To Wallow in Ash & Other Sorrows

by Sam Richard

  I didn’t know what to say, obviously. It all sounded so crazy. I wondered if he was just wandering around, peddling conspiracy theories. But then again, he could have been a Parks Department employee. I stared at fresh clump of bloody fur swaying in the gentle breeze for a moment, grateful that this stranger’s appearance dissuaded me from trying to climb the fence. I turned to thank him, but he was already a ways away, walking along the bank of the river. I then noticed a silver shine from his back at his beltline; I think he was armed.

  I wasn’t going to let tales of ravenous, man-eating prey wandering around the park dissuade me from trying to get a little time with her. But that fence was an obvious obstacle. I needed to be near her, so I stepped into the water and followed the chain-link fence to the drop-off point. The fence running along the flow of the river followed closely at the edge of the drop-off, but there was still room for me to balance on it, one hand holding the fence, the other tugging Caligula along with. He was ecstatic in the water, truly his favorite place to be, and now made all the better with me accompanying him.

  At about the halfway point, I looked up again, to see if the razor wire was still there, which it was. I had hoped that they didn’t string it along the entire top portion of the river side, counting on someone else’s laziness to help me out a little. When those hopes were dashed, I considered turning back, but as I was already soaked, I figured I might as well see if they hadn’t blocked off the entire peninsula. Another several minutes of balance and grip, I was shocked to find my assumption had been correct. There was about a four-foot by four-foot section just outside of the fence. Someone hadn’t considered the growing and shrinking tide line.

  Standing there, I realized that was probably pretty close to where I had buried her and a shiver went through my body. As soon as I was done processing it, I was in tears. I could feel my knees give out as I crumpled to the ground, sobbing and gasping for air. Caligula was still splashing around in the water, doing all the dog-stuff that he could. Urgent feelings of guilt and shame shook me, as I apologized to her, to the sand beneath my ass, for abandoning her. Having not visited wrecked me and avoiding coming back here felt like I had let her die all over again. If you ever want to know what the worst part of the worst grief is, at least by my count, it’s the guilt. The guilt is the darkness waiting to swallow you whole.

  As I wailed, holding myself like an injured child, a cool breeze blew in from the woods; the cold crawled into my bones. My clothes were soaked through, dripping onto the damp peninsula. I was drawn to the comfort of cold, exhausted sleep, but I fought it. My head nodded off a few times, as my eyes continued to leak salt. I anxiously awaited the calm that follows this type of purge, but before it would come I heard three gunshots in the distance. I didn’t hesitate getting up to find the source. That level of violence wasn’t known to happen at this park, though the possibility didn’t surprise me. As I made my way back, along the chain link fence, following the shoreline, I remembered the man with the gun

  What if he really was a conspiracy theorist or just a crazy fuck with a gun, possibly shooting wild animals because he believed they were attacking folks, or shooting fucking people’s dogs? The thought had me enraged. As soon as I got back onto solid land, Caligula and I took off running towards where I thought the shots came from. The river valley had a way of distorting sound, so I wasn’t exactly sure but I gave my best guess. We cut back into the trees. The woods had gone silent in the wake of the noise; all I could hear was my blood pounding in my head, the rhythm of my feet hitting hard-packed dirt, and the gallop of Caligula’s stride.

  We were about halfway to where I estimated the shots came from, though it could have been anywhere, really, when I heard yelling from the woods ahead. We were on a wide path that cut through the entire park, but we angled into one of the veins that went further into the actual state park that the dog area was connected to. My lungs burned and my side felt like it was devouring itself. Panting and completely out of breath, I stopped to get some air. The yelling got louder, closer, and I could see vague movements from within the gaps in a layer of new green growth upon vibrant brown branches.

