Memoirs of Mortality: The Haunting Odyssey of Kiler Davenport

This has been my life since I was 14. I am now 67 years old. These images will forever be burned into my mind, soul and spirit. Body after body after body. They chase me day and night. Yes, this is PTSD. The real deal. Business as usual for those of us who swarm to these grotesque scenes. Read this and know a little bit more about me (Kiler Davenport) and why I became a talk show host and non-fiction writer.

Little aborted fetuses laying in my morgue in dolls clothes, in little red ski hats, like little shriveled prunes, eyes squinched, mama says don't they look so precious. I'm thinking to myself 'we should just throw them away', that is what we do with most fetuses. Mama wants a proper burial. so we give it to her. Fetus after fetus after fetus. Like little alien beings from another planet. I held them in the palm of my hand. and I said, “God, where are you?” Standing among stinking rotting decomp, swollen, oozing bodies of all race and age. the smell on my clothes forever embedded. just can't seem to get that stink off. Call after call after call.

Sometimes you think you are in hell. Life is hell. but you just gotta keep on keepin' on. It's in your blood. the guts. the gore. the stench. the stink. that next scene. I just gotta go to that next scene. fat man stuffed himself in camper box blew a perfect Texas star right between his eyes. laid there ten days before we got to him. Hundred degrees plus. I knew those parts were gonna fall off. first a leg, then an arm. Ain't no body bag gonna contain this fat ass. suicide. 19 years old stuffed in a camper box. Being connected to the crematorium just made everything worse. cooking body, after body, after body. Raking what's left in my little tray. Picking out the metal with a magnet. Crushing those final bones down to powder. Oops gotta check one in the oven. Brains haven't fully cooked out yet. Gonna leave him in another 30 minutes. Ever seen a body explode and go bad in an oven. Somebody's got to clean up the body fluid. Somebody's got to slip and slide in it. How do you clean this shit up? With a mop that has been used over and over and over, again and again and again.

We got a thousand toe tags stuffed in the back room next to the old wood stove where they used to burn babies. Back before we had the big fancy ovens that sound like a 747 when you push the blow button. assholes used to burn two bodies at a time until they got their ass kicked. All kinds of nasty shit goes on in this place. I could give a box full of crushed pinto beans and tell you it was your daddy, and it really wouldn't make a fucking bit of difference. You never get the exact amount of ashes of your loved one anyway. You are just mixed in with all the others bodies in the oven. One after one after one. bones flickin' and flyin' in every direction. that shit goes up your nose and in your hair. You breath it down into your body. I kinda miss that smell. it is an odd kind of natural organic smell.

I loved working at the morgue. It gives you a strange sense of power. I used to wonder what some of the young, fucked up embombers did to young pretty women freshly dead. Some of these guys are really kinky. They stay drunk and fucked up most of the time. and hell you can't blame them. The shit we see is too much for any one person to bear. It is hard to explain if you haven't been there. Vagina, fetus, oozing shit coming out everywhere. It just don't make any real sense. We used to sling bodies around in the morgue like potato sacks. This ain't no secret in the business. Sometimes we would get so busy we would have to sleep with the bodies in the ambulance room. I used to be scared shitless of that but I would never tell anyone about that for fear of being called a pussy. Throwing babies in the floor board. Hauling ass back to the funeral home. Oops gotta another call. Mine as well pick thissun up on the way it is a homicide. Can't wait to get there to see the cause of death. That is what keeps us going.

The different ways people get whacked. the different ways people commit suicide. cutting bodies down swinging from the rafters at 19 years old is not something i recommend to anybody. especially when their eyes are open, they are stiff as a board, and dripping shit out of their asshole. foamy, frothy mouth and noses. It is a scene right out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. My years in this business have taken a toll on me. I have seen it all. I've heard it all.

Homicide was one of the worst experiences of my life. I am tired now. I still have flashbacks every night. The bodies creep and crawl around my bed. I've got fucking post traumatic stress disorder from hell. Very few of my friends know or even understand the pain I feel inside. It is hard for me to interact with a lot of people. because people just don't want to hear this shit. I am telling this story because you want to know what is on my mind. I am 67 now and I have to say I miss the business. the business of death. the business of chaos.


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