a return to the house of death (7)

Her body was now mostly unrecognisable. The sheets were sodden with fluid around her remains and the odour was breathtaking, awash in her organs. It was as though the entire room had been given over to death, as though death and it were then as one. The maggots had consumed the body and now migrated from it for their imminent rebirth. In the midst of life we are in death. As they hatched gradually the sound of their wings was deafening. He stood in the room and felt them land upon his skin, felt their disappointment at his continuing life and the little promise it offered; the room held nothing further of interest for them. Her perfect teeth were fixed in a smile and she looked quite happy given the circumstances; her skin was slipped and mottled, the colour of a cola bottle, her face almost pitch black, and it looked ready to cave in on itself, as though one poke would finish it. He yearned for the revelation of the complex beauty of her bones. He undressed with his back to her then approached the bed and scooped great handfuls of fluid and gunk from around her body, which he rubbed across his bare skin, his chest and arms and legs and face until like her he was the colour of death. The flies cared little. These acts of love, he thought, are thermodynamic.