  I moved forward and pushed the trees away like a curtain. From within the chaos before me, what first struck me was the gun sitting on the ground, like the centerpiece of a Renaissance-era painting, with all the motion occurring around it. Then I saw the three badgers climbing up a shrieking woman. They were taking massive bites out of her flesh. Blood oozed from holes in her tracksuit, while she tried to pull them off. She managed to grab one by the back, but when she pulled it, all the fur and flesh slipped off, like a full-body de-gloving. The woman’s shrieks got louder and more urgent, but the badger paid no mind to the loss of its skin. It didn’t even bleed; there was just a purple slime that glooped off with the hide.

  The man who could be a crazy conspiracy theorist or armed Parks Department employee was lying in a puddle of his insides. He looked like he exploded outwards, with a violent spray of congealed crimson surrounding his open torso. Several mangled squirrels gnawed on what appeared to be his spine and shimmering ribs. One was missing all the skin and fur on its face and another was only the front part of a squirrel, with the back end missing completely. The man’s hands twitched as inhuman groans escaped his mangled throat.

  I tried my best to close the curtain of green, to avoid being seen by these flesh-eating animals. But Caligula had other plans. I don’t know if he was initially as shocked as I was, or if it took him a moment to register what he was seeing, or maybe he just didn’t know how to react. But as soon as I inched backwards, he lost his goddamn mind. His manic barks were piercing, nauseating.

  I was sure that we were about to die, about to join her in whatever comes next. But, I also found myself more than half disappointed when they didn’t come after us at all. The growing army of animals stopped to look, but they continued on their macabre feast. I thought about going after the gun, but I didn’t want to press my luck – maybe we had just been far enough away that they weren’t threatened. But maybe it was something else.

  We got out of that park as quickly as we could, running the whole way back to the car. There weren’t very many people around, but as we got closer to the entrance to the park I saw a handful of folks. I told them that the park was closed and that they should leave. Only a few listened. I didn’t care to stick around and see what happened, so I got Caligula in the car and we headed home.

  As I drove, my grief and sorrow made room for the rushing tides of anxiety and bafflement. Only a few blocks from the park section of the park we had been in, I pulled over to compose myself, as I had begun to violently tremble, and I managed to get the door open in time to puke outside of the car, rather than all over myself. Those people were dead, dying. Those animals were…something?

  Sitting on the side of the road, I turned off Amebix and silently prayed to her – the only possibly cosmic source that made any sense. Before the words left my brain, I could feel her in my heart and hear her voice in the core of my being. She told me that everything would be ok. She told me that nature was fighting back. I felt her drift away again and a new, endless grief overtook me; I’d lost her again, again. The misery was shattered when I heard screaming coming from the trees to my right. It was then replaced by terror as a horde of wounded, bleeding animals and humans attacked everything in sight.

  Small critters, dogs of all sizes, deer, a bear, a few cougars, and a fuck ton of birds, all in various states of wholeness, flocked towards a family sitting on a picnic table. Ribbons of flesh flew through the air as a cloudy pink haze spread in the breeze. By the time the horde was finished, there was scarcely anything left. They dripped small amounts of purple goop behind them as they walked. Some looked relatively normal, but others were missing limbs, had chunks of flesh missing, were missing an eye, or were otherwise fucked.

  I struggled to comprehend what I was seeing, when three sparrows flew down and pecked at the face of a young man running towa
rds me, a look of terror on his bleeding face. He swatted at them, shouting and crying as he ran. He managed to pull one of them off, but the bird was still connected with its small talons and beak. As he wrenched it away from his bloody cheek, it tore chunks of stretchy skin and fat away with it. He fast-pitched it against a tree and it exploded into a burst of feathers and opaque, purple jelly.

  He managed to get away from the other two, but as he ran his steps became erratic, jumpy. Three dogs had started to chase, but they abruptly turned back in search of other prey. The terror and pain that had painted his face was replaced by an ominous and vacant expression. He sniffed at the air and then, without notice, he locked eyes with me and a crooked snarl made its way across his mangled face. The bleeding on his open face wounds had stopped and the blood had transformed into the same gloopy, purple slime.

