Chapter 6 : Shopping List
[Watkins Funeral Home, Rainier Beach — Late March 2015, 10:00 AM]
The arrangement room at Watkins Funeral Home had the specific melancholy of a space designed for grief on a budget. Two folding chairs, a desk with a county-issued computer monitor from 2008, and a box of tissues that had never been opened because the people who ended up here — unclaimed, unvisited, unmourned — didn't generate the kind of loss that required Kleenex.
Watkins was already seated when I arrived. He'd started wearing a tie for our meetings — a concession to professionalism that struck me as both touching and absurd, given that our professional relationship involved the sale of human organs from a strip mall in Rainier Beach.
"Mr. DeBeers." He stood. Shook my hand. The formality had become part of the ritual. "I have this week's intake ready. Five unclaimed — higher than average. Two strokes, one exposure, one liver failure, one—"
"I want to see the files."
Watkins paused. His hand, still extended from the handshake, hung in the air for a beat before dropping to his side. "The files."
"Intake paperwork. Background information. Whatever the county provides when they release remains to you." I sat down. Set an envelope on the desk — fatter than the usual ones. "I want to choose."
The room got quiet. The fluorescent tube above us flickered — a bad ballast, the kind that would burn out within a month and cost forty dollars to replace, which I knew because the accountant's brain had opinions about maintenance budgets.
"Choose." Watkins lowered himself into his chair. "You want to choose which brains you take. Based on... what?"
"Background. Occupation. Skill set."
"Skill set." He repeated the words like a man tasting something unfamiliar. "You're asking me to let you shop."
"I'm asking you to let me review publicly available county records — name, age, cause of death, occupation, next-of-kin status — before I make a purchasing decision. You already have this information. I'm just asking to see it before I write the check."
Watkins took off his glasses. Cleaned them. Put them back on. The same buying-time gesture from our first meeting, except now I recognized it as a negotiation tactic rather than a nervous habit. Arthur Pollack's brain understood negotiation pauses. The man was stalling to see if I'd sweeten the offer.
"Seven thousand per brain," I said. "Up from five. In exchange for review access."
The envelope sat between us. Watkins looked at it the way a man looks at a drink he knows he shouldn't take — with the specific expression of someone whose willpower has already capitulated and whose body is just catching up.
"This is—" He stopped. Started again. "Mr. DeBeers, I want to be clear. I'm providing a service. Disposition of unclaimed remains. What you do with the tissue after transfer is your business. But selecting by background—" He rubbed the bridge of his nose where his glasses left indentations. "That feels different."
"It's not different. It's specific. Specificity costs more, which is why I'm offering forty percent above our current rate."
Seven thousand times five brains: thirty-five thousand dollars. Cash I didn't have. But the accountant's brain had found the money — a restructured revenue forecast for Meat Cute that projected an additional eleven thousand per month in legitimate income if I optimized the storefront operations, plus a client fee increase I'd been considering. The real Blaine had charged his zombie clients a flat rate per brain. Arthur Pollack's financial instincts suggested a tiered pricing model based on brain quality and delivery priority. Premium brains — younger, from skilled professionals — at higher rates. Standard brains — elderly, lower nutrient density — at base rate. Let the market subsidize itself.
It was monstrous. It was also functional. And standing in a funeral home negotiating for the right to shop for human brains by résumé, functional was the only currency that mattered.
Watkins opened the envelope. Counted. Thirty-five thousand. Every dollar I had left, minus a two-thousand-dollar emergency reserve I'd hidden in the apartment under a loose floorboard.
"This is for this week's supply plus the selection fee?"
"Five brains at seven thousand each. And going forward — same deal. Weekly."
He closed the envelope. Stood. Walked to the filing cabinet behind his desk and pulled a folder — county intake forms, five sheets, five dead people whose next of kin had either been notified and declined to claim or never been located at all.
"Twenty minutes," he said. "I have a viewing at eleven."
The files spread across Watkins' desk. Five names, five lives reduced to government paperwork.
Margaret Yoon, 68, stroke. Occupation: retired schoolteacher.
Ronald Briggs, 72, stroke. Occupation: retired postal worker.
Carlos Mendez, 44, exposure. Occupation: none listed. (Homeless, likely.)
Frank Goss, 58, liver failure. Occupation: security consultant, private sector.
Denise Whatley, 63, cardiac arrest. Occupation: administrative assistant.
I read each file twice. The accountant's brain sorted them by potential value — a cold, efficient process that I let happen because efficiency was keeping eight people alive this week and guilt was a luxury I'd budget for later.
