Cursed with life

I lie here in my final place. Nothing surrounds but darkness. I do not get the pleasure of being around loving family nor friends, not even a doctor or nurse.

I have nobody now, no space of my own, no help to come. My space is not a coffin, nor buried underground. I’m in a mortuary, feeling the cool air upon my face, keeping me from rotting away.

My flesh does not pulse with life, my heart does not run with blood, yet I still feel something. It’s not numbness. It’s hurt, pain, agony. Not in my head but in my chest. I feel it twist and make my skin twinge as if alive.

The pain spreads, growing through me and making me want to writhe and vomit, gag until I’m retching nothing up. But I can’t, I can’t move, not an inch.

I can hear something new now… slowly piercing through the silence, loud in the deafening stillness of nothing. It tangles through my flesh, through my veins, through my heart and lungs. Now more than ever I want to gag, want to get that horrid feeling out.

Maggots.

It’s maggots, wriggling around inside my body as if it were allowed.

But it couldn’t be, they could never be allowed into here, living in the cool air, feasting on chilled meat.

Crawling, crawling, crawling up my throat, unable to cough, unable to stop it. My body stays completely still, as if I were dead.

I am dead. No… I couldn’t be, why then can I still feel that twist growing tighter in my chest? It’s as if someone stuck a fork deep under my sternum and twisted like it were spaghetti, my lungs and veins coming right along.

My thighs and wrists begin to burn, that feeling when you run too hard too long, cramping, hurting, burning.

Then suddenly a light appears at my feet, some sort of small door opening. It’s a woman, dressed professionally, looking sort of like a doctor. She looks tired, exhausted even. And as my eyes trail along the light they land on my own body, perfectly intact.

I lie here in my final place. I will not go on and I will not go back. I lie a body. Merely a body. Nothing more, nothing less.