Fiction: Decomposition

By Courtenay S. Gray

The pizza slice continues to grow mould. The once vibrant and greasy toppings have been overtaken by an almost sickly fur. The dishes are stacked up to the ceiling, and I haven’t moved from the couch for two weeks. My hair is firmly stuck to my head, and I smell like a bloated cadaver. The empty vodka bottles have been repurposed as ashtrays. Every trip to the bathroom is a dizzying opera. The walls go all topsy turvy like those moving cylinders at a fairground. I can’t think clearly enough to pull my underwear down. The toilet roll looks like a giant marshmallow. Spots of colour bounce around the room like planets. I lift my hands to see two big stars with veins down the middle. Death is supposed to be natural, but all it brings is an unnatural amount of pain that lingers like radiation. I should be dead myself, considering that I’ve mixed alcohol and medication for the past week. How can one person hold your sanity inside them without knowing it? Before him, I didn’t know what living was supposed to be. After him, I know that whatever it was is gone. We are fools when we ask how violent people come to be. It seems more apparent now than ever before. The violent have been brutally wounded; therefore, they cannot contain the chemical reaction that begins to bubble beneath their skin. The pungent perfume of mourning decimates the honourable citizens who are yet to be exposed to the bylines of the Earth. Lost within this haphazard twilight is the desire to want anything at all. It is consequential that I should find solace in the numbing sensation that rises from the tips of my toes. I’ll be ok now… I think.

Courtenay S. Gray is a pushcart nominated writer from the North of England. You’ll find her work in an array of journals such as A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Misery Tourism, Expat Press, Red Fez, and many more.