Page 8 - NIXBOOK

I investigated dozens of death scenes. I saw dead bodies in bathrooms, in bathtubs, on beds, in tents, on couches, on floors,
behind furniture, in cars, and under cars. Face up, face down, some lying flat, some scrunched upside down jammed behind
furniture, some with clothes, some without clothes, some of them were dead peacefully, but some died with a lot of sudden
violent messy trauma. Some in public, some in private. Some of them died instantly, some died slowly. There were expected
deaths from illness, disease and old age and unexpected deaths from accidents and motor vehicle collisions. Dead bodies in full
rigor stiff as a board and dead bodies limp and floppy and soggy. I saw more than one old timer Norwegian who had shuffled
his mortal coil while napping in his favorite recliner, which I think is the best way to go. I saw dead people cut open at autopsies.
I saw dead bodies bloated and fermenting and discolored and covered with flies on top and maggots underneath with bubbling
sloughing skin and I saw freshly dead bodies still warm and wet with body fluids. Fresh or stale, none of them had a good color.
Some smelled only slightly bad. Most smelled terrible. Some smelled so horrible that when I opened the front door the giant
black overfed flies couldn’t escape outside fast enough. Once I saw a whole brain that had been completely shotgunned and
blown out of a skull and had landed several feet away…totally intact. I saw people dead because of their own actions; sometimes
intentional and sometimes not, and I saw a lot of dead people who were dead because of somebody else’s actions. Most probably
didn’t deserve it but they just had the great misfortune of getting stuck in the grim reaper’s sights at that time and place. I do
not like touching dead people and virtually every single dead person I saw was, in a word, gross. Some of the dead people I met
were people whom I had personally known before they were dead. I’ve stepped over a few dead bodies, and one time I did pry a
gun out of a man’s cold dead fingers.

A lot of my dead clients were suicides. I saw teen suicides, elderly suicides, middle aged suicides, and every age range in between.
I saw successful ones and failed attempts, and I even interrupted a few attempts before they could become successful. Suicides
by alcohol, suicide by pistol, suicide by shotgun, suicide by rifle, suicide by cyanide even. Suicide by car grills, pills, car exhaust,
knives, smoking, drinking, nooses, self-defenestration, and other creative methods. Some suicides were planned out years in
advance. A shocking too many were very impulsive. I read a variety of suicide notes and letters left behind. Most were not very
coherent or articulate but a few were.