Embrace Cringe

The pair had had a good run, all things considered. Ten years had never flown by so fast. Fame, fortune and admiration had come for the both of them. Madeline’s second wind had been monumental, though she was unfortunately snubbed for any more Oscar nominations, much to her eternal chagrin. Helen had written three more successful novels and easily cemented her position as one of the modern greats. And if that wasn’t enough, each of them managed to consistently garner extra publicity for the other. Though they’d worked out their differences —mostly — and landed on terms that were as good as could ever exist between them without throwing the universe into a state of cosmic imbalance, their public feud was still legendary. Homoerotic, even, if the tabloids were to be believed.

( And on this occasion, they should be. Madeline had dropped a lot of money planting that particular story. )

Alas, a single decade was of enjoyment was all Viola had allowed them, so there was nothing else for it. 

Madeline Ashton and Helen Sharp had to die.

Again.

And if they were going to do it, by God, they were going to do it in style. 

Madeline’s flair for the dramatic paired with Helen’s eye for detail and hefty experience creating a compelling plot — both for books and for murder — gave them ample ideas. There had been many an evening which saw the throwing ideas back and forth, talking them through to their finales, picking out any holes in the stories. It had been quite fun, in a morbid sort of way, to discuss the nitty gritty details of their demises; but then, death didn’t quite hold the same weight that it used to.

They’d toyed with the idea of a vague sort of Hollywood overdose scenario, or a robbery gone wrong, or any number of other things before settling on a car crash. Madeline’s idea, because she never could do anything by halves.

‘I’ll be this generation’s Princess Diana!’

It had taken some convincing, especially considering they’d have to affect some level of physical damage for it to be believable, as Helen had immediately pointed out. 

“Oh, come on, Hel! It wouldn’t be that hard!” Madeline chirps. “Besides, I’ve already got my neck and you’ve got… well…”

She teasingly wiggles one perfectly manicured finger towards the spot where Helen’s stomach used to be.

“Stop that,” Helen deadpans, arms crossing over her middle protectively. “You can’t keep using my hole to get what you want.”

Madeline flashes her perfect, dazzling smile.

“Admit it, it was a hell of a shot.”

She’s certainly not smiling now. She’s not doing anything, actually, other than lying very still and holding her breath ( not that she even needs to take a breath in the first place, but old habits ). She’d been perfect thus far, still and quiet and cold, not even letting her lashes flutter as they zipped her into the body bag. The journey is possibly the most boring thing she’s ever experienced — aside, perhaps, from her wedding night with Ernest — made all the more torturous by the fact that she can’t even chatter to Helen. Assuming Helen is in the same vehicle as she is. Madeline tries not to think about that too much. 

Her anxiety fades a tiny bit when they pull her out of the van and she can hear the squeaky wheels of a second gurney somewhere nearby. There’s Helen. She’s not alone. 

Whoever is pushing her trolley isn’t very mindful about it; it trundles and bumps. Do they not know she’s the Madeline Ashton?! She pouts from inside the body bag, allowing herself that small act of expression since nobody can see it. 

A sharp drop in temperature signals their entrance into the morgue. Two sets of receding footsteps — the porters, presumably — and then deafening silence. Madeline doesn’t even dare to call out for Helen, though she’s desperate to know she’s there.

After an uncomfortable wait, a door swings open. Someone walks towards her. Madeline’s so used to being the first choice that her jaw drops when the newcomer starts moving her into the cooler. She hated the cooler last time! Why are they doing Helen first, she’s Madeline Ashton! Aside from every other reason that she should be going first, Ashton comes before Sharp alphabetically.

She feels herself being slid onto the freezing metal tray. Her heart stops, or it would have if it was still beating. The sound of the roller mechanics seem unbearable loud as she’s pushed into that awful, horrible body fridge again. It’s so cold. Madeline’s eyes fly open to total, oppressive blackness as the heavy metal door thuds shut.

She whimpers. It echoes, bouncing off the walls of the refrigerator, taunting her. She feels like she’s in a coffin. Is it getting smaller in here? Her eyes start watering and she squeezes them shut harshly.

