The Body
Written By: Luke Barron The Body lies still. It lies in its grave, rotting and fraying in its flesh, soil and muck soaking up the spoils of its decay as it stays lifeless and deceased...
The Body
Written By: Luke Barron
The Body lies still.
It lies in its grave, rotting and fraying in its flesh, soil and muck soaking up the spoils of its decay as it stays lifeless and deceased, as it has and ever shall it continue to be as it returns to the cycle. A stitch in the tapestry of all living things.
And then The Body wakes.
There is no opening of the eyes, no gasp of air for revived lungs, no blood or colour or any evidence that a corpse should be anything but a corpse.
One moment it isn’t - and then the next it is.
There is no thought, no realisation of the dirt and ground compacted onto The Body fit there to swallow it into the earth and hold it there to be nestled for all eternity - there is instead an instinct, an action: climb.
Climb turns to claw as The Body uses all four of its appendages to scrape and tear at the weight on top of it, moulded onto and around it, cracking and twisting into shapes unnatural and grotesque, peeling and peeling, layer by layer, clumps of hardened mud falling with nowhere to land in the cramped space. The dripping masses of mire threaten to bury anew, to devour The Body wholly and permanently. But the instinct, the need strengthens, solidifies, power and force building and building as the arms pulverise and the feet decimate and the head itself slams into the captive world built around The Body - every part of it screaming for its release.
The effort is unfelt, as is time. The process could have taken minutes, hours, years upon years and the calling would still not cease until finally a fist reaches out from below to break through to the other side, a gasp in the silence of the night as it surfaces. The hand finds purchase along the side, fingers plunging into solid ground as it pulls itself up, a second hand rocketing out to join in tandem as The Body listens to itself and climbs, climb, climb, CLIMB, CLIMB!
Unbidden by any action to use voice, The Body projects the totality of its being into the cry that resounds through the forest. A climactic sigh, an exhale, a sheer release of pressure that begs itself to be given volume.
The surroundings are unfamiliar, obscured and hidden in the dark of the night yet still identifiable as trees and branches and bushes and foliage and ground and earth and muck and mud and ground ground ground - so much of it to sink into, to be ensnared and subsumed by. Not fear, but caution of an absolutely dismal introduction. The Body lifts its right foot first, tentative and experimental, the decision not made by choice - it simply knows the left is stronger, that it will hold itself up better. The Body learns this about itself at the same time as it begins to learn that not all of that which it stands upon is made to be entombed in as it places its foot on the soft green growing over a patch of dirt and snapped twigs.
Here strikes the first of Sensation - moss between toes, wind blowing on the back of neck, cloth hanging over The Body’s form matted and in disrepair - but distant, muffled, the whole mass of flesh dull and numb. Its removal from the confines of the grave have done nothing to erase the suffocating tightness that presses out all other feeling.
Then here strikes Thought, the first inkling of a conscious mind to make its way past the fog of its ordeal. The creeping dread that has settled into the basis of a truth, a foundation on which it shall build the scaffold of its reality. Memory is nonexistent, so much so The Body does not even consider reaching for it, to scrape the edges of its mind for anything resembling a remnant.
Something is wrong.
A simple thought, rudimentary and obvious to anything that could observe the shambling corpse that pulled itself from its own grave. But as a first thought it is at the least disquieting and at the most panic-inducing. A panic that is but an experiment in thought, a drift in the wind of contemplation as it finds nothing within The Body to latch onto. There is nothing here that can receive the depths, the intensity of this emotion.
The disquiet however, is incredibly present, never more so in the last few moments than when it truly looks at itself for the first time. Gaze cast downward, eyes scanning along taking everything in. The clothes are tattered and torn, slices and gaps revealing small hints at the scarred and decayed flesh on display there. Arms are mutilated with a chunk missing out of the right forearm, two fingers on the right hand are just gone leaving shrunken stumps in place, the feet sport toes with nails that have atrophied and been discarded from The Body leaving the toes grotesque and nailless. No panic, no alarm - just the prevailing knowledge that something is absolutely oh so very ,very wrong.
Distraction, attention drawn away from the inspection of itself as The Body observes a small winged creature descending from its traversal through the air to land upon the disfigured shoulder - a perch for its talons. The creature is black, eyes dark and blank, voids as its head furrows closer, itself performing an inspection of the desecrated form it now sits upon. Sensation, experimentation, the study of the only creature other than itself in all of the known world - The Body reaches out its full-fingered hand to prod at the creature curiously.
The bird unleashes the shielding of its beak and snaps at the tissue in front of it, a morsel to nibble upon, tearing it away and digesting it within its mouth. Not pain, the amplification of sensation as The Body is robbed of what little it has left to its makeup. The bird is now recoloured within the eyes of its beholder, the curiosity and freshness of its arrival now turned sour and distasteful in not just its action but in the manner in which it is done, the flagrancy of its desecration, the wantonness of its thievery - its treatment of The Body as nothing but a perch and a meal for the corvid to do with as it pleases.
Opinion - this bird is bad.
Disquiet has been silenced in the face of distaste and as the crow moves to take a second bite of its feast, The Body stops it, hand shooting out with speed to catch the beak in its hold and halt it from dining anymore.
A truth - treatment shall be met in kind. Disrespect be met with disrespect, violence be met with violence.
The bird tastes raw. Its feathers are cumbersome in the mouth, feathers tickling at the back of the throat. The blood is wet, metallic and salty. The meat itself is raw, absent of flavour or alteration - the purest form of the creature in consumption. The bird itself wriggles and squirms in its trap, only registering the true danger it is in as the mismatched and bent teeth sink into it, trail of blood and viscera trailing down the chin in its messy vigor. There is no satisfaction in the act. Necessity rarely breeds it, especially the necessity of this truth.
The Body drops the bird after the single bite is swallowed, message conveyed with the utmost severity. The spoils of its ingestion are left untouched, blood staining and seeping into skin, flecks of feather and flesh drying on its face. The night returns to its silent air naught but for the wind in its blowing and leaves whistling in it. Nature sings at a low hum and The Body finds itself in discord with it. This is not where it is meant to be, even indeed if there is any “meant”.
That same instinct pulls at The Body, now compulsion - the difference between its origin in the world of the vertical and its return now in the realm of the horizontal immaterial to its meaning. What was up is now forward, and yet:
Climb.
The Body moves, one foot in front of the other, and as it does the world expands. The stump of a tree, the carcass of a squirrel, the puddles of temporary moss that squelch as a foot sinks into it. Trees, so many trees - tall and short and wide and slender, branches a plenty and branches a few but all unique in some shape or form. The Body feels itself stand out against its scenery even more, as in its journeying it has yet to find anything similar to itself besides the squirrel carcass - the remnants of violent consumption, triplets with the bird that made itself victim.
A sorry and pitiful bunch they are.
Luke Barron is an Irish writer living in Dublin. They are a graduate of the American College of Dublin.