40 :

Just another sunrise over London, beautiful and mundane. Tendrils of light crept over from the east as the earth raced back to meet the sun, this massive ball of flame 93 million miles from this small rock that was racing through space in an enormous circle, rotating on its own axis at 1,600 miles an hour, pushed constantly into a permanent state of rotation by the opposing forces of gravity.

I saw my first sunrise as a corpse.

My new life. Whereas once I was a pupae, now I was the caterpillar, now I was the moth. Clouds parted, passing slowly overhead. Trains and planes and cars passed me by. Nothing, nobody saw me.

I wondered, is this what life was like as an old lady, dying, alone, in her flat, unloved, unknown, unnoticed until the two weeks have passed, until the flies eating her food in the kitchen have massed in black sheets on the windows, until the boiling water of the bath has eaten away, boiled her flesh so that her skin would slide off as soon as any investigating policeman forcing open the door with a crowbar could touch it? Is this what it would be like, to die alone, unnoticed? Unreported except by my granddaughter, who would come around every two weeks to do my shopping, wondering why she hadn’t heard from you? Maybe she’s gone out.

Is this it?

At first, one could barely detect that I was dead. My flesh, still warm, cooled. Rigor Mortis, the stiffening of the bones, set in within twenty four to forty eight hours. I wasn’t able to check my watch so I couldn’t really tell when I was due to experience rigor mortis, but it was definitely after the first night and before the second, when my body felt like the old bones of an arthrithic man who had spent far too long watching television in one position, my bones stiff as statues. They contracted slowly. My body tensed into itself.

My hair still grew, my nails still grew. Except that they didn’t. My flesh, old, and cold, contracted in on itself, giving the impression that I was still growing. Imperceptably, by a matter of a fraction of a percent, my body shrunk. There was nothing I could do. My muscles atrophied, grew weak, my stomach, already a disorganised mess of fractured bone, flooded lungs, dried, cold blood, began to collapse in on itself. I was coming undone.

Christ, I’m freezing at night. These lidless eyes see all. Sometime on the first day a small orange dor, a fox, approached. It sniffed my body. Nipped gently at my foot, tried to ascertain if there was any food worth scavenging out of me. Leather is not a taste they enjoy.

Foxy Loxy left me untouched. But natures ravages were not as kind. My body was a feast. Insects, ants, cockroaches, god knows what, things I had never seen before, didn’t know what they were, couldn’t pronounce, they explored me. They crawled into my half open mouth, burrowed down my throat, up my nose, searching for food, for nutrients.

If I could puke, if I could do anything, I would. I would get up and walk away from this.

From the earth we come, to the earth we go. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. How could one believe in God in a world this just?

I felt small teeth nip at my flesh. I felt my skin ripped off, chewed and devoured by small incisors and mandibles. Another nip. Another chew. The sound of a million miniscule feet and claws on earth. Then another. Then I lost count of the number of feet and claws and incisors and mandibles that devoured me. I gave up counting.

I’m not here. This is not really happening. I’m somewhere else. Anywhere else. I’m on a beach. I’m dancing at home on a Friday night. I’m at work. I’m anywhere but here.

No one ever told me death could be so boring. I had nowhere to go, nothing to do but experience myself being eaten from the inside. Feel my flesh sag and fall off my face, my clothes rot, my insides harden and petrify, my flesh turn black as I was eaten inside and out by things seen and unseen. Bacteria feasted upon me. I felt time pass so a second felt like an hour, a minute felt like a lifetime.

I had all the time in the world when I was alive. Now I have none. If only I’d known. Life is wasted on the young. And whilst I had spent most of my youth wasted, that surely was not a waste of time. But this, this was some new torture. This was some new life without God.

I waited. I had all the time in the world. Too much time. And sometime, someone would see me for the first time. And I? I would be no longer a memory. I would be an investigation. A mystery. An inquiry. A late night news item. A yellowing file in an archive in Birmingham. A set of photographs stamped “unsolved”.

I would be history.