This Broken Body You Refuse to Leave
by Andrew Nadolny
Dies iræ...
dies illa solvet sæclum in favilla…
The infection spreads quickly to the head, the haze of red blanketing my vision as I blink dying eyes to the bleary skies of the blood-soaked world. Head back, fists curled, no longer feeling the beat of my heart as my body stops and starts its decay.
There's some note from my throat as my loose neck swings me around to you there in the chair next to the bed with the gun in your hand too stunned to shoot, just rooted to the seat with my transformation complete.
I always thought I ought to take a bullet to the head than be undead like this but I… I'm still here and it's queer because I can't talk and the smell of your vibrant blood floods my still functioning olfactory senses kicked up to eleven, seven counts past since my last breath.
If this were the movies I think I'd have lunged with a growl and a groan because it's just us alone and the temptation of your warmth makes me want to sink in teeth bone deep to your neck and drown in the sticky sweet of your death. But…
But you're warm and I'm cold and I feel my soul's been sold to some whimsical God as you prod at my face with the barrel of the gun and don't run when it drops and I… I stop myself from that final lunge because no matter how many times I'm plunged to this maddening hunger to feed I… I need you to thrive, to stay alive and…
I'm shaking, nearly breaking that resolve when I feel your arms, that blanket of heat a sweet torture with my cold lips to your shoulder knowing it would be so easy to… to stay and let hunger flay me alive even with my body being nothing but impulse and ghosts of memory and a name I'm starting to forget but not regret.
Mors stupebit et natura,
Cum resurget creatura,
Judicanti responsura.
I remember… sometimes as I lay still beside you, the story of a scorpion who entreated a frog to help it cross the river and they both died because the scorpion inside could only obey its biology and I wonder how this dark and decayed form stays its amoral hand when shivering. You draw near and I can hear your pulse calling to my mouth.
Life pulls away from me like the parting Red Sea and even the most putrid of carrion dwellers don't rest on my cold chest or sit in wounds that never seem to heal as you feed me another meal of one of The Sheep who didn't make another sun's dawn, as we carry on and you hold the hair from my face and tell me not to waste any of it.
You never seek others like you, instead keeping me fed and safe because this body can't mend or defend, only drag along when muscles can't sustain—when the rainwater chills and spills over brittle skin like a drum on a cold tin roof. The only proof I live is the pain it gives seeing you grieve this broken body you refuse to leave.
The rest of us overwhelm in our numbers, sundering makeshift ruins hopeful humans erect like Babel to the sky crying out for a savior when walls fall and the dead crawl towards them. I wonder if not for you, my tired pied piper, if I wouldn't be part of that horde, that locust plague shambling towards those few safe havens where craven criminals war over the last scraps.
Juste Judex ultionis,
Donum fac remissionis,
Ante diem rationis.
In the crumbling church, stomach rumbling with that need to sate which never abates, I think perhaps my unsaved soul may be the only whole of me remaining. My lips move silently remembering something from those hazy dream-dust days as I watch you kneeling on the ground begging for some divine favor, laboring with the fervor of a zealot.
My hand drops over yours beads, clenched tight, your sight turned to some God they say cursed the world like Nod because of sodomy or some other nonsense that no one cares about anymore. The Doomsayers slayed like the rest as they prayed for the sky to open so they could ascend before the monsters could rend their corporeal masses. I’ll give you my every strength because you need sleep and I can keep on as long as we need.
I know the words as I know your tears, my own frozen, trapped, throat bands snapped, and as you entreat at the feet of another fallen idol I wonder if this spell binding us is my own sort of hell dwelling in the dark where it’s only you that sparks life to the bleeding walls and holds me in thrall.
Everyone who stands before these cemetery gates is fated to die—whether by a flash from the sky or lying down with the monsters outside—and once I tried to bring you another who might save you where I only hold you back and that’s when I saw at last your eyes turned full black as I never had before and I was sure that…
Lacrimosa dies illa,
Qua resurget ex favilla,
Judicandus homo reus.
Huic ergo parce, Deus:
I was sure that I was the only living nightmare…
There was a story of a man who slayed a thousand demons and then became one himself and I always wanted to ask what of the man who slays a thousand angels, a thousand sheep, does he keep company with the same beasts feasting on the fallen world?
Your hand is still warm as you brush the frail strands of hair from my face and place your lips to my forehead in some benediction before I feel fire crawl from within and I…
I finally kiss you awake.
Pie Jesu Domine,
Dona eis requiem. Amen.
Bring on the dead.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew is a writer and artist currently living in Columbus Ohio and looks forward to one day being devoured by his own mitochondrial DNA.