Frank Goss. Fifty-eight, liver failure, security consultant. Twenty-two years in private security — corporate, residential, commercial. The intake form listed his last employer: Meridian Security Solutions, Seattle. His body had failed him, but his brain had spent two decades learning how to protect things.
"This one," I said. "And the teacher, the postal worker, and Mendez. Four this week."
"Not the administrative assistant?"
"Next cycle, if she's still available."
Watkins noted the selections. Filed the remaining form. The transaction completed with the same antiseptic professionalism that had characterized every interaction since our first meeting — two men who understood the terms of their arrangement and chose not to examine them too closely.
I loaded the duffel into the trunk. Four brains. Twenty-eight thousand dollars' worth of dead people's futures.
Frank Goss sat in the passenger seat — metaphorically, in his specimen bag on the floorboard — while I drove back to Meat Cute with the windows down and the radio off, thinking about what a security consultant's brain might teach me.
[Meat Cute Charcuterie, Back Office — Afternoon]
The integration was different this time.
I'd eaten the three standard brains first — distributed Margaret Yoon and Ronald Briggs to clients, kept Carlos Mendez for Jackie's next delivery, and saved Frank Goss for myself. The elderly brains went down easy. Familiar process. No surprises.
Frank Goss hit like a migraine wearing brass knuckles.
The headache started within minutes of consumption — not the gentle settling I'd experienced with the chef and the accountant, but a sharp, drilling pressure behind my left eye that spread across my temples and down into my jaw. The office blurred. The fluorescent light became a weapon. I killed the overheads and sat in the dark with my palms pressed against my skull, breathing through my teeth while Frank Goss's twenty-two years of security expertise tried to cram itself into neural architecture that was already occupied.
The chef's brain had been the first tenant. Clean installation, plenty of room. The accountant had been the second — different domain, no conflicts, smooth integration. But Frank Goss was the third, and the available neural real estate was shrinking. The headache was the price of admission.
Forty minutes. That's how long the worst of it lasted — forty minutes of sitting in the dark while my visual cortex rewired itself and my motor cortex adopted new patterns and my frontal lobe reorganized priority hierarchies that had been stable for nine days.
Then it cleared. Not gradually — like a switch. One moment the headache was a five-alarm fire behind my eyes. The next, it was gone, replaced by something else entirely.
I opened my eyes. Looked at the office door.
Dead bolt — Schlage B60N, single cylinder. Adequate for residential, insufficient for commercial. The strike plate was mounted with half-inch screws; a solid kick would rip it from the frame. The door itself was hollow-core interior — decorative, not defensive. Someone with moderate upper-body strength could put a fist through it.
The knowledge was automatic. Involuntary. Frank Goss's brain looked at the world through a lens of vulnerability assessment, and everything it saw was a potential breach point.
I stood up. Walked through Meat Cute with new eyes.
The front entrance: glass door, single-pane, no security film. The lock was a commercial-grade Medeco, which was good, but the hinges were exposed on the exterior, which meant someone with a screwdriver and thirty seconds could pop the door off its frame entirely.
The loading bay: roll-up door with a manual latch. No electronic lock. No alarm sensor. A padlock that could be defeated with bolt cutters from any hardware store.
The windows: single-pane throughout. No security cameras on the exterior. One interior camera — a dummy, battery dead, positioned more for the insurance discount than actual surveillance.
The walk-in freezer: no interior lock mechanism. If someone sealed you inside, you'd freeze. If someone broke in from outside, the latch was a standard commercial release — a flat-head screwdriver would open it.
Every weakness, every blind spot, every point of entry that Chief or Boss's people or anyone else might exploit — Frank Goss's brain mapped them all in a single walk-through, the way the chef's brain had mapped a kitchen or the accountant's brain had mapped a balance sheet.
Three skills. Three brains. Three dead people's life's work, living in my nervous system like permanent tenants who'd signed long-term leases.
The integration headache was the cost. And it was getting worse — forty minutes this time, versus near-zero for the first two. If the pattern held, the fourth brain would be rougher. The fifth, worse. At some point, the cost of each new installation would become debilitating.
File it. Plan around it. Keep going.
I grabbed a notepad and started a security assessment. Meat Cute needed hardening — upgraded locks, real cameras, reinforced entry points. Frank Goss's brain provided the shopping list. Arthur Pollack's brain calculated the budget. The chef's brain had nothing to contribute to the conversation, but the onion soup it had made yesterday had been excellent, so nobody was complaining about departmental relevance.
Don E knocked on the door frame. "You okay in here? Heard you moving around in the dark."
"Headache. Passed." I looked up from the notepad. "We need to upgrade security. New locks, cameras, reinforced bay door. I'm making a list."
"What's wrong with the current setup?"
