Soiled Manna

Mortem would always ask how his mother had perished. Aunt Cecelia would place her fingers to her mouth and murmur something like a faint memory. His older sister, separated from him by the recollection of her that he didn’t have, would always tell the boy she didn’t know.

“How wouldn’t you know?” he would have wondered, confused.

“Who would want to know?” she would then whisper prayers that always started with Why.

“Me.” 

Why, why, why?

“Me,” he repeated.

Why now? Why this? Why, why why?

“Me!” he would have screamed a final time. His sister would be erupted from her prayers and forced to peer at him. She wouldn’t say a word, only look like he had brought great misfortune upon the home. Then, he would leave, and they wouldn’t talk for fourteen hours exactly.

Every morning it repeated. A song would play, normally dragging gospel music Grandmother used to listen to when she was here. When they weren’t speaking, they ate Aunt Cecelia’s manna. She had cracked open the Bible one day and examined the scripture like a cookbook, echoing letters like ghouls.

M-a-n-n-a, manna.

What she would produce was stale bread varnished with an aureate glaze. It would stay in the oven for seventy-seven minutes precisely, then it would be taken out by Aunt Cecilia. This was the one-thousand fifty-sixth time she had served them manna. It became easy to ignore the compression of your lungs after the seventh day.

Mortem held his fork, silver with a blemish on the end of its slots, and ate. It was a crunchy delight, soaked with fatty butter and gritty flour which formed manna: corn of heaven, angel’s food, the bread of God.

Aunt Cecilia took her own fork, scooping the manna and chewing on its floury intestines. He could hear them screech. “How is the food, Akuji?”

Akuji would, too, grab her utensil, but then place it back onto the faintly stained napkin. “I’m not hungry.” Her throat, he supposed, had been irritated by the constant words she would say for hours. Breath. Why? Breath. For hours.

“I thought it was good.” Mortem turned to her “It’s my birthday today, Aunt Cecilia.”

But the older woman had returned his words with a scrunched face and an irate scowl. Mortem glanced down back at the manna, a silent apology. He looked up from his spot. The shadows were millimeters short today.

After eating on grit and ingurgitating wine, Aunt Cecilia rose a hand, which trembled with caution, at Akuji. Akuji left the table, resonating the sounds of a yowling chair and footsteps, soft and low. Aunt Cecilia had only needed to glare at Mortem to release him. When her piercing eyes had grown dim, he knew to leave.

The rest of the day, Mortem played with his only possessions, two cars. Each car shined like rare delicacies but shattered one another like foes. He grabbed the one that glimmered obsidian, then rammed it into the ivory-hued one. One blow had done nothing, so he plunged it into the other a second time, this time leaving the souvenir of a back wheel. The third, yet another wheel. Fourth, the windows. Fifth… sixth…

When he finished, the white car had been reduced to a mutilated mess. Mechanical parts clustered around glue, which splattered onto the carpet like clotting blood.

Someone opened the door.

He saw his sister, who’s eyes were non-existent in the dark. Her body had trembled, much like Aunt Cecilia’s when she feasted. “Happy birthday, Mortem.”

The boy glanced at the car, and then at her. “Thank you.” 

“You don’t get to be thirteen every day, Mortem,” Akuji’s voice was raspy, but he didn’t see anybody’s arms coiled around her windpipes. “I have a surprise.”

The boy followed, hesitant, skipping around the metallic organs that splattered onto the ground. When he had crept close enough, Akuji had begun walking, and he followed. 

The walk, to Mortem’s surprise, had been short and all but silent. Whispers of wolves crept into his ears like precipitation on windows, like hail on cars. Screeching owls overcast sharp silhouettes in the trees. The sky pleaded in a language he couldn’t quite understand. It felt calming. It felt home.

Mortem had made it to a graveyard, which rested on the hill above the forest. It was abnormally small, with exactly twenty-three graves, thirteen of which with petite writing. “You took me here, Akuji? To a graveyard?”

“Not just a graveyard,” she whispered hoarsely. “Mother met him here. She said she met him at the mailbox, but she was lying… ” She went to a particular grave that had something carved into its stone. His sister brushed her nails against the grave, leaving dust between the crevices of her fingers. 

“Do you know his name, Mortem?”

He recalled every name he knew that had been from a man. Christopher Columbus, Andrew Jackson, Harold Shipman. Jonathan Miller. All those people, he realized, are deceased for various reasons. “Not exactly.”

His sister screeched like she had been punctured through her body. “He has your name, that filthy man!” She cried. “He took her and Father! He took her and Father!”

