I imagined my body decaying and melting into the carpet. My mind
recalled the phenomenon after death when the deceased’s blood settles, a patchy
mottling of skin, causing a horrifying yet beautiful discoloration. Death’s kiss-- bruised
purples and pinks, a farewell firing sunset fanning out on corpse. I pictured
my flesh speckled and unfashionably pale
My own romantic tendencies had me barring the more grotesque aspects
of decay. There’d be no bloating, no stench. I’d be a body, sprawled perhaps,
but in a slumbered position. For an instant, I imagined the gore, my skin
flayed and cackled, peeling and dehydrated, rotten and raw, but the ugliness of
it was searing.
I visualized my face. Muscles relax after death, and eyeballs tend to sink back into sockets. Eyelids creep open. Would my eyes would be open, looking without seeing as they so often did in life? I thought of a dead fish floating in the river, washing up on shore. I could see its glassy eyes, receding and decaying slowly. Eyes, which were never a window to anything, but rather a clump of very useful cells, open as though aware.
Would someone lay coins on my eyelids? I imagined stitches sewing my eyes in a grotesque manner perhaps more suited for a horror film.
I told myself to shut up and I smoked a cigarette. I went to bed that night, and visions of fish and decay and death’s kiss haunted me.