"Everything. The front door's a suggestion. The loading bay's a handshake. And that camera—" I pointed at the dummy unit above the register. "—hasn't worked since Obama's first term."
Don E squinted at the camera. "Huh. Always assumed that thing was real."
"That's the point of dummy cameras. They're convincing until someone actually tries to rob you." I stood. "Can you handle the front for a couple hours? I need to make some calls about equipment."
"Yeah, sure. Oh — hey." He pulled his phone from his back pocket. "Made a playlist for the kitchen. Classic rock. Figured the place needed some life."
He hit play. The Bluetooth speaker on the counter kicked in — Led Zeppelin, "Rock and Roll," the opening drum fill rattling the glassware. Don E grabbed a spatula from the drying rack and air-guitared the intro with the committed intensity of a man who'd been waiting for this moment his entire shift.
The spatula hit the counter on the downbeat. His foot stomped in roughly the correct rhythm. His face was pure, uncomplicated joy — the expression of someone who'd never in his life considered whether air-guitar was dignified and wouldn't care if he did.
I laughed.
Not the performative chuckle I'd been using since arriving — the one designed to mimic Blaine's casual amusement. An actual laugh, involuntary, the kind that starts in your chest and breaks through before your face can catch up. It lasted maybe three seconds and it hurt in the way that using an atrophied muscle hurts — unfamiliar, stiff, and oddly satisfying.
Don E grinned. "See? Told you this place needed a playlist."
"Play the Stones next."
"Done."
He went back to the front. "Rock and Roll" segued into "Brown Sugar." I sat at the desk with the security assessment and a laugh still echoing in my ribcage — the first real one since Seventh Avenue, since headlights, since the hard cut between lives.
The notepad filled with specifications: Schlage commercial deadbolts, Hikvision camera system, reinforced strike plates, window security film, motion sensors for the loading bay. Frank Goss's brain was thorough. Frank Goss's brain had spent twenty-two years making buildings harder to break into, and now that expertise lived in a zombie butcher shop owner who'd been alive for ten days and already had three dead professionals renting space in his skull.
The afternoon dimmed toward evening. The Stones played. Don E restocked the front case. I finalized the security plan and locked the notepad in the desk with the ledger and the hidden journal.
Then I washed the onion soup pot. The chef's hands scrubbed the steel with practiced efficiency — the same hands that had written a security assessment and restructured a financial ledger in the same afternoon. Three skill sets, zero degradation, and a headache that was already a memory.
At 8:47 PM, I stepped outside to bring in the sandwich board from the sidewalk. The street was quiet — Jackson Street at closing time, the laundromat next door already dark, the taco truck across the road packing up for the night.
A black town car rolled past. Slow. Tinted windows, front and back. No license plates — not missing, removed. The car passed the storefront, reached the end of the block, turned around, and passed again. Same speed. Same trajectory. A deliberate, unhurried circuit that said I'm looking at you and I want you to know it.
The car turned the corner and disappeared.
I stood on the sidewalk with the sandwich board in my hands and the security consultant screaming in the back of my brain: That was reconnaissance. Professional. Someone with resources just put you on their map.
Chief's idle car in the parking lot had been unsettling. This was different. This was organized. Funded. The kind of surveillance that came with a payroll.
The show had a name for this. A crime lord who controlled Seattle's drug trade, who ran his organization with the quiet efficiency of a regional bank, who'd eventually intersect with Blaine's operation in a conflict that neither side walked away from unscathed.
Stacey Boss. The man whose territory Meat Cute sat inside. The man who'd been ignoring a butcher shop that laundered money through artisanal sausages — until now.
I carried the sandwich board inside. Locked the front door. Checked the dummy camera out of reflex, then remembered it was useless. The security upgrades couldn't wait until next week. They needed to happen tomorrow.
Don E was cleaning the kitchen, the Stones still rolling from the speaker, and for a moment the normalcy of it — music, cleaning, closing up shop — made the town car feel like something I'd imagined.
I picked up Blaine's phone. Scrolled through contacts. Found the name I was looking for — filed under B, not because it started with B, but because the real Blaine had filed his threats alphabetically by category: B for Boss.
No call yet. Not tonight. But soon.
Stacey Boss wanted a meeting. And thanks to a dead security consultant's instincts, I'd see him coming.
Note:
Read the raw, unfiltered story as it unfolds. Your support makes this possible!
👉 Find it all at patreon.com/Whatif0
Timeline Viewer ($6): Get 10 chapters of early access + 5 new chapters weekly.
Timeline Explorer ($9): Jump 15-20 chapters ahead of everyone.
Timeline Keeper ($15): Get Instant Access to chapters the moment I finish writing them. No more waiting.