The smell assailed us as we entered the morgue. All the while we had been outside it had come to us in vague wisps. Now that we were inside, we could tell the smell was different from what we were used to. The smell at the anatomy building had been the smell of rancid flesh, coated with the civilizing veneer of formalin. But this was the smell of putrefaction, pure and undisguised.
I borrowed T's bottle of cheap perfume, and doused my handkerchief. It didn't really help, but I clutched it like a talisman.

The post mortem room, into which we entered from a short passage, was a rectangular room, with four concrete slabs perched on iron legs. At one end, a gallery rose, in tiers, for students to view post mortems, and an adjacent side had a shallow drain and a brace of sinks. The other end had a rack filled with bottles of congealed specimens taken from bodies. There were four corpses on each of the slabs, and another five on the floor between the tables. The bare-chested dom who ushered us inside flitted casually from corpse to corpse, talking volubly. This was a hanging, and that was probably a poisoning case. This one, he said, indicating a body with part of the skull caved in, was that of a youth who'd hit it on a pillar while swinging from a train-door. He trod carelessly on the forearm of a corpse as he walked across the room. It made a tiny rubbery sound.
His associates spilt some perfumed phenol on the floor. The smell receded a little.

The gentleman, who conducted the post mortem, an assistant professor of Forensic Medicine, was a dapper little man who spoke in staccato bursts. Magnus, Shaky, and I went up on the second tier of the gallery. We looked around while the little man told us about the documents it was necessary to have before a medico-legal autopsy could be performed.
The dom who was about to perform the post mortem (I don't know his name and will call him X) was a young man wearing a dirty yellow vest, and a pair of shorts. He had a scalpel, and something that looked like a chisel. He had a glove on one hand. A pair of ankle-boots completed his ensemble. He continually sharpened his instruments against one another as he waited for the professor's signal to begin. I saw Shaky's throat working, and Magnus had his handkerchief pressed to his face, his expression was exactly how I felt.

First up was a young woman, twenty three years old. She had hung herself, the report said. There was froth around her nostrils, and a rope pattern (the ligature mark) around her neck. She had long black hair, and she was dressed in a bright red salwar-kameez; the kameez had flowers embroidered in dirty gold down her front. X took a wooden ruler and measured her 'length'. Then he untied the knot at her waist and pulled the salwar off. Then he walked over to the other end of the table, and pulled her kameez off. She was left splayed on the table wearing an incongruously pink pair of panties. X hooked his fingers around the waistband and pulled them off.
This was the only time in the entire proceeding that I felt a rather surprising twinge, of something I can't quite describe. A sense of violation, perhaps.
I leaned forward to catch what the professor was saying.
"...and we must check for the presence of a sanitary pad or tampon, premenstrual syndrome is something that may be advanced as a cause of temporary instability..."

After we had checked the external surface of the body for marks, or any injuries, or evidence of sexual assault (there were none), X used his scalpel to cut her open. He gutted her, slashing unceremoniously from her throat to her pubis. Her intestines rose outward as she gaped open. He sawed through the soft connections of her ribs to her sternum with a grating sound. He flicked her sternum away, and it landed between her obscenely spread thighs, leaving a glistening smear against her genitals. X cut her flesh from her ribs, and her breasts sagged against the sides of her body, like flaccid bags.
They took her stomach out. It had also been cut open, and it spilled the remnants of her last meal. They put in a plastic bottle, for analysis. X cupped his bare hand and scooped some blood from the thoracic cavity into the bottle, before he shut it.
They also cut her uterus out and opened it.

She had had children.
After they had looked through the rest of her abdominal viscera, and placed them in a little pile between her thighs, X cut across her scalp down to the bone. He then proceeded to pull her face down, everting the skin, stripping it from the bone like a mask so the forehead touched the chin. He sluiced her skull with water, as the professor pointed out a bruise on her scalp.
They next took off the top of her skull, with a hammer and a chisel, and took out the brain. Chips of bone had flown everywhere. After we had examined it, he threw it casually inside her belly. It came to rest, nestled amongst her intestines.
This was where it hit me: these bodies come in as remains of human beings. They leave as desecrated sacs of viscera.
Behind her, at the other tables the post mortems proceeded at greater speed. Four had already been done as ours continued.
Outside, there was a flash of lightning, followed by a burst of loud thunder. I remember remarking to Magnus that the atmosphere was positively Frankenstein-ish.

Another woman had died of acid poisoning. They took her stomach out and showed us the corroded lining inside.

***

Shaky and I both wanted to leave, and Magnus followed us out.
We had to wait in the ante room before we could finally leave because it was raining so hard.