The Conscious Cadaver

TW: mention of sexual abuse (no details), death, swearing

Then came the darkness, and nothing else. I'd expected a bright light, a flash of memories, an omnipotent warmth, but there was nothing. A timeless nothing that expanded infinitely. I could help but not wonder, where had I gone? I knew I was dead, where was my consciousness? Was this purgatory? Hell? Given that I was never to believe in such things, I thought maybe this was simply what happened when you died. My consciousness left to float through the ethers. Then, the brightest light came to me. This is it, I thought, as the light enveloped me. But it was not the light of an angel nor death. It was an overhead fluorescent light. Certainly, this was hell. I noticed my body, suddenly, cold and rigid on a table. It was strange how I could not move, and even though I felt like I was in my body, I could see around me. A dark-haired young woman appeared, clad in mask and gloves. She washed and disinfected my inanimate flesh, and I observed, oddly amused. That is, until she made the cut near my clavicle and stuck a tube full of pink shit inside me. It flowed through my veins like pastel blood, and she gave me a nice massage to spread it throughout my body. I could feel, in a way, but there was no pain or displeasure. It was incredibly curious, but it was getting macabre. She stitched up my eyes and closed them, but I still could see. I could not help but wonder why, as the mortician pulled out a palette and put a horrific shade of blue on my eyelids. I tried to call out but there was no movement or sound, just my own frustration. To make it worse she put too much blush on my cheeks and gave me a mismatched shade of lipstick. All I needed was a big red nose, because apparently, my funeral was going to be a circus performance. Little did I know...

Carefully, I was put into a black coffin against my will. I wondered bitterly who had ignored my requests. I wanted to be buried in a shroud amongst the forest, my body left to compost the earth. I'd been very vocal to my family about this, but I wasn't surprised. They never listened to what I wanted in my life, why would they fulfill my death requests?

I did not know how much time passed inside that coffin, but the next thing I knew, it was opened, and there stood my crying mother and numb brother.

"She looks so peaceful, likes she's sleeping," my mother said wistfully,

"She'd dead, mom," came my brother's flat retort,

"I KNOW THAT, DON'T YOU THINK I KNOW THAT?!" My mother demanded in a screech that made my brother wince. The coffin was left open, and I watched many familiar faces enter the room, none of them my chosen family. Where were my friends? Where was my lover? Had they not been notified? Or did they simply not care? I brooded in impeccable silence as my father approached me disdainfully,

"She looks like a painted whore," he grumbled under his breath. If I could have rolled my eyes they would have gotten stuck in the back of my head. My father never approved of sex work, even though his children knew he secretly slept with prostitutes behind our mother's back. He sighed heavily, closed his eyes, and walked away. For a corpse, I was experiencing a heavy load of conflicting feelings, and I felt as though I'd jump out of my skin. In some morbid way, this amused me. Still time passed and the room filled with my family and their friends, yet no one close to me. Just the disapproving figures of my childhood. Overhearing them talk about me was unbearable. How I'd never given my family a child, gotten married, or found monetary success. I bristled. My brother had children and hoarded money, was that not enough? Was my breedability and financial wealth the only measure of my worth? I was, in fact, very wealthy in my adult life. I surrounded myself with people I loved and worked a job that fulfilled me, even though the pay was nothing to call home about. I'd never wanted a child or a husband. I had a cat and a girlfriend and that was all I needed. I hoped they were alright without me. A wave of sorrow came over me - they probably weren't. This whole thing was a living (dead) nightmare. A pastor came to begin the procession and I would have rolled over in my coffin if I'd had the ability. He made the whole event about his stupid Christian god, and went as far as to say, "even if her accomplishments were few, she was loved by many." Not you, not your god, not a single fucking person in this room could I say truly loved me. Suddenly I became aware of my drunk uncle in the back of the room and my soul caught fire with rage. I'd cut off his insolent ass the moment I turned 18. I told my family what he did to me, and no one believed me. I refused to attend family events when he was present, and my family always chided me for avoiding my uncle. I wish I could have launched myself out of the coffin to vomit that pink shit they put inside me all over him. Ideally, it would burn his flesh off, and he'd be in a worse state than I. Everything felt so unfair. And again, where was my lover in all this? Intellectually, I knew she had not been invited, but emotionally I felt abandoned. Dead and alone in a room full of the living. Yet, they were more dead than I, their souls hollow, hearts empty, heads full of nothing but fear and hatred. In all my misery, I wanted to die. What a cruel fucking joke. The procession ended and that drunk fucking creep came over to breathe at me. I was thankful that I could not smell the booze and cigarettes wafting off of him nor his chronic halitosis. He stared at me for a while, wiping a tear away from his eye. He leaned in and I willed him to spontaneously combust, but he planted a wet kiss on my cheek and told me how pretty I was before he walked away. I felt disgusted and disgusting. Rage was all I knew as I watched him leave the room. Everyone came to see me and say something distasteful or ignorant and I begged the powers that be that my corpse may explode, leaving them all horrified and covered in my guts. By the time the funeral was over, my rage had spiraled into a deep depression. I would have cried if I could. I'd never felt so rotten in my life. And here I thought death would be easier. How foolish of me. The coffin closed, and I was saved by the darkness. My dead, unbeating heart ached with loneliness and rage. I wondered what on earth I'd done to deserve this. I wasn't a bad person. But bad things happened to good people. That had been made clearer than ever to me.

