#deckplot

[CAUSE OF DEATH]

…

[EXECUTION, START!]

It's dark, and he can't see anything, and for a moment he's convinced he's already dead and gone and he missed the whole damn thing. What a shame that would be—out of any death, he's thought the most about his own, and the executions are by far the most exciting ends he's ever heard of. A literal once-in-a-lifetime event, and he doesn't get to see it? Now that would be torture!

Then the lights turn on, and they're bright, uncomfortably so, and he's on a metal table, and its cold, uncomfortable sensation is suddenly so, so, obvious.

Then he remembers that one's own death is really a terrible place to be, and that he would have been better off missing the event.

Then he looks deep inside himself, and he's always considered himself an accurate judge of his own workings, and it's spelled out as clear as day. He is scared. He's going to die, and it's going to be permanent, and serious, and that's what death is. Not a joke. Not an abstract concept. Definitely not a game.

At least he's figured it out now, before the screaming begins. He has a feeling he won't have the presence of mind soon.

For now, though, for now Law’s still a member of the real world, the conscious world, able to burn the last sight of his life into his memory. Not that it'll matter once he's gone, he knows that—oh, who is he kidding. He wants to think it won't be. He wants to think that, even now, laying almost completely naked on an operating table, the lights shining into his eyes like cold miniature suns, he'll still think of something and make it out. 

Law breathes in, staring into- Clang. All of a sudden, his moment of peace is over, as metal clamps shoot out from the table, pinning him down by the limbs, by the chest, by the neck. His mind goes blank, filled with a flood of static, and he forgets to breathe out, forgets to blink, forgets to move at all. 

A flash of green. Surgical scrubs, and a surgical mask, and the leering face of the mascot he likes so much, and the glint of metal. All this registers in his wide eyes, but he can't move, can't scream, can't do anything but hyperventilate and try to silence the snowy mess running through his brain. It's an autopsy, he would realize, if he could think. He's done them before. They're easy, because the dead don't move, just like him right now. 

And then the first cut begins, into flesh he hasn't realized is marked up and down with permanent marker lines. A vertical slice across the abdomen, then two horizontal, oh so precise and impersonal, oh so easily staining his field of vision red. 

Law remembers how to scream.

Law stands in a dark room, the basement of a hospital, smiling down at a cold cadaver. He’s usually not on autopsy duty, but it's something he should learn, and it's fun, in a way. Like dissecting a frog in Biology, lining the organs up neatly as though they're the parts to an IKEA chair. First you slice it down the middle.

And then you pin it open. Cut the tendons if they're making it difficult. Do the same to the limbs. Check for anything amiss.

Remove the intestines. Hang them on a rack. If they were alive they would be squirming.

The kidneys. The liver. The pancreas. The spleen. Open them up, take a look at what's inside. Any irregularities could be what did the stiff in, you know.

Cut the stomach out, careful with the acid. That stuff can melt solid wood.

Remove the ribs. Open the lungs. Is there any fluid inside? Any sign of rot?

The heart, all four chambers. What a joke, that this little thing could be the home of all human emotion, the source of what makes the world go round. Check for clots.

There's one part left. It works after detached from the body for up to seven seconds. Lobotomies traditionally reach it through the eye socket. Trepanation drills a hole through the skull. Most surgeries cut the skull open and sew it back together. The ancient Egyptians were known to get it through the nasal passage.

He knew so many things. So many fun facts. What a nice little container, for so many thoughts. Such a vivid imagination.

His brain joins its counterparts in the operating room’s trash bin, as the light above the door changes from red to green.