Basic Physiology

When I came to, the rain was coming down so hard Charlie’s office felt like a submarine in a dive: Water streaked the windows, warping the streetlights—making me seasick.

“This isn’t possible,” Charlie said. He peeled off his gloves and tossed them in an aluminum bin.

“This is a piece of your lung,” he said, lifting a vial from the table and shaking it. “I’ve got brain, liver and heart on slides under the scope. All dead tissue.”

“Isn’t that what we expected?”

Charlie bowed his head and squeezed his temples.

“I don’t take this stuff for granted, Sean. The physiology is very straightforward. Your heart is pumping, but your blood…” he lifted another tube, full of crimson muck, “…is no good. It can’t possibly carry oxygen. Your systems should be shutting down. You should be a vegetable.”

“Or at least have a hell of a headache. So what, you’re saying this is some sort of black magic?”

Charlie shrugged.

“Know any voodoo priests?”

“No. But I know a voodoo priestess.”

Charlie laughed.

“And why would she bother raising you from the dead?”

“No idea,” I said, suddenly smiling. “She’s the one who killed me in the first place.”

This here’s a quick post for Andy Black’s Two For Tuesday prompt. This week the words were Black Magic, and since it fit so well with the story I’ve written for the prompt the last couple of weeks, I figured I’d keep going.

The Series:
Dead Man Walking // X Marks the Spot // Postmortem // Basic Physiology // Les Moelleux // Her Body Begs for Death // The Talisman // Madelaine