This Body

This Body (In Progress; Updated version coming shortly)
This Body

In a drafty room with vaulted ceilings, the man appeared to be looking out of the narrow windows into the landscape at a single sloping tree in the right corner of the pane. He was alone. Slouched in an aged though still plush leather recliner lined with defiant brass studs, his hand dangled to the ground, fingertips grazing the faded tapestry covering the otherwise bare floor. A letter opener that had not been used for weeks lay just out of his grasp. He sighed. He never thought he would return to this place, but he had never known what to expect when it came to his life. Ah well, he had always liked the landscape here. Views had always been extremely important to him, so when the old estate with its gothic arches and stone carvings had come into his hands through the death of yet another unknown and grizzled ancestor, he moved in perfunctorily. Who owned it last, anyway? He could not remember. He chose the dazzling company of the wood over that of human interaction, for he knew what picturesque treasures loomed across the acreage. This room was by far his favorite; he had rid its walls of all books within days of his arrival. Stories were worthless. He would rather sit alone, enclosed behind stone walls, and gaze at the stunning scenes of nature surrounding him. Over the past few weeks he had grown tired of such inactivity, but found no solution. He simply didn’t care much. About anything. All he could do was slouch, like an emptied burlap sack once filled with ripe and hearty seed, and dully glare at the menacing outside that seemed to crawl quietly every day closer and closer to the house.
Spring would come soon, and with it some sort of rejuvination. He had not been out on the grounds lately, and thought some fresh air would do him well. He would rather linger inside the stuffy confines of the estate, but brief memories of his childhood summers spent in this very place propelled him outside. The only way to counter his acceptance of listless boredom was with unease, and this he now surely felt. He stood up. He trudged with heavy feet down the hall, put on his boots in case it should rain, for it always rained, somewhere, and left the house.
As the man approached the body, his eyes began to cloud. A strange tingling set in, and he became aware of a clammy perspiration when he unclenched his fists. He looked at the crescents in his palms left by his ragged fingernails, at the indentations quickly turning from a fleshy pink to a deeper crimson-red. He remembered this color, dully behind a curtain of his memory.
At the house, decades ago, in the middle of the morning—or was it evening? The man grew angry with himself for not remembering such an essential element; how could he not remember the time of day? Someone had crudely boarded up the windows of that musty room with the intention of keeping something from getting in. A laugh choked his throat, though he recalled nothing humorous about the whitewashed walls of the cellar and the horror he had felt during his imprisonment there. In fact, he was there again somehow, and saw not the pale body lying in front of him, but his own arm, hairless and goose bumped, with a watch circling his wrist.
He had found the watch in a forgotten box made of gnarled wood in the stable, which had not housed any animals since the accidental death of his father. Curiosity of this sort was partially the reason for his punishment. The watch had probably faded from a magnificent blue to the pale and watery color it then appeared with the natural passage of time, and had acquired a cracked plastic face that made it all the more appealing in its feeble and aged way. As he inquired into it to distinguish how long he had been enclosed in that room in the unused wind of the house—Aida? I’m sorry, I’m hungry…Aida?—he realized it had stopped at the odd little spot between 4:30 and 4:31. He heard a rustling, and at first it was difficult to distinguish whether its origins belonged in the past or the present.
Gradually becoming aware of the sour smell of burning leaves wafting lazily on the wind in the present, he thought saw an approaching figure not so far off in the trees. The figure in the distance was, in fact, a little boy the man would eventually meet, though the man did not know this yet. The figure was slow moving, and probably wouldn’t arrive at the spot in which the man stood in time for them to meet, for the man wasn’t planning on staying long. Even as he looked down at his wrist he knew it was naked, and, silently scoffing at himself he mused about how true it was that old habits die hard.
He couldn’t look directly at it. His eyes seemed drawn to the area surrounding—the matted grass huddled together in clumps exposing the hard, bare earth underneath. A patch of dandelions crushed from the tread of feet, a powerfully masculine hand, or the impact of the body itself. It was amazing how much impact certain bodies could have.
