping around his neck, her fist exploding the flesh from his face while her knuckles crushed his old cheekbones. And moments after the life would flee from his body and while the last gasp of air draws in blood into his lungs, she would stop and look down at him, so that her satisfied face would be the last thing he sees.

“I need access to all the organs or tissues you stored from my sister during the autopsy.” Cassandra walked over her screaming ego and it drained her so much that she started to consider the possibility of satisfying her wrath. Only the comfort of a thought that there might be a recording device hidden somewhere numbed the pain caused by swallowed pride.

“That would be impossible, as I took none.” Charon crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“Reason being?” She couldn’t hold back the smile. She felt like she was plucked from reality and placed into a play, where the entire Universe was plotting against her already strained composure.

“The case presented to be simple; the autopsy, but a formality… a box to be checked so to speak. She was found on the track opposite to the abandoned hydropower plant. The explanation was and is simple. Teenagers go there for one, sorry, two things: to do drugs or orgies. Or both. And she had both, plenty of. Unfortunately…” Francis faked the politeness; the creepy smile did not abandon his face. “one of the two killed her. And it wasn’t the latter…” Francis added, hiding the side of his mouth like he was whispering the obvious. He even jiggled his eyebrows up.

“What can I say, Charon…” Cassandra sucked air through teeth as she pushed herself away from the tabletop. “You picked the wrong case to mess with.” There was no way he was recording something and talking with such nonchalance about what he did.

“Is this a threat?” Charon guffawed.

“Something tells me that you consider it.” Cassandra lifted her left hand and started to turn it in front of her eyes. Then she made a fist out of it; the tattooed tentacle of the colossal squid stretched over her bulging muscle.

“Are you gonna hit me?!” The medical examiner found new fuel for his laugh.

“Of course not. That would kill you on the spot. A guy like you feeds off the people’s struggles, dramas, life, and hopelessness. You can only enjoy life when others cave underneath you. You’re a bully. But unfortunately for you, so am I.” Cassandra let her arm down just to lock eyes with his.

Charron stopped from laughter. There wasn’t fear on his face, just confusion tinged with anxiety. He was looking at her with a puzzled grimace, unable to make any reading on her placid demeanor. Sweat started to laminate his forehead.

“Until next time… Charon.”

…

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