“Hurry boy, get it on the slab!” I watched as Donavan mustered his strength in between dry-heaves.

“I want to go home… I want to see my mother, please.” I tossed the young man a look of pity. He had likely not seen a body so mangled in his two years of working. I did not want to remove the cloth with him here and traumatize him further. Yet, I needed to know the details of his discovery.

“Chip up boy, you’ve seen some nasty ones in your time I’m sure it's not so bad.” I let out a forced chuckle that was meant to be reassuring. Grabbing his shoulder, the boy appeared a man come home from war. He still had not let loose a single word in response.

“Alright Donavan it’s just a dead man, tell me where he was found and by whom, and you can be on your way.” For the first time Donavan seemed to hear him. He turned his head agonizingly slow, a boy possessed by pure fear. His eyes carried something brand new, a reality that couldn’t be shaken off. His voice started with a near groan. His throat seized up, clutched by the adam's-apple with terror.

“It...you...it’s not a dead man. It’s dead. But it isn’t a man. Or maybe it was, or is.” He then let out an unhinged cackle before resorting back to shivering. The boy needed to stop drinking.

“Your nerves are fraying my child. How can I keep you employed if you can’t handle the gore every now and again?” Donavan looked away from the red-ant he had been transfixed with for some time.

He slowly shook his head, gathering momentum until it neared a violent pace, “You - you don’t understand. You have to look to understand. We are cursed now. Now and whatever time we have from here on out.”

A long drawn-out sigh. I suppose there was not much to be done other than to assuage his fears, and take a gander at the body. I gripped the edge of the ruddy cloth and began to yank at it,

“No for goodness sake don’t do it now! I am going home!”

“Boy, get back over here, I won’t make you stare at it. Just be here if I need you.” Donavan meandered over to one of the ancient wooden stools and dragged it through the dirt. His face was vacant. He placed the stool on the opposing side of the room and sat facing the wall, his knees touching the hard-packed dirt.

The boy had lost all sense, that was for certain.

“Alright, now that you’re safe and warm over there, I can have at it right? My goodness.” Donavan did not deem it necessary to respond. The sheet cloaked an immense figure, pockmarked by rivulets of blood. I drew the sheet slowly from the bottom. The canvas brushed away, and revealed an incomprehensible abomination.

I let loose a bloodcurdling scream, Donavan whipped his head around, and upon seeing the figure emptied his stomach across the floor. The body was something that had given up all rationality, it was an insult hurled at creation.

It’s skin was not enough. It was nearly bursting with muscle that could have only been inserted through crude surgery. The skin, by God, the skin was a massive blighted bruise across its figure. It had been stretched to the point of vascular death. The blood vessels popping and melding at the top of the membrane.

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The purple expanse led down to two mismatched feet, one covered in what looked to be fish scales. They were crudely stapled on, but miraculously appeared to have healed and callused. The one subject of horror that truly defied understanding was the head. All else could be chalked up to human cruelty and a demented mind. The head could not be given such a simple explanation.

It was a melding far beyond the capabilities of a butcher. The skull existed as if it were human, yet with an abscess of horror growing uncontrollably inward. The face possessed two human eyes, both brown. Yet, in between them was a cleavage several inches wide, bursting to the brim with many eyes, all different colors. It was a crevasse filled with motionless bulbs, hiding in the shadows of a human appearance.

Donavan’s retching was slowly subsiding, though it had brought him to his knees with a great force. The pure human side of me was appalled at something that was in the shape of a man, but so clearly violated. Yet the artist, the man of science within me was hopelessly infatuated.

The eyes, unlike the rest of the alterations, did not look to be surgical. The cleavage in the head was almost sunken in, with the eyes growing like wildflowers.

“Donavan, grab my forceps… and the calipers.” I looked over to see if the boy had even attempted to move, surprisingly he was rising to his feet.

“What… what the fuck is going on here?”

“Well, I don’t know if we will arrive at the answer tonight, but we are certainly going to try. Now hand me the forceps.”

Donavan shielded his face with his palm, like a small child. He stuck his left arm containing the metal tongs over the body.

The thing spasmed. A purple-hued right arm struck Donavan in the chest, sending him barreling several feet backward with strange force. I jumped away with a limberness I had not possessed in years.

His face turned over to me at the sound of my movement. The multitude of eyes lit up with awareness, blinking furiously from the crater in the man's head.

“God! For the love of God! The Mast! Stop, Stop the ship….stop it. By God…. Fuck.” The man’s miniscule mouth below the cavern of eyes had begun with a barrel-chested scream, but now could barely be heard. His lips moved breathlessly, quickly with some sort of inaudible incantation. They began to peter out, and he was again in rigor mortis, as if the seconds before had been an implausible nightmare.

What God would allow such a thing? The jolting manner of the corpse’s movement was the most profane thing I had witnessed. Having seen this, I must come to deny the existence of a God. Or even more horrific still, that there was a God, but whatever evil lived in this world was superior. A God that allowed this desecration was either cruel or impotent.

With a shuddering breath I took several rapid steps to Donavan, attempting to pull his groaning body upright. The boy, who I had thought was certainly exhausted from terror at this hour, let out his loudest cry yet. His arm stiffened and pointed directly at the corpse, I whiplashed my head backward expecting to see an upright monster.

When would this hellish fever dream end? Yet upon turning, the body was motionless.

“What is it boy it’s - “ And then I caught it in my glance, the true terror.

Now glowing, nearly orange and hissing like freshly branded calf-skin. The mark of the Interior Ministry was emblazoned on the forearm, hanging slack from the table. I thrust Donovan onto his feet, his body nearly hitting the dirt again at the abrupt feat of strength.

“Come now! Donavan we have to move this.”

For the first time on this night I felt no curiosity mingling with my fear. The dread had raided all senses known to me. I was struck dumb by it. The body before us bore the ministry’s mark. They knew what this was; had laid claim to it. And they knew it was here.