Cleaning up

   When he finished cleaning the place up, he lit up a cigarette and decided to take a nice deserved break. He did need to go and throw all that was still stained with blood, but he knew he had time to do it in a moment. After all, the crime was already solved and everyone involved had gotten some kind of closure after such a horrible event. So, he cleaned the murder scene and allowed the owners of the property to sell the house or at least attempt a sale. It was always difficult to pass such a property on to someone else, but it was feasible and people knew they had to try and do it in order to move on and close their wounds.

 Fred was the guy police hired to do the cleaning up. He was very well known for being the first one to offer a top-notch service, never denying a service, no matter how horrible the murder scene was. He was known to have cleaned a whole room splashed with brain and skull fragments after a bunch of people from a suicidal cult had decided to shoot themselves before the police could get them for selling child pornography. He did it all by himself, using many types of liquids and concoctions to properly remove the traces of blood and other body fluids, as well as the foul stench of death that could really linger for a long time.

 He was also known for working by himself. Many people always worried about him not been able to do it in the time they wanted him to do it, but he always did the work in the time they had agreed on and he even noticed construction or design flaws that other experts could fix on a house. Fred even saved some precious objects from destruction, by taking care of them, always thinking that every family would love to keep something from the person that had left them, if it had happened in their house. And if it hadn’t, he was always very good at finding evidence that could have been ignored at first sight.

 Besides all of that, the man was cheaper than the competition and his clients really loved that part of his business. Of course, his main employer was the police department, but even them had to use other services sometimes, in order not to look as if they had a preference for him of any kind. He understood that very well and just kept working on other crime scenes and also fixing houses that needed his attention, although he really liked working after something horrible had happened somewhere, because he felt he could help bringing that place into a better place, he could even make people feel better and less afraid.

 When he finished smoking, he pressed the cigarette against a plank of wood and then threw it into one of his garbage bags. He put in the piece of wood to and walked down the stairs to put it all in his car. The afternoon was almost over and he needed to get to the landfill before they closed. He could sell some of the things he had found in the room he had cleaned for good money, things that a family would not like to save but that he could take advantage of.

 He was able to get there just in time and, after selling some objects to the operator, Fred went back to his place: it was a tiny apartment above a pizzeria, near downtown. The place was old and rather unpleasant if one considers the smell of anchovies, but he got used to it. Besides, he didn’t really need that much room to live, as he lived by himself. The only other living being in his apartment was a cat called Pineapple. He was fat, had yellowish fur and the hairs on his head seemed to always be working independently from the rest of his body. So, the name had been chosen perfectly, the moment Fred had met him in a crime scene.

 He suspected he had been owned by a girl who had been killed with his parents by a burglar, but he didn’t know for sure. He asked the police if he could keep the cat and no one seem to mind. From that moment on, the cat was named Pineapple and it often sat by the window, looking at the fishery on the other side of the street. The funny thing was that he could actually go there and eat it if he wanted, but he never left the apartment. He was just one of those creatures that one never understands, no matter how long you try to make sense out of its existence. A very human animal, in that sense.

 Fred had never married and had never felt the urge of having children. He did like women and he did like children but all of that didn’t really fit with his work and his work was the one thing that actually made him feel good. He had discovered the job later in life, after been fired from his workplace and then wondering around for years, from one menial job to the other, lasting six months at most in each one of those assignments. His parents never approved of his lifestyle and they eventually stopped talking to him in a frequent basis, deciding to only contact him during the holidays or when they felt it was necessary.

 The last time he had talked to them was when his grandmother Libby had died from old age. Libby was one of those adorable older women, the kind who love to be pampered but also enjoy saving parts of their old lives all around their house. He was the one in charge of cleaning up her house, before it was put for sale in order for his parents and her other children to profit from it. He felt awful helping them doing that to her, but it wasn’t as if he had a choice. They didn’t listen, they just said things to him and he was expected to comply. He tried to rebel against that but decided not to try ever again, as it never led anywhere.

