Exhibition / Prologue : The Animatron
When they cut her open, what they found inside was scarcely human.
She was undone, the threads crawling off her like a maddening map of black roadways, all of it spilling out onto the stainless steel table. Inside her, they found rods of rebar crudely welded to gizmos, pumps, and gears. Her opened ribs were webbed with chicken wire, and within her open chest, a shimmering black liquid pooled and drowned where a steel pipe took the place of her spine. Things had been replaced and moved about, but everything was still there in some way. Despite her missing organs, her structure was still human—a clockwork imitation of our anatomy draped in perfectly preserved flesh. But human. The only thing that was truly gone was her head.
“Well… She still has great tits.” A man dressed in scrubs laughed as he shook one of her breasts in a nitrile-gloved hand.
“You’re sick in the head, you know that?” A man greying in receding hair and patched beard, dressed in a faded striped suit, leaned against the far wall.
“Yeah.” The Pathologist smiled, “What do you expect given my clientele?” He reached down between her legs and examined the seams. Her thighs were sewn off at the hip joint, and there was another sealed crevasse that allowed the legs to be posed. He put her in a birthing position. “This is something entirely unique, though. I’ve never seen anything like this.” He played with the knee and foot joint, twisting it around and around.
“Can you stop playing with it? It’s not a damn doll.” The Detective looked away, flaring his nostrils and curling his lips into his teeth.
“Hard to agree, Detective.” The Pathologist set the leg back down, the foot faced inward towards her hamstring. “Her body is perfect. Hair.” He plucked at her pubis mons. “Skin.” He caressed her thigh. “Nails.” He flicked her toenail, it made a loud click sound. “This preservation is the work of a craftsman.” He finally looked up at the Detective. “Where did you find her again?”
The Detective pursed his lips and swallowed, avoiding The Pathologist’s gaze.“Got a call about a gunshot near the old theater in Gamebridge.” He scratched his chin, “When we got there, we found it all strung up to tubes. Head was nowhere to be found.”
The Pathologist rolled the body onto its side. Some of the black liquid oozed out, its long wet fingers reaching off the table. He studied something on her back, then beckoned The Detective over with a curling finger. The Detective stepped over the black stuff pooled on the floor and craned his neck around her backside. He looked at her ass, then averted his gaze to where The Pathologist was pointing. “Do you see these?” His finger pressed into the small metal openings on her spine for a few seconds at a time, the skin indenting as he did.
“Holes?” The Detective replied.
“Yes, but look. You found her hooked up with tubes, right?” He let the body go, and it thumped back down onto the table with a wet, black splat. “She is a hydraulic system.” His eyes were wide, looking for something The Detective would not give him.
“A what?”
They rolled. “Have you ever been to a pizza arcade?”
“Yes?”
“A man rat sung to you about friendship, while a birdie played bass, and a frog smacked the drums.” He smacked her thigh. “That’s her.”
“Jesus.”
“Risen is she… Did you find anything else at the theater? A… Uh… Control system?”
“Nope. Just a few shell casings, the body, and lots of blood — not its own blood, we’re guessing. I’m sure you’ll let us know.” The Detective walked towards the exit of the autopsy room, but before he reached it, he stepped in some of the black liquid. “Shit!” He hissed, sliding a bit. “The hell is this shit?”
“Oil.” The Pathologist ran his finger along the neck of the body. He said something to himself, “Looks like someone was in a hurry…”
“What’d you say?” The Detective was flinging black globs off his foot. “Look, is there anything else? I need to shit, eat, and clean this shit off my shoes.” The Detective balanced on his unsullied foot and hobbled towards some paper towels. He grabbed a wad and smeared the oil into his shoes. It bled into his hands. “God dammit. I’m sick of this.”
“Then why do it?” The Pathologist looked into the opening where a head should be.
The Detective grunted, “Whaddya mean? It’s a job. Man needs to have a job.”
The Pathologist moved to the other end of the table and pulled the skin around her hips and midsection, he was scanning something, his face getting closer and closer to her skin—his eyes would have touched her if it weren’t for his glasses, “Sounds like you need some passion in your life.”
“Oh, I see enough of what passion does. Makes people plain crazy. This kind of shit you’re playing with right now is a symptom of passion. In my thirty years of this job I’ve taken down my fair share of monsters, and they always claim it was a crime of passion. They cry and plead with the judge, and that idiot usually listens.” He blew air between his lips, making a pfft sound. “If I’m passionless, so be it, ‘long as I die a good man. ‘Long as I’m remembered that way. I’ll be good.”
“Seems to me like you need to see a good movie, Detective.” He smiled. “Might brighten your day.”
“These movies all have shit endings these days. They don’t make ‘em like they used to. Bah, anyways…” The Detective waved his hand in a big downward arc, dismissing whatever was in front of him and walked to the exit, but when he got there he stopped and turned to face The Pathologist. “Ya’ know. Funny you bring up movies… I became a detective because of those damn movies I saw as a kid.”
The Pathologist pulled a veil over the body and began sorting his tools on his cart, “Makes sense. But why keep it up? Does it make you a good man?”
“No. I wouldn’t say that.”
“Then why?”
“’Cause I’m good at it.” For a brief glimmer, he smiled. In a single moment he had an aura of youth, then, as quickly as it came, it was gone, and what remained was a grim old man. “I gotta shit. Call me when you’re done playing with that thing.”
“Sure. Oh, and Detective!” The Pathologist had his hand up. He was pointing and wagging his finger as his eyes looked about the room, “I’m not sure if this matters or not, but she either gained a lot of weight and lost it immediately, or…”
“Or?”
“She was pregnant.”
The Detective growled and stormed through the exit, “Goddamn crime of passion.”