This one is a little...outside the (shoe)box...of what we normally run. But when a story is this fucking good, fuck the rules. That's punk rock.
There are several themes here in the Gutter. File this one under, "It's the lies we tell ourselves that allow us to go on living."
There are several themes here in the Gutter. File this one under, "It's the lies we tell ourselves that allow us to go on living."
Obituary Game by Rasmenia Massoud
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It took three days to find the carcass after we first
noticed the smell. The cloying, putrid stench of decomposing. No matter how
many windows we opened or how many cans of fresh spring breeze chemical
disinfectant spray we emptied, that death stink permeated everything.
After three days, it dawned on me that it was the scent of
rot being slow-roasted. I slid the refrigerator away from the wall and found it
looking up at me, or maybe it would have been, if its eyes hadn't dried and
shriveled. One little wing had gotten stuck in those hot metal parts.
Cameron watched me put the dead bat into a shoebox.
"Crissakes, Melody. Just throw it in the fucking trash."
"I wasn't planning on having a funeral. Just back
off."
He jerked in his chair like he might jump out of it, and
then turned his head away. "Whatever."
He went out that night. "You can come if you
want," he said.
What this means is: I don't want you to come with me, but I
don't want to listen to your bitching, or hear you calling me an asshole.
I spent the evening scrolling through the obits in my
hometown's newspaper, scanning them for familiar names, curious to see who
didn't survive long enough to make an escape. There's a special kind of
satisfaction in lasting longer than the girl who looked down her nose at you in
4th period biology; in knowing where the creep who felt you up in 8th
grade is buried.
I look at the years to see whom I've outlived.
Born in ’82. Died yesterday. I've outlasted this stranger by
three years. I win. Most names listed in the obituary section belong to old
people. Most people, they die with thin, white hair on their head. That cheers
me up. This is proof that a long life is possible, not just something people
say you can have if you drink lots of water and avoid trans fats.
When Cameron comes home, his knuckles are bloody. Again.
"Got into a fight at the bar," he says. I don't ask what he was
fighting; why he has bloody scratches on his neck.
"You're reading the obits again?"
"I get curious."
"Curious? What good does curiosity ever do
anybody?"
Up on the roof a few weeks later, the scratches have almost
healed, but there are dry brown lines on the skin of his neck. They'll
disappear soon and it'll be like they were never there. Bloody wounds crust
over, turn to dry skin flakes and vanish to dust.
The bats fly around one another, swirling in a small, living
tornado. In the purple orange of dusk, they almost look like birds. Sometimes,
one flutters by close to where we sit drinking rum and Coke in big plastic
cups. Cam swats at one, even though it doesn't come close enough for him to
reach.
"Fucking things have rabies," he says.
"It won't bite."
"All animals bite if they're scared enough. Or crazy
from rabies." He picks at a dried scab on his knuckles.
We look down just as something tiny and black hits the wall
and slides down to the ground. I run down the stairs with my big plastic cup,
leaving a sticky, stinking trail of booze and soda. What I find on the ground
is a gasping black mouse with wings. I dump the rest of my drink in the dirt
and scoop up the broken thing in my cup.
"What do you think you're gonna do with that nasty
little fucker?" Cameron's chest is heaving from running down the stairs
after me, all puffed up from showing me his authority.
"It's hurt."
"Don't touch it."
"I won't."
"Little fuckers have fucking lice."
"Jesus, Cam. I'm not gonna touch it."
"It's dead. You can't fix it."
"It's still breathing."
"Breathing doesn't mean anything." He takes a big
drink from his cup. "Fuck this. I'm going to the bar. You can come if you
want."
"Okay," I say, looking at the dying bat in my cup.
"Never mind. I'll just stay home."
"No. I mean, okay, go."
When Cameron comes home from the bar, I'm sitting on the
couch with a shoebox in my lap. I'm trying to feed a moth and bits of lettuce
to this injured bat. His tiny mouth is open, small puffs of air going in and
out with the rapidity of fear.
"You're still wasting your time with this shit?"
He peels his jacket off. His T-shirt is wet and reeks of beer. He notices me
noticing. "Spilled my beer."
A couple of hours after Cameron passes out, I take my
shoebox over to the desk. I scan through the recent obituaries. Most of these
people were born before my parents. And their parents. Most of these people
lived through war. They came from a world I've seen in documentaries and
history books.
But this one, born in ’85. Peace Corps. Loving husband. A
baby boy. She died three days ago. I beat her by six years. I win.
Next to me, the tiny panting builds momentum, speeds up, and
then stops. I tap the box. Nothing. I hear Cameron in the next room, snoring
off his drunk, his body sloughing off claw marks, becoming dust flakes for me
to vacuum up tomorrow and the next day.
I stare at the dead thing in the box and tell myself over
and over again: Six years. I win.