Who knows how long i was in the darkness. I wondered if I was going to be buried or cremated. I pleaded to the old gods to let me be cremated. Maybe then I would be freed from my cadaver. If I was put in the ground like this, I might have been doomed to the darkness. But anything was better than being in a room full of people pretending to care about me. I felt the coffin moving, and I could have screamed. Of course they were going to bury me, those bastards. I heard the "ashes to ashes, dust to dust," bullshit and dirt smacked the coffin, startling me. My consciousness shifted uncomfortably, bound to my body. I knew I was dead, but it felt like I was being buried alive. Six feet beneath, sleep evaded me. I longed to be freed, but left my hope behind. I didn't want to hope for something that would never happen. I missed my friends. I missed my lover. I wondered where they were now, when something began digging in my grave with what sounded like a shovel. Grave robbers? The thought felt stupid the moment it came to mind. Maybe it was my druncle, digging me up to have his way with me one last time. Please just let me die in peace, I wrestled with my lack of tangibility when the shovel hit my coffin. I was terrified of who was opening my coffin, and I willed my closed eyes to stop perceiving. It was not anyone expected. It was an angel, pure of heart, more beautiful than anything I'd ever witnessed. I never got the chance to marry her. "We're going to get you out of here," she told me, and pulled me out with the help of three of my friends. My friends, I could have died of joy (if I wasn't already dead). They hadn't forgotten me, after all. My body was gingerly wrangled into a plastic bag, and I was thrown into my bestie's trunk. I was thrilled. I didn't know what they were doing with me, but I would have been overjoyed even if they'd decided to spit roast me. The car stopped, and the trunk opened. I was carried a while, until their footsteps stopped, and I was placed down and unwrapped like some sick Christmas present. It felt a lot like Christmas morning to me, as I was lovingly wrapped in a shroud and tossed into a hole dug in the ground. Flowers followed me, and the tears of everyone I loved. My entire chosen family was there, love in their eyes. They shared their favorite memories of me, and I laughed silently with them. Each and every one spoke to me, and told me they loved me. If tears could have escaped my eyes I would have drowned in salty water. Then the dirt came, but this time I was ready for it. It hit me harder than in the coffin, but I was safe behind an armor of love. Again, the darkness enveloped me and I heard them singing my favorite song to me. Silence followed, but it was more peaceful than the previous instances of silence. I don't know how long I was there, not how long I would be there. It seemed like centuries passed, or maybe it was a few seconds, but I was startled to see the sun again, except I was no longer dead. I was alive and devouring the heat of the sun. I knew my body was no longer that of my human self, but I struggled to understand what it was. And just then, my lover appeared above me, smiling down at me. "Daisy!", she spoke my name and picked me, a grave flower, to put me behind her ear, and blissfully my consciousness dissipated into the ethers, never to be known again.

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