He looked at the body through lowered eyelids. How strange it was that the gray shell, the actual physical body encasing the spirit, or soul, or whatever, looked just as if in sleep. A gently deflated and dozing sleep. But not calm, or peaceful. Just completely empty. He blinked slowly and deliberately, shaking off the vacancy seeping in through his pores. No, the emptiness was still there.
Once, while chasing a duck that he had wanted to feed during a summer at the lonely estate he now inhabited, he had gotten lost in the wood. When the people he had such little memory of—his parents—found out that he had left without permission they were angry, and decided to deal with him upon his return. After a few hours of calling his name through cupped hands, they returned to the house to eat, not knowing all the while he was desperately hungry and not only wished he knew the way back home, but that he had fed the only bread he had to a rotten duck. The next morning, full of brambles and bleary-eyed he appeared on the lawn, refusing to eat anything but toast.
Images like these, brief snapshots of his life, cluttered his memory. They jostled for attention, but none seemed real. He never felt as if he experienced any of it and instead creatively patched his childhood together through the false fabric of fairy tales and storybooks whispered to him through the mouths of many loving and imagined maternal figures.
Rushing warmth spread over his face while he looked at the cold body. He once again felt the tension between his utter detachment from others on the one hand, and the eternal, unspoken connection on the other, that annoying link threaded through the human condition he could never completely rid himself of, no matter how firmly he shut his eyes. He never could relate to others, no matter how hard he had tried. Understanding was a lie. Nobody had ever known him.
The man looked straight at the carcass. His eyes roamed over the length of the body. Crisp black and white photographic images of the silhouette snapped in his skull, a close-up of the twisted angle of the neck, the strangely puffed and bloated stomach. The eye closest to the ground was shut, yet the other stared defiantly into the fractured glare of remaining sun, broken and glassy like the shards of a mirror. The man couldn’t get past the eye once he began to stare. He saw himself reflected in it, listless and hazy like the mist curling upon the surface of the water that night so long ago. The water, frozen in spots, had been sedate. But now, upon recollection, it seemed to be rippling, gurgling invitations and whispers to return. He contained this, and a tremor inside his head hypnotically became the water, following the curved shore in his mind’s eye towards the darkness of the wood. In retrospect, the void beyond was more frightening than it originally had seemed.
At times, a strange and incomprehensible fog would float upwards through his body, settling itself into all the hidden crevices in his head, and he would temporarily be filled with a feeling he associated with dread. He sometimes wondered what he was afraid of. The most he could manage to do at times like these was lay down, closing his eyes against the quick flickering, and concentrate on his shallow breathing. He would succumb to this feeling, or it would pass, or a sound would be made to bring him out of his reverie. But it always eventually passed.
Hesitantly, the man lay down next to the corpse, carefully grazing it with his pinky. He left his empty hand where it originally lay as if the dead and the living were now impossible to separate. He gazed upwards into the trees, trying to look through the leafy tendrils cascading over them. There were just too many. The spindly growths seemed to be magnified and increase by the second, reaching towards him with bony greed, promising a cold, bare shelter from the much too full and colorful world. He got lost in the trees for a while, breathing deeply and settling into a trance.
His dripping skin, wet from the chilly lake water, was quickly warmed by a combination of the sun and the massaging fingers, slender yet strong. That fingers could be so sly and mischievous had never occurred to him before this moment. What love! What a nourishing and life-sustaining caress!
The man, completely consumed with a heightened sense of anticipation, wasn’t immediately sure that he had dozed off. Awakened from his deep slumber by fat droplets of rain eagerly embraced by the thirsty ground, his skin was instantly cleansed from the residue that had collected on his body.
His body, now chilled by the ground and the fuzzy remnants of his dream—or his reality, for who can tell the difference?—felt foreign and unused. The man even wondered, for a moment, if he could lift up his head, let alone his arms or wool-bundled legs. He moved his. He was all right.
