Ripping the Super Glue Apart: A Short Story
Trigger Warning: Blood, Death
I watched as a crowd gathered and surrounded my dead body; all wailing and screaming to the heavens for someone they knew nothing of to come back to life. I thought my face looked pretty, as pretty as a dead person could be. My clothes were largely undamaged but stained with green gutter residue, as was my scattered hair and some parts of my body. My feet had bruises on them, so did my arms and my now uncovered torso. A group of men, all of youth, alarmed at the state of my demise, pulled my body out of the gutter, planting their feet on the part where I left an imprint on the soft soil. They had trouble pulling out my head; the green residue made it stick to the wall. I watched as they forcefully yanked it off the side of the gutter, leaving a bald spot with pieces of my broken skull protruding and a steady stream of blood flowing out of the scattered holes.
The wails grew louder.
My eyes fixed on one of the men that helped pull me out. I wondered if anyone noticed how big his arms were; either arm looked capable of supporting the weight of an entire human being. He stopped to catch his breath and wipe the sweat off his face using the less bloody part of his arm. He had been the one holding my broken head. A woman put some cloth on the floor and the men laid my body to rest on it. More people gathered around me, displaying their sympathies with loud cries of regret and compassion as though they had known me, or my name. None of them did. I made sure of that. But their pity made me glad. I lingered on my face a bit more, it looked thoughtless. What was once brimming with curiosity laced on the tongue behind those broad lips and perfect teeth had now, as always, become hidden behind impassive mystery. The crowd began dispersing in their one’s, then ten’s, until what was left was the woman who owned the cloth and the big armed man. They didn’t know what to do with me, or who to call. It was as tragic a scenario as any Nigerian could imagine for themselves. The man sighed and picked my body up. My body’s arms swayed back and forth as he took gingered steps towards somewhere I knew nothing of, the woman following close behind him. She held her cloth close to her chest and said muffled words of prayers, begging God to accept me into the paradise I once believed existed. The man’s steps became longer and pacier as the evening quickly descended upon them. The woman could no longer keep up and tailed far behind, until she turned back home. I wished I could enter her mind and find answers to why she cared so much or find a new home as my old mind had begun decaying.
The walk seemed endless. I sought to speak to him and ask what he wanted to do with the body, but I could not figure out how he would be able to hear me, neither did he look the type to give audience to any questions; no one had seen me staring at my body or their grieving faces. Besides, where would the words come from? None of what I saw had a semblance of reality sewn into it, neither did I. I could not see the faces of the people the man passed by, but I could feel their sorrow as they stretched out their arms to touch the body. The man did nothing to stop them; he continued on his odyssean burial of someone he knew nothing of. I became even more struck by curiosity, as my body’s mind once was. I began to wonder what exactly I was. I looked at the body’s face again, then the gaping hole at the back of her head. The blood had stopped completely now, all I could see was the body’s brain which once glistened with ideas, and yearned for love, and showed anger, and controlled speech and writing. Now all that stood, or remained, was a lifeless sculpture of human matter, carbon really. Nothing could bring it back.
The evening quickly became night. I thought he could walk no longer, but the darkness did little to deter him. The jinn dared not come near to him, nor did the evil that plagued the clandestine gatherings in the corners scattered around him. He remained focused, his eyes not turning away from the destination he did not reveal except through his steps forward. I wondered how the dead body smelled or felt to touch, as I could do neither of those things. The man didn’t give off any indication of discomfort, but one knows with these people not to read their body language as the bible. I stared at the body as he kept on walking through his darkness. I tried to remember anything that happened before I found myself existing outside of the body, but I could not. I knew nothing of who I was or how I got there except that I wanted to be far away. What pain could lead someone to this? Or was it pain at all? Was I taken there? Does this man know anything about it? Is that why he chooses to walk as far as possible from where the dead body was found? I turned to his face and lingered on it; his eyes were hazel brown, his lips broad like the body’s, his cheekbones visible behind the thin layer of skin. In that brief moment, I imagined sitting with him on the beach as daylight gave way, our eyes on the crashing waves before turning to the sunset, locking our lips together with the taste of honey on our tongues.
Maybe that was a memory.
He kept on walking; through the sounds of the crashing waves and the bats flying over his head, through the sounds of the distant gunshots and the feel of the sand on my hand as he touched me, through the sound of the soft moans as his hands caressed my neck with his tongue wrestling with mine and the chirps of the crickets, he kept walking. I had no grasp of the time, but it felt like he had been walking for hours. The sky darkened around us; the light of the stars barely visible through the eclipsing clouds of grief over the man’s head.
The man stopped walking abruptly. I had thought the moment I had imagined was brief, but the sky had become bright, and the morning had descended on us like a thief following us from a secluded corner. I thought about the problems broad daylight would come with. What if the police stopped him? It appeared that none of these concerns were in his mind. He dropped the body to the ground, a tear rolled down from his eye. Thoughts about the problems he could face vanished in that moment. I looked at him, wondering what the problem was, as his head faced down and even more tears flowed; I wished I had the hands to reach out and touch his face, maybe hands with a soft velvet touch, or hands that smelled like roses. He looked up and turned towards a building with familiarity in his eyes. I looked at the building with inquisition, unable to place what it could possibly mean to the man or the dead body.
I began to wonder what I was doing with a large man or why there was a dead body with him. I wondered where we were. I wondered why I had appeared at the scene of the dead body in the first place. I looked at it, the dead body, again but had no clue who the person was. The man looked in my direction with even more tears in his eyes, mouthing the words “I’m sorry.” Suddenly, the world around me started to disintegrate. The morning sky slowly eroded, so did the man and the building. The dead body remained as it was, with a bigger hole at the back of its head. Out of the eroding building came a walking mirror. It rushed towards me before I could move, and I found myself looking at it; there was no reflection. I turned towards the dead body and saw that it was no longer where the disintegrated man placed it. I became exasperated and scurried around looking for the dead body. Preoccupied with my search, I had not noticed that the eroding sky had come to a stop, leaving a half nothing half blue horizon just above me. Unable to find it, I looked back at the mirror and saw a reflection of the dead body jumping off the building and into the gutter just beside it. The mirror suddenly disappeared, as did everything else around me. It all became nothing.
I thought about what to do next.