Deathwish 040: Alyson
“Our villains don’t get funerals. We have unmarked their tombstones.”
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I have tethered myself with string like hard muscle to failing bodies: my mother’s blood swollen with tumors still pending; my father eating donuts on a Monday, then nothing but cottage cheese for three days straight. I am alive in the way we are all of us alive, but temporary—like the imprints of a baby’s hand or the colors in passerby-clouds. Our cells split badly and march us closer to death.
Have you noticed? We unburden our good of their livers, their wallets, their clothing, their spleens, and stuff the reminder with salt like pickle jars. The good leave skin smooth like orange rinds rubbed for too long between thumbs.
We watch them. We sell out parades. We scramble, respectfully, to the sides of tempered glass, and marvel at the colors and shapes someone has fashioned of wires and previous meat. When an infant dies, we suture their eyes to look as though they are sleeping.
It is the bad who don’t leave bodies. We reserve our corpses for the good. When Hitler died, they burned up the body so it couldn’t be buried, so his people would not make pilgrimage and settle to his bones like evening dust. When he drowned, was there a minnow who ate the small hairs from Mengele’s nose? The fat from his whistling mouth?
Our villains don’t get funerals. We have unmarked their tombstones. We cut off their heads and mount them on pikes for the sky birds.
Have you noticed? The bad don’t leave bodies, so where will we live?
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To read the previous installment, "Deathwish 039: Neil," go here. To participate in Deathwish, find details here.
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Alyson was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and currently lives in Edinburgh, United Kingdom.