Slowly, as if awakening again from a long sleep, he rose underneath the brittle canopy. He quickly realized that he couldn’t rub this from his eyes. The man felt that death would always be a part of him, but he still walked away with his back to the sun, as if he had left the body behind.

The little boy held his breath, his feet planted firmly on the gently sloping lawn stretching vastly across the yard and into the woods. Miner was feeling rather precarious. The first few steps away from the house were rushed and uneven. Almost stumbling from anticipation he threw his weight into the stalking he had seemed to be invited to participate in. The bread, clenched firmly in his little fist, was crumbly and dampening by the moment. Midnight feathers flashed in the underbrush ahead, rustling decaying leaves that protected the velvety moss he had slept on top of during an afternoon nap two days ago. The slight palpitations of his robust heart quickly subsided into joy as he scrambled after the duck.
When Miner finally turned around to gauge how far he had come, the house, like the duck, was no longer in sight. He wondered after Jada. Would she be worried? He could almost see her rocking and humming in front of the fireplace; spectacles perched upon her nose, her nose upon a face composed by both age and time. Her hands like butterflies. They flitted deftly around the fabrics she weaved and threaded in an almost dizzying fashion, never seeming to cease. Miner blinked at the brightness and looked upwards instead of inwards. The sun was in the sky and the words wouldn’t be too harsh, he thought. Smiling absentmindedly, like he was remembering something he had not yet learned, Miner unplucked a bramble from his hair and looked at the dirt underneath his nails. He heard it! There it was again, waddling off in a thicket between two monstrously tall trees, intertwined mysteriously far above his head. Scampering over a rotted log, he followed, trailing the scent like a faithful bloodhound.
Miner scrambled over the brush. He got lost in the heat of the chase and ran much, much farther than he truly knew. He was hot, and breathing heavy. Where was that stinking duck? A forceful sigh escaped from the tiny cavern of his chest and he wondered what he should do. He turned around and realized he no longer remembered the way home, felt very thirsty and sat on dead branches that crackled as if burning. While he gently pinched the skin on his knee he heard a splash and abruptly turned around. Water! The duck had to be in the water! He sprung up, ran to the water’s edge on instinct, and watched the rippling reflection as he dove in.
After a few scrambling moments, Miner realized the duck wasn’t in the water. He trudged, sopping and discouraged, over to a log that looked like a bigger animal’s chew toy and plopped down. The sun was swiftly setting, and the child wasn’t looking forward to being wet, hungry, and cold for much longer. He thought he saw a figure in the distance, and set off to find him. Maybe he’d run into the rotten duck on the way.

By the time the man had stood up from his brief and disjointed nap next to the bloated corpse he had found in the wood, Miner was but seconds away. The man thought he heard irregular little bursts of breath and slaps of shoes on the burnt-colored ground and turned from the sun, now situated arrogantly in the gray-green sky, towards the oncoming sound.
The straggling young child looked damp and disheveled, yet a hopeful kind of innocence gleamed from his shining eyes. He stopped, breathless, a few feet in front of the strange man, whom he had never seen. Not many homes were scattered throughout the wood, but the possibility of them being neighbors was not far-flung or preposterous. They both looked at each other—the man confusedly and uncomfortably, the child trusting and illuminated—for a few moments. The man finally cleared his throat.
“Children shouldn’t be out running around, ‘specially nighttime. It’s dangerous in the wood. Are you alone? Don’t you have parents? Come on now, answer me. We can’t be standing out here all night.” The man’s tone was gruff, and its authority startled even him.
“I know…I’m tired…cold. I’m lost. A duck…I don’t know how to get home, and I’m hungry. So hungry.” Words somersaulted over the child’s lips. His teeth starting to chatter and his little body began to tremble ever so softly.
Though the man assumed it was very common for young boys to chase animals, he still sensed the parallel was strange. He had chased a duck, years ago, in this very place. Could he be trapped in a surreal type of flashback? Could this boy be a boy like me? He didn’t understand. If he could simultaneously exist in two bodies, then why stop there? Whose body had he really found? The frantic thoughts scattered like visible scars across his lined face. His silence prompted the child to speak again.
