Body Rhythm

A disturbed man finds a dead body and becomes obsessed with it.

The upper part of his eye socket was missing, but there was no blood; only a few shards of bone breaking through the surface of his skin like icebergs. Had his eyes been blue? Green? Hazel? Who knows. Maggots had nestled into the spot where his eye would have been. They were crawling over each other in a slow-motion frenzy to eat what was left of the soft tissue around his cheek bone. The other eye lid was closed but I could see movement underneath, like the flickering, dreaming eyes of living men. The bulge under the lid was most likely more maggots, but I was too afraid to find out for myself.

            He was wearing a blue hooded sweater that zipped in the front, Old Navy jeans, and a pair of what use to be blue and white Nike’s. The parts of his shoes that should have been white were a dingy grey and the toes were scuffed, exposing bits and pieces of the leather underneath. The only parts of his skin that were visible were his hands and his face. His skin was almost lilac in color, but that could have been from the light of the neon sign nearby that flashed ‘LIVE NUDE’ and let passer-bys know that there was a topless bar behind the heavy black door beneath it; although they should be able to tell from the loud thump, thump, thump of the music playing inside. The dead man and I were in the alley behind the strip club next to a dumpster that I can only imagine was full of used condoms and balloons that once contained heroin that traveled over borders in the a*s of a pretty young girl.

            As I stood there over the corpse and watched the maggots gracefully consume him, I felt a sense of calm. I was almost euphoric.  I don’t know how long I stared down at the pale lips that turned up at the corners into a little smirk, but eventually I walked away. I didn’t call the police. I didn’t tell anyone. I walked away. I went home and made a microwave dinner, since my studio didn’t even have a stove. I think the building was once used for offices and someone bought it and rezoned it. Now it’s nothing but a s****y apartment complex for drug addicts and the mentally ill.  I turned on the old tube television and watched reruns of 90’s sitcoms and listened to the grunts and screams coming through the thin plaster from my schizophrenic neighbor. He yelled obscenities with his mouth pressed against the wall because he was convinced that the government had bugged his apartment. When he would eventually become worn out and his yells turned into low, barely audible mumbles, I could finally fall asleep.

            Even my dreams were filled with noise. My six year-old self watching my mother clamor around the kitchen, banging pots and pans in the sink when she washed the dishes. She was angry again, yelling something that I couldn’t quite make out. Her hands were an overwhelming hue of bright pink in the thick dishwashing gloves and she was waiving around dirty knives in the direction of my father who was seated at the kitchen table. He looked up from over the top of the newspaper and when our eyes met he winked at me.    

            I woke up before the sun, but I was used to it because of the short winter days. I brushed my teeth in my cramped, closet like bathroom, looking at myself through the warped Plexiglas mirror. My hair was greasy and stuck up all over in tufts, sprinkled with bits of feathers from the pillow on my bed. My other neighbors were already awake and yelling at each other about which morning news channel to watch and how strong the coffee should be made. I’m not sure why, but I decided that I had to go see if the body was still there. The urgency I felt was bizarre as it rushed me down the street before I even had my coat buttoned. The strip club was only a few blocks from my apartment that was sandwiched between two high-rise buildings decorated in graffiti and sprinkled with broken windows. I felt as if I couldn’t get there fast enough. I was worried that someone might have found him. Someone might have taken him away and I was terrified.

            A sense of relief came over me when I turned the corner and caught a glimpse of his sneaker. He hadn’t moved. His arms and legs were positioned exactly the way they had been last night. He was on his back with his face rolled onto the right cheek, the shattered socket facing up toward the phone wires and smog that were above us. His left arm was across his body and his shoulder was turned in. The other arm was underneath him, but the hand emerged from the opposite side of his back. I wondered if the arms of dead people fell asleep. The hips were turned so that he could have been running if he were standing upright. He looked uncomfortable.  

            I watched him lay there peacefully as the sun rose behind the shield of gray smog and I learned that his face was pale purple. Around the broken socket was dark maroon and I could see where the skin had tore away from the bone when the piece of it went missing. It shriveled up and pulled back across the skull, exposing the meat beneath it. The maggots had made short work of the eye socket and the hole was even larger than it was last night. They must have burrowed deeper into his head because his cheeks began to sink in and his skin looked spongy.

            I bet his name was Mike. There are a lot of men named Mike, so I felt like this was a safe bet. He looked Hispanic with a head full of dark hair, thick eyebrows that came close together in the center, and a shadow of stubble above his pale upper lip. His last name would have been something like Rodriquez or Lopez. I kneeled down beside him, wanting to check to see if he had a wallet that would give me some insight into his life. I reached toward his pants pocket, hesitating, and I decided that I should head to work.

            When I got to the office, I couldn’t concentrate. The computer screen in front of me glowed an iridescent blue and the low, usually inaudible, hum sounded like a bee flying around my head. I could feel the keyboard keys under my fingers, but my hands weren’t moving and all I could think about was Mike Lopez. Did Mike have a dog waiting for him at home? Was there a dead dog at home that starved waiting for Mike to come back from the strip club? How often did Mike go to the strip club? I wondered if anyone knew him; if anyone was looking for him. Did Mike have a family? And even with my brain moving a mile a minute with scenarios about Mike’s life, calling the police was never an option.