  I fixated on the transformative process from blood to purple goo and before I even noticed that he had been moving, he was skulking outside of the car, shrieking and trying to punch through the window. Caligula lost his shit, manically barking and growling demonically. I struggled to turn the keys, to get the motor running so I could get away from the fucked up man with the fucked up face and all the fucked up animals, but my hands were clumsy, slow. As he lifted his fists to strike the window again, the three dogs from before, mangy and broken, pulled him to the ground, into the pile of vomit, and tore his body into pieces.

  They paid us no mind, and once again went running off towards a family on bikes who were all screaming, having clearly taken the wrong bike path. The dogs made fast work of them, as did a growing collection of beast and man, alike. I tore myself from the grips of fear and my hands answered when I told them to move. I started the car and we drove as fast as we could until the river-valley was a distant memory. But the fear and confusion remained.

  Moving on instinct, I hadn’t been paying the greatest attention to what was happening around me until I found myself in the thick of a traffic jam. I tried my best to breathe, to not freak out at what had happened, when I saw people running. Fighting against the sour in my stomach, my mind battled against the truth of why people were running.

  It was the human creatures first. I had no idea how they had gotten here, but they were spreading, violently and impossibly fast. From the seat of the car, I watched these monsters brutalize and mangle people at random. They were grabbing those who were fleeing, tearing unsuspecting motorists from their cars, and pulling people off their bikes and biting into their flesh. Those who weren’t too damaged quickly joined the horde and participated in the orgy of death with them.

  They were still a little ways up the road, so I got Caligula and we abandoned the car, like so many others had. I didn’t know where to go, so we just ran, avoiding clusters of these undead as best as we could. We ended up at the playground of a school. It looked mostly empty, but when we turned the corner of the building, there was an ocean of them. The only thing I could think to do was climb to the highest point of the playground equipment, so I grabbed all 37 pounds of the dog and ran as fast as I could, while the ocean of dead rushed towards me.

  I got to the top of the playground equipment, but all that meant was sitting atop the highest point on the tube-slide. I had nothing to fight with and couldn’t set the dog down. There was no way that I wasn’t completely fucked. As they charged, I felt her once again. My heart was filled with warmth and love, as her voice radiated around me, shaking my trembling flesh. She told me that the world as it had been was over. In death, she built a new one. Soon the dead would dry out and die again, but not before they toppled civilization. Through her, they would reset the world and let it breathe again.

  As she spoke, softly but with such power behind it, I could see my body being carried away by the mob of undead, I was being shredded into snapping tendons, broken bones, and tearing flesh. Yet some other part of me remained on the slide, holding some other part of Caligula. She told me that she was sorry; she didn’t know that she wouldn’t be able to control the humans. She hadn’t intended on me dying so suddenly, as I hadn’t with her. I looked up and saw a black sun and the bleeding moon and I knew all we had to do was let go; let got and let nature take its course.

  DEATHLIKE LOVE

  I looked down at her heavy, lifeless hand, cradled in my own, and knew this moment would stick in my mind forever. The breathing tube was still in her mouth, running down her throat into her lungs. I tried to remember what it was like when she breathed, when she laughed, when she came. I flung myself on top of her, pleading for her to not be dead. Salt burned my eyes, my lips chapped and raw. I asked her how I could go on without her. I asked her why this had happened. I pleaded with neither man nor god, but only her. She wouldn't react, wouldn't respond - her dead body remained still but for my violent shaking. This wasn't a nightmare. This wasn't Hell. This was now my life. I was a 34-year-old man with a wife who died at 31. She was gone. And I was the walking void.

  In three parts I was torn. The first, and most powerful part wanted to join her, to end my own suffering forever. The second wanted to survive for her; it’s what she would have wanted. The third was an encroaching madness, which demanded I remember everything we had ever shared and asked for just one more moment together. It was to this part, this voice, that I gave in.

