Ch. 1

I feel warm as this liquid release we call sweat collects on my forehead and runs down my face, making frequent stops upon the ridges and inclines of this collection of muscles wrapped in blemished and imperfect skin.

Complacency. It’s what I feel. When I think of how they see me, I think of a mirror. Rarely do I like what I see when I stare into it. Do they feel the same, I wonder? Does it matter? I swat the gnats from my eyebrows as my right and left brains debate over this once-difficult question, and eventually come to a conclusion.

No.

One day the flesh that contains all our imperfections will rot alongside the bodies of those that ridiculed. We will all taste the sting of death, and feel the great equalizer that lies six feet below the surface, where an army of dead wait in their slumber.

Being at a funeral makes one think of such things, thoughts of sadness, of once happy memories, and then of the evanescence of it all, as you stare upon the lifeless and should-be decaying body that you came to mourn, one that would be rotting had it not been for the body being previously stuffed and soaked with all manner of chemicals in order to preserve the hollow shell before me that is turning respectable men into blubbering infants.

Lifeless as it is, the still, inanimate body in front of me carries some emotional persuasion. It makes me feel as if I should re-evaluate my very existence. If I died today, would I be satisfied with the quiet murmurs of relatives and friends telling tales of times we “hung out“? Would I be satisfied to look down from Heaven above upon my friends and see that all my death had done was leave them in a pit of sadness? Of course not. My mind wanders… I start to imagine this situation becoming the “day of the living dead.” I’ve heard of resurrection, but only in the Bible, and as far as I know, none of us here at the funeral are the Son of God… they’ll just have to live with this.

And so it has come to pass that the preacher preached, the family wept, and the body of a wealthy man descended into the shallow sub-levels of the Earth’s surface, where it will lie in an underground field, become part of an army of dead, waiting in slumber for their final destination, six feet below.

-Jacob Helgeson

I'M NOT DONE SO DON'T BASH IT! It's just the first part of the first chapter of a short story!!! -Jacob