by Joshua Gessner
(This story contains a dead body.)
“It’s weird to see a dead one up close.”
Those words felt wrong. All dirty and naked; they were almost like a baby. When it first comes out, wailing and red, pretty but in a gross way. I don’t recall Jane saying anything else when she saw it, and I’m not sure if I even responded. There was a weight to the words. I could feel them crushing me as a child, as I shifted from side to side on the only twin bed that I’ve ever slept on, filled with so many cotton clumps and memories. She seemed blank when she said it, and when I think back on it, that doesn’t surprise me at all. Jane was furtive as a child; she talked a lot to others, but never about herself.
Back then we had gone out to the woods often together, hoping to go around without sensing any full-grown eyes latch on to us. It was entirely ordinary to our families and anyone else who cared enough to wonder about us. The two of us were young and lived in a place where people would come to see sparrows chirping, leaves falling, and other dull things. There was never much to do in that sort of town; except to explore. Really, when I think about it that way, finding the thing was inevitable. It was no one’s fault that we had come upon it. And if not us, then someone else would have. Maybe an older man with a beard who would know the right call, or a younger girl who would scream, poke it with a stick, and push it into a brook. But people steered clear of those woods, for reasons we were never allowed to know.
Daring as we were though, Jane and I went into the forest around dusk that day, just about the time that the sun and moon fought for control of the sky, after telling our parents we’d be back by dark. Jane started to climb a tree when we got there, and I grabbed a long stick to poke around. I aimed for trees, pebbles, moss, and tiny ant hills; around that age, I had a fondness for investigating crevices too. Knowing myself, I probably whipped the stick around, and let it assault the nothingness that surrounded me. The sound of the cutting wind when I swung hard enough always made me smirk. At some point, however, as Jane inched further toward the end of a high branch, she squinted.
“Mel, do you see that?” She asked, pointing her finger to a lumpy thing that rested near the edge of a hill.
“No,” I said. “What is it?”
Jane climbed down without another word, quicker than she rose, as the setting sun turned her hair a fiery red. She took my hand and pulled me to the spot she had pointed to. Then, Jane let go, and we stood side by side before the lumpy thing in silence. It was a man—or what used to be a man—dressed in a plaid shirt and jeans with his head in the dirt. The man looked like he was eating the earth. But the seemingly hungry man was dead, and we were old enough to understand that. It was then that Jane said those words to me, completely calm and somewhat remote.
“It’s weird to see a dead one up close.”
From what I can recall, we had both kept quiet for a while after that. We just sat around it, the body, and looked at each other occasionally in a solemn gaze. There was a nasty smell about him, but we didn’t care. In fact, we acted like it wasn’t there at all. Now, I am shocked that I didn’t scream, or run, or vomit, or cry. But my only guess is that, in that moment, I was curious about this corpse. I had heard of death, been told of things about it, however I had never seen it. Death: the sight of it, the feel of it, the scent of it, and everything that happens after it is interesting as a child, to all of us. Not dying, but death, and the important difference between the two. That’s why I think I didn’t run, and why (I can only guess) Jane didn’t either. Simple curiosity and that raunchy allure.
It was once the moon began its ascent in full stride that Jane and I decided to head our way home. But, before we left, we wanted to cover him; to give him a sort of burial. Since that is what we were taught to do for the dead. Without shovels, in the middle of August, we decided on something lighter than dirt. Leaves. We went around grabbing fallen ones by the handful; we covered him wordlessly in colors of red, yellow, and green. It felt nice, and after I gently squeezed Jane’s hand and she held it, as we walked out together. The next time I spoke to her was later that night, just as I was about leave. She turned to me, hugged me tight, and whispered in my ear.
“Don’t tell.” She said, and in response I only nodded. There was no malice, mischief, or melancholy when she said it. It was just a favor that she asked, and we gave small smiles back to each other. I think we felt closer to each other then, closer than we ever had before.
