The Family Business
For Dr. Paolini, a pathologist at the 'Santi Giovanni e Paolo' and his assistant Mathias, the night was going well: not many corpses had arrived on their table that night, and their shift was about to end. Only one more poor bastard to go. While the older man proceeded with a thorough cleaning of both tools and workplace, Mathias brought their last task closer to the operating table with a stretcher, before helping the pathologist heave the body onto the metal table.
Just one more job, and then they could both go home.
"Alright. Who's this?" Paolini reached for his recorder, his fingers brushed on the 'ON' button.
"Uh. Hold on, let me just..." Whoever laid in that bag had arrived with a report from the Carabinieri, and a sealed bag full of their personal belongings drenched in moss and water. It didn't take long for Mathias to fish an ID from the corpse's wallet. "Bryan Cox, California. The police fished him out a few hours ago from one of the canals."
"...tourists," Paolini yanked the body bag's zipper to reveal what remained of mister Cox.
The sudden stench of rotten, bloated corpse soon made him regret the decision. The victim had spent more than a couple of days floating around the more forgotten canals of Venice, and the result was a putrid, vaguely humanoid mess half-devoured by local fish. While his assistant did his best to keep himself from
vomiting all over evidence, the good pathologist went for two pairs of clips: one for himself, one for Mathias...
The bar crawl went well; while Bryan couldn't manage to visit all the places on his list, he had gotten in a fight with some French dicks over a local girl and almost won. Neither of them got the prize, but the fact that he didn't back down despite being outnumbered was good fuel for the ego: Bryan was happy and very much drunk.
Given that the Sun was about to be up in a hour or so, the American decided to wobble his way to his hotel room. Slowly. It was hard to walk, what with his body feeling heavier by the minute, and that huge canal on his right that threatened to swallow him, should he take a wrong step. As if that wasn't enough, Bryan's vision wasn't the best: things were blurry. The shadows moved by themselves, sometimes. The pantegane that floated in the water kind of freaked him out - what if one of those rats jumped at him? - and his stomach threatened a revolution.
In the end, Bryan couldn't help himself: he froze, turned to his right, and vomited the contents of his stomach into the canal...
"Victim has been drained of blood. Someone chewed on his arteries an-- That's not how I taught you to make an incision, Mathias." Paolini chided his assistant, then cursed himself under his breath. They'd have to cut that part from the recordings.
"Oh, fuck. Sorry. It's just--" The assistant gulped, embarassed. He looked up to his mentor with an expression that pleaded for help.
With a defeated sigh, the pathologist went for his recorder - to turn it off - and armed himself with a scalpel. He pressed the sharp tip against Bryan's torso, hard enough to cut through skin and flesh and muscle, so that he could carve an opening and continue their investigation. "Like this, Mathias. Still having problems with Linda? I saw the update, on Facebook..."
There was something swimming in the canals; Bryan was certain of that, even in spite of the high alcohol levels in his blood. It was larger than the oversized rats that lived in the lagoon. Much bigger than any fish he'd seen back home, too. The creature had a vaguely humanoid shape, but it moved way too fast to be a local tourist on a early morning swim. Whatever that was soon surfaced to meet the drunk American; Bryan jumped away from the border of the canal, falling backwards.
The monster looked human... but wasn't. The shape of a young woman was covered in scales of a color that matched the dark waters of Venice; the top of her head, and her forearms, had long fins that must've aided with swimming. She beamed, flashing a maw full of sharp teeth to her next prey...
"Alright. Close him up," Dr. Paolini shoved the last handful of organs inside Bryan's torax, before he deprived himself of gloves to wash his hands in a nearby sink. "Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how he died. I'll report to the Giovanni that there's still a problem in the canals tomorrow night."
"I see. I guess we're destroying the corpse?" Mathias regarded his mentor with a raised brow.
"Eh. I don't know. They might want to see him, so... just keep this good man well-refrigerated. Alright?"
"Sir, yes sir."
