Surprise, Surprise
Maria placed her caramel latte next to the corpse and cracked the window.
Light seeped into the basement generously, interrupted by people’s legs treading on the pavement. Morning freshness diluted the air of chemicals.
Maria rolled her shoulders and turned towards the corpse. It was small, deflated. Its cover hung low on the gurney’s sides. The right arm jutted up shriveled and dry, culminating in an outstretched index finger lecturing God herself somewhere up there.
Maria frowned. The frozen gesture looked almost familiar. She shrugged it off as a stroke convulsion. She would have to break the bones to fit the arm into the coffin.
“Okay, let’s make you handsome,” she said, slapping latex gloves on.
The corpse didn’t reply.
Maria pressed a sip of silky caramel against the roof of her mouth, and wheeled the instrument cart closer.
Pulling the cover, she recoiled.
Only once had she encountered a familiar face at work — Acho, a gypsy boy from her neighbourhood that had got mangled in a mechanised dump truck whilst rummaging.
Then, she’d curled up in the corner and wept. Now, warmth spread over her.
“Professor Ivanov, what a surprise!”
Maria let down her hair, browsed her phone’s playlist for “Sympathy for the Devil”, pressed play and swayed her hips in tune.
“Remember what you told me years ago when you wouldn’t let me pass chemistry, professor?”
Maria clasped the outstretched hand.
“You wagged that finger of yours,” said Maria. “This little piggy,” she began and snap-snap-snapped the brittle bones one by one, tucking the limb at the professor’s side.
“I begged, proved your marking wrong… but you wanted more than chemistry answers, didn’t you, professor?… Remember wagging that finger at me, saying… ‘over my dead body’?”
Maria jumped, leapfrogging over the corpse. She plopped onto the dead man’s stomach.
“It’s good you did, or I might have got another job and never seen you again. Because look where I am now, perv… over your dead body!”
She placed her fingers on the corpse’s eyelids, pulled them open by the lashes and leaned over the milky eyes. Jagger’s voice screeched through the loudspeaker. Maria swayed her hair and whoo-hooed over the corpse. Warm light and shadows of pedestrians’ legs danced on her triumphant face.
Stefan Sofiski
Stefan Sofiski is the pen name of a double miscast in the literary community: a left-brain structural engineer writing fiction, and a Bulgarian doing it in English. He holds a PhD in engineering and a Pushcart nomination in writing. He juggles these two worlds, often embarrassing himself in both. Stefan works in two intertwining registers: literary fiction (Unbroken Journal, Flash Fiction Magazine, Tint Journal) and thriller/noir (Shotgun Honey, Close to the Bone, Thriller Magazine).
