The Wind Tastes Foul
The scent wafting down the stony shore into her sensitive nostrils alerted Mary to the human body ahead. Unlike the peculiar sea creature that had washed ashore the last time they’d had a massive storm during a full moon, a human body had a particular essence that clung to the back of her throat. It was both pleasing and gag-inducing. Involuntarily, Mary’s feet slowed from a steady gallop to a walk. The pressure in her teeth tightened, a stinging pain along her gums that came with the odor of flesh. A pressing urge to move away overcame her because of the overwhelming aura of death clinging to that base level of pleasure. She should move away from the frail, pale body lying on the beach. Her stomach clenched in spasms of hunger. Instead, Mary pressed onward.
The sound of her running shoes pressing down upon the pebbles and sand rattled in her ears with each crunch of granules, the sliding screech of rock on rock. Like the commotion of an orchestra behind the curtain waiting to play, the noise became distinct before she pushed it away. The massive driftwood tree, also washed ashore during the last storm, was now surrounded by smaller chunks of wood and seaweed. The body lay in the shallow bowl of sand, like some peculiar funeral bed against the driftwood headboard.
Mary’s feet came to a stop six meters from the corpse. The grey-blue of dawn painted the world in a dreamy haze. It was her favorite time, her favorite color, that intangibly transparent yet cloudy blue. Her gaze danced out to the waves at sea. Their languid roll to shore like the Dr. Jekyll to the Mr. Hyde waves that had crashed ashore two nights ago. Mary had stood on the beach that night, her long dark blonde hair whipping her face and neck, hoping for a rogue wave and wishing the tide would pull her below. The cravings came hard and fast these days. They overwhelmed her to the point she lost reason. Mary longed to end them. Skin drenched and rain-lashed, she hadn’t felt the cold or the sting that night. Not the way others would.
She played her tongue over the elongated eyeteeth, touching the tender flesh surrounding them. The carrion smell of the young woman now lying before her drew them out. Mary moved closer, lazy steps. No one else was on the beach, and no one would be for hours. And the dunes formed a natural barrier from the road. Any passing car would be too far away to notice Mary, let alone the beautiful corpse now at her feet.
“Odd,” she started, “how the shade of dawn now paints your decomposing flesh.”
The top layer of the body’s skin was dull porcelain. Her auburn hair lacked the brilliance it emitted when she was alive. Her eyes were milky and vacant, lips a mauve blue.
Mary tilted her head, examining the corpse. “Sarah Elizabeth, what did you get yourself into?”
Sarah’s body appeared freshly washed, no dirt, debris, bruises, or foreign bodies sullying her beautiful form. The position of her arms, legs, and head made it seem like she had posed for an angelic painting and then simply died. The barest sign of footprints showed in the sand, but the residual winds from the storm masked them to the point that Mary wouldn’t say she could recognize them as male or female. Her gaze returned to Sarah Elizabeth, naked and blue.
“The breeze, the breath of God, is still,” Mary whispered, reciting the macabre Edgar Allan Poe poem that sprung to mind.
“And the mist upon the hill
Shadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken,
Is a symbol and a token.
How it hangs upon the trees,
A mystery of mysteries,” Mary recited.
The gravel crackled under the toes of her shoes as she bent easily over the body. A lithe grace that came from miles of running and hours on a yoga mat, exertions that abated cravings Mary could not satisfy. When she was younger, specialists said she had a form of pica, the desire to eat objects or substances that were not edible. Her eating habits had caused forms of anemia, and her desire for iron, or rather blood and raw meat, were “unsavory” habits her parents desired she abandon. Mary had always known her affliction was more than a diagnosis modern doctors could conceptualize.
The scent of the recently deceased young woman grew more intense. Mary’s nostrils flared—a tantalizing sweet smell. The fragrance of death began wrapping Sarah Elizabeth in a cloak of decay, shifting a prehistoric, animalistic button inside Mary’s brain. She swallowed forcefully. The desire to chew on something made the freshly dead flesh look like a raw cut of prime beef. Instead, she crouched and took up a nice flat stone from near the body. Mary placed it on her tongue, savoring the weight of it, the salty brine and metallic cool that pooled in her mouth.
Thankful for the momentary release the stone provided, Mary righted her body, standing once more over Sarah Elizabeth. Mary pushed the rock into her cheek like a piece of hard candy.
“What to do with you?” she asked herself.
Mary had known Sarah since the child was born. Now Mary knew her in death. She tilted her head back, observed the steel-blue sky, then pivoted her body to look toward town. Lost Grove was quiet and still in the early hours of the morning. Calling the police station would click over to the answering service. Mary was in no mood to deal with a switchboard operator who would ask her fifty questions.
“Time to get up, Chief Richards,” she said, deciding.
Mary loped down the beach, her feet carrying her smoothly across the stony shore toward town. She’d weave through the quaint Victorian homes and stop at a modern ranch-style house on Bluff Street. Chief of Police Bill Richards and his wife would startle awake to a loud banging on their door. He would find a note pinned under a small, smooth stone, Mary’s saliva already drying on the surface of it. The note would tell him to search Mourner’s Beach for Sarah Elizabeth’s body. At the bottom, in fine print, “Hint: she’s by the pile of driftwood.”
