Seeing this terrifying scene, goosebumps popped up all over my body. I wanted to run away, but my body froze in place uncontrollably.
I knew that I was extremely frightened, and my body didn't know how to react.
At this time, Huang Po also noticed something strange. He leaned in for a closer look and couldn't help swearing.
"Damn it! What's going on? It shouldn't be like this after just one night in the refrigerated cabinet!"
Huang Po came up to me, which made me feel a little calmer. I looked at the female corpse again and realized that I had been mistaken.
Those things looking like red earthworms weren't worms at all. They were the torn muscle fibers.
These muscle fibers were densely packed together. At first glance, they really did look like a bunch of wriggling worms entangled with each other.
This scene was quite creepy, but it wasn't the first time we'd seen it.
We'd seen similar situations when dealing with accident victims before.
Simply put, the muscle tissue had been violently torn, causing the muscles to tear and the muscle fibers to be exposed.
Ordinary people basically won't see such a scene because it simply doesn't occur in real life.
Even when buying meat at the market, the pork, beef, and mutton are all cut with sharp knives, not by violent pulling.
The scene of tearing Japanese invaders apart with bare hands only exists in those exaggerated TV dramas. In reality, only mechanical force can tear muscles apart.
After realizing that I had been mistaken, my heart settled down a bit, and I continued to undo the buttons of the red wedding dress on the female corpse.
However, I always felt that something was off, as if I had overlooked something.
When I pulled the dress open and saw the state of the female corpse, I suddenly realized what the problem was.
Last night at the scene, this female corpse had been crushed into a pancake.
Even if her body muscles were torn by the impact of the car accident, exposing the muscle fibers. Her bones should have been shattered.
But now, her chest was bulging.
This was much scarier than the torn and blood - stained muscle fibers.
The bloody muscle fibers were just scary to look at; it was a normal situation in a car accident and not really terrifying for a corpse carrier.
On the contrary, a bulging chest meant that the sternum was intact.
But last night, the female corpse had clearly been crushed into a pancake, and all her sternum bones were broken. How could the sternum and chest be intact now?
I'd been working at the funeral parlor for more than two years, and I'd never heard of a corpse having its comminutedly fractured sternum repaired after just one night in the refrigerated cabinet.
A terrifying image popped into my head:
The female corpse was still alive. While in the refrigerated cabinet, her body had been constantly self - repairing and slowly growing.
Thinking of this, I shivered and jumped back abruptly, scaring Huang Po beside me.
"Chen Zi, what's wrong?"
"This female corpse is problematic. She might still be alive!" My voice was trembling.
"Alive? How could she still be alive?" Huang Po also panicked.
I told Huang Po my speculation, and he also realized that the situation was bad. His whole face turned as pale as a sheet.
This guy was braver than me. After a brief hesitation, he actually reached out and pressed on the female corpse.
"The bones are really whole.
Huang Po looked extremely alarmed.
"Could it be that the embalmer used some new technique?" I asked, hoping against hope.
"Absolutely not. This definitely isn't the result of makeup."
Embalmers are in charge of applying makeup to corpses. When faced with a damaged corpse, they use certain materials to make it look as normal as possible.
For example, if a corpse is missing an arm, they'll wrap cardboard with plaster or flour to create a fake arm.
After the makeup, the corpse can be made to look real enough, as there's no need for the corpse to move anyway. It'll just be cremated later.
However, this definitely doesn't include propping up a broken sternum, as it's impossible.
To actually prop it up from the inside, surgery would be required. Embalmers aren't surgeons, so they can't do it.
Previously, when embalmers had to apply makeup to a corpse with multiple fractures all over the body, they would simply put the clothes on and stuff them inside.
As long as the clothes were puffed up and the family saw a human - shaped body when viewing the remains, it was emotionally acceptable.
The female corpse in front of us was completely different. Her chest cavity wasn't filled with fake cardboard props.
Understanding all this was why Huang Po and I were so terrified.
A corpse with multiple fractures all over the body being able to recover was unheard of. It was even scarier than corpses coming back to life.
After all, when a corpse comes back to life, it just moves. But now, this corpse was actually recovering and growing.
I felt an icy chill that even the heat in the cremation room couldn't drive away the cold on my back.
"What should we do?" I asked, my voice trembling.
"Stuff it in and cremate it quickly. What else can we do?"
"What about the red wedding dress?"
Now that the corpse was stiff, it was easy to undo the buttons of the red wedding dress, but taking it off would take a great deal of effort.
"Just cut it off. Anyway, nobody'll know. We just can't let the dress go up in flames with her," Huang Po suggested.
This was also the norm in the industry. When the family wasn't around, we needed to handle things quickly and act according to the emergency situation.
Speaking of which, in the past, family members were not allowed to watch the cremation at all because there was a step of cutting open the abdomen and pulling out the intestines.
Even now, family members only watch the corpse being sent into the incinerator and then have to leave.
Because during the cremation process, the corpse will twist and sit up due to the high - temperature burning, which the family can't bear to see.
As for a corpse to be cremated at night without the family around, there's even less to worry about.
Huang Po and I didn't start working right away. We plopped down on the chairs and had a smoke first. After calming down a bit, we got up and found a pair of scissors.
We cut the red wedding dress open, revealing more of the female corpse's skin.
This made Huang Po and me even more terrified because the skin under the dress had recovered to some extent.
These patches of skin looked no different from normal skin.
Just looking at the skin, you wouldn't think this was a dead person at all. Instead, it was more like a sleeping beauty.
Huang Po and I quickened our pace. We cut the red wedding dress open and then yanked hard to pull it off the female corpse.
We were in a hurry to get it done, but we made a mistake in our haste. I accidentally cut a shallow gash on my finger with the scissors.
The wound wasn't big, and it didn't hurt much. It was just bleeding slightly, so I didn't pay much attention to it.
However, when I tore off another piece of the red wedding dress, the blood from my finger dripped down and landed right on the chin of the female corpse.
I instinctively felt something was off and wanted to find a tissue to wipe it clean.
Just then, Huang Po called me over to pull at the skirt of the red wedding dress. I had to set this aside and deal with the red wedding dress first.
After finally getting the red wedding dress sorted out, I grabbed two tissues. I wrapped one around my finger and planned to use the other to wipe the blood that had dripped on the female corpse's chin.
But when I walked back to the female corpse, I suddenly realized that the drop of blood on her chin was gone.
"Where's that drop of blood? Did you wipe it off, Huang Po?" I shouted at Huang Po.
Huang Po, who was gathering the red wedding dress together, turned his head and asked suspiciously, "What the hell blood?"
A terrifying thought popped into my mind. I looked at the place on the female corpse's chin.
The spot where the blood had dripped was glistening faintly like it had been wet.
It was the look of skin that had been licked by a tongue.