When she isn’t writing, Krystal Bean spends most of her time hiding dead bodies in the woods. Together with her Belgian Malinois, Remi, she trains to locate human remains as part of a search and rescue team. They split their time between a small town in middle Tennessee and San Antonio, Texas for search certification and volunteer work with the rodeo.
WORKING STIFF
by
Krystal Bean
The Code Blue alarm blared. Jackson sighed and ambled toward room 2A amidst the rush of doctors and nurses streaming past him. He might have to do this job, but he didn’t have to be enthusiastic about it. Noting the time on the clock over the nurses’ station, he still had four hours left on his shift. He quickly glanced at the calendar beneath it—May 14th—and sighed again. This year was dragging by.
Jackson saw the humor in having to work the graveyard shift, and he didn’t really mind it—at least there weren’t that many people. He’d always been an introvert. Luckily, most people didn’t even notice him as he went about his job.
With a detachment near boredom, Jackson watched the defibrillator deliver a shock that popped the patient off the bed. The life-signs machine steadily beeped a flat line tone. He hoped this wasn’t going to be one of the bad ones. Those still freaked him out. Blackness and an ear-splitting shrieking enshrouded the entire area when bad people died.
Luckily, a soft multicolored glow like the Northern Lights pervaded the room and he heard distant laughter instead. The old lady rose from the hospital bed and looked at him. She panicked as she looked back at her body where the doctor was pronouncing her dead at 4:30 am.
“It’s ok,” Jackson soothed. “You’re going to a good place where you won’t be in pain anymore.”
She looked at him questioningly and turned her head as someone in the light called to her. She seemed to recognize the voice and took a tentative step toward it. She stopped in wonderment and said, “I haven’t been able to walk in years!”
“You can do whatever you want now,” Jackson told her. “Just follow the voices.”
Smiling like a child, the old lady practically sprinted into the light. As usual, no one else in the room saw her or him.
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At times like these, Jackson guessed this wasn’t such a bad gig. Rubbing the scars on his wrists, he still wouldn’t have done it if he had known. Why hadn’t someone told him that he would be forced to be a glorified usher for spirits if he took his own life? That should have been on the internet somewhere. Now, he was stuck for the next 24 years ensuring good spirits went into the light.
Sometimes, in their fear and confusion, the spirits stayed and missed their opportunity. Then they either endlessly repeated a loop of their deaths or wandered continuously trying to reach out to the living, most of whom weren’t sensitive enough to perceive them.
A few people could feel the spirits or hear them. Some even caught a glimpse of them, but it only led to fear or excitement for the living. It didn’t resolve anything for the dead. Jackson didn’t have to worry about the bad spirits. They got sucked into that howling black vortex without a choice.
Jackson had gotten used to it after two years. Every night he found himself standing in front of a time clock in St. Remington’s Hospital at midnight where he clocked in, worked his shift, and clocked out at 8 am. The next thing he knew, he was at the time clock again ready to start another day. If it hadn’t been explained to him when he died, he would have thought he was in Hell. He just had to do his penance for the same amount of time he had been alive—only 24 more years to go.
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It usually wasn’t that busy on his shift, so Jackson couldn’t really complain. However, there had been a recent increase in unexplained deaths in the pediatric ward. The babies were the hardest for him.They never got a chance to experience life. Since they were too young to understand, he carried them to the light, where they floated away. At least with the babies the blackness never came.
Jackson walked to the isolated pediatric ward to check on the babies. The new nurse, Marva, leaned over one of them. Gasping, he realized she was pressing a pillow onto the face of the struggling infant. Without thinking, Jackson yelled, “No!”, and instinctively grabbed her hand. Shivering, Marva reflexively pulled her hand back.
“Did she just feel me?” Jackson wondered. He had never tried to touch or even communicate with the living before. Marva rubbed her hand and looked around wildly, the baby temporarily forgotten.
“Is someone there?” Marva stammered.
Jackson didn’t answer. He was as shocked as she was and didn’t know what to do.
Marva slowly moved back to the baby and pushed the pillow down on his face again. This time, Jackson consciously tried to pull the pillow away from her. Unable to move it, he shoved hard against Marva’s chest. She fell backward with a grunt and began laughing maniacally.
“I knew it!” she cackled. “I knew there was life after death. I just had to kill enough of them to open the veil. Where’s Tommy? I want to see my little boy.”
Jackson didn’t move.
“I know you’re there!” Marva cried. “Why won’t you let me see my baby? He was only four days old when he was taken from me. He needs his Momma.”
“Answer me!” she whispered in a hoarse half-cry.
Getting no response, Marva rose and walked to an instrument tray in the corner of the room. “If you won’t bring him to me, then I’ll go to him,” she announced defiantly, grabbing a scalpel off the tray.
“Don’t do it!” Jackson screamed and lunged for her hand.
Marva sliced through her carotid artery before he could reach her and blood spurted across the room. As quickly as the team of doctors arrived, there was nothing they could do to save her. Trembling, Jackson wondered if he was about to get a new coworker on the graveyard shift.
Piercing shrieks broke through his thoughts as the blackness swallowed Marva’s spirit.