 He found Pineapple’s bowl there, as she had owned several cats herself but they had all died because she overfed them. He did find a couple of dead cats around the house, but they had died such a long time ago that the smell was not a problem. He also kept a nice picture of her and his grandfather and also a beautiful pair of shoes she had kept in a secret storage section of the house, that no one had ever noticed before he cleaned up the place. He also found some of her secret savings and a couple of jewelry items he could sell at any price.

 But he never did. He thought it was all too precious and selling it would devaluate everything. So, he kept the shoes and the jewelry in his closet and put all the money he found into a bank account that he promised himself only to use if his financial problems ever got as the ones in his past. But thanks to his cleaning business, that was almost impossible. It wasn’t that he was rich or anything of the sort, but he had always been very careful with money, despite being horribly unlucky when trying to find employment. He was one of those people that really only need money to live but they find no actual joy in having any.

 His flat was very modest, his cat was second-hand and clothes had never been a concern of his. His loves were doing his job and walking around beautiful parts of the country, in those moments he allowed himself to go on vacation and enjoy himself a little bit. Fred did feel a bit sad to realize that he didn’t really have anyone to share those experiences with, but understood that not every single person in the world was meant to be in a relationship. It was one of many things he had learned in the cleaning business and working with deceased people.

 Everyone makes such a fuss about life and death and about what you own and who you share it with and so on and Fred found all of that to be utter stupidity. He just wanted to feel that he could accomplish something, no matter how small, and that was it. He didn’t need to fill his life with a bunch of things that he didn’t really need it. He even tried finding new hobbies and passions and it did work, with some things, but it he was always back to work on time and he always very attentive of his tiny apartment and his cat. The top priorities never changed and some people thought that indicated that he was sad or depressed.

 And, although he did feel a bit lonely sometimes, he enjoyed his life thoroughly. He didn’t care for having more or changing something from what he knew. He felt great about it and had realized that he didn’t need any more from life. He didn’t even understand why some people demanded so much just because. He had his things, his little joys, and that was enough for a man like Fred.

Tough job

   The body arrived at the morgue very late at night. Doctor Smith was there to receive it and check it before anyone else. It was one of those cases that she hated to attend: a suicide. The victims were often very young, kids that hadn’t even known love or anything in life, all the good things that she knew came up later in life, during college or when you started to live as an adult. Doctor Smith was still young, or so she like to think, so the see those young people on her table was beyond heartbreaking.

 She had the obligation to check the body in order to give a proper statement of what had happened, no matter how many witnesses were there. Insurance companies were to blame in this case, because most people would never want their children or parents being opened up only to check something that was already known. But it was part of her work and she just had to do it and in those dark hours of the night, which didn’t really make things better. She just put on her gloves and started working.

 The body had multiple lacerations, deep cuts in the wrists and even some smaller ones in other parts of the body, as in the chest, the face and the thighs. She took pictures of all of it, putting special attention to the smallest incisions, which she believed had been caused by a razor blade. A knife would never be that exact or cut in that way. Besides, she knew perfectly how different cuts looked. She had too much experience with things like that, so she tried not to overthink this when checking a body.

 After taking the pictures, she started checking for other marks on his body. She only found one big lump on her head, probably caused by something hitting that point a while ago. It hadn’t fully healed but it was there and it was still noticeable. She took pictures of the head, carefully tilting it to one side and to the other. Touching their faces was always overwhelming, and she had a technique for it: she looked straight at them and thought of her children, her family and every happy face she had seen recently.

 Sometimes she cried in silence when she checked the bodies, but it was always for a little while. She would then dried her tears with a tissue and move on with her work. But that time, her phone rang when it never did. It was too late at night and her bosses would never call at that time. She wished, but she would often get up to their calls, in the afternoon. It was the worst thing to have to sleep at odd hours and then be awakened by them, calling to ask things that she had already reported on thoroughly. But as with everything, she had grown accustomed to it.

 That time, it was one of her bosses who had been awakened himself by a call. Apparently, the body Doctor Smith had on her table was not only the body of a victim of suicide, but also the one of the son of a prominent government official. They were calling every single person in the city that could help cover up what had happened, at least for a little while. Apparently, the man was part of a very religious cult that had been growing in reconnaissance all over the country and he had gained his post because of that.

