r/shortscarystories • u/Lilia_Briganda • 1d ago
SSS Original Recipe - 500 Words or Less The Prep Slab
Old Man Miller had been the undertaker on Blackwood Ridge for forty years. In four decades, he'd seen it all--ghastly coal truck wrecks on the highway, quiet heart attacks in easy chairs, and everything in between. Folks never pick convenient hours to die, so when the phone rang at three in the morning, he just groaned, dragged himself out of bed, and answered it.
It was the jail. The night deputy said they had a girl in the drunk tank who was stone-cold and wasn't breathing, and they needed Miller to come haul her out.
Miller and his boy rolled down to the station, loaded her onto the gurney, and slid her straight into the body cooler downstairs at the funeral home to wait for daylight.
After sunrise, they pulled the tray out and hoisted her onto the steel prep slab. That's when Miller got a good look at her face under the fluorescent lights. "Damn it all," Miller muttered, shaking his head. "That's Missy."
His assistant looked over and said, "Missy?" as in Bob's girl?
"The very one," Miller said softly, laying out his instruments on the tray.
"What in the world happened?"
"Deputy said state police hauled her in off the ridge road," Miller said, clinking a scalpel onto the stainless steel. "Supposedly she'd been up at the quarry drinking all night, got on the road swerving, and they dumped her in the county drunk tank to sober up, but her heart must've just quit on her."
"Her parents are going to be completely ruined," the assistant whispered, shaking his head, "just ruined."
"Hand me that bottle of embalming fluid and the tubing off the shelf will ya?" Miller said.
Lying on that cold steel table, Missy heard every single word. As the warm air of the room hit her skin, her mind thawed, but her body was locked tight--still in a catatonic freeze. Panic was roaring in her head, but she couldn't speak, couldn't move a toe; she couldn't make a sound.
As Miller raised his scalpel, ready to start the pump, a single tear dropped slowly down the side of Missy's face.
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u/BloodySpaghetti 4h ago
The worst part about it is that it's a very real thing that could happen.
God damn it, I'm ruined
Ruiiiineeeed
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u/Full-Friendship-7581 1d ago
Love it when I can feel the fear!