..:t h e : c o r o n e r:..

The Assignment: In a few paragraphs, try to give some insight into a character's personality. That's basically all it is: not a real story, just a piece of one. According to me, this isn't a character sketch. But apparently, it is one.

The Coroner

         Usually, the bodies were cold by the time he got to them, but not now. He’d been called surprisingly quick; apparently there had been no question about whether anyone was still alive or not. The car crash had been that bad, that…messy.

         Linus Jameson had worked in the County Coroner’s office for five or six years now, and he was finally getting the hang of hardening himself to the gruesome disasters he had to face almost every day. His mother had gasped—actually stopped what she was doing and full-out gasped—when he came home and told her where he’d been hired, what he was going to do with his life. Linus? Pick up dead bodies and cut them open? Linus, who turned white as a sheet every time he saw blood? Who almost passed out when his brother got his wisdom teeth extracted? Of all the jobs in the world, that was most definitely not the one for him.

         But there he was, walking into the accident scene like it was just a Red Lobster, or something. Thinking about what he’d eaten for lunch (oh, that guy isn’t looking too good) and forgetting if he’d let his dog outside before he went to work (man, he’ll be lucky if he comes out of this with just a broken leg). His body—the one he was coming for—was just a little farther up the street (God, that’s a hand, a hand without anything connected to it). And there was a white Four Runner there, one that looked just like his fiancée’s.

         And—funny—there was hand there, too, draped over the steering wheel like a wet washcloth. A washcloth with something sparkling on it…

         Linus felt dizzy. From here, it looked just like the ring he’d surprised her with two months ago. The one he’d bought almost a year ago, but was too scared to give to her. He’d looked at it every night before he went to bed, thinking about the thousand different ways she could reject him.

         He stopped himself from going closer. He couldn’t do it, couldn’t take the steps that would confirm his worst fears, no matter how desperately his feet wanted him to keep going.