Stephen R. King
THE SICKNESS
THE SICKNESS
For a long time, I slept.
The air around me was comforting and dark. I forgot how sunlight felt, what colors were. I was suspended through space, and all of the stars had been devoured by black holes. I couldn’t see anything because there was nothing. The only thing I recognized was sound. Like raindrops falling onto glass, but magnified, filling me up until I couldn’t think.
I forgot about human constructs—time, and language. I no longer felt my body, as if it were no longer attached to me. Then I forgot my name.
With nothing else to hold onto, I clung to the nothingness. Life was absence, and subtraction. It no longer contained meaning, and I no longer understood the concept of consciousness. I reveled in the darkness. It was me, the dark, and the frosted sound.
And then I woke up.
The process was jarring—far more overwhelming than the first time, writhing through the womb. Infants know no suffering. Everything came back, aching and slow. My body first, bones blooming like flowers out of thin air. Sinews of tissue seeped from the pores, entwining and layering me like a blanket. Flesh grew and flowed like water, and I cried out wordlessly at the joy of it.
With human skin came all other humanly things… with eyes there was more darkness, but this darkness was of another kind, shadows hidden far beneath the earth. With limbs came beauty—the simultaneous silky and rough feeling of wood against my fingertips, cradling my toes. And sound, so much sound my dormant ears drank in the noises: bats wings, rhythmically flapping in the night air, a cacophony of crickets chirping, the sound of a thousand blades of grass shivering in the wind.
CHHING, CHHHING.
Metal scraping against dirt.
My body stiffened, first alarmed by the foreign feeling of it, then I listened intently, struggling for clarity. Through the thick grains of oak, and the layers of clay and soil, I heard the sounds of a man. They were faint, practically nonexistent against the cadence. But they were there. The voice was like brushed steel against a silver fork—metallic and heavy, every grunt running along my spine, until I felt my body shrink in protest.
Somebody was digging above me.
To what purpose, I was unsure. My freshly born mind couldn’t fathom the possibilities. The only instinct that kicked in was fear—fear and an unwavering desire to be asleep again.
Sweat trickled along my back, imitating a creek bed. But I kept going. Blisters bubbled and burst pockets of blood on my palms. But I kept going. Every time I thrust the shovel into the dirt, every time my shoulders protested at the movement, I thought of her face. How had she died? A disease taking her in slumber, plains of skin painted in mock serenity? A car crash, eyes full of surprise, mouth agape at the gore in her hands? The mortician would have fixed it, made her beautiful again. But it was the look of anguish I imagined as I dug.
Cemetery soil caked underneath my fingernails. My heart pounded against my rib cage, its solid vibrations a constant reminder that I was alive, and she wasn’t.
Finally, the sweet sound of steel against wood. I squealed in boyish delight, flinging my shovel on the dew covered grass. I clawed at the dirt with my fingers—nails against wood grains, like a pencil sharpener. Each splinter buried in my skin was that much less distance between me and her. Constance. Constance Amelia Hayes. Her name rolled along my tongue like butterscotch. I felt my lips pant it out, over and over again like a hymn. Every nerve, every rivet in my brain focused solely on my fingertips touching soil, soil touching wood, and wood caressing every curve of her body. Constance Amelia Hayes.
The first sight of the casket was my private hallelujah. The sledgehammer was an extension of my fist, colliding into the wooden lid. Every piece of splintered oak was a drop of blood pumping towards my erection. I grappled the edge of the lid, flipping it off and away like a raging wind. Moonlight spilled over the grass and onto the box like a silk dress, illuminating her gray fields of skin, the decay in the corners of her luscious mouth. Constance Amelia Hayes.
Looking upon her face, I opened my mouth and whispered
“Jesus, lover of chastity, Mary, mother most pure, and Joseph, chaste guardian of the Virgin, to you I come at this hour, begging you to plead with God for me. I earnestly wish to be pure in thought, word and deed in imitation of your own holy purity.”
The man worked with a fury I never mustered my first time of living. He dug closer in a steady rhythm, making the casket shudder all around me. My body lay helpless as I swam within my mind. Consciousness. The beauty and ache of a human soul, returned. My spirit ran through my veins, like I swallowed a piece of the sun. Memories eluded me; in death, I forgot who I was. But life itself poured into my marrow, rendering me human, with thought, emotion, and reason.
And finally… air. Sweet air, dripping like honey down my throat, coating my lungs in ecstasy. I opened my mouth, gobbling it up. This was bliss, this was heaven.
The sound of wood cracking. Tiny fragments of splinters thrust down from the coffin lid, millimeters from my wide, seeing eyes. I was violently alive, instantly falling in love again with what it meant to be human.
In my experience, there was only two reasons why somebody dug up a body in the middle of the night. The first reason was to rob them. The second, was to violate them. Deep in the pit of my stomach I knew the man above wanted sex. Sex with a cold, dead human… he worked with such urgency, such excitement, I knew it to be true. And here I was, at the ready. I was too grateful to be enraged. Too eager to rest my gaze on another living creature, soul to soul. It had been so long, far beyond a mortal’s concept of time. I wanted to touch warm skin as badly as I wanted to breathe. My frail paper arms lifted of their own accord, running along the coffin’s edges, waiting.
She was a portrait of beauty. An exquisite corpse. Her heather gray skin glowed under the glare of the moon. Her decaying process was slow, and intricate—instantly dainty and feminine. Strands of red hair streamed from her skull, falling into soft curls as they lay atop her cotton covered breasts. A widow’s peak—my favorite. Straight brows rested over lashes, black and spread like a fan over a geisha. I imagined the faint, rosy hue her cheeks once held, a constant blush of modesty. This creature had never been wicked in life.
Her purity stood in stark contrast to the sexual desires I tried to keep secret for so long as a youth.
My eyes tore to her mouth. I had never seen such a beautiful mouth before. The curves of her upper lip were as tempting as her white dress, smooth and arched in all the right places. The corners of her mouth were split even, spreading outward in gray decadence. But what charmed me most was how her lips were parted, ever so slightly, in the center. Forever asking a question. Asking me to hold her, love her, let her be human one last time. Her thin arms lay against her sides, elbow crooks exposed to the night air. I saw the faint traces of her veins, now void of blood. Purpose gone. A slight dimple in her rounded chin. Slender waist into curvy hips. Beautiful collar bones, islands surrounded by sunken skin. All of my organs twitched in envy for what my eyes experienced first.
In a moment I was on my knees before her, caressing her skin with my fingertips. Like paper on which I wrote. With shaky breath, I unbuttoned her dress. The frilled edges and silk laces of a classic sundress, as white as freshly fallen snow. Innocence preserved in death. I took pause, then stopped unbuttoning. I trailed my fingers from her cold, lifeless toes up her stiff shins, and withered kneecaps. I moved my fingers into graceful arcs against each thigh, and up into her dress. Her mouth seemed to widen more, as if in suppressed shock. The trees suddenly danced in place, moved by the gentle wind. Every branch and golden leaf whispering “Constance.”