Fiction



     

Living Near Death

By David Henson



      I nestled into the warmth of your corpse and fell asleep. When I woke, I picked you up and dragged you around the room. You were cold. You left no trail. You had no crumbs left to let fall. My hands ached. Your weight was different. You were hard like petrified wood. I imagined a sharp scraping sound as I pulled you toward the bed. It took two days for me to lift you onto the bed. First your arms and head. That was a whole day. On the second day I asked a friend to help me with your legs. She declined. She said she was busy with the living. I said that I am the living. She said think again. I put an old bed sheet under your legs. I took both ends in my hands and stood on the bed. I pulled with all of my might. I almost fell and broke through the window. The curtains were shut. The curtains were always shut. I went outside to look for some flowers. I hadn't realized that it was night. I found flowers in the neighbors' garden, but couldn't figure out what kind they were. It was too dark to tell blue from purple. I picked two and brought them back to the house. I set one in a beer bottle with some water in it and put it on the ledge above the kitchen sink. I walked the other upstairs to you. You looked like you were just waking up. I tucked the flower behind your ear, but that didn't look right. I gently pulled it out of your hair and tore most of the stem off with my teeth. I slipped it into your mouth. It looked like a kind of smile.
      I slowly stood up and opened the window. The ladder that I kept under it for emergencies was lying in the lawn. It pointed accusatorially at the neighbors' house across the street. I made up my mind not to blame them. I had been tricked by these signs before. Using what strength I had left, I lowered myself out the window feet first. I stopped for a moment, sure I would break a bone if I dropped to the ground. I could imagine myself lying in the lawn for days, staring at clouds, greeting the mailman politely, and shooing away neighborhood dogs that tried to urinate on my legs. I closed my eyes and let go. The fall was a fall forever. Seasons changed. I grew older and grey. I felt wrinkles being carved into my face. I saw you reincarnated as a wandering neighborhood dog, curious but unfriendly. I reached out to pet you but you sniffed and turned to run away. And then my feet touched the ground and I landed safely, with all of my bones intact.
      There was no reason to go out the window. But, as you know, I create obstacles. I created hundreds of obstacles while you were still alive, calling them "trials and tribulations." But you knew better. I created obstacles when I was a child. They were the only things I could call my own. When I overcame the obstacles there was no reward. I never received a pat on the back. I'd created an obstacle to getting out of the house. After I landed on the ground, I knew I was no closer to a destination. There was no reward. There was no obstacle.
      I walked to the front door. I took the key out of my pocket, unlocked the door, and left it open as I walked away from the house. I walked toward enormous skyscrapers. I knew I would have to walk for a long time to reach one of those buildings, even though it looked like I could reach out and caress them in front of me. I did not make up my mind about anything. I just walked.
      I found your teeth in my coat pocket. I found your fingers in my hair. As I walked, parts of you fell out of my clothes. I found your feet in my shoes and your fingernails in my mouth. I coughed up an old winter hat you used to wear years ago. I rubbed my eyes and found a handful of your tears. I used those to wash my face, but the salt stung and I reached in my pocket to grit your teeth.
      I threw a long lasso over one of the skyscrapers in front of me and tied the other end around my waist so I wouldn't lose my way. I gave two tugs on the rope to let them know I was still alive. I received two tugs back. That was enough to keep me moving. I no longer had to stare at the skyscrapers to know which direction to walk.
      The ground was alive with activity. Fire ants burned their way toward home with treasures on their backs. One ant carried a can of soda. One ant carried a TV dinner. One ant was furiously looking for the remote control. I stepped over the ants but they didn't seem to notice. I stopped and checked my shoes to make sure nothing living was stuck in the grooves. They were clean.
      I passed through a fog. The fog slipped under my clothes. It threatened to become me, to carry off my clothes and assume my identity. I wanted to kiss my fog-self. I wanted to see my fog-self dance. I wanted to know, if the fog assumed all of the burdens of me, could it still float and vanish?
      The fog gave up. I did not. It crawled out my pant leg and went to bother someone else. Someone it could more easily scare. I did not watch it go. I looked down to see what I was walking on. Carpet. Rectangles of carpet laid out as a road. There was something wet and squishy under the carpet. I couldn't bring myself to lift it up and look. I walked as lightly as I could while my breath tried to escape me. Your voice whispered in my ear. I cleared my throat violently. There was silence.
      Night and day came at once. I yawned and shielded my eyes. Deer fled the sun as though it was a luminous hunter rising skyward. I thought about you. I thought about where you would be now. Still at home, but somewhere else too. You might have burrowed into the center of the earth. You might have taken up residence in the rings of Saturn.
