Big Pink Raisin

As related to me by Bill Watterson

We stepped out of the bar.

"You wanna go get Coco's?"

"If they're open"

"They're open all night. It's the ultimate drunk food, it'd be cruel to be closed now."

CORONER'S REPORT

Concerning the investigation into the disappearance of Kyle A. Wyandotte, age 8, from his home at [REDACTED] on the evening of August 27...

I ordered the omelet curry, 500 grams rice and garlic-cheese naan on the side. He got the classic, chicken katsu with double meat, double cheese.

BACKGROUND: Object was found soaking in a pool of fluid with a temperature of approximately 41 degrees celsius which, when analyzed, was found to have an extremely high concentration of sodium compounds, uric acid, and urea salts...

“So, what's the weirdest thing you've ever seen working as a coroner?”

He glanced up in the middle of dousing his curry with Worcestershire sauce.

“You really wanna talk about this while we're eating?”

“Fuck it. I'm not squeamish.”

He muttered, more to himself than to me, ”That's what you think...”

...object was coated in an extremely wrinkled and very wet leathery skin with a rough, sandpaper-like texture...

“Picture this.”

...Color was a pale pinkish-tan...

“I'm picturing. What is it?”

...and overall surface was deeply grooved...

“A five-foot long..”

...resembled nothing so much as...

“Yeah?”

...an extremely large...

“80 pound...”

...and partially re-hydrated...

“Meat raisin”

“...What?”

AUTOPSY: Due to the unconventional shape of the object and the fact that no more obvious means of orienting it could be found, it was decided to begin with a vertical cut, starting from approximately 25cm above the lowest point...

“What the fuck is a 'meat raisin'?”

“Just what I said. A big huge hunk of skin, all pink and wet and wrinkled up like a raisin.”

...was remarkably difficult to sever, being an average of 7cm thick...

“What was it? Is it some kinda deep sea animal I've never heard of? Is it a delicacy in the Philippines?”

“We had no idea what it was. Actually, we still don't.”

...via osmotic diffusion, thereby "pickling" the organs...

“Weber, he was my assistant, he was hacking away at it with this huge razor.”

...abrasive and tough, in addition to still being waterlogged despite having been removed from any liquids and left to drain for over 36 hours...

“He finally got through that thing, and we clamped on with a spreader and pulled the two flaps apart just as far as they'd stretch”

...pulled apart to reveal a cartilaginous skeleton through which we had cut when creating the incisions, dense, fibrous muscles that bristles and separated into individual dark-red fascia when cut, and organs which appeared...

“And when we finally got inside...”

“Yeahh?” My curry forgotten for the moment. No mean feat.

… the organs, all of which were within the average weight range...

"On the inside it was just like a normal kid. Well, a normal dead kid. But it bled.”

seeped a viscous black liquid, presumably blood, which has remained fluid rather than coagulating as in typical livor mortis. Samples were sent to toxicology to test for the presence of the anticoagulant Warfarin...

“Bled?”

“Yeah, this watery black blood. It still stank just like normal blood, all sweet and rusty. But there was something else strange about it. We found out when we were weighing the organs.”

...did not attach to any orifices. The urinary and digestive tracts simply tapered off within the abdominal cavity, as well as the esophagus and trachea. They give the appearance of having been slowly constricted and eventually pinched off...

“They didn't go nowhere. Just ran off into nothing. Like they'd taken the guts outta a normal kid and stuffed em in a meat sack, let em heal up inside it.”

“...So it was just a living sack of organs? With no in's and no out's?”

“Well..”

...full set of adult human teeth, as well as a partial set of deciduous teeth, all decalcified in the...

“It had a head.”

“A head? Did it have a face?”

“Ehh... sort of? I don't know that I'd call it that.”

...typical respiratory, ocular, auditory alimentary and nervous systems for any child aged roughly six to nine, despite the fact that all orifices had been grown over with a thick layer of nearly impenetrable skin...

“So you just found a dead sack of flesh that looked like someone wrapped a kid in an elephant scrotum?”

“Yeah, I suppose. Though, it may not have been entirely dead.”

...brain had a healthy gray color and was seen to pulse slightly upon it's removal. This continued until it's severance from the carotid arteries, which issued forth twin sprays of black blood at...

"So what the fuck was that thing?"

"Officially? Nobody knows. I got my own theories though. You know those wrinkles you get on your fingers when you sit in the bathtub too long?"

It was the first time I hadn't finished a meal at Coco's. They asked if I wanted a tray to wrap up the leftovers, though for some reason they looked like the juice you'd pickle a meat raisin's guts in. He must have made that story up, there was no way it was real, but I felt a little jittery when I took a shower that night.