This part of the proceedings was much more interesting to Paul. The backroom, where the bodies were held and all the grisly going-ons that involved preparing them happened. It was cold and grey and thoroughly depressing. Stainless steel and florescent lights, white tile, and cold metal slabs where they drained the blood. It gave Paul such intense pleasure when he first learned about the mortuary process and just how degrading and debasing it was to die.<br/><br/>His father had died of mysterious circumstances so an autopsy was performed. Paul could not even begin to describe his unholy glee at the thought of complete strangers rummaging around in the guts of the once proud and austere Charles Albrecht. Paul had even made sure that his cadaver was used for medical study, letting undergrads come in to gawk at his naked body. The amount of people that must have handled his corpse, all the grasping hands that had undressed him, bathed him, cut him open, arranged him, poked and prodded and snipped and stitched and touched him, all without Charles' consent as he would have surely protested if he had been alive.<br/><br/>Paul knew that carcasses expelled their bowels, so someone had to remove his soiled trousers and wipe his dirty ass. Paul knew that it required sewing the gums together to keep the mouth closed. Paul knew they used little plastic contacts with spikes to keep the eyes shut. Paul knew that his father's brain and heart had been placed in a little metal salad bowl for weighing. Paul knew that the organs were tossed into a medical bag and placed in the chest cavity like a goddamn Thanksgiving turkey fresh from the butcher.<br/><br/>When they buried Charles, Paul was warmed through with the knowledge that he was little more than a hollowed out husk of bone and meat, held together with twine and staples and slathered in makeup in a facsimile of Charles. There was nothing left of the man Paul once knew when they lowered him into the ground and Paul had laughed himself to near asphyxiation, because he knew of all the indignities his father had suffered just to pretty up his festering corpse. And there he would stay, in a pretty little box buried in the dark, rotting away undisturbed and alone forever.<br/><br/>It was a tremendous comfort, and perhaps Gabriel would agree considering the way he stared at his own father's corpse with completely dry eyes. It wasnt much to look at anyway.<br/><br/>Gabriel's words were calm as he spoke to the funeral director and then, quite unexpectedly, he laughed. Paul had never heard him laugh before, and it seemed so exceptional appropriate that it should it happen in a house of death. Paul's eyes alighted on his angel and he felt his own lips quirk at the sound, brief and stifled as it was.<br/><br/>How in the world could he get more of that? Who would he have to kill to make Gabriel laugh again? Because Paul would do it without hesitation.<br/><br/>Gabriel seemed almost curious as he reached for the body, touching it calmly without a trace of horror or lingering love or regret. Just a touch, like how one might poke at fish at the supermarket to ensure that they were truly dead.<br/><br/>"It can be donated," Paul said idly, "there are cadaver farms that study the rate of rot and decay when a body is exposed to the open elements. They are always eager for fresh corpses."<br/><br/>Paul had originally wanted to do that with his father's corpse but his mother wouldn't allow it.