Street Cleaner

Written By
Shadow Kitsune

The coroner, Dr. Marilyn Rob, had seen death in all sorts of variations in her sixteen years as a medical examiner for the New York Police Department. She had seen some of the nastiest crimes one could possibly imagined, and at first she was troubled by the severity of some of the victims she had to open up to examine. But over the years, she had become accustomed to the harsh reality of death. Now, hardly anything bothered her, unless, of course, it involved sandwiches. Marilyn was a simple woman, one who always enjoyed the simple pleasure of eating a good sandwich. It was one of the highlights of her day to go on lunch break and eat a sandwich for lunch. Sometimes it would be roast beef with Swiss cheese, other days it might be turkey and ham with American cheese. It was obvious Marilyn was a sandwich enthusiast. That’s what earned her the nickname Sandy Sandwich.

It was a day like any other for Marilyn. She was hunched over a dead body of yet another hobo, or homeless person as the politically correct term would have it. Homeless people were always the most fun to work on, because she often found some of the oddest things in their stomachs. Pigeons, rats, dogs. You named it, they had it in them. Today was no different than any other. She stood over the dissected body of a homeless person while eating a hot roast beef sandwich with Italian dressing and Swiss cheese while poking around inside of the bum she had before her. It was business as usual. She cut the urchin on the examining table open, and dove right in like a pelican going in for a fish.

But in the midst of examining the contents of the dreg’s stomach, Marilyn found something that made her stomach churn; she thought she was going to be sick. There, in the pit of the homeless man’s gullet, was a half eaten sandwich. From the looks of it, it was a turkey and bologna sandwich with mayo and mustard on it. Stricken with disgust, Marilyn began sewing the homeless person’s stomach back up and went on to dissect another homeless person. The sigh of a half eaten sandwich simply depressed her, to tell the truth.

So there Marilyn went, cutting open yet another bum as if there weren’t a care in the world. But then, yet again, Marilyn was greeted by the most repulsive sighed imaginable… again.

There was another half eaten sandwich in this hobo’s stomach! This one was a salami and ham sandwich with white American cheese, mustard, and pickles. Again, Marilyn’s stomach muscles constricted, and she quickly sewed the dreg up. She didn’t know what this world was coming to when hobo’s still had half eaten sandwiches sitting in the depths of their stomachs.

After sewing up her second homeless person, Marilyn began to open up yet another pathetic hobo that had just been brought in. That was when she completely lost it… right inside the homeless man’s stomach. After the shock of finding another sandwich inside the hobo’s stomach, she suddenly made a connection: all three of these bums had half eaten sandwiches in their gullets! Stumped by this strange phenomenon, Marilyn became curious as to just what caused the death of the urchins. So by taking a sample of the half eaten sandwiches from each of the dead dregs, Marilyn ran a series of tests on them to check and see if there was some sort of poison or contaminant on them when they ate then. If the sandwiches had been bought in a convenient store, they would likely be old and way out of date, which could have caused a food borne illness which would have likely led to death if left untreated. After an hour of testing, Marilyn made a startling discovery.

All three of the sandwiches the hobo’s had eaten contained traces of cyanide! Startled by this discovery, Marilyn felt that was obligated to the sanctity of the sandwiches to find out what kind of vile person would spoil their sandwichy goodness by spiking them with poison. With the task in mind, Marilyn set out to find the cause of this gross atrocity.

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Staking out a popular hobo hangout, Marilyn sat in her car comfortably while watching the various homeless people huddle around a fire in an old trashcan, all while eating a roast beef with lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise sandwich and listening to Cher. She was hoping one of the hobos would whip out a sandwich sometime so she could run them down and steal the sandwich so that she could run a test on it, but so far, she wasn’t having any luck.