She lasts 23 seconds before she screams.

She straightens out the last instrument in the tray carefully. Not that there’s much point; she’ll only have to re-straighten them when she gets back. Still, it keeps her hands busy. It feels methodical. It’d eat at her if she didn’t do it before leaving the room.

Ellie makes a swift exit three minutes before the porters are due to deliver her next project. Dead bodies are fine, but the living? No thank you. Even the tiny amount of small talk that would be expected of her should she be present when they bring the bodies in would be unbearable to her. No, it’s much easier for her if she just conveniently takes a bathroom break precisely when they’re due to arrive. Then she can just come back once the handover is all done, and it’ll just be her and the cadavers. That’s how she prefers it. She never has to worry about small talk or saying the wrong thing when her words are falling on ears that can’t hear anything anyway.

From what she’s been able to glean from the news and the paperwork, this job is looking like an interesting one. She’s had car crash victims before, plenty of them. There’s very little Ellie hasn’t seen — one loses one’s sensitivity to gore and brutality quite quickly in this line of work. But it’s not the circumstances that make this one unusual, it’s the people. Ellie hasn’t worked on anyone so prolific before. Nor has she worked on someone she’d class herself as a fan of. Not that she’s told anyone that; as we’ve already established, she doesn’t really do small talk. Or any talk, if she can help it. Besides, she’s not sure if it would sound unprofessional or weird to admit to having been rather taken with Madeline Ashton and Helen Sharp before she’s due to work on their bodies. 

Ellie’s not great with that sort of thing, but she’s pretty confident that would make her look weird. Well, weirder. 

When she’s sure the porters will have been and gone, she makes her way back to the familiar chill of the morgue. Sometimes she wonders if she’s the only person in the world that finds such a place comforting. The double doors shut behind her, leaving her alone with two body bags. Her cool eyes look over her sanctuary; it doesn’t look like the powers touched anything aside from the obvious new additions, but still. It’ll bother her if she doesn’t. She strips her gloves off, tosses them, snaps a fresh pair on. Latex-covered fingertips methodically straighten out her instruments. Again. 

She always starts with the one on the left and, judging by what the reports she’d seen had to say, she’s anticipating fairly extensive injuries on both of them. Ergo, the one on the right can wait in the cooler for now, lest the one on the left take a while. Ellie doesn’t like to rush her work. 

With practiced ease, she settles the one on the right onto the tray and slides it into the drawer, shutting the door with a quiet thud. She’s always mindful about those doors. Not that she’s ever had a noise complaint from a client, but that’s not the point; she herself can do without any loud noises, even if she’s the one causing them. 

She turns back around and begins to make her way ti the one on the left. Her hand is just hovering over the zipper of the body bag, ready to pull it down and reveal her first job, when frantic screaming starts from inside the cooler. Ellie almost jumps out of her skin, the sudden volume startling her almost as much as the implications of the noise. Dead people don’t scream. 

No, that’s wrong. That’s wrong. That’s wrong.

Her heightened stress levels are immediately internalised. That’s another reason Ellie’s built for this job; compartmentalising is second nature. She just has to problem solve. Be methodical. Worry about the rest later. 

Alright, step one: open that drawer. 

She’s back over there in a second and trying to ignore the way her gloved hands tremble as she reaches for the handle. The noise only gets louder when she cracks the door open, no longer dimmed by the thick steel. She whips the tray out, yanks the zipper down and pulls the bag open.

Madeline Ashton sits up on the table, frazzled and frayed round the edges. Her sapphire eyes are glassy with tears she shouldn’t even be producing. 

“Ohhh,” she whines, “it was even worse that time! So dark and cold and cramped!”

Her unhealable neck crunches as she twists to look at Ellie, pouting and dramatic, before she throws herself forward to hang off of the mortician. 

“I thought the walls were closing in on me, I was scared, hold me!”

