Portions of this epic saga were posted years ago and vanished, never to be returned.

The answer to the title question is: NOTHING.



The following are some of the experiences that occurred during a 22 year career as a mortician and a second career as a police officer.



One of the stand out events was recovering the body of a 60 something drunk that had been sitting in his backyard drinking Gin and eating saltine crackers, when he pitched over and died. His family found him a few hours later and we transported him to the mortuary for embalming and funeral services.

After removing his Gin and vomit covered clothing, I noticed a huge wad of Gin soaked crackers in his mouth. When I removed the wad, the stench of fermented Gin soaked crackers filled the air. Along with the stench, hundreds if not thousands of tiny ants came pouring out of his mouth and nose. I can still remember the smell of the ant spray I used.



Deaths by thermal burns are usually unpleasant at best. As we have seen here in Kaotic, bodies lose their facial features, fingers and in extreme heat will burst open. The smell of burned hair, burned flesh and cooked internal organs will take your breath away.

A woman sent her kids to the store for ice cream and doused herself with gasoline and fired up her trusty Bic lighter. The fire burned so hot, it melted trophies on a dresser. I had a retired minister working for me that puked all over the hall in the house and quit on the spot. Later that day the family came in and insisted on seeing her. As tactfully as I could, I explained that her facial features were gone and that we couldn't tell her sex due to the deep burns. Finally, I took her uncle back to the morgue and he told the family exactly what I told them. The family plead poor and didn't know how they were going to pay for a full funeral. I suggested they consider cremation as a less expensive alternative. "OH GOD NO, SHE WOULD NEVER WANT THAT!"

Deaths by firearms can be nasty too. While working for the Coroner in Los Angeles we responded to Compton. A young girl was riding her bike around in her driveway, waiting for her father to come home from work. She caught a stray round just above her ear from an AK-47. The round took the entire top of her head off and slammed her intact brain into the garage door. By the time we got there a huge crowd had formed. One asshole ran up to the covered body, pulled the sheet back and stuck his finger into her brain, then took off running. Some huge bystander threw a punch at the idiot that would make Mike Tyson cry. He was out on the ground with a massively deformed jaw and eye socket. The cops on scene didn't say shit.

Shotgun wounds to the head at close range,

These will really ruin your day. I responded to a "Man with a gun" call on dayshift in the ghetto. On arrival, homeboy was standing in the middle of the front yard swing a shotgun around and demanding the woman inside the house come out and talk. The night before, he had raped the woman's 15 year old daughter and ran off before the cops got there.



Our 911 operator, kept her inside and on the phone, while everyone out front was yelling at him to drop the gun. Without warning, the soon to be very dead, dropped to his knees, screwed the shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger.

The results were spectacular. His head vanished in a volcanic eruption of pink mist, skull fragments and a fountain of blood from both carotid arteries. His ex girlfriend ran out of the house and started yelling at me for killing her boyfriend. Before I took any slaps or punches, a nice church lady took her back inside. One of my associates said "Don't worry, _____, they are always going to blame the white cop.



Last, but not least are decomposed bodies. We see pics of them all the time in Kaotic, but to get the full effect, you need to smell the gases and fluids leaking from the body and the cheerful buzz of thousands of flies and their little maggot babies. I have lost several co-workers just looking at a decomposed body.



One adventure comes to mind where a morbidly obese couple were living in their car and decided to commit suicide with CO2 from their car's exhaust. Their car was parked in an industrial area where no one was around on the weekend. The weather had been in the mid to high 90's during the day and cold at night. Their diet was primarily Mountain Dew, chips and beans, based on the mound of trash surrounding their cockroach and ant infested car. Friday night, they bundled up in three layers of clothing and gassed themselves. Workers discovered them Monday morning.

Just getting the bug and fly covered bodies out of the trash and litter was a challenge. At the mortuary we had to undress them from three layers of puke soaked and bug infested clothing and prepare them for autopsies. Even with heavy duty exhaust fans running full blast, it took 3 days for the stench to go away.

These stories just scratch the surface of my twisted memory. If you are interested in mortuary work, coroner, law enforcement (that always brings out the trolls) or executive protection, hit me up in my in box.