  I pulled back the blue and red quilted blanket that covered her body. Moments later the nurses would gently fold this blanket into a square, put it in a clear plastic bag and hand it to me, matching another bag containing her shoes, purse, clothes, cellphone, and glasses. Beneath the blanket, she was draped in a hospital gown, which I then untied from behind her neck. Much like her hand, her stomach skin was cool to the touch and her once almost olive skin shown as a mildly grey, milky white. Her many tattoos stood out in contrast to her flesh having lost its once beautiful luster.

  Squeezing her hand reassuringly, I hoped, screaming inside, for a response. Tears splashed against her un-answering skin as I tried my best to stifle overwhelming sobs and allow myself to breathe. Far distant recesses of my brain howled at me about how wrong this was, they clawed forward, trying to reach me with violent reason, but they were beaten back by all the memories she and I had together. All the times our skin touched and made us one.

  I remembered her warmth, her different tastes, how she gently moaned when we combined ourselves in various configurations. The way she breathed into my neck or chest, the way her hair would tickle my face when she was above me. How I would wipe away her gentle trickle of tears after I had finished inside her ass - she said it was because that was when she felt the closest to me, when we were the most connected; with a smile, she said that the emotions were just that intense.

  These thoughts were excruciating, the memories almost inaccessible. I tried to recall individual moments, not the collective ideas that were held about them. I grazed her cooling neck with my salt chapped lips, kissing her while my tears welled in the hollow of her throat, creating a lake of tears. My vision blurred, my eyes stinging, my own throat coarse and raw. Struggling for breath through clogged sinuses, I worked my lips across her collarbone and over her hollow chest. The once steady rise and fall of her chest, the patter of her heart on my ear were viscerally absent.

  Running my fingers along her sternum, along the perfect lines of the tattoo that adorned it; two hands reaching from beyond into the center of her solar plexus, one belonging to a woman with a frilled, Victorian shirt, the other belonging to a demon with long, black nails. A red, inverted pentagram glowed where they almost touched, like God and David.

  I was shaken by an unnatural wail that rang through the small, hospital room. The voice of my own pain was unbearable and alien. With trembling hands I groped her breasts and pinched one of her nipples. Her flesh felt dead, grey, and her skin had no reaction to my touch. As best as I could, I tried to recall her various reactions to this over the years. Her insistence that I squeeze a little harder, or pinch more aggressively, the times it was exactly what she needed and h
elped push her over the edge to orgasm, the nights where I pinched with a little too much vigor and she would yelp, asking me to let up a little. All these memories, and others crashed through my brain. I felt her warmth in my hand as it moved with the up and down pattern of her breath. She let out a light sigh, a gentle moan of pleasure, as I worked my lips down her stomach, past her tangle of snakes and fruit that ran along her belly and onto her hip and thigh, and touched my lips to her pubis.

  She tasted comfortable, familiar, as I gently pressed the flat of my tongue to her clit. Her body gently buckled with pleasure, as she pushed herself closer to my mouth. Her trimmed pubes tickled at my nostril as I thought about all the special times we had done this together. Not the everyday marital-sex moments, but the kind that become part of our shared sexual storybook.

  There was one time we got drunk at a friend’s wedding where we didn’t really know anyone aside from the bride and groom. Earlier that summer we had been to the same venue for a different friend’s wedding, so we knew there were additional bathrooms down a hall and around a corner that were under-used. After a few more drinks, a lot of inappropriate comments, and knowing, secret glances, she handed me her underwear under the table and told me to meet her in that bathroom.

  I followed.

  We had only been fooling around for a few minutes when someone barged in on us with my face buried in her ass and my tongue in her pussy. Turns out the lock didn’t work. I don’t know who was more shocked, but they ran off apologizing and we made our way to the exit without saying goodbye to our newly married friends. She always told that story best, as she saw a lot more of the person and their reaction than I ever did.