It was strange how easily time had passed after that. There was a point, at first, when we thought the body might be found or people would discover that we’d seen the man with his head burrowed in the ground. But we didn’t worry for long, and we had never been too worried or acting out of the ordinary to start with; after a while, it actually became rather serene. We would meet in the woods to play still, that never changed. However, we would also visit to see and talk about him. The leaves had blown off a bit by the second time we’d seen him, and we saw no reason to cover him again. But the smell progressed into something far more pungent, and it became harder and harder to ignore each time we came. It was due to the decay of the man, which was obvious enough, as his body slowly started to change.
The man grew bloated over the months, and he filled with gas, Jane and I looked at him in amazement. Would he pop like some putrid bubble? We wondered. Would he simply float away? We would pinch our noses and move back from him, as we watched him expand slowly, almost with effort. Flies had busied themselves with his body too, and some other maggots which wriggled about his head. It wasn’t the most pleasant area to be, no matter how hypnotic it seemed. Jane and I thought it would be best to leave him to the earth which he originally tried to eat, like some divine retribution. As we looked on from a far, we became distracted as our interest considering his life before had grown.
“How do you think he ended up like this?” I asked one evening, as the sun began to creep off of him.
“He probably hurt himself in the forest, and couldn’t make it home.” Jane had said, before asking. “But who do you think he was?”
“Owen.” I remember saying back to her. Quickly, like I had already known. “I bet his name was Owen.”
For some reason, as we talked of him, we took our answers as the truth. His name was Owen, and we would call him Owen. In school, to our parents, and sometimes to friends we would talk about him. We would mention our friend Owen, how quiet and interesting he was. We would often say that they should meet him too, and everyone said yes. They would always say yes, but never come. Just as Jane and I had expected. But our imaginations never stopped there. Both of us would laugh at jokes we thought he’d say, and smile at the childhood stories he’d want to share with us about his life on a farm. The two of us thought up a family for him too, one that would probably be grieving over him. Praying for him, because his family would be one that believed in the power of prayer. We talked about how his daughter would be blonde like her mother, but still have his nose. How his marriage had been failing, and how he had always tried his best to fix it. We would cry for him even, knowing that Owen could never fix it again.
All the while, as we made a life for him with pointless words, he dissipated. More maggots came, the flies drowned him in swarms, and he would exist a little less each time. He had turned black as months passed and his skin turned to mush, foam erupted from his mouth, and morphed his corpse into an absurdly horrendous atrocity. We hoped dearly then, that his soul had truly moved on, and no remnants were trapped in the black slop before us. A slop that resembled more of a mud or a bile, and less of a man.
As Jane and I continued to age though, we eventually became ready to create our own lives, and all that was left of him were the bones he no longer needed. Since even his clothes had blown away in the wicked eastern winds, or were snatched by some freely roaming animal. And, just like Jane had asked, I never told anyone about our times in the woods. We kept them between Owen and ourselves, and we thought Owen would have liked that. He would simply remain there until he was found or until his bones turned to dust; whichever came first really.
While he remained there, Jane had moved out to California for college, somewhere I’ve already forgotten. Somewhere that was far away from the place where we grew up, and eventually, we stopped talking. I don’t blame her, and I hope she doesn’t blame me. But, for a while we kept in touch, talking late at night about her classes and what we hated about the way things were. It came of no surprise when we had stopped though, as the calls became shorter and farther apart.
Time felt like it passed a little slower for me, even more so when Jane left. I was staying at my parents’ house for another year at that point, and I picked up a job serving meals at a hospital. Without Jane to join me, I had also stopped visiting Owen. And that year turned into the longest year of my life—filled with many months of quiet, and solitary days. But, on the last day of that rotten era, I visited Owen one last time. I went to him when the wind was strong and said goodbye to him, for both Jane and I. A tear may have fallen then, who knows. All I can recall is that Owen’s skull was caked in mud that day, and he wore it like a crown.
Category: Featured, Short Story, SNHU Creative Writing, SNHU Student