A Lovely Corpse

It was quiet the night I died. I remember it quite well as one with any amount of sense should. After all one’s death is nearly as important as their birth. The illness had taken most of the town, so when the first bloody coughs came late that evening, I did not tell my mother. No, best to keep her from worrying. No doubt she would find me come morning.

I stared out at the night sky. I was to meet him tonight. Him. The feel of his skin on mine, his hands gripping my waist. It was a fantasy I my mind would not be swayed from pursuing. He would be expecting me.

“Run away with me.” Those gruffly spoken words whispered in my ear had sent a shiver down my spine.

Another cough erupted from me, this one more bloody than the last. I heaved myself out of bed and crossed the room dressing out of the nightgown that stuck to my feverish skin. I would meet him. An explanation, he deserved that at least. And it had to come from me.

An ache felt deep in my chest that had nothing at all to do with the illness. Oh god the world was nearly ours. We were so close. I swallowed my grief and finished dressing. It was a plain gown but then we were not rich.

The wind was brisk against my skin raising goose flesh upon my arm. I held the woolen cloak close to my body, but it did little good. Winter was right around the corner and with it came the chill that would claim those who did not abide by their hearths. This is if the plague had not taken them first.

The moon hung round in the sky lighting my way as I walked through the dark of the wood. I would know my way even were I to be blinded but still I smiled at the night’s light. The lake was a short walk from my village.

I could see it lighting up with the light of the moon like a beacon as I approached. And there he was. I forget his name now but knew it then. I knew his name in my very flesh. I could taste it on my tongue when he smiled at me, feel it in shivers of my spine when I thought of him.

Funny eh? How time dulls even the most surreal of passions.

His gaze found mine, even there in the dark. I shuddered at the pure joy of it. His relieved smile was payment enough, but then he approached and before I could say anymore he took my head in his hands and kissed me. It was sinful but I could not bring myself to pull away.

I leaned into his touch and suddenly his warmth was all that there was. The cool of winter could no longer touch us. The moment was something out of children’s fairytale. I wanted nothing more that to stay in that moment forever.

But we are immortal souls, beings such as are not meant to stay trapped in such a manner.

I breathed him in and then… I coughed. I do not recall who pushed away first. What I do remember is the chill setting in as his body heat left me. And just like that I was alone in the night air.

“You have it. You…” His voice trailed off as he wiped my blood from his lips with shaking hands.

I could feel my entire body shaking with want. Want of him, want of it to be over, want of it to never end. Want. Want. Want. The word repeated in my head until I thought I might go mad with it.

I looked on at him as if he were an angel and he looked at me as though…

“Vile creature!” He spat. “You’ve killed me!”

He went quiet, I could practically hear him thinking of a way out. I reached for his hand but he pulled away.

“Who knows?”

I shook my head. “Nobody, I still may have some time left before the illness claims me. We could still run away.”

Death and time, the blessed pair have taken many memories from me. Some good some ill but I do not think I will ever forget the look my lover gave me in that moment. As he assessed me, I might have known had I been paying any attention.

The elders say you can taste the kiss of death in the moments before his lips find yours. But experience have they with death? They are wrong of course. Death hovers quietly, watching waiting. Like a parent watching their children explore the world, then picking them up when they fall.

I just wish I knew I was falling.

“What are you mumbling about?” I whispered.

He stopped his pacing and smirked. “I’ve a plan.”

“Truly?”

But he did not acknowledge me. Rather he kept to his rambling.

“If you do not have it then how could I? See I don’t have it. I am safe.”

“But I do have it. You know this. The plague has been upon our village for weeks.”

He shook his head. His voice becoming a low whisper. “No, you are perfect just as you are.”

He caressed my cheek and I sank into the grass with him. The moon in all her majesty illuminating my last moments of my life as it were a stage play. Around us the insects made noises at increasing volume. Looking back perhaps it was a warning… but then perhaps not.

His hand traveled slowly from my cheek to my throat and I realized I was crying in relief. Forgiveness. I didn’t deserve it and yet he offered it freely.

He touched his fingers to my lips then to his. “Our secret?”

I nodded. “Our secret.”

Then his hands were around my throat. Those same hands that had undressed me under moonlight countless nights. Hands that had twirled me around as we danced in the village square. Hands that had held me when my father died.

