Jack in a Box

365 Days of Creativity

day sixty three

Jack in a Box

He had been dead for six months.

Contrary to popular belief, the grave did not get comfortable. His neighbours said he'd grow accustomed to it, but there wasn't much growing that he went through anymore. He was cold constantly, and it was so damp that he was forever covered in a slick sheen of sweat. And there was nothing sexy about death sweat.

He remembered his second girlfriend. The good one. How he used to love to make her sweat. She'd writhe and twist so her body shone in the candle's flames, reflecting the light so she glowed golden. Now that was a sexy sweat. What covered Jack was not so steamy. Imagine a mussel, greasy and clammy from the sea. Now put it in a box in the dark, and bury it six feet into soft soil, the type perfect for the breeding of multi-legged life forms.

It wasn't the bugs that were the worst part, though they were bad. No, it wasn't the earthworms who squirmed, or the earwigs who managed to crawl into every whole, no matter how small. And no, it wasn't the dark, though it was overwhelming. Impossibly so. In fact, the lack of light was so severe, Jack knew he must be blind. Even if a match had been lit for him, it wouldn't have made a difference. "If you don't use it you lose it,"are words to die by. He had lost other things too. His sense of taste for one. At first, there had been the horrific flavour of rot. Like the one time he accidentally ate a roadkill steak.

That had been with Clint. Man did they do some crazy shit after college. It was the third road trip. The one to New Mexico. The duo had been starved while on the highway, so they popped into a shady looking diner. It was the last stop on the way out of a small town, and for good reason. If the restaurant had been the welcome feature, nobody would make it past the population sign. 

Two steaks, thick and heavy with blood were plopped down in front of the men. Rare was the only option, and if it weren't for Bobby-Jean and her husband Bo standing with shotguns that could kill elephants, they would have left then and there. Bo's five toothed grin told them that meat was a hot commodity around that place, and the locals weren't too particular about the source. The blood hadn't bothered Jack as much as the patch of fur that stuck to the underside of the steak. Jack remembered every excruciating bite of the flank, and exactly how the meat had chewed like a rubber ball. Each clench of the jaw released a wave of toxic taste. Like engine grease or motor oil. That melted tar mixed with rancid flesh, that was what death tasted like. Luckily after the first few weeks, Jack's tongue completely dried up, and he never had to taste anything again.

The sense he hadn't lost was the one that plagued him the most. He wished with all his might that he could be deaf, for in all of the afterlife nothing was worse than the sound of footsteps on your grave. They usually came only two or three at a time, just the stride length of a grave, but it was two or three too many. Every footstep echoed, a deep, hollow sound, like a hammer to the head of a man sleeping in a cave. The great thuds reverberated for days, pulses of sound which infected the soul, twanging the nerves with each razor-bladed wave.

Jack often thought of the films he used to love, and he cursed one scene in particular whenever the living walked overhead. Each stab to his eardrum was like the harsh slice of the violin that slashed out in the shower scene of Psycho. He wished he had been buried next to Hitchcock so he could damn the man. Jack satisfied himself with imagining that Hitchcock suffered worse stabs for he was the cause of such terrible sounds.

It was tedious, being dead. There wasn't much to do other than listen to the mice scratch at wood beside your head. The main activity that took place was reminiscence. Other than your memories, nothing else comes with you after you die. Not your clothes, not your pets, not the people that you loved. But the images of them, the pictures of their smiles and styles and tears, those stayed with you. Jack had begun to think through his life, trying to remember day by day what he had done. It was slow going, but he had nothing but time. It was hard at first, to see all of his destructive tendencies laid out in front of him. To remember the beatings and abuse and hungry nights of his childhood. To remember why he had the scar on his leg, and how he broke his arm. The memories of the car crashes and the suicides and the feelings of loneliness. Those were the terrible parts. 

But then Jack thought of the risks he had taken. The women he had fucked, the men he had known, the tattoos and drugs and alcohol that had taken him away from all of that. Maybe he had made some bad choices, maybe he had gotten his escape in all the wrong ways. But here at the end of days, Jack knew he had lived. 

He only regretted the words that he never said. And that he had never bought a more comfortable suit.