Mortem knew it would have been appropriate to comfort her. But something was enticing about the echoes of distress and the fear emitting from every syllable that left her tongue. It was like manna from the heavens. Just a moment longer, he told himself. Then he would help. 

But moments turned to minutes, and for minutes he remained still. It had taken an abnormal portion of control to refrain from giggling in delight.

When she had finished, her face was cloaked by her curly, dark hair. She managed to help herself up. “He took her, and he took my father, and he left you! Not a mailman if I even heard of them! Who meets a woman in a graveyard who isn’t mourning themselves? She called him Mortem once when he delivered mail, Father heard her! Then she called you Mortem! Of course, Father noticed immediately, but-”

“My father isn’t Mortem, he’s Jonathan.” 

“No,” she hissed. Akuji settled again on the grass, staring absentmindedly at the graves. “Do you know about mythology, Mortem? Do you know what that is?”

She didn’t give him much time to answer. Her voice boiled with rage. “‘Mort’ means ‘death’. It’s a Latin root. You’re Death himself, or half of him. It’s in your name. My mother, of all things, cheated with Death. She danced with a demon!” Akuji laughed as if it was the funniest thing she had ever heard. She lowered her head. “They’re immortal, though.”

Mortem had wanted his heart to explode, or for himself to ponder over the revelation. Instead, he felt more complete than anything. It was calming. No matter how much he wanted to feel abnormal about the concept, it made more sense than less. 

But Mortem couldn’t show that, so he attempted to tear his voice like how Akuji had ripped hers. “Immortal?”

“It means you can’t kill them.” She seemed upset at the fact. “If you think he cares about you, he doesn’t. He takes who he wants when he wants. He’ll take you soon.”

“Well,” He reasoned instead, unable to keep that sense of calm away in his tone. It was impossible. “How am I living, then?”

"You're living, but you're not alive."

Akuji remained as a wax figure on the hill. All twenty-three ghouls thrummed with the wind. It reminded Mortem of the festive, jolly tunes Aunt Cecilia played every Christmas. 

“Hold still, Mortem.” 

The girl went steadily towards him, limping, only a few moments away. The boy looked below to the forest. It was screaming, begging in-between breaths. Yelling, crying. Pleading him to come, each tree seemed to have reached out their roots like a long-lost relative. He stepped back.

“I said hold still, Mortem.”

The sounds of Akuji’s footsteps drew closer. Her hair was clumsily clumped over her eyes, her whole body forced into a silhouette over the absence of the moon. But he could still hear the screams calling him, seeking him. Soon, they told him. Hurry. 

He took more steps backward.

“I SAID HOLD STILL, MORTEM-!”

A tingling sensation came through Mortem, it felt sweet and pure, like the bread of heaven had coursed through his blood. It only lasted for a moment, leaving as soon as it came. Mortem, after the revelation, stared at his sister.

His sister was on the ground, a knife plunged into her chest. Blood seeped through holes in a hurry to exit her body. Her eyes were ever staring, tears flowed down her cheeks. Her breathing had grown thin. She seemed to have forced every muscle of her body to fold her hands in prayer.

“Why?” Breath. “Why?” Breath. “Why, why, why?”

“Why have you forsaken me?”

******

It had been Mortem’s birthday. His Aunt Cecilia seemed to have carried more respect for him than before. Her trembling had gotten worse, but her manners had improved. Every time they ate, she would grow a small smile and pat his head as gently as she could. Then she would look around, form her hands in prayer, but never pray. They never spoke about her.

Somebody had rung the doorbell. Mortem turned around to Aunt Cecilia. “Someone’s here.”

The woman didn’t respond, hardly breathing. Staring at her hands, stretched and joined. It looked as if she couldn’t wrest them apart.

Mortem had gone to the company themselves. He slid open the door to see a man peering back at him. The man had black hair, with equally dark eyes and a blue uniform signed M.M. He gave Mortem a half-smile.

“Didn’t think boys like you would pick up the mail,” he said quietly, yet there was something about his tone that made Mortem’s lips cower, leaving a thin line. Finally, the boy shook his head. The man chuckled. “Not to worry, Mr. Miller. To be expected ‘round these parks. Cursed parks.”

Mortem opened his mouth to say something, but the man patted his head before he could speak. “Here you go, son.” 

The mailman had given Mortem a small sticky note, sticky-side up. It was bright and yellow, like a sponge. On the front were words written in intimidatingly perfect handwriting.

Mortem J. Miller Jr.

2.846 Miles Exactly From The Graveyard

He turned it around, only to see a couple of words written in the same, superb penmanship.

Happy 1st Anniversary!

I’m proud of you! ;)