Rough and strong they now shoved me against the ground cutting off my airway. I might have screamed but I cannot recall. I fought, but it was not enough. I knew that, and so did he. I cannot say what kept me raging against him. Rage? Instinct? A primal urge to live? Likely all three.

I could not breathe, much less swallow. The ache in my chest now had nothing to do with love or longing but rather the desperate need for air.

Was this how I died?

The thought streaked through me even as he bore down.

Yes.

It was.

Dying is a funny thing. There are no trumpets, no angels welcoming you home. No gods humbly coming down from the heavens to greet you.

No nothing that the elders would speak of.

I knew I was dead when I stopped feeling cold.

It is a strange sort of awareness that comes with death. In life our bodies work to contain us but in death we are set free to share ourselves as we please.

I must confess in those first few moments of my death I did not wish to roam. I still, even then wished for him. I knew I was being moved. I could feel the guilt and fear rippling off his soul in waves.

Then I was in the water my lovely corpse sinking into the lake where nobody would find me. I remained there for some time, swaying in the shallow depths. Occasionally a small fish would become curious and nibble at my exposed flesh.

On the third day I washed ashore. I knew this because I could feel the hum of life around me. It had changed. No longer was I surrounded by skittish fish. Now there was a choir of flora all around me singing their praises to the sun. And all around the insects were hard at work.

Suddenly a world that I had not known existed in life was open to me.

Someone must have noticed me there for I did not linger on that shore for long. Gentle hands found me and buried me in the soft earth under the shade of the shade of my favorite tree.

It was a simple act born of pure kindness and it warmed my soul as the sun had once warmed my flesh. Perhaps the stranger said words, more likely he did not. I cared little, human speech in all its nuances evades me now in death.

I recall the first kiss. Perhaps nibble is a more apt description? Yes, nibble. Some sort of bug, an insect maybe, though I could not say for sure. But I could feel the buzz of hunger. A primal need easy to find in my newfound infinity. For all things living and dead share a hunger.

So deep it sits within us. It begs our very souls for one more moment in the sun. And once the sun has set and our vigor vanishes it calls out for a home, for the familiarity we abandoned in our life.

So, I let them nibble, because my soul hungered as well.

“Come find me,” It called. “Feast on my flesh that you may be fed and I may become something more. Take me from this vessel and share me. Make me one with all that is and is to be.”

It was a communion like none I had ever experienced. I was no longer some helpless woman chasing love in a moonlit wood. No, I was the grass, the trees. Even the birds trilled my name in the morning air. The wind sang my song in her gentle breeze, and the worms that ate at my innards found sanctity in my flesh.

The living fear death, but we who are death are your comfort. The felled are your food, your tools, your art and eventually the stories you tell. And yet you fear to become one of us. You poor thing.

But not I. Many years passed and I remained there with my creatures. My lake dried, and my tree grew around my corpse a gentle reminder that I was not alone. Many years passed like that.

I do not know when I became merely bone. By then I was far more than my flesh could contain. I was the master of my meadow. My bones a mere memory of the woman who once lay there.

Oh how I long even now that I might remain in that peace forevermore.

But we humans are creatures of horror, lurking in the night like a monster never satiated by our own desires. And I was ever prey.

You came one fair morning, like a groom for your bride. But you did not come for me nor my meadow but to see us used for your own pleasure. First you strung rope about my tree, and I cried out but you could not hear me.

Then one by one you hung them. Men, your own ilk, your own kind. And in death they remained, my birds picking at their eyes. And a rage like no other filled me so I screamed out.

How dare you!

I cursed you, but in my deathly silence you heard me not. You trampled my meadow with the boots of your soldiers and your dead littered my sanctuary. And suddenly my heaven was an endless hell from which I could not escape. My birds lay dead, felled by your guns and my animals fled for lack of food.

“Come to me!” I called to them and the earth shook with my hunger that they might know my love and the home I had once given them.

But still they fled.

And still I remain. Below your city. Beneath your roads. Unnoticed, and forever used.

Neither of us knows my name, not anymore.

But I hear the sounds of your steps on the pavement.

The laughter of your children.

And a new hunger has bloomed within me.