Post Mortem is a 2022 web story by Looperreallyreallyrocks. It can be read here
and here.
A man wakes up on a morgue slab with no memory of who he is and finds out that he was murdered and somehow managed to come back to life. Now he wants to find out who he was and who tried to kill him.
This story contains examples of:
- Amnesiac Hero: Ralph is the main character who wakes up in a morgue with no memory of who he is and gradually discovers who he is throughout the story. This also ends up horrifically subverted when it is revealed that Ralph was a Serial Killer and a terrible person in general. Worse, Ralph ends up embracing this.
- Canon Welding: The story both features the characters heading to Bucksville and Dylan mentioning Unrequited Love when saying "Wish my cousin Darren was here instead of running that bar in Ireland…"
- Darker and Edgier: Downplayed because the author's previous stories were also quite dark. In comparison to the previous stories, this one focuses more on the feeling of uneasiness as the truth of what happened is gradually revealed to the readers. It is also revealed that the main character, Ralph, was a horrible person, and the story ends on a full-on Downer Ending with not even a smidgeon of hope.
- Downer Ending: After Ralph discovers he was Serial Killer who killed entire families after murdering the guy who almost killed him, he decides to embrace this and kills Officer Miller. We are then told he went on to kill even more people before being locked up and declared insane.
- Evil All Along: At first, the audience is left unsure of who exactly Ralph was until it is revealed that he was a horrible man.
- Expy: Ralph Leder is a pretty clear one of Leonard Shelby from Memento. Both of them suffer from memory loss that was the result of a deadly attack and prevents them from being able to recognize the kind of person they are. Both of them are trying to investigate a murder in which they are eventually revealed to have had a far more sinister involvement than they originally thought. Both of their storylines happen out of order. Both of them turned out to be serial killers. Both of them eventually decide to embrace their destinies and willingly commit a malicious act (and for bonus points, both people harm a police officer who had been trying to help them after the realization). Both of them are constantly foreshadowed throughout the story to be violent and unhinged.
- Family Extermination: A lady mentions a family killer early in the story. It is later revealed that Ralph is the one.
- Flashback: The story has a lot of flashbacks that slowly reveal the truth behind Ralph.
- Freudian Excuse: When Ralph was a child, he witnessed his parents being murdered, which affected him quite deeply.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Officer Miller is a genuinely nice person who tries to help Ralph as much as he can. His kindness is rewarded by Ralph killing him after he discovers who he was. To add insult to injury he was still sympathizing with Ralph for what he went through.
- No One Could Survive That!: Ralph is killed, and that is what causes his amnesia. By all accounts, he shouldn't have survived, but his heart somehow restarted.
- Prequel: The story is one for the entire verse. Being set in 2015, 3 years before the events of 30 Days in Spring. This shows quite clearly in the fact that nobody in Bucksville refers to the events of A Case in Bucksville.
- Red Herring: The story has one in the form of Bucksville itself appearing which initially makes the audience think the story will have a major tie to A Case in Bucksville. It actually doesn't.
- Then Let Me Be Evil: When Ralph discovers that he was a serial killer before losing his memory, he is horrified at first, but quickly decides to embrace it.
- Waking Up at the Morgue: This is how Ralph starts the story, and he has no memory of anything.
