"Jesus, Frank, where have you been?" the medical examiner cried. "You were supposed to come by on Tuesday, my morgue's overflowing!"

The undertaker wearily climbed out of the hearse. "Don't start, Barry," he moaned, "just ... don't. It's been a hell of a week."

"Yeah, yeah, cry me a river," Barry grumped. "My Author got eight new ideas last week. Do you have any idea how much carnage that makes?"

Frank slammed the car door and turned to face the other man. "Carnage! You want to talk carnage, you little..." He slumped back and his anger dissipated. "Sorry, buddy. It's not your fault, it's these damn Writers. They're gonna work me to death."

"Don't worry about it." Barry handed the older man a coffee and danish. "Jeez, you do look like shit. What happened?"

"That mess on Tuesday." Frank gratefully tore a bite out of the danish. "That's why I couldn't come by -- I had to clean up the aftermath from the BDSM scene down the street. Took me all day." He wolfed down the last of the danish. "Is Tonya working today?" he asked, trying to seem casual.

Barry covered his eyes. "You're twice her age, Frank. She's way out of your league." He offered Frank a seat. "So what happened Tuesday? I heard the crash and the sirens, but I never got the details. Was it that bad?"

"Worse." Frank rolled his eyes as he slumped into the chair. "This Author decides, out of nowhere, his main character is a Dom. So he writes his first BDSM scene, and the Dom chains his Sub to the chair -- and the wall -- and the ceiling -- and the floor."

Barry chuckled. "Ok, that must have looked ridiculous, but I don't see why the clean-up was so bad."

Frank shook his head as he sipped the coffee. "That wasn't the problem. The problem came when the Master threw her onto the mattress."

"Oh, no," Barry murmured, his face pale.

The undertaker nodded sadly. "Forgot to undo the chains. Whole building came down on top of them. I needed a backhoe and jackhammer just to get to the bodies." He took a long pull from the Styrofoam cup, draining it. "Fucking internet."

The younger man was confused. "What's the internet got to do with it?"

Frank sighed. "You don't remember the old days, Barry. There were so many fewer writers, and they had mandatory safeguards back then -- everything went through publishing houses, with whole staffs of editors and proofreaders. This used to be a quiet route." He looked at his eighty-foot long stretched hearse. "Now? Someone gets an idea, and two hours later he's pushing 'Submit'. So many God-damned bodies." He crumpled up the cup and tossed it at the trash can, missing the mark.

"You don't need to tell me about impulsiveness. How do you think this half-assed shop opened up?" Barry gestured vaguely around them, indicating the ramshackle construction of 'Bad Line Ghoul's Mental Hangar'. "The asshole starts jotting down ideas as a 'mental exercise'. Five months later, I've got bodies piling up faster than I can autopsy them."

Frank wearily got to his feet. "Well let's get to it, then. Show me what you've got, first, then I'll start wheeling them out."

"Yeah, back to work." Barry stopped Frank before they entered the building. "Promise you won't embarrass yourself hitting on Tonya."

Frank put his hands up defensively. "I promise!"

Frank paused at the door into the Recovery and Repair ward. "Hey, Tonya," he leered through the doorway.

"Hello, Francis," Tonya replied coolly, without looking up from her work.

"Barry, go on ahead," Frank whispered, "I'll catch up."

"Give it up," Barry whispered back. "It's not gonna happen."

"I'll catch up," Frank insisted. Barry continued on down the corridor, shaking his head.

Frank sauntered into the recovery area. The radio was blaring that Ferris Bueller song: 'Oh Yeah' by Yello. "Working hard or hardly working?" He immediately winced.

"Working hard," Tonya answered with a glare.

He feigned interest in her patients. "I can see that. What's wrong with these gals?" He pointed to a row of beds along the far wall, where nine women furiously scratched at themselves through their hospital gowns.

"Schrodinger's Pube Syndrome," she answered.

"I never heard of that one," Frank confessed, dancing closer to the beds.

"Hairy, shaved bare, hairy again; they vary from sentence to sentence. Very uncomfortable," Tonya explained, "and contagious."

Frank danced back away from the beds. "So when are you gonna let me take you out?"

"When you stop smelling like death," she answered.

"Ohh Yeah," he sang along. He danced right into an operating table, sending a two-foot-wide disc tumbling to the floor.

"God-dammit, Frank, if you're gonna pester me in here, be careful!" She carefully lifted the disc back onto the table, reattaching some tubes and sensors. "He's in bad shape to begin with!"

"That's a patient?" Frank peered down at the disc, then jumped with recognition. It was a man, a famous man, in richly embroidered robes. He had been pressed flat, barely filling a third dimension. "Pope Innocent the XIV?" Frank felt himself starting to dance to the beat again.

"Crushed by the weight of canon," Tonya nodded sadly.

"Why isn't he in the morgue?" Frank asked.

She rolled her eyes, jerking her thumb at the ceiling. "The Big Guy insists he's salvageable. Writers," she grumbled sourly.

"If anyone can save him, it's you, sugar." He danced up to her, seriously grooving and snapping his fingers. "Ohhh Yeahh! Have I told you how much I love your taste in music?"

Tonya pulled out a hypodermic needle. "Stop dancing this second, or I sedate you." Frank stopped dancing. "God!" she snapped, "I fucking HATE this song!"

"Then why are you blasting it on the radio?" Frank asked.

She pointed behind him. "I'M NOT!"

Turning, Frank saw three bodies writhing on a bed. A young redheaded cheerleader was being sandwiched -- an elderly white coach lay beneath her and fucked her pussy, while a massive black linebacker plowed her ass from above. They were providing the music.

"Ooom ... Bow Bow," the linebacker groaned.

"Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun," the little cheerleader panted between gritted teeth.

"Ooom ... Bow Bow," the linebacker groaned again.

"Ohhh, Yeahh!" Coach Thompkins cried in release.

Frank looked down at the patients' chart. ('They came together, singing out their orgasm over countless seconds.')

"Ooom ... Bow Bow."

"They've been here for a week," Tonya said despairingly. "Could you take them away, Frank?" She looked at him, biting her lip and fluttering her lashes. Her finger fiddled with the button of her medical coat. "I'd be grateful."

"Di-dun-Di-dun."
"Bow Bow."

Frank bit his own lip, sorely tempted. He started to move to the music again.

"Be-yuu-tee-ful," Coach Thompkins moaned.

"Di=di Dun!" the cheerleader squeaked.