“…followed a duck but can’t find it and now I’m hungry and want to go home.” Miner’s rambling yet coherent voice stated again his situation.
“You wanted this duck so bad that you followed it around all night? Got lost in this here wood, went without food and your bed and now you’re over it? What about the duck now?” The man’s comment even surprised himself, but he felt obligated to call attention to the child’s behavior, for he thought that was the proper thing to do. “Who are you, anyway?”
“Huh?” The boy arched his delicate eyebrow over the humble orb of his left eye. His nose wrinkled up in perplexity.
“I don’t understand.” The man fidgeted with his hands. “How could you have wanted something so bad that you’d leave your home without thinking twice about the consequences, and then allow yourself to just give up?”
The impish boy shrugged simply. “Jada said I could play so I went outside. We have chickens, but they’re no fun. I saw a duck—as big as a pig, I swear! I followed him. But I’m hungry now. And cold.”
“Who’s Jada, your mom?” The man asked, grumbling behind bushy eyebrows.
“No…I guess, kinda. She does mom stuff. But my mom went away with my dad. He was very noble. But he needed her where he was, and she had to go. But Jada stayed for me. She named me, she says. She reads me stories.”
The man couldn’t remember ever having been told stories. He remembered that at one time, someone had to have read to him. He didn’t remember learning to read, either, though he knew he had. In fact, he couldn’t remember any particular story. But that was okay, because he thought they were counter-productive. What good were myths, anyway? They weren’t real people. Why should they matter? They had nothing to say to him, knew nothing about him. Fiction was a lie—characters weren’t made of flesh, like the body lying empty on the ground, or his body—but words. “Don’t know no stories, don’t care to.”
“You don’t know stories?” Miner inquired, his eyes growing larger in his porcelain head. “I’ll tell you a story! I love stories!” He clapped his hands excitedly and danced from one small foot to the other.
“No.” The man firmly stated. His mind was awhirl. Jumbled and fluttering letters carrying on and on from the end of one line to the beginning of the next gushing like a rain-bloated stream only to be abruptly halted by some deliberately placed punctuation.
“Oh, come on…please! She told me a good one last night! It’s creepy.” The boy slowly started to shuffle through the tall grass. The man noticed he moved in the direction of the body, but felt powerless to stop him. Miner closed his eyes to gather his thoughts. He wanted to make sure he told it right.


A strange sound struggled in the depths of the man’s throat, momentarily choking him. The little boy asked if he was all right, concerned with the unexpected outburst so dissimilar to his other experiences with adults. Brushing away a few salty tears the man attributed to the sudden breach in his breathing, the man straightened the collar of his flannel shirt as if it was askew and cleared his throat. “Damn bugs.”
“Taste good? You full now?” The boy chided, dimples creasing his cherubic face.
“What?” The astonished man gasped, bloodshot eyes gesturing wildly back and forth between each of the boy’s penetrating eyes.
“From the bugs, silly. It was a joke. You know, a joke?”
Relief flooded the man’s face, and he began to look at the boy as if he had never laid eyes on him before. In the pit of his stomach he began to feel some sort of pang, not exactly uncomfortable, but strange, like his internal organs had decided to shift around a bit.
Never before this moment had Aron been aware of being so hungry himself. It was as if he had never eaten before, that his stomach was a big, vast void that had never been full. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten, or what it had been. Aron felt like he could eat the world. The little boy outstretched his hand, imploring the man for companionship, or guidance. It was going to get dark, after all. Without thought the man enveloped the miniature hand in his and began to wade softly through the fallen leaves. If anyone had seen them they would have appeared to emerge from the fire of the sun like the mighty phoenix, setting aflame the standing trees in a final explosion preceding the night. Their hands gripped tight; faces expressionless, yet at peace. How happy they would be upon knowing he was no longer lost.