Deceased: Victoria L. Darrow
Sex: Female
Age: 27 years
Time of Death: November 5, 2010, 10:30pm
Sarah glanced at the clock on the tiled wall. It was nearing midnight. She turned back to the body on the stainless steel table.
Victoria had been a beautiful girl. Her long, dark hair lay in wet curls around her head like a wild halo. Red lipstick smeared her plenteous lips. Mascara from her thick lashes streaked down her cheeks, it's black matching the filmy dress clinging to the curves of her body. From the look of it, it would have had been revealing even before it was soaked by rain and blood.
Sarah's eyes slid to the crimson stain that spread across the girl's left side. Victoria had been broadsided while driving home from work and had died at the scene. Sarah hoped, as she often did in cases like this, that she'd never seen her end coming -- that the poor girl was here one moment, then simply whisked away somewhere better the next.
"I'm sorry, Victoria." Sarah murmured into the silence as she began to carefully remove a ring from her finger. She placed the ring into a box that held other things once belonging to Victoria; a pair red five-inch heels, a matching red clutch, a sparkling ruby heart charm on a broken necklace chain. Victoria clearly had an affinity for red.
As Sarah began the delicate, regrettable task of cutting Victoria's dress free of her body, she imagined the kind of life Victoria might have lived. She noted the racy red panties that peeked out beneath the dress as she cut. They were the kind a woman wore for someone else to see, the kind a woman wore for someone else to take off.
A few small bruises high on Victoria's inner thigh did not appear to have resulted from the crash. Sarah leaned closer. They looked like small bite marks. Hickies? Perhaps left behind by the overzealous mouth of a lover?
Sarah felt a twinge of envy. She had known a few lovers in her life, but none with that kind of passion. Even in death, Victoria was marked by her lover.
Sarah was reminded it had been some time since she had been marked by anyone, if truly ever. Lately, she'd spent most evenings locked away in the sterile rooms of her family's funeral home, working late into the night, having one-sided conversations with corpses. She wasn't sure how she had let herself slip into such a lonely life. Sometimes she felt scarcely more alive than the company she kept -- merely breathing amongst the dead.
"It's easier this way," she thought. "Safer too. At least I know what to expect from one minute to the next. Not like poor Victoria, here."
Sarah finished with Victoria and wheeled her body into a large refrigerated room. She would wait to do anything further until she had spoken with the family tomorrow morning. She scooped up the box of Victoria's things on her way out of the morgue.
She rode the elevator from the basement and wound her way through a series of hallways and doors that led to the wing of the house where she and her family lived.
When she was a child, the other children teased her because her home was also a mortuary. In truth, she realized later, they were scared of her. She'd learned to adapt to the outcast way of life early on. Unlike her school-age peers, she had looked to her home as a place of refuge and retreat. The Bennett Manor Funeral Home was a stately, historic Victorian that sat on the edge of town. Her family of undertakers had resided there for the last century.
The manor was a work of art all its own, full of ornate woodwork, stained glass and antiquities. It was as macabre as it was magnificent.
Sarah basked in its stillness. The rest of her family was on vacation. She had volunteered to stay, knowing that a holiday with her parents wouldn't have proven to be much of a vacation at all. Besides, she liked the peace.
She stopped by the entrance to the office and stood at the door, fingering the key to unlock it. Procedure was to place the deceased's belongings inside for safe keeping until the family arrived to retrieve them.
"Maybe, just this once," she murmured to herself, returning the keys to her pocket instead and ascending the regally engraved mahogany staircase to her bedroom.
Sarah set the box on her bed and stepped back, unbuttoning her blouse. She shed the rest of her clothes on the way to the bathroom. Catching a glimpse of herself in a full-length mirror, she stopped and doubled back to look.
"Not bad," she mused. Her body was voluptuous, not unlike the late Victoria's. Full breasts emphasized by a trim waist and curvy hips. Sarah opted for a lab smock instead of black, clingy dresses these days.
"No wonder I don't get second looks. Why am I hiding?" she brooded.
Tracing her hands up her sides, Sarah thought of how Victoria's skin had been warm not so long ago. Now she would never be able to embrace her lover again. Pity for Victoria rose up in her throat. Or perhaps it was the regret borne of her own body going untouched for so long that stung her eyes.
Sarah let her hand drift down to the shadow of tight curls at the junction of her thighs. She left her fingers poised just above her tender spot, so neglected. She lingered there for only a moment before retreating to the shower.
After toweling off and slipping into a white cotton chemise, Sarah perched herself on the edge of her bed and pulled the box into her lap. She had developed a burning curiosity about Victoria's life. Such a tragic end to such a vibrant life, or so she imagined.
She withdrew the red purse and gingerly opened the clasp. Inside she found typical purse-things -- lipstick, a powder compact, a handful of colorful plastic credit cards. Amongst the cards, Sarah found a bright-eyed Victoria beaming up from the photo on her ID.
There was also a small bottle of perfume inscribed with an unfamiliar but exotic sounding name. It smelled divine. She couldn't resist spritzing some onto her wrist, then the base of her neck.
Amongst the rest of the clutter, Sarah saw a red light flash from Victoria's phone. The screen showed a new text message. Sarah paused, feeling guilty for snooping, but her fingers were quicker than her conscience, and a moment later she was reading the screen.
Get home quick, baby. Been thinking about your sexy ass all day. This last message was from someone named Loren. Letting her curiosity get the best of her, she scrolled down to other messages. Most of them were from Loren. A text from that same morning read, Sorry I made you late. Couldn't resist how beautiful you looked...or how good you tasted.
Sarah read on, feeling like a voyeur peeking in on the host of little intimacies exchanged between lovers.
The mix of thrill and guilt Sarah experienced were to be expected. Something else was not. The more she read, the more arousal stirred within her, stretching itself out into her limbs like an animal awakening hungry from a prolonged hibernation.
She pushed the box away and, sitting on her knees with Victoria's phone clutched in her hand, she spread her legs slightly to allow her free hand to fit between them.
She began to stroke herself, slowly at first, teasingly, spreading her wetness between her fingers. She found pictures next, pictures Victoria had sent to Loren -- suggestive poses, some of them nude.
Even better, Loren had returned the favor, sending Victoria similar pictures of himself. He was handsome, thick, dark hair, sharp-jawed, large brown eyes. Her entire sex spasmed in reaction to one particularly lurid image of his naked erection.
Sarah laid the phone with the erotic picture on the bed in front of her. She leaned forward, straddling the bed and bracing herself on one arm to work her clit in increasingly frantic circles. She rolled her hips against her hand, imagining she was impaled upon the cock her eyes were hungrily fixed on. Loren's cock. Loren's magnificent cock.