      I wished for a storm, for a cataclysmic event that would rain meteors upon the earth and carry you back to me. I wished to put my hand in lava and pull back only bones. If only we could have lived near a volcano and become eternally joined when it erupted one extraordinary day. I'd be perched forever on the edge of the bed, stroking your feverish forehead. In a thousand years they would put a velvet rope around us. Tourists would come to gawk and take pictures. Each one would wonder about our lives for a brief moment. Those moments would add up. We would endure forever. Not only in our charred state but fleeting from mind to mind.
      Someone tugged on the rope again. I couldn't understand the impatience. I tugged back to let them know I was still coming. I tried to convey that there was no need to send out a rescue party. I tightened the knot around my waist as I came upon a forest. I saw the faces of people I'd known in the bark of the trees. I scratched at the bark. Pieces of it fell into my hand. I sniffed and then tasted them. They tasted like the pancakes my grandmother used to make for me when I was a child. A hint of cinnamon. A hint of pumpkin spice. But I could not swallow. The wood caught in my throat and made me choke. As I coughed up the pieces they only tasted like bark.
      Suddenly I realized I hadn't eaten in days. Hunger shot through me like a cannonball. I wished for an all night diner. I was still in the forest. I clutched my side and fell to the ground, considering what other kinds of plant life I could try. I heard bells. I thought they were church bells ringing for my funeral. They were not. They were the small bells of a tamale vendor's metal cart. An old Mexican man pushed the cart over the uneven ground. I called out to him "I'll take one!" He smiled and nodded and headed in my direction. "Are you taking a nap?" he asked. "I can't walk any farther," I said, "I'm too hungry." I think he knew that. He was being polite. "Lucky you saw me. I was just on my way home. That'll be two dollars please." I reached in my pocket. I only had your teeth. I started to panic. I thought about what you would do in this situation. I couldn't remember. My panic grew at the thought of forgetting you. The old man saw the terror in my eyes and said that I could owe him. I forced myself to my feet to shake his hand properly. "What are you doing with that rope?" he asked. "I tied it to the skyscrapers so I wouldn't get lost," I said. He looked from my waist to where the rope disappeared in the distance. "Are you sure you want to head toward the city?" He seemed genuinely concerned. "I don't think I have a choice at this point. Plus, they're expecting me." I wondered if this was true. I absent-mindedly tugged at the rope to see if it would come off. It stuck to my waist like cement. The old man shut the lid of his cart. "Well, we all make our choices. I can respect that. Try to keep on a straight path. And don't worry about paying me back. There are some places I won't travel to collect a debt." Leaving me with all those words, he wandered back into the twilight of the forest. I heard his tiny bells long after I lost sight of him.
      The tamales renewed my energy and spirit. I walked with purpose. I was determined not to stop again. The tugs on the rope started coming at even intervals. Maybe I was late.
      As I walked, I felt as though I grew in size. At one point I thought I was looking down on the skyscrapers, but it was hard to tell in the dark. None of the lights were on. I thought I saw a wandering light in one of the buildings. It bobbed from window to window. Perhaps it was a night watchman. I felt lonely thinking of a man in uniform walking from room to room in the dark, putting his life on the line for a building, guided only by the short grasp of a flashlight's beam.
      I tried to follow the light with my eyes but soon lost track of it. Perhaps he was patrolling the back of the building. Maybe he was taking a nap.
      I heard the birds singing to me. Morning must have arrived. The birds sang my name. It sounded like they had a Spanish accent and a slight lisp. I wished that I knew names for each of them. I decided that I didn't need to know their names. I could give them new names. I could give everything a new name and create a new world of words. The words might not mean anything to anyone else but I could say them with conviction. That would be enough. As I walked farther, I named everything in sight. As time passed, however, I forgot the new names for the things I had seen. I also forgot the old names. I didn't know what I was walking on. I didn't know what blew through my hair. I became scared of what was shining down on me. Not knowing its name lead to not knowing what it could do. Everything pulsed with possibility. The world was limitless and I was afraid.
      I looked up and saw myself. I wasn't moving. My arms hung dead at my side. I looked behind myself. I saw that the earth was scorched. It was nothing but burning embers. They nearly touched the back of my shoes. I was afraid for myself. I tried to tell myself to turn around, to hurry up. We are in danger, I shouted. But now myself was just pouring a few teeth from hand to hand, ignoring my warning. I stepped back into myself but didn't remember to move.
