Chapter 1 - A Riddle in Ink



It was regrettable, Eleanor Tregellan thought, how many days began like this. The ribs gave way with a wet sucking sound as the incision opened the peritoneal cavity, yielding access to the dark mass of organs within. The familiar reek of body fluids and the corruption of death filled the air, making her skin feel greasy even though it was completely covered. Ellie resisted the urge to draw her arm across her head, knowing that the gesture would cover her with gore and maybe worse besides. The basement morgue was a familiar location to her, both from her work for the Sunday Group and her long ago medical training. The floor was angled down slightly to a central drain and bright fluorescents hung on hinged arms overhead. A pair of examination tables, one of which held the body, dominated the room, flanked on all sides by smaller benches which held a variety of tools, both medical and arcane, as well as specimen trays, bottles, and the other various chemical agents used in a post mortem examination.   Eleanor was dressed from head to toe in blue surgical scrubs and an examination gown of lurid green. Most of her face was concealed by her face mask, save for the goggles which covered her eyes and magnified the dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. A surgical cap compressed her dark auburn hair bulging up over the severe bun that kept it from her eyes.

“Zhou know ve could try to summon up hiss spirit,” a cultured Austrian accent observed. Ellie’s eyes flicked to the I-pad which was propped on one of the two surgical tables which occupied the improvised morgue. Emmaline von Morganstern’s heart shaped face bobbed up and down as she ran on her treadmill in their home twenty miles away from the Sunday Group offices. The face was much more pleasant than the inset of an open chest cavity that the camera was pointed at.

“Well that didn’t work so well the last time we tried it,” Ellie responded as she slid her gloved hand into the open chest and began to explore. The body was that of a young male, physically fit, shaved head but beyond that it was difficult to say too much about him. A black substance coated every inch of the body like tar. Not only did it coat the body, it seemed to impregnate it somehow. The teeth were completely black, save for a few fillings, not only on the surface, but in cross section. The eyes were black, as though the aqueous humors were somehow transformed, the blood, running down into collection channels as Ellie cut, was also dark as midnight.

“Vat do you fink it is? Vat does it smell like?” Emmaline asked. Ellie resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

“It smells like I just cut open a cadaver that has been dead for six to twelve hours, so not great,” Ellie deadpaned as she took a pair of forceps and clamped the top of the esophagus and the duodenum. Repeating the process above and below the first clamps with a second set of the stainless steel instruments.

“Yes you are very funny woman Eleanor,” Emmaline replied without humor, continuing to run. Ellie’s good genes meant that she didn’t have to do a tremendous amount of exercise to maintain her relatively slim figure, but Emmaline, whose appeties in all areas were considerable, had to fight the tendency towards fat as she got older. Ellie severed the esophagus with a practiced cut before doing the same to the intestine and then lifted the stomach out onto an examination tray. Releasing the forceps she began to squeeze the contents of the stomach out onto the tray.

“Zat is goot for my diet,” video Emmaline remarked with a cocked eyebrow. The stomach contents was blackened also, but that appeared to be the acid only and even that was partial as though the high acidity of the stomach was destroying the black liquid that was so ubiquitous else where. Or the stuff was a protenagenous and was being broken down by stomach enzymes, or a hundred other things. Whatever the reason the half digested food was only partially colored in the black tar like substance. The last meal appeared to be cereal of some kind, perhaps a muesli bar. 

“Hello,” Eleanor said as a glint caught her eye. She reached into the mass and withdrew a small metal object.

“A key?” Emmaline asked in surprise as Ellie held it up to the camera. It was an old fashioned brass key with three teeth of different lengths and an ornate loop at the base.

“He must have swallowed it before.... whatever happened to him,” Ellie agreed. That meant he had swallowed the thing, at most, six hours before his death, otherwise it would have moved down into his intestines. 

“Vat do you fink killed him?” Emmaline asked, sweating now as the program increased the speed and incline. The Austrian witch spoke good English, but her accent always thickened when she was focusing on something else. The key clattered as Ellie set it down in the examination tray and rinsed it with some alcohol.

“Well I’m going to take a wild guess and say it was suddenly being made of about fifty percent black stuff,” Ellie opined with a straight face.

“As I said, you are very funny.”

Eleanor did smile now, though the expression wasn’t obvious on her face Emmaline recognized it.

“Vhy are you so happy?” she asked as Eleanor stepped away from the open corpse and began to strip of her protective gear, dumping it into one of the warded bins with imposing black biohazard symbols.

“I’m going to need an opinion on this black stuff, and you know how much I enjoy waking Anna up…”


[hider=Synopsis]
Ellie Tregellan - Almost but not quite Fearless leader of the Sunday Group, conducts an autopsy on body that seems to be impregnated with a mysterious black liquid.

A key is found in the dead mans stomach.

Eleanor takes perverse joy in calling Anna to wake her up.

[/hider]


[hider=Writing Prompt]
Everyone is on their way into work, feel free to provide us with some insight into your homelife and make up some details about the Sunday Group offices.

[@Rapid Reader] Anna is woken up extra early by Eleanor calling to get you to figure out what the black stuff might be.
[/hider]