that you have the body
Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2020 6:16 am
((The corpse had been left behind, eyes wide shut.))
Inevitably, the only thing Marcy had done for Roxy’s presentability was rob her of her useful sundries. Bit of an insult, really. If she’d been that in need of a fix’er-up Kelly would have obliged without hesitation. Payment for her one dragging foot, a means of thanks for the rush and thrill of living, of thriving, that accompanied the ice cold shudder up her spine each time she felt her shot-open knee almost fold from under her.
Not like Kelly was using the food herself, anyways. She didn’t have much left, but she was saving it for a special occasion. Sometime never, she’d consider the scraps of morsels left in her bag worth a nibble. For now, she didn’t need the energy. The only things she needed were things she could trust only herself to provide.
Roxy, after all, had demanded the answers from someone else. They had called each other friends, once, and all Roxy had to show for her trust was the particular patterning of her innards. There was an almost hypnotic swirl to the cream of her guts- it was small things like that, little details, that helped Kelly feel grounded.
Kelly trudged up to her, her presence barely heard and felt. Even the moon seemed to spill off her skin, it’s pale lingering chill refusing to stay put, leaving most of her head obscured under an umbra of her own dark hair, dissolved slowly into a briarthorn of twist and fray.
Kelly knelt at Roxy’s side. Slowly, methodically, cleared the gnarl of her bangs off her eyes. She wanted to see her clearly.
I don’t think there was ever anything to find.
Kelly hadn’t lived this long for that to be Roxy’s last words to her. She’d remember Roxy at her best, not at her most defeated.
Her hand was cold as marble as it gently tended to Roxy’s body in stiff sweeps. Roxanne’s glassy eyes were sealed, Kelly mindful of the weight of the lid, slightly fluffing up the sagging jelly of the eyeballs so that Roxy’s closed eyes looked full. The uniquely squirmy, oily texture of gore did not bother Kelly, it was actually quite easy to get used to it when it was attached to her own body in so many places, let alone just bits and pieces of another dying thing. Kelly rescued Roxanne’s guts, repacked them into the empty cavity from which they’d been liberated.
She undid what was left of Roxy’s top, cutting down the front of the bodice with the first aid kit’s pair of surgical scissors. The whole shirt she replaced it with would hide the gash in her abdomen adeptly- with some creative snips along the seams of the back, to widen it as needed. Roxy had been a larger girl, after all. In physical form, anyways.
She’d picked her chartreuse shirt. So long after that color had been meant to represent a spur of the moment impulse towards craven social homogeneity, it seemed like a fitting thing to bury with the dead.
Silence passed, after Roxy’s corpse was neatly bow-tied, set aside to decay in peace. Kelly had nothing to say, any words she’d known for a moment like this had died with a previous iteration of herself. Prayer and ritual were turgid artifacts of a more naive time, inert blocks of rigor mortis and fanciful dream.
The only way she knew to honor Roxy’s memory, now, was that Kelly pick up where she had left off.
Inevitably, the only thing Marcy had done for Roxy’s presentability was rob her of her useful sundries. Bit of an insult, really. If she’d been that in need of a fix’er-up Kelly would have obliged without hesitation. Payment for her one dragging foot, a means of thanks for the rush and thrill of living, of thriving, that accompanied the ice cold shudder up her spine each time she felt her shot-open knee almost fold from under her.
Not like Kelly was using the food herself, anyways. She didn’t have much left, but she was saving it for a special occasion. Sometime never, she’d consider the scraps of morsels left in her bag worth a nibble. For now, she didn’t need the energy. The only things she needed were things she could trust only herself to provide.
Roxy, after all, had demanded the answers from someone else. They had called each other friends, once, and all Roxy had to show for her trust was the particular patterning of her innards. There was an almost hypnotic swirl to the cream of her guts- it was small things like that, little details, that helped Kelly feel grounded.
Kelly trudged up to her, her presence barely heard and felt. Even the moon seemed to spill off her skin, it’s pale lingering chill refusing to stay put, leaving most of her head obscured under an umbra of her own dark hair, dissolved slowly into a briarthorn of twist and fray.
Kelly knelt at Roxy’s side. Slowly, methodically, cleared the gnarl of her bangs off her eyes. She wanted to see her clearly.
I don’t think there was ever anything to find.
Kelly hadn’t lived this long for that to be Roxy’s last words to her. She’d remember Roxy at her best, not at her most defeated.
Her hand was cold as marble as it gently tended to Roxy’s body in stiff sweeps. Roxanne’s glassy eyes were sealed, Kelly mindful of the weight of the lid, slightly fluffing up the sagging jelly of the eyeballs so that Roxy’s closed eyes looked full. The uniquely squirmy, oily texture of gore did not bother Kelly, it was actually quite easy to get used to it when it was attached to her own body in so many places, let alone just bits and pieces of another dying thing. Kelly rescued Roxanne’s guts, repacked them into the empty cavity from which they’d been liberated.
She undid what was left of Roxy’s top, cutting down the front of the bodice with the first aid kit’s pair of surgical scissors. The whole shirt she replaced it with would hide the gash in her abdomen adeptly- with some creative snips along the seams of the back, to widen it as needed. Roxy had been a larger girl, after all. In physical form, anyways.
She’d picked her chartreuse shirt. So long after that color had been meant to represent a spur of the moment impulse towards craven social homogeneity, it seemed like a fitting thing to bury with the dead.
Silence passed, after Roxy’s corpse was neatly bow-tied, set aside to decay in peace. Kelly had nothing to say, any words she’d known for a moment like this had died with a previous iteration of herself. Prayer and ritual were turgid artifacts of a more naive time, inert blocks of rigor mortis and fanciful dream.
The only way she knew to honor Roxy’s memory, now, was that Kelly pick up where she had left off.