 To the doctor, it all reeked of corruption and she hated to be part of things like that. She had been asked to do things like that before but she had always been saved by her bosses at the very last minute. This time though, there was no way someone would save her from doing something she really didn’t wanted to do. She told her boss she hadn’t finish the autopsy, so that he should call her later in the day for when she had completed the whole thing. From then on, they could discuss the delay of the final report, not before.

 The man was about to talk further but she hung up and he didn’t call back. She had been clear enough and she had a job to do. Her hands were shaking, because all of those attitudes made her really mad, but she tried to clear her head and move on to more pressing things. She started opening the body a while after she had hung up. Everything inside of the boy was normal, nothing was out of place except some strange abnormalities that she didn’t recognize at first, and so she decided to do some tests.

 A thorough blood test would take a long time in a regular hospital but in a morgue it was a little bit faster. It would take an hour or so, time she spent checking the rest of the body and having something to eat. After all, she hadn’t eaten one bite for a long time. Her husband would often pack some things to snack on at work, because he knew very well she missed meals because of her work. In spite of it all, she loved what she did and really thought she made a difference for the rest of the world.

 She ate a yogurt, a banana and when she was in the middle of a cookie, the blood test was completed by the computer. She finished eating while reading the information and she was shocked to see what was on the screen. She looked at the body and looked at its surroundings. She put on a new pair of gloves and checked carefully for blood on the table and on herself. She used a mirror that was always there, unused, to see if she was safe. It was horrible to think like that but she knew being careless was unforgivable. HIV was not something to take on lightly.

 How a seventeen-year-old kid had been infected with that various, she did not know. And suddenly she realized why they wanted everything to be covered up and delayed. It wasn’t the fact that the kid had committed suicide but that he had HIV and maybe even that he was gay… That was too much to assume, because drug addicts were also prone to the disease, but she had checked the body carefully and there were not traces of injections on his arms or anywhere else on his body. She checked again but the results were the same.

 Doctor Smith closed the body and left it as untouched as she could. She finished late or very early, however people may have thought about it. She expected another call from her boss soon, as her shift was not very far from ending. However, he did not do that but decided to get there in person, which was highly irregular. What was even worse, was the fact the child’s parent was also in the building, apparently waiting for his cover up to be confirmed. Her blood was boiling once again.

 She explained the case to her superior and he just listened to everything she had found. When she finished reporting her results, he asked if she had written it all already. And she nodded; she had finished only minutes before their arrival. She had printed out a copy and put the digital version on a portable device. The man grabbed both and then told her it was very important that she understood that no part of that information could leak out of the building. He then announced the man was going to see the body.

 Before she could protest the man and his bodyguards were there. She asked the armed men to leave, stating that they had to respect the bodies that were stored in that room. So they left and only the doctor, her boss and the parent stayed there in silence. She looked at the politician as he looked at his son. She tried to decipher what that look on his face meant, but it was too hard. The man was an expert already; he had learned to use that same face in his political life and had found a way to use in his personal one.

 The man left a few minute afterwards. Her boss took the information away and reminded her of shutting her lips, as saying anything could endanger all of their posts and even their lives. The man had grown too powerful and it was necessary to know not to talk until they knew exactly what to say.

 Her boss left too and her shift finally ended. She was tired and her head was spinning. She thought it was criminal what was happening but she had no say in the matter, her voice had been silenced in a second. It was good to leave for home though, and enjoy that life that seemed so far away from her work.

Changing lives

   Thomas had gotten used to working out almost every waking hour of the day. He would wake up very early in the morning, sometimes at five in the morning, in order to get dressed up fast, hop onto his wheelchair and then drive directly to the gym. He would help the owner open up shop and then he would spent the whole day in there, resting only once to have lunch in the gym’s cafeteria and sometimes to drink some water and other drinks he ingested in order to have proper level of vitamins and all of those.

 He had been invested in growing his strength since he had came back from his service overseas. He had lost one leg and had been in treatment for his other one for a long time. Actually, the only times he spent out of the gym or his house would be spent in the hospital, in his treatment. He would have some physical therapy and then receive several shots that would help his body deal with all the scars and, especially, with the psychological consequences of everything that had happened in the desert.

