Whether you’re a mercenary in a dystopian future, a hardcore serial killer or the reconnaissance unit of the King’s Army, bodies are a fact of existence. Corpses are a pain in the ass, though. You can’t just leave them lying around. They tend to attract attention. They stink. Worst of all, they may hold incriminating evidence, or prove to your enemies that you were somewhere you’d rather they didn’t know you were. And we can’t have that. So, without further ado, here are the three most unique methods of body disposal I can think of. *
PIGS
They can eat the whole body, including the bones. Brothers Robert and Donald Duvall beat two hunters to death and fed them to pigs, and the Swine Method kept them out of the slammer for damn near two decades. They were only prosecuted and sentenced after a witness came forward with information. Other such incidents include those involving a father of 50, a man disposed of so his friend could collect his pension and a farmer’s wife.
BODY LIQUEFACTION
An environmentally-friendly alternative to cremation, the process is described in a BBC article as “submerging the body in a solution of water and potassium hydroxide which is pressurised to 10 atmospheres and heated to 180C for between two-and-a-half and three hours,” after which the remaining bone is crushed in a cremulator, just like the bone fragments left behind by cremation. The liquid remains are to be flushed into the sewer system, which has, understandably, generated controversy for a number of reasons, to include respect for the dead and sanitary concerns.
BLACK MARKET ORGAN DONATION
It’s not perfect. You have to know how to properly extract the organs, you have to know how to preserve them, and you need access to a trustworthy person who has money and a network. Pulling it off, however, would yield a benefit most methods of corpse disposal do not: a cash payoff. In some countries, organ sale is legal and regulated. In others, there’s merely a healthy black market. The latter folks aren’t likely to ask many questions, since they’re already disposed to such measures as holding people at gunpoint and removing their kidneys after tricking them into thinking they’ve been hired for a construction job. If you have to get rid of a body anyhow, why not make four or five figures in the process? It would certainly leave a smaller mess to clean up through more traditional methods.
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* Obviously, if these were completely foolproof, we wouldn’t know they’d been done, but don’t be a wiseass, huh?
LINCOLN CRISLER is the author of two short story collections (Despairs & Delights, 2008 and Magick & Misery, 2009) and one novella (WILD, 2011) and the editor of Corrupts Absolutely?, Damnation Books’ forthcoming anthology of dark superhero fiction. His work has appeared in a variety of print and online publications, to include HUB Magazine, Shroud Publishing’s Abominations anthology and IDW‘s forthcoming Robots vs. Zombies anthology. A United States Army combat veteran and non-commissioned officer, Lincoln lives in Augusta, Georgia with his wife and two of his three children. You can contact him at lincoln@lincolncrisler.info.
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