How far would you be willing to go to make yourself look good? Would you make the ultimate sacrifice?
How far would you be willing to go to make yourself look good? Would you make the ultimate sacrifice or could you rely on someone else?
I have been poisoned.
I suppose I must be having an out of body experience. From up here I can see more clearly. There is a boat, approaching from the horizon, coming to my rescue. But I think it will arrive too late. And below, I can see myself, naked and dying. I am semi-prone, in a self-imposed recovery position because I do not want to choke on my own vomit.
It’s strange. I must be twenty feet above the ground, yet every detail is microscopically close. I have never seen my back before. It surprises me, the way the little ripples of flesh resemble the patterns in the wind-sculpted sand. The colour is almost the same, too; a gorgeous golden brown. I look remarkably fit for a dying man, even though I have been stranded in this uninhabited, inhospitable place for 63 days.
Dying is much better this way. From here I only have to watch my pain; I don’t have to feel it; I don’t have to hear it. I don’t have to smell it, either, which is good, because my changing position predicts an imminent event. I am curling up. I am lying on my side, knees gripped into chest, head thrust down, like a seventy year old foetus. Here it comes – a painted fart fantails from my buttocks; dysentery green with streaks of red.
Difficult as it is, I must roll myself over. Any effort is worthwhile if it preserves some kind of dignity. I will not let them find me lying in my own shit.
That’s better. Now that I am on my back, I look so much more attractive. I look good, except for that herniated umbilicus. My navel is poking out at me, like a half-layed egg. I should have got that fixed years ago. It disfigures me. And my penis is a stranger to me, half hiding inside its scrotum, the rest of it, lolling, leering at me like a rude, insulting tongue. But the rest of me is the me I love – well formed and toned.
When they find me dead, they will never guess how old I am. They will be amazed that I still look so fit, so well fleshed, even after weeks in this place.
How can this be happening? Why am I dying? I was the one who was supposed to survive. How could he have done this to me? I would never have made him suffer in this way. It is so cruel.
The boat is nearer now, but I have no existence left. Will it get here in time? I think not.
*********************
The boat arrived too late to save him, but he looked good lying there, the bronzed, sun-bathing cadaver, still attractive, even in death. Unlike his companion, what little was left of him. All that remained was a pile of butchered parts. Some of his meat was still hanging on the bones, but it was flyblown, green and putrid.
