It was a question of scale, really.
Once upon a time I used to do flood and fire restoration. It was interesting work in that it almost never got routine, but we found that we would dip into ever stranger avenues of "cleanup". Like body jobs.

Not that we removed the bodies mind you, we were there to clean up the mess they invariably made. Suicides, overdoes, or just granny's bowels relaxing... these were the sorts of jobs we'd get, although I should mention that they're the sorts of jobs I'd get, since I was the only one with remotely applicable tickets, and because I wasn't as squeamish as the rest of the staff. So...

Got a call, rush job, suicide in a town about 45 minutes south, needs to be done right away, not much to do. Fair enough.

The boss was out of town, and we had several flood jobs on the go, so I was a bit tight for staff. I sent the new guy. In hindsight, this was a mistake.

"Not much to do" to me sounded like "a bit of a stain on the carpet", which he could have easily handled. And if not, he could have phoned me and I could have talked him through it.

Instead, it appeared that a 215cm (seven foot) man had put a rifle under his chin and blown his head off, in a basement kitchen. The geyser of blood from what remained of his neck had apparently been under such pressure that when it hit the ceiling, it managed to spray all the walls, the appliances, the cupboards... everywhere... with unbelievable amounts of goop.

The new employee, completely unprepared for this and having (as I found out later) a weak stomach anyway, couldn't get past the smell and was unable to go back inside once he'd got the sheared copper smell in his nostrils. His wife (who didn't work for us), whom he'd picked up on the way so they could spend a little time together actually did most of the work for us, bless her. And when she'd got some of the deeper slicks of sludge cleaned up, our employee managed to overcome his nausea and help her.

It may have been when the twelve year old stepson of the suicide came and and started helping them to clean up his dad that convinced the new guy that this needed to be done in a timely manner. He re-lost his composure though when he found a chunk of jawbone under the front of the fridge when he was mopping up more blood.

The pictures were just unbelievable. I don't have them (I've not been with that company for many years), but imagine John Woo making the Quake movie.

*pop*

Length? I believe the police report said it was a .30-06
(Ejaculantern was caught desecrating pumpkins on, Thu 7 Aug 2008, 19:00, Reply)