Ellie stands ramrod straight as a freezing bundle of blonde clings to her. How the hell is she meant to compartmentalise this? Her head is going a mile a minute and nothing makes sense and she doesn’t know what to do and it’s too much and —

There’s a woman crying on her. She should probably… try to make her feel better?

“You’re fine,” she says lamely, lifting one hadn’t to awkwardly tap Madeline’s back in what she hopes passes for a comforting gesture. “It’s fine.”

She’s so focused on trying to navigate the encounter without totally losing her shit that she doesn’t even register the sound of a second zipper being pulled down. 

Helen rolls her eyes so hard it’s a miracle they’re still in her head afterwards. Trust Mad to balls up the plan. And Helen had been doing so well, too. She hadn’t even bristled when the ambulance guy had gone poking around the hole in her stomach. 

Well, there’s no point staying in here any longer. Plan’s shot, might as well call it quits.

She fumbles around above her head, looking for the zipper. When she finds it, she manages to wiggle and manoeuvre it down from inside enough that she can stick a hand out and get a proper grip on the zipper pull. She pulls it down the rest of the way, sitting up and shrugging the body bag off her shoulders like it’s no more than a very ugly coat. Her gaze immediately falls on the scene before her and she can’t really even bring herself to be surprised.

“Really, Mad?” She drawls, “you’re supposed to be an actress and you can’t even play dead for five minutes?”

Madeline’s waterworks are abandoned instantly. She cranes her broken neck to face Helen, though she doesn’t seem to be willing to release her hold on the poor girl she’s currently wrapped around like a very sad python. 

“I’m a two-time Oscar-nominated actress, for one thing,” Madeline snaps back petulantly, “and for two, it is not my fault if I have PTSD from the last time I got locked in one of those!”

As if mentioning it has reminded her that she’s supposed to be upset, Madeline wails again, clinging to the harrowed-looking young woman Helen can only assume is their mortician. She rolls her eyes again, muttering a curse under her breath. This is so not how the plan was supposed to go. 

Helen swings her legs off the table, standing and brushing down her dress with a derisive snort. 

“God forbid you do something simple without making a scene.”

Madeline whirls on her again.

“Do you have any idea how terrifying it is in there?!”

“Do you have any idea how terrifying you sound screaming like a banshee in there?”

“It was pitch black! I couldn’t breathe!”

“You don’t breathe anyway, Mad.”

“… well it felt like I couldn’t!”

Helen pinches the bridge of her nose. 

“Two-time Oscar nominee and you flub the easiest role of your life. All you had to do was lie there.” Her voice drops to a low mutter, though it’s still perfectly audible. “God knows you’ve had enough practice doing that.”

Madeline exclaims in over-exaggerated offence and outrage. She turns back to the mortician, imploring her with enormous blue eyes and trying to look like butter wouldn’t melt. 

“See what I have to put up with?” She whines. 

The mortician doesn’t respond, just stands there stiff as a corpse despite being the only one in the room still breathing. Helen thinks she looks like she’s about to pass out. 

“Fine, fine, you’re a delicate flower, we’ll all remember it forever, are you done?” She snarks to Madeline. “Let go of that girl, she looks like she’s experiencing every stage of grief at once.”

Madeline looks back at Ellie, taking in her posture and demeanour. She loosens her grip slightly, though she still holds on to Ellie’s arm. Helen reaches down the front of her dress, producing a bottle of pills from her ample cleavage. She gives the bottle a little shakes and holds it out towards Ellie. 

“You’ve got that deer-in-headlights look,” she comments dryly. “Valium?”

Ellie just about manages to silently shake her head no before Madeline starts up again.

“You just carry those around?” She asks, shocked. 

Helen fixes her with a deadpan stare, eyebrows slightly raised in disbelief. 

“Everything you put me through and you’re surprised I take Valium?”

Madeline addresses Ellie again. 

“Don’t take anything from her,” she warns, leaning in to add in a conspiratorial whisper: “she tried to give me a suppository once.”

Helen doesn’t even deign that with a response. 

