Corpse Hunting

I went looking for a corpse today.

My friend Daniel had not been seen in two weeks, and we were all starting to be a bit worried about the guy. After all, the fucker drives around in a little 49cc mosquito bike. So when the Emmster called a search for him because we hadn't seen the fucker in close onto 2 weeks, and his facebook account didn't show any activity, we started worrying about where he was.

This morning, Emmster and Razzle asked if I could come to the Colombo General hospital to see if he was there, how could I refuse?

So I went off to Colombo General to see if the guy had been admitted, and I, of course, had a tough time convincing them to let me in with my laptop and my camera in my bag. I'm used to this. So it really didn't bother me much.

When I finally did get inside with Emm and Razz we went to the Inquiries desk and found that no one like Daniel had been brought in during the past week. But we were told, that since we were in the area, we should try the mortuary.

*gulp*

The fucking mortuary!

Yes, we debated it for a bit, but we finally agreed that we should go, just in case.

So we went to the mortuary and spoke to the cops there, and there were three bodies that had not been identified. I asked if i could see them. They agreed, and off we went to do body hunting.

When we went, the Emmster, bless her heart, wanted to come and see it with me. Trauma shared is trauma halved, she said. But somehow, I couldn't be anything but macho and I asked her to stay outside.

So I went and saw the bodies.

When I thought of the morgue I first thought CSI/24/X-Files kind of morgue. All stainless steel, and drawers, and antiseptic. Then I realised this was Sri Lanka, and the morgue was probably built in Colonial times, and started hoping for old-school freezers with ceramic tiles.

What I got, however, was a pile of bodies, many of them desiccated by the freezing in a 40foot refrigerated container. That's it. A literal pile of corpses. Many of them had the skulls open and the brains removed and the halves of the skulls were hanging on by strips of skin. The smell was, not too bad I guess. Either that, or my brain was so traumatised I had no idea what the hell was going on.

Now I've seen some horrendous stuff in my time. The '83 riots, the '89 JVP time, various accidents and stuff have left me pretty inured to it. But there was something really disturbing about a pile of corpses. I still can see the half-rotted and desiccated leg that was sticking out of the bottom of the pile. It wasn't freaky but it did disturb me quite a bit.

Then I went and had lunch. And beer.

Postscript:

Soon after publishing this we found that our friend was alive and well. That he was merely sick and not in the mood to talk to anyone. He will not be alive for much longer after I get my hands on him.