Silent Siren: Memoirs of a Life Saving Mortician by Sias Matthew Franklin

Author:Sias, Matthew Franklin [Sias, Matthew Franklin]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Biographical
Publisher: Vulpine Press
Published: 2019-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

A Multitude of Maggots

Investigator Jim Sosik and I are called to an apartment complex in Northshore for a decomposed body. Jim is a seasoned investigator originally from St. Louis, Missouri. His head is shaved. He sports a goatee and multiple brightly colored tattoos down each arm. His personality belies his tough exterior; he is among the most personable individuals I have met in the death-care industry. Outgoing and friendly, he is able to put families at ease under the most difficult of circumstances.

A King County Sheriff’s deputy meets us outside the downstairs apartment door. As an officer holding a notepad briefs us on the situation that awaits us behind the closed door, I notice a lone maggot loping down the common hallway towards parts unknown. If the adventurous maggot had separated from the group en masse, I could only imagine how many writhed in the apartment.

We enter a darkened, starkly furnished apartment that stinks of rotting flesh. Two high-performance bicycles hang from pegs on the living room wall. Snowboards are displayed on an adjoining wall. A poster of a man skiing, dog-eared at the corners, is suspended from thumbtacks above a cluttered desk. Maggots crawl in seemingly random fashion across the linoleum floor like animated grains of rice, separated from the source of their nutrition. A congealed black fluid pools on the floor, emanating from a bare mattress on the floor and spreading to almost the kitchen area. Blood, I suspect. It has been there so long that it has dried and cracked, resembling candle wax.

The dead man lies on his back on a bare mattress, surrounded by the accoutrements of his previous life. He is dressed in jeans only. Both eyes have been replaced by writhing balls of maggots. His mouth gapes open with a softball-sized colony of the squirming larvae. The source of bleeding seems to be his left forearm. As I look more closely, I notice the bulge of what appears to be a fistula used for dialysis. A carpet knife, its blade bloodied, sits nearby. A fistula is a connection between an artery and a vein, constructed to allow dialysis in a kidney failure patient. Puncturing or laceration of a fistula is nearly always deadly. Massive bleeding ensues. This man knew exactly how to end his life. The unanswered question is why. No suicide note is found.

While Jim wraps the man’s remains in plastic and zips it into a body bag, I obtain the necessary information from police: date of birth, next-of-kin, etc. We load the body up and transport it to the morgue in Seattle. The man is placed for several hours in the freezer to slow down “insect activity.” He will be autopsied in the morning.

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