 In his team, he hadn’t been a leader or someone too important. He was just one of the guys, trying to realize the mission that had been entrusted to them. They had to patrol small towns and suburbs looking for terrorists, for people attempting to use their dwindling power to hurt a bunch of invaders. He had told those exact words to his psychiatrist, telling her that he understood how damaging their existence there was but that he was younger somehow, even when it had happened only a few months before.

 Thomas was a bit resentful of the full thing, having no intention of going back or of wanting to contact the other guys that had participated in the war with him. Even watching pictures he had taken there was awful, hurting his head and his insides. He even burned some of them, but his wife prevented him from doing it with the whole lot. She hid everything in a box, far from his reach in order to preserver things she thought he would need in the future. She thought she knew what was best for him.

But in reality, she had no idea. What he wanted was to build himself up again, to be strong and fit in order for the world not to be able to destroy him. When his foot blew up, he felt he was made of clay or something like that. He felt like something and not someone, like one little piece in a large game that didn’t care about people like him. And he didn’t want to be just that, he had grown fed up of the whole soldier life, only entering it because he needed the money they paid to help his family out. But he had other dreams, before all of that. Not anymore though.

 Everyone person that went to that gym had grown to know Thomas in one-way or the other. They all knew he was the guy without one foot but also as the guy that could spend almost two hours in the same weight station. It was amazing to see him sweat but not care too much about it, going on and on. Many asked him for advice and he would give it to them but he was always clear about not letting them getting too close. He didn’t want any friends or anything of the sort. He didn’t want to compromise at all.

 That’s why his relationship with his wife had grown sour and stale. They didn’t have sex anymore and she claimed it wasn’t because of his accident but he felt that wasn’t the case. However, he was honest with himself and he knew he had relinquished any need for sexual relationships.  He had no interest in them, even if his penis proved to be working still. His doctors had assured him he could have children if he wanted to, but the truth was that he had no intention to have any kids.

 He wasn’t interested in living the life they had always wanted for him. His family, his wife, his friends in his soldier team and everyone else thought that knew what he needed in his life, what he had to and how he had to do it. And he had done exactly that for a long time, accepting the life he had been almost forced to live. But now he felt free somehow, he felt that by losing a part of himself, he had allowed real freedom to enter his life. It finally felt like he had a reason to live and not just go by.

 One day, his wife finally exploded in a fit of rage. She broke some plates and threw the box filled with his pictures and medals to his face. She yelled and demanded some action from him, something to tell her he was still the same man she had married. But the truth was that he wasn’t and he told her exactly that. He also said that he would be picking up his things and that he would be happy to sign any papers she wanted him to sign. He wheeled himself out of the house and then left for the gym.

 That night, he went back home to find it empty. She had probably left for her mother’s house or something. He stood up from the chair and decided right then and there that he didn’t need it anymore. He would get some crutches and then a prosthesis for his disappeared foot. He didn’t wanted to stay as a cripple, he needed to take the freedom he had been granted and use it to make whatever he wanted in life with it. He put all of his things on a few boxes, carried them to the car and then drove right into a motel to sleep for the night. It was the best night sleep he had in a long time.

 A few weeks later, he signed the papers his former wife’s lawyer had for him in his office. He was using the crutches then and had already sign up to get a prosthetic foot. It was going to cost a lot but him being a retiree from the army would get him some kind of discount. He was happy that day, celebrating the whole thing with one of his only friends, the owner of the gym. He was already thinking of getting a job, when his friend told him he would be welcome to work as a trainer in the gym. Thomas accepted in a heartbeat.

 He eventually got a nice little house, he was enjoying himself a lot at work and was even open to having new friends and maybe even a romantic relationship. He had built his body to be the one he wanted and now he was doing all he could to be the guy he had always wanted to be as desires and wishes go. He was finally himself and that made him smile from time to time, especially at those times he was alone and he remembered everything that had happened in his life and how much could still happen.

 Thomas was eager for more.