      The rope started pulling me forward. I was surprised and fell down. The ground was very warm. I couldn't use my bare hands to push myself up. I noticed that I had accidentally dropped some of your teeth. I picked them up and put them in my own mouth so I would always know where they were. The rope dragged me further before I could stand up. I thought about staying down and letting them pull me the rest of the way. I was tired. I was ready to give up. But the ground was too hot, even through my clothes. So I struggled to my feet and walked faster than the rope was pulling. The ground burned me through my shoes if I didn't move fast enough.
      I developed a fever as I walked. My vision blurred and I saw things drifting in and out of the overgrowth. They looked like giant, shadowy men hunched over dramatically, carrying enormous burlap sacks full of jagged edges. Men becoming buffalo. Their faces were drawn out and their chins nearly dragged along the ground. They moved surprisingly fast for how big they were. I called out to them. They immediately stopped but wouldn't look in my direction. They stared straight ahead and breathed heavily. I felt a warm and musky breath on my shoulder. I turned and came face to face with one. He nuzzled my face with his own as he spoke. "You've come a long way. Are you traveling alone?" I told him that I was. "Almost everyone does. How lucky you would be to travel with a friend. But it would be selfish to ask anyone to come with you." I asked how much further I had to go. "It isn't far now, but this will be the most painful part." He stopped nuzzling my face and started to stomp at the ground, kicking up a great deal of dust around us. I asked him if he could help get this rope off of me. "The rope is not what pulls you. It is the strength at the other end. That strength could pull you without a rope." He kept kicking up dust. It was now so thick between us that I could not see his face. His voice vibrated painfully through my head with each word he spoke. "But fight against the rope if you can. Don't let it hurry you. Choose your own path. There is much to be gained by putting your foot in the place of your own choosing, even if we all end up at the same destination." I heard what sounded like a stampede circling me, though I could still see nothing. The dust was so heavy in the air that my eyes watered and I began to cough. "But where are all of you going?" I shouted. This time his voice was like a needle through my eardrum, though I knew he was already far away. "We are not to be known. You will see us once, but never again, though we have seen you always, heard you always, and protected you from everything until now." The voice was too much to bear. I fell to my knees and was burned. I heard the stampede shift and run in a direction I could not follow.
      I thought my skin was melting. I thought I would be fused to the earth on all fours, bowing to the city until I took my last breath. I swallowed the pain and became as still as possible. The pain became a part of me. I felt it move down my throat and into my stomach. I carried it like a child fathered by a tornado. My hands and knees no longer had any feeling in them. I pushed myself to my feet and fingered the holes in my clothes. I cradled my stomach as I stumbled forward, the rope squeezing my middle tighter and tighter.
      I thought of the way you held me. I would come home exhausted and angry and you would put your arms around me from behind. I would go slack like a dummy and you would drag me from room to room pretending I was a brand new toy. We did that so many times. I would close my eyes and let you pull me. Though our house was small, you never left me in the same place twice. I would open my eyes again and find myself on top of the kitchen table, or somehow slung over the fridge. I would stay there and laugh to myself as you untied my shoes and let them drop to the floor. Those were the nights we used each other as pillows and blankets and slept past the sound of the clock radio. Those were the times I was filled with trees and grass and everything that grows.
      Eventually I had to run in order to stay on my feet and keep up with the pull of the rope. The earth spun violently but I shot forward like an arrow, my feet barely touching the ground. The skyscrapers were so close that I couldn't see their tops anymore. They disappeared into dark grey clouds, piercing them and making it rain. The rope pulled so hard that each time I slipped I was immediately pulled up again. I kept running. I passed by abandoned cars in the middle of the road, their doors open, each one in perfect condition. I saw a group of saddled horses next to a building, chewing on the landscaping.
      Turning to look straight ahead again, I saw that the rope lead upward. It seemed to be coming out of the window of one of the skyscrapers a few block ahead. I worried that I would be dragged up the side of the building. I imagined all of my skin scraped off by window ledges. The pull of the rope suddenly became much stronger. I knew I couldn't keep up so I took one last leap as high into the air as I could. I closed my eyes. I did not touch the ground again.
      I thought about the last thing you said to me. You were so sick. You didn't look like yourself. You looked like a rag doll being swallowed by the bed. You said that this will be the longest we have ever been apart, like you were going on a business trip. I didn't cry. You said you would go first like an ancient conqueror and clear the way for me, build a home in a new world that we would someday live in together. And then you would send for me. I smiled at you. You always gave me your beautiful thoughts. I thought of what your ashes would smell like when they gave them to me in a small box. I wondered if I would keep them so long that someday I would forget where I put them. You turned to face the wall. You said, "Think of everything we swallow when we're asleep."
      I nestled into the warmth of your corpse, but I don't remember closing my eyes.