call of the vile

if I cut you then a thousand condom wrappers would come spilling out

I really don’t know how morticians do it.

I wonder how many of them have seen your face and said, out loud, that they think this is all just a terrible shame. Because you’re so good looking, even when you’re dead. Everybody’s thinking it. I’m thinking it. It’s not because you’re dead or in spite of you being dead. I’m thinking about people I don’t know touching you. How many people even work here, anyway? I wonder if they use the same brand of gloves that I do; probably not. You always did like latex. Christmas came early.

You’d look good on film; black-and-white especially. Maybe it’s the light. Maybe it’s the things they’ve done to your face to stop it from collapsing in on itself. Is it childish, to stand over you like this and wonder why you don’t look more dead? It’s not like the rot sets in immediately.

Rotting is for other people. Old people. I’m nearly twenty-five and I’m not rotting. Neither are you. You’re twenty-two and change. You won’t rot. You’re made of something else.

I wonder how long you’ll be pretty for. Have they touched you, the way I’ve touched you? Would you even tell me if they had?

You look cold.

Against the chrome of the slab and the fluorescents I can trick myself into believing there are snowflakes melting in your hair. You look like the boys they used to dredge out of the sound back in Jersey. Your lips are a little blue, babe.

I wonder if your eyes look the same or if they’ve slipped backward into your skull so I peel back an eyelid and take a look. These fucking lights. You have green eyes, and you were always very adamant about that even though I’d tease you and say they were hazel at best. But the brown is bleeding out and they’re muddy, like earth, like leaves in September. I wonder how many people have seen a dead boy’s eyes. They’re already starting to get a little cloudy, like egg whites when they hit a hot skillet.

When I press the pad of my thumb into your eye you don’t flinch or cringe or bat my hand away. I should probably throw away your contact lens solution, or I guess I could keep it until it goes out of date, I don’t know. I can’t see it but my thumb will have left a print. I could push your eye all the way into your brain and you wouldn’t feel it. It’s the least you deserve. I don’t like that you’re alone with these people. If I had a blacklight I bet you’d light up like the fourth of fucking July. You always were a slut.

No use placing blame.

I really thought you’d smell. Dead people are supposed to smell sweet (something that’s always disturbed me since I found that out) but you don’t. You just smell like the outside, like the cold, like freezer-burned cold cuts. Maybe I’m imagining that. That’s what you are, now. There’s a cold turkey joke in there somewhere.

I know the curve of your ears better than I know my own. They’re gone — the rings, I mean — and there’s barely any proof they were there at all. I know you wanted to be buried with it all but maybe this is for the best. Your mom would freak if she saw what I’d done to you, aside the obvious fact that you’re dead and that’s bad enough. Come to think of it, you do look a bit ill. I wonder if they’ve got your shade of powder here. I’ll see if yours is still in your dressing room.

They’ve put all your jewellery in a little box. I’ll keep it. I’d like to wear some of it and I’d be alright with the cross-contamination if it wasn’t so fucking pointless.

Do you remember, a few weeks after we found out you were sick, and I was trying to quit smoking? I was considering packing it all in and just letting you come in my mouth just so the smoking wouldn’t matter. We would have been going to the same place, you and me.

I’m not even supposed to be in here. I’m only here because you died in my sleep. Not because I need this. Do I? Need this?

I try to find something that will tell me I’m dreaming. I’d quite like to stick you in the side and go rooting around, I guess to see whether you’re full of sawdust, or hollow, or just plain black blood and guts. No; I reckon if I cut you then a thousand condom wrappers would come spilling out like I’d just won some kind of demented fucking jackpot. There aren’t any winners in this room, baby. Did you know that they’re giving out free condoms on the second floor? I wonder if the morticians bring their own.

You don’t react to me touching you; there, or anywhere else. You were self conscious about your navel so I’d always make sure to get come on it. Remember? No use doing that now. I check to see if you’re watching, maybe holding your breath, but no. Everything’s starting to feel a little too real.

Your mom is going to fucking kill me.