Cold Yearning

Kat Sandefer

I had been in the sun for days. My bones were small, brittle torches that baked my flesh. The sand at my back scraped the skin, pulling it deep into the desert. The nights were kind; the animals would run from their shady spots, my body a beacon. They gnawed at my arms and legs, tearing burnt flesh and muscle off to bring to their little homes.

I knew my soul would be stuck until all the flesh was taken. I would bake, praying for the bugs and creatures to leave their sanctuaries to free me from my prison. I would continue to suffer the way that had taken my life from me in the first place.

Then the vultures came, bless them.

When the first bird took my nose, I could still smell the rotting flesh the bird ripped from me. There was a gaping hole in my face that my soul longed to leave through, but I knew I had to be patient. I longed to leave, to get out, to escape the heat that stole the rest of my days. My throat still burned, reminding me of the initial panic of running out of water. I had shaken the bottle over my open mouth to no avail; moist sand had dripped down my throat, causing me to gag. The last drip— not an oasis— was just a continuation of the endless desert I had found myself in.

I had no hat or bandana to cover my face; I started to decompose long before I died. The sun broiled my skin for hours before the cold chill would freeze my sweat on gaping burns. I woke up gasping, my hands stuck to whatever skin I touched. I would rip chunks of dead skin from my arms and chest, my white t-shirt doing nothing but combatting the inevitable.

When I became desperate enough to try and drink from a cactus, my blood stung the burns on my hands. The stabbing pain cut through the slow ache of being baked alive, my blood cooler than my skin. I cut myself deeper, not holding back a feral scream, as I rubbed the cool blood over my arms and my face. Maybe it’ll protect me from the sun, I thought, delirious. Maybe it’ll heal me, and I’ll go home.

I could see my wife on my last day. Even in the heat of the day, stumbling towards a continuing nothingness, I felt a cool peace.

I did not meet my wife when I died. There was no bright light leading my way to heaven, there was only continuation. I stayed embedded in a decomposing flesh prison, waiting to be freed.

I learned quickly that vultures were holy creatures.

They came to separate my mortal vessel from my spirit, giving me a way out. The moment the second bird tore into my eyes, I began to feel peace. It didn’t hurt like I expected it to, but it tickled. It was a breath of a feather, brushing against my bones, cooling the small fires they lit.

Decomposition was an oasis in the distance. There was no relief– the sun was still blazing, and my mouth was barren– but I could see the crystal waters of the afterlife in front of me. 

The thought of after made me think of my wife, who was embalmed and buried hundreds of miles from me. The irony of leaving on this journey to escape her memory just to join her did not escape me.

I wondered how long my wife laid in the dirt, rotting, and waiting to escape the cold, impersonal coffin. I wondered if she craved the feeling of the sun on her bones as I suffered its rays. When the last bird, an archangel, tore the last bit of flesh from my bones with a peck of its beak, I dove into the cold pool of the beyond and waited patiently for my wife to rot.

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