Just as Marilyn was about to give up and go to a popular Cuban sandwich shop several blocks away, she suddenly saw a shady-looking car drive up alongside the hobos. Hunching over the steering wheel intently, Marilyn watched as a short, fat man with a bushy brown moustache rolled down the window to his car and handed a bag full of sandwiches to the hobos. In that split second, Marilyn recognized the face of the man giving the dregs the sandwiches. It was none other than Detective Albuquerque Andersonmendon Sovonovich III, the most well known face among the NYPD! This discovery shook Marilyn to her core, almost as much as knowing that it was he who was spiking perfectly good sandwiches with cyanide. But it was still premature to accuse the Detective of tainting the sandwiches with cyanide yet. She still had to test the sandwiches.

Whenever the Detective drove off, Marilyn started her car up again and slammed down on the gas pedal. The sound of screeching tires squealing against the pavement echoed out, frightening the bums and scaring them off. Luckily for Marilyn, they dropped the bag of sandwiches! With a sly grin and a song in her heart, Marilyn hopped out of the car, skipped over to retrieve the bad of sandwiches, and pranced back to her vehicle to return to the morgue. There, she would run tests on the sandwiches, and ultimately find the answer that she sought.

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As soon as Marilyn returned to the lab, Marilyn set to work on figuring out whether or not the sandwiches she had obtained were indeed spiked with cyanide. After opening up the bag and slicing several of the sandwiches, she stuck a sample under the microscope and investigated each one of them. To her horror, there was a lethal amount of cyanide contained within each sandwich. And now, she also had her suspect.

Detective Albuquerque Andersonmendon Sovonovich III. He was the one responsible for creating these sandwiches of Death, and they would be sandwiches that Marilyn would never eat… because they had onions… and she hated onions.

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Marilyn burst through the doors of the New York Police Department headquarters, and marched right up to the Chief of Police’s office to show her evidence and prove the Detective as the snake he was. She was radiant with confidence, mostly because she had just eaten a BLT before she came to accuse the Detective of being a sandwich poisoning jerk. But that confidence suddenly faded as Marilyn stormed into the Chief’s office, only to find Detectice Albuquerque Andersonmendon Sovonovich III sitting comfortably behind the desk. Marilyn was stupefied by his presence, and suddenly, it all fell into place.

“Ah, Marilyn!” the Detective exclaimed. “What a pleasant surprise. To what do I owe this visit from a creampuff like you?”

Marilyn put her stubby little arms on her wide, fat hips, and puffed her cheeks out like a balloon filling with hot air.

“When did you become Chief of Police?” Marilyn demanded.

“I’ve been Chief of Police for three years now, Marilyn, after I exposed that the former Chief was receiving kickbacks from that gentlemen’s club down the street,” the Detective replied.

“How come I’ve never heard about this?” Marilyn inquired.

“Because you’re a crazy woman who sits in the morgue all day eating sandwiches and cutting open dead bodies,” the Detective replied.

Marilyn smiled, and chuckled.

“Oh, right,” she said. “Well, I think you would like to know that I’ve just found out your dirty little secret!”

The Detective raised an eyebrow quizzically.

“Oh? And what is that?”

Marilyn grinned menacingly, and leaned over the Detective’s desk.

“I know you’ve been poisoning sandwiches with cyanide, and I know you’ve been doing this for the past month. So you might as well come out of the closet and admit it—you’re a dirty, filthy sandwich spiker!”

It was then the Detective broke out into a cold sweat, and bolted up onto his feet.

“Alright! I admit it! I’ve been poisoning sandwiches and handing them to hobos so that I could thin the herd!” he proclaimed.

“Why? Why go to such lengths to do such a silly act?” Marilyn asked.

“Because hobos area drain on society and an eye sore to the city! The only way to alleviate the problem is to exterminate the whole lot of them!”

Marilyn blinked, nodded, and smiled.

“I see,” she said. “Well then, I guess that’s understandable,” she said. “But next time, find another medium for carrying out your vendetta against the homeless; use beer instead.”

The Detectives face brightened, and he smiled.

“Of course!” he exclaimed. “I had never thought of that before!”

And with that, Marilyn and the Detective sat down and drank champagne while eating ham and turkey sandwiches, and laughed deep into the afternoon…

The End