Returning from the corner store…

I had thought this was going to be a good week for me. Honestly. Got a raise at work, wife that loved me, parents who loved me and lived nicely far away like the rest of my family, mortgage almost paid … things were looking up, all my hard work paying off and retirement was going to be a nice thin, not a desperate rush to save money at the last moment. I had it good.

At least, up until I walked into my bedroom and disturbed the flies.

And saw the body on the bed. I’d never seen a dead body, outside of movies and TV shows and funeral homes really, certainly not one that was missing the whole bottom of the face and whose brains were decorating the afghan. To say nothing of the stains on the carpet. Amazing what we focus on when we don’t want to see what’s in front of our faces.

I finally looked at the body. Male. Naked as a blue jay. Dead. Definitely dead. And holding a gun, so at least I wouldn’t get blamed. But, you see, I’d just gone to the corner store for a paper. 5 minutes, tops. Not enough time for someone to break in and shoot their brains out, unless they were really determined. Mind you, anyone who shoots their brains out has to be determined. Or never learned the proper way to clean a gun. I mean, the face was a total loss: we were talking closed-casket funeral or maybe even cremation. He stunk, but that was mostly the crap on the carpet.

I don’t know why I did what I did. Tampering with a body was bad. I learned that watching Cops and NYPD Blue. I did it because I was curious, because I had to know who the hell would come into my home and commit suicide like that. It was his arm I noticed, the tattoo of a butterfly. I have one like that. Same one, in fact.

Putting one and one together might be easy normally, but I was getting fractions and prime numbers and fractals here .. I’d just touched my own corpse. I was breathing as well. And definitely not dead. Ok … not much of a pulse, but I was alive. And I definitely wasn’t my body lying in a pool of blood and faeces. I began to get a migraine. For the first time ever, that was good. I could still get migraines. I wasn’t a ghost, or undead, or what have you …. and I’d left my fingerprints all over the crime scene.

I think I started to giggle them, imagining the police trying to figure it out (“he shot himself in the face and blew his brains out, then he turned his body over and began to clean up the mess. Very neat and tidy, which is why we suspect foul play because his wife did all the housework”). I did start cleaning up – not even sure why – then it really hit me: this was my body. I could count the moles, the little nip missing out of the ear that was still part of the head … so I got up, and walked outside and left.

I thought about leaving a note, but I don’t seem to have left one and all I could think of was “Sorry about the mess. I’ll do better next time,” or something. Famous last words: “Tell them I said something really profound!” So I left my body dead in the bedroom and raided Emily’s jewellery (maybe it could be explained as a robbery .. ‘sides, I need money. I think.) and headed got my old coat with the hood and left by the back door, through the park.

I saw some other people along the way, but they were living. I think. The weird lady feeding the birds I wasn’t as sure about, but I wasn’t sure about much.

So I might be wanted for murdering my body or something by some after life police, except this is the real, same world. I’m just …. hell if I know.

And to think I thought this was going to be a good week.