Your Corpse

When Peter entered the house after an exhausting day at work, he froze. There was a corpse on the living room floor. It laid on its arched back, arms and legs bent into strict angles in a tortured rigor mortis. From head to toe the corpse wore flaky, rotten flesh. A jigsaw puzzle of scabs and fungus and scars molded over a body. The corpse’s stench made Peter gag. At first he wanted to look away but found that he could not. He felt drawn to it, as if the corpse had its own gravity pulling him closer. Peter stepped warily to where the corpse lay. He stood over it.

The corpse looked like Peter. The only difference was that this thing had been decomposing for a while now and was dressed differently. Peter had on a blazer and khakis while the corpse wore a tattered T-shirt and faded jeans. Otherwise it matched Peter perfectly. The same parted, thin hair. Same wire frame glasses. The constellation of freckles on the body’s face mirrored his own. Lines crossed the palms of its hands exactly as Peter’s were crossed.

The corpse hacked up blood and mucus between crusted, purple lips. A faint breath escaped. From its mouth oozed murmurs mixed with gurgling. Peter bent down to try and make out what it was saying. The corpse’s lips shuddered until they moved freely. It formed its first word:

“Remember…”

Peter asked, “Huh?”

The corpse wet its lips with a mildewed tongue. “Remember him on the corner.”

Peter furrowed his brow and bent lower.

The corpse’s chest expanded and contracted, its breath rattling within.

“Remember him on the corner,” said the corpse. “The man you passed…wanting some money.”

Peter could not tell whether he was remembering this as a moment from his life or picturing it as the corpse told him.

“What man?” asked Peter. “I don’t know anybody like that.”

“Knew him,” said the corpse. “Knew him…but still passed him. Wanting money…just a little money. Just a dollar…a penny. Didn’t you have any?”

Peter’s forehead creased as he thought harder about this man. It was coming back to him. The corpse wasn’t making this up. There was a homeless man, about a month ago, standing outside a grocery store Peter had just walked out of. At the time Peter was carrying cash, but—

“—but we didn’t want to part with it, did we?” asked the corpse.

“We?”

The corpse’s lips curled into a grin. Its eyes twinkled.

Peter coughed. “What–what do you mean we?”

“Let’s not worry about that now. Much of our life was just you. But now, you have become we. We are Peter. Both the sunny, fake side. And the true side. The side that knows its true nature, its grime, its sins. ‘Til tonight, the true side has been hidden. On this night, we see the true side in me.”

Peter stammered but couldn’t find the right words, any words, to get him out of this.

“Relax, Peter…” the corpse murmured. “We will be one again tonight. One side will die for the other to live.”

Peter bowed but not of his own accord. His head dipped lower, closer to the corpse and its bristling eyes. The corpse’s voice had grown louder than a whisper and could be heard clearly.

“Remember,” the corpse said. “Remember yesterday…when we yelled at that child.”

Peter squeezed his eyes shut, squeezed them until he saw lights in his own head’s darkness. He remembered this one.

“Remember we screamed at that child, didn’t we? Oh Peter, what did that poor child do to deserve such a harsh word?”

Peter’s eyes watered when he opened them.

“I don’t…I don’t…know.” Peter’s voice had shriveled down to a murmur.

“Yes, you do. You do, Peter. That child, it did everything that everyone does to deserve a punishment. Its true nature was right to receive such treatment. You had to yell at that child for laughing too loud, didn’t you?”

Peter was on his knees now, his face inches away from the corpse’s pale, sickly face. A weight pressed on his neck, though he couldn’t see what it was. The corpse’s voice filled Peter’s ears.

“What was it to feel? Joy? Was the child to feel joy? Think! Joy!” The corpse laughed. “Isn’t that the first lie it’s told in life? No such thing!”

Peter’s arm began to feel tired. A fatigue crawled up from his hand to his shoulder, his entire arm trembling.

The corpse spewed saliva at Peter’s burning cheek.

“How could that disgusting brat deserve joy? It was right to be shut up, just like you, Peter!”

Peter felt the tears gnawing at his throat. He was gagging on the grief inside himself. Phlegm and mucus and drops of blood dribbled from his mouth. He put a finger to his lips. They had become chipped layers of skin, hard and cold like a statue in the shade. Tears clouded his vision until before him the corpse grew into a festering, dark cloud.

“Revolt, Peter, revolt! Go on and cry! Cry for yourself, for your sickening deeds. Cry for your putrid ways you’ve thrust upon others. Cry for the wretch you are, for who you truly are!”

Peter snivelled as tears seared his cheeks. His back heaved with every convulsion of grief, rocking back and forth, faster and faster.

Until he stopped.

Peter’s strength failed. His upper half collapsed. He buried his head in the corpse’s chest. Maggots burrowed through his hair, and they pricked his scalp. Peter’s arm wavered like a flag being thrashed about in a storm.

Everything vanished from Peter, the world pulled out from under him. He saw nothing, felt nothing. Except a coldness that bled inside him and spread all throughout, from head to toe. He was adrift in a pocket of gray nothingness, boundless and suffocating all at once. Low rumbling stuffed his ears. It was all he heard…then the corpse whispered:

“What are you doing now? Crying? Are you crying, little Peter? Does a wretch want to cry for his true nature? Well? Does it? Stop crying! Why should you cry? Why should you get the pleasure of crying for yourself? Wretch! Sick wretch! Go to the deeps, go to the deeps. Go to the deeps… You wretched child! Wretched, crying, child! Go down now!”

A gasp.

Peter turned around. He saw his wife Amelia at the door. Her mouth agape and eyes sparkling with tears. Peter thought:

She is so beautiful.

Amelia rushed to his side and pulled him into an embrace.

“Peter! What’s happened? Are you okay?”

Peter held onto her for a minute, grasping for breath in her warmth. A minute more. Still a minute longer.

“What’s the matter?” asked Amelia. “Talk to me!”

Peter looked back at the corpse, but…it didn’t look like Peter anymore. It was the body of someone else. An old man in rags, much shorter than him. Peter drew his hand out from under the dead man’s head. His fingers felt cramped. Peter realized his hand had been inserted in the back of the body’s head as if it was a puppet.

“I was thinking…” Peter trailed off.

“What? What is it?” asked Amelia.

Peter looked back at the corpse again. But there was no corpse. No signs of anything dead or evil on the living room floor.

He shook his head. “I must have been hallucinating or something. The body looked like me, then it started telling me all these things, these bad things I did. I just got so caught up in what I had done, I just…Amelia…I just thought I was a lesser person for doing these things.”

“Oh, don’t say that, please!” said Amelia. “You can’t let these thoughts get to you. Whatever bad things you did—those things don’t define you. I know you, Peter. You are a good person.”

Amelia looked into his eyes. She pulled him back into her embrace, into her warmth, her flowery fragrance. Her life.

Peter smiled.

She was so beautiful.