“Alright,” she says, clapping her hands together, the pill bottle rattling. “Forget the cooler. This is even better than our plan!” She paces back and forth, then pauses to gesture towards Ellie. The Valium jingles as if to punctuate. “Look at her — she’s perfect. Exactly what we need.”

Madeline’s brows furrow. 

“A panic attack is what we need?” She says as if Ellie isn’t even there, as if she’s not actively hanging off her arm at this very second. 

“No, a new Ernest.” Helen’s eyes flick down to Ellie’s badge. “Well, Elizabeth, but close enough.”

“Oh. Ohhh,” Madeline hums, catching on.

“Face it, Mad, Ernest was never going to cut it long-term even if he hadn’t taken a swan dive off that roof. He was weak. He drank too much. He had the shakes, he would’ve drawn our eyebrows on squint. But her…”

Helen turns her attention to Ellie, looking at her with a gleam of cunning in her eyes. 

“She’s a mortician,” the redhead explains, “she already spends her days with corpses.”

She shoots a meaningful glance towards Madeline, who seems to understand exactly what Helen’s getting at. Ellie, on the other hand, has absolutely no idea and can’t even begin to formulate any sort of guess over the blaring stream of ‘this is wrong this is wrong this is wrong’ on loop in her head. 

“Honestly,” Helen continues, “it’s like fate dropped her in our laps.”

Madeline cocks her head, countenance slowly transforming; first into understanding, then into something else.

“You’re right,” she starts. Then her voice drops into a sultry, breathy register as she turns to Ellie and bats her lashes. “You were going to get us all pretty looking,” Madeline coos, “you know how to keep up appearances on a dead body.”

Ellie still doesn’t speak, just blinks silently, standing stiff as a board, apparently in a state of fight or flight.

“Exactly,” Helen agrees, coming to lean on the edge of the tray on Ellie’s other side. “Someone who actually understands us.”

Madeline’s hand slips from the mortician’s forearm to her upper arm and she leans a little closer, only a hair’s breadth away from resting her chin on Ellie’s shoulder. 

“You can fix us,” she breathes, tone tinted with something like reverence. From the other side, Helen’s husky nasal voice joins in.

“You will fix us, won’t you?”

Ellie’s throat feels tight. She’s trapped. The morgue is supposed to be her sanctuary, this can’t be happening here. Madeline’s hand on her arm feels almost unbearably heavy. Helen’s expectant gaze makes her wish desperately that the ground could swallow her up. Its so bright in here suddenly and their voices seem so loud. Ellie wants to run, but she can’t bring herself to move. She’s cornered. There’s only one thing she can even manage to do. 

She problem solves. 

“That’s my job,” she states, sounding clinical, almost robotic. “You’re today’s assignment. That’s my job.”

This is very much not how she’d envisioned this job going, but these two women are her entire schedule for the day and Ellie cannot handle any further disruptions to her routine. 

“No visible signs of decomposition,” she observes mechanically despite the roaring in her ears. “You need maintenance, touch ups. Disguising of injuries. I can do that.”

She snaps the edge of her glove. And again. And again. At least that’s predictable. 

Madeline beams, delighted.

“You’ll do it? Oh, she’ll do it, Hel!”

Helen’s mouth curves up in a satisfied smirk as she tosses her bouncy red curls out of her face. 

“Perfect. So… where do you want us?”

Ellie forces herself to gesture towards her work table. 

“There,” she says. It’s easier for her to agree than even begin to explain the utter panic clawing its way through her chest. At least if she agrees, she can work. Work is normal. Work is something she understands. 

She makes her way to her work table on autopilot and reaches for her tools. The cool metal of her instruments grounds her enough to keep breathing. If she works, she doesn’t have to think. If she focuses on the familiar — on tools, trays, cadavers — she doesn’t have to look too closely at the two impossible women smiling at her like she already belongs to them. 

She lifts the first tool from her instrument tray, her eyes firmly fixed on the table. Madeline lays down atop it. Ellie tries to ignore the fact that today’s cadaver had just walked herself to the slab and tells herself she can handle this. She just has to work.