It was simple, they would bring us a body and by the ancient arts of dissection and divination we would supply a name and a number. Sometimes it was the name and phone number of a witness, other times it was the name of a street and the address of a suspect.
Our body tonight hadn't been brought in by the police, he'd walked in himself, looked me in the eyes and said 'auger this' and promptly blown his brains out with a .38 special revolver, a model selected no doubt for it's concealability and availability.
He didn't look like a suicide, he was well dressed, his face and body showed no signs of sleep deprivation or drug use, in all respects he seemed a well adjusted person right down to the predicted number of credit cards in his wallet.
What could we do? we augered him.
We didn't believe the results. According to our augery, tonight was the end of the world.
So I kicked his heart across the floor of the morgue but this time, I didn't care to pick it up when the others complained. A ridiculous augery of a suicidal mad man.
Then another well dressed stranger surprised us with the same last words and his brains along the tiles.
Then again, and again.
Nobody told us to close, so we just kept piling them up, along the walls, in the corridors.
Augurists must be special, or else nuts, we've already made a pact not to give in to it ourselves, not until we auger the whole city.
One of us has decorated every streetlamp for ten city blocks with human entrails, another has used a helium canister to inflate a thousand human stomachs and lift a red banner up high above the morgue, it reads 'give us your sick, your fallen, your downtrodden' and we hope it's clear that this is the place things are still happening. That if you're gonna go, you'll come to us first.
It's been a great success, people are dying to get in here and die.
We'll auger every single one. These citizens of the red night need us.
Personally? What have I done?
I've built a temple out of human hearts.
Let it bleed.
