Elisa stretched, relishing the feeling of her spine popping. It had been a long day; while paperwork was the most boring part of her job, it also seemed to take the most time.

Something rustled behind the door. It was a quiet sound, barely worth noticing under normal circumstances, but Elisa was certain she was the only one left in the morgue. She’d been hoping to check again some of the more suspicious corpses, hoping for signs of magic that she had recently learned about, but that might have to wait in favor of rat chasing.

Elisa was tempted to simply lock up and leave, but the idea of coming back to files, or worse, bodies, gnawed at by rats was too unsettling. Reluctantly, she got up and grabbed a broom from the closet before entering the cold room.

She was met with silence. Looking around showed no sign of any vermin or intruders, and it was only to be thorough that Elisa slammed her broom several times on one of the cabinets, hoping to scare any unwelcome guests out.

No one dashed across the floor from underneath the cabinets, and Elisa was quite content to think that she had misheard earlier, her tired brain playing tricks on her.

Then something rapped in response, the same pattern her broom had played earlier, coming from inside one of the compartments.

Mistakes of all kinds happen; Elisa had had to reassure some very freaked out people that had woken up after being sent to her. The sound wouldn’t have been so strange if Elisa wasn’t sure that all bodies currently in this room had died distinctly violent and certain deaths.

She approached the cabinet carefully. “Hello?” she called out, once more poking the metal door with the broom.

A single boom sounded in response; if there were words, she couldn’t make them out.

Elisa thought that she should have left after first hearing noises. If she’d gone then, none of this would have been her problem and she could have gone to sleep while cuddling her cat none the wiser to strange happenings in the morgue. But she was still a doctor, and there was a potentially hurt and scared person trapped in a tiny box in a cold room.

Elisa couldn’t remember what kind of corpse was supposed to be there, and didn’t want to lose time by going to check. With outstretched hand, she unlatched the compartment and yanked the door open.

For a few moments, everything was silent.

Then a deep rumble sounded from within, and a disfigured, skinless hand grabbed onto the edge of the cabinet, leveraging a body out of it.

What came out was certainly not alive, but also certainly still moving.

Its flesh was rotting, muscles and sinew on full display. The eyes glowed in the half-darkness of the morgue, and Elisa wondered if that was a recent development or if someone had managed not to notice.

The creature roared and turned towards her, making Elisa grab the broom firmer and position it between herself and the creature. There was little place to maneuver, and even if Elisa could make it past the zombie to the door, that would just be postponing one problem and creating multiple others.

The creature stepped towards her, slow but purposeful. It’s movements were janky and stiff, but even as it ran into a trolley and sent instruments flying across the room, there was no denying it would likely overpower Elisa if given the chance. She readied the broom.

Hit, stab, guard, Elisa remembered her father’s lessons with the halberd. Distance is your friend. Not waiting for the corpse to be within arm’s distance of her, she swung the broom with all her might in a half-circle onto the undead body’s head; used the momentum to give herself room for a hard push to get it away from her, and brought the broom back up to protect against the zombie’s fists.

Dad would have been proud, she thought for a moment, before realizing that a broom was significantly lighter and less deadly than a halberd or even a spear. The zombie stumbled a bit and paused, confused but undeterred, and then kept advancing.

Well, Elisa could keep going all night, she had fantastic stamina, as many an old flame would agree. Squaring her shoulders, she repeated the cycle again, and then once more, putting more emphasis on the hit to aim for the head.

The second time, the zombie went down, its skull cracking and weak joints folding under the weight of the broom’s swing. Elisa sighed in relief.

She used her trusty weapon to poke at the corpse a few times, but it seemed truly dead this time – no sudden movements, eyes devoid of light.

It was also surprisingly heavy, and after a few tries Elisa gave up on trying to force it back into storage by brute force and focused on cleaning up. Both the zombie’s movements and her erratic lunges with the broom had rendered the room a terrible mess; if Elisa didn’t want to have to explain that the next day, she’d have to deal with it before going home.

She was picking up clamps when something grabbed her ankle.

The pain of the deep scratch made Elisa stumble. Her first thought was “gonna need disinfecting” as she once more took in the corpse’s dirty nails.

Her second thought was, “I thought I killed that fucker!” as she realized the its eyes were once again burning red.

Perhaps that was what had happened earlier, how it came to the morgue undetected, she mused. This time, it went down easier, a single blow enough to knock the fire from its eyes, but this time Elisa waited instead of continuing with cleanup.

Within a minute, it rose again. It was just enough time to mourn her favorite pair of slacks

Abandoning the broom, Elisa stomped hard on the skull, feeling it crack under her heel. What was she to do? There didn’t seem to be enough time between resurrections for her to go and get some help. Perhaps, tying it up and locking it in a closet could work, but that still ran the risk of someone else stumbling upon it first, which wouldn’t bode well for some unsuspecting intern.

She stabbed it with a scalpel.

The corpse still rose back, worse for wear but still as mindlessly resilient as before.

No, the moving corpse had to be dealt with as soon as possible.

Elisa frantically thought back to the occult books her detective friend had lent her. There were some chapters on undead creatures, but Elisa hadn’t paid them much mind, more interested in the ways people died than ways death got cheated.

There had been mentions of things like sanctified water, and positive energy pulses, but even if that wasn’t all gibberish, it wasn’t helpful to Elisa at all.

The answer came to her with a glance towards the lamp she was supposed to blow out as she was leaving. There was still plenty of oil in it, and – well – the corpse still seemed to use its muscles to move. Quite disgusted with herself, Elisa once more kicked the zombie’s jaw in and reached for the lamp…

The burnt remains stained the previously pristine floors, the smell sharp and unmistakable. She probably should have done that elsewhere, but moving far away or dragging the corpse anywhere else meant being vulnerable to it waking up and scratching or biting. The wound on her ankle hurt enough; she didn’t need more.

Exasperated, Elisa opened the doors to let the air in and swapped her broom for the mop. Somewhere in the distance, the clock rang an hour past midnight. With the way things were going, Elisa was looking at spending the night on the break room couch.

She wasn’t looking forward to explaining it to her cat.

—–

Ughhhh well this isn’t really angsty. Or fitting the prompt. But whatever, I’m way too tired to do something else. I’ve missed day 17 (at least for now), but hopefully I can catch up at some point…