~Pfalz

That April Fools joke? That was a hit below the belt, completely uncalled for. As much as I'd like to say that my lack of journals up until now has been pure will power for April first, it's not the case. Honestly, I'm writing journals less because I have more to do now than back in America, back when I basically did nothing between visiting friends in far away places. I have been writing, drawing, photoing, and whatnot. I just have to get back into the habit of posting stuff. No snowfall in Paris; maybe we had a dusting or two, but nothing like I got back in Chicago. That sucks. Next winter I'm going to have to take Izzy north, or into the mountains, or someplace. Anyplace with snow.

Those of you who diligently read my journals know that I have a job as the night watch at a morgue. Those of you who didn’t know that, now do. When I thought night watch, I thought like a security officer like the ones at my old high school: fat, middle age, nobodies with walkie talkies. Turns out I actually get a uniform and a badge. No walkie talkie. I figured my job was basically to protect the corpses from thieves and the chemicals from druggies, which is right, but I figured that if someone was going to steal a body or something, they might be armed, so I would get a weapon, right? Well, I didn’t get a gun, Paris is pretty strict on gun control, and rightly so, so I was thinking something among the lines of stun gun, taser, bean bag launcher? No. They gave me a wooden bat, which, in retrospect, is much cooler than I initially thought, being given authority to beat people with bats. I like to practice my swinging, knock some nerf balls around. I actually had Izzy and some of her friends come over one Friday to play some indoor baseball. And I also get this whole security office to myself, which is basically just this little office where current employment records, fire alarm control panel and some other stuff is. It’s really neat because it’s old fashioned, if it just had some blinds over the glass, it would be just like a film noir private eye’s office. It’s awesome.

Anyway, the job is slightly more complicated than sitting on my ass all night long. They gave me this thing, it looks sort of like a canteen, has a shoulder strap so I can carry it around, I’m not really sure how it works since I can’t open it up. Anyway, there’s a keyhole in the thing, and there are a bunch of keys set around the morgue in different rooms. Every hour I’m supposed to go to every key, put it in the canister thing, turn it until I hear the click, and then supposedly there’s a piece of punch tape inside that verifies I was doing my job. I guess they’re too lazy or cheap around here to update to some digital system or something.

Here’s where things get a little creepy. There are no lights in this building—I mean, there are lights, but they don’t leave them on for me. So aside from the lamp light in my little security office, the place is completely black. So when I go on these hourly rounds every time my egg timer goes off, I have to walk around with a flashlight. Oh, it gets better.

So there are keys throughout the building, in different rooms, they’re all these large brass old-fashioned like keys chained to the wall. There’s one by the fromeldahyde storage, there’s one in this room where all the organ doners insides stick around for hospital pick up, an autopsy room, and then there’s a key in the storage room. If you’re thinking that this storage room is like a wall of drawers, and if you open up one of the locker doors there’s a metal bed with a body inside— you’re wrong. Not this morgue. There’s just this one really long hallway, and at the end there’s a heavy refrigerator door, and inside is just this really big room, and the bodies just lay out on these tables with only a white sheet covering them, their feet sticking out and everything.

So every night, I have go into the basement, alone, with only a flashlight, do down the hallway, open the bulky refrigerator door into a room that’s always thirty-something degrees, walk all the way down these isles of dead bodies, in the dark, need I remind you, to use the key for my punch tape thing.

But, oh wait, I’m not even finished yet. So the first time I got here, the old night watchman gave me the low down on the whole punchtape system, where all the keys were, and all that jazz. It was really the only time I had seen the place with the lights on and everything. And while I was in the refrigerator room I noticed that all the little beds had these ropes hanging from the ceiling, so I’m like, “what’s that for?”

He says, in case someone wakes up, they pull on the string, alarm goes off in the security office, doctor comes. Not that anyone’s ever woken up, that is. But you do get an idea for how old this place is—it practically dates back to when people feared of being accidentally buried alive. So one night, I’m sitting in the security office, getting my Victor Hugo on, and this red light on the wall starts flashing. And I’m thinking “that’s odd, it’s not the fire alarm” and then I notice that it’s the fucking “I’m not dead” alarm coming from the refrigerator room. So I call this number for emergencies and say “hey, the alarm went off, is a doctor coming?” And they tell me to go downstairs and check it out, if someone did “wake up,” call back. Then I thought, oh fuck, what if someone’s trying to steal a body and accidentally pulled on the cord? So I grab my bat and head downstairs.

I walk down the hallway, see the door is still shut like I left it, open it up, and then I shine the light around thinking somebody’s playing a trick on me or something. And then I see that one of the strings are swaying, and sure enough, there’s a body laying under it. So first I look to make sure there isn’t someone hiding around, then I walk over to the corpse. I push the bat down on the guy’s chest to hold him, I pull the sheet away from his face—and the guy’s as dead as a doornail. Hell, half his throat was missing. I check his pulse anyway because I’m thorough like that, and then I end up checking the other bodies.

Faulty wiring? A rat in the ceiling maybe pulling on the rope? I don’t know. Everyone in the room was dead. The alarm hasn’t gone off since. How’s that for an anticlimactic ending? I fucking hate this job. And I'll tell you why I hate this job... some other time. This journal has gone on long enough.

So long; goodnight.