            Once again I found myself in tucked away in the alley behind the strip club, kneeling dangerously close to the body. It was faint, but he was beginning to smell, or perhaps the odor of a rotting corpse was underwhelming when compared to the stench of the city. He seemed so familiar to me now. Like someone I may have known or have been friends with in a past life. I leaned closer to his face and studied all of the little imperfections that I’m sure he noticed when he looked at himself in the mirror. We shared a scar across our left eyebrow that cut a jagged river into the hair. We were kindred spirits, Mike and I. I got my scar when I was ten years-old when my foster brother threw a rock at me. I wondered how Mike got his scar.

            I sat down, leaning against the brick wall that encased the dumpster, next to Mike’s body. His head was turned away from me in the familiar fashion of two men embarrassed about sharing serious and meaningful conversation. The time passed by with the rhythmic pulse of the music in the club. I imagined the naked women as they pranced around the hot, sticky stage in their high heels, glittering like diamonds surrounded by filth. The men would be hooting and hollering at them, waiving around their dollar bills, bidding on bodies. And when the women came over to their side of the stage, the men would toss the cash at their feet, letting it litter the stage, feeling powerful as they watched the women crawl around on their hands and knees to gather a measly ten dollars.

            Out here with Mike, the city was quiet. The dark alley with its neon glow was a sanctuary hidden away from a city infested with the grotesque. I didn’t feel bad for Mike. Here in our alley, he was peaceful, he could sleep. When I was with him, I was tranquil as well. I thought about death and the serenity it must bring if you are lucky enough to have someone smash your head in with a brick. I decided that this is what happened to Mike after I spotted a brick not too far from where we sat. I stayed this way in a silent meditation next to the still body, listening to the thump of the bass behind us, and dozed off into a relaxed sleep that I hadn’t had in years.

            Again my mother was yelling, her voice sounded like a train’s horn, and her words were unintelligible. This time she was standing over my father while he was reading the paper. A pink gloved hand came up and slapped him across the face and the clapping sound echoed through the kitchen. She walked back to the sink and slammed the pots and pans together in the hot, soapy water. After a moment he winked at me, standing up from the table, the chair skidding against the laminate flooring, and he grabbed her by the neck from behind. Her body tensed in shock and when he yanked her away from the sink, she dropped the handful of cutlery she had been washing.   

            I was awoken by the high pitched squeal of the back door to the club, and the loud, hollow smacking sound it made when it came into contact with the wall adjacent to Mike and me. The large black man stood directly under the light that was illuminating the back door. He stood there in a moment of hesitation, holding a trash bag. He saw us. Before he could say anything I jumped to my feet and hurried down the other side of the building, disappearing down the street. I ran so hard that it hurt to breath and I could feel my heart pounding in my throat. When I made it back to my apartment, the neighbors were sleeping but there was a low white noise in my head like the sound of a snowy TV screen. I abandoned Mike and the world was loud again.   

            My mother was screaming this time. They were both on the ground, my father on top of her with her body pinned underneath his. There was no hard packing sound as his fist came into contact with her face repeatedly. I couldn’t hear his heavy breathing or his forceful grunts. The only sound that I could hear was her shrill scream until it came to an abrupt stop when the steak knife was plunged into the side of her neck, releasing blood that crept across the floor, slow and steady like honey. With a flash I found myself sitting across from my father at the table again, he was reading the newspaper. My mother wasn’t there and it was quiet. My eyes were drawn to the pink stain on the laminate flooring where the blood had been.  I looked up at my father and when our eyes met, he winked at me.  

            I holed up in my tin can apartment for a couple days, afraid and ashamed of myself. I thought about Mike, but the obsession with him that once drove me now made me feel guilty and when I finally went back to the alley, I walked slowly and reluctantly. I knew that after the other night someone would have called the police and Mike would be gone, but it still didn’t prepare me for the profound sense of emptiness that I felt staring at the bare spot on the ground where his body had been. There were footprints in the dirt, all different shapes and sizes and I could picture the scuffling of multiple cops as they busied themselves around the body. The violation of what had felt like a sanctuary could still be felt by their leftover yellow police tape. I sat down, cross legged in the clean spot that Mike’s body had left in the dirt. A tacky blood spot was left behind where his head and been and I could see a few maggots, unmoving. I wondered if they had fallen when he was taken, or if they had done such a complete job consuming him that they had begun to emerge from the backside of his head. I sat there, staring at the blood, and the world was loud around me. The cars drove down the street, rumbling and wheezing. People were yelling from their apartment windows. Doors all around opened and slammed closed. And the only comforting sound was the rhythmic thud from the strip club.

            My head felt heavy with guilt and the sickening sounds of the city were intensified in my brain. Thump, thump, thump. The music broke through the noise of the city, a small twinge of comfort followed. I stood up from the ring of footprints and walked toward the front of the building. The neon sign hummed above my head, ‘LIVE NUDES’. The black door was impossibly heavy and a large black man pushed it open for me from the inside. It was the same man that saw me with the body, he didn’t recognize me. He said, good evening sir, and held the door open for me as I walked into the cloud of cigarette smoke and glanced shyly at the bodies of the beautiful women and the men were invisible to me. I thought of Mike in a morgue, on a gurney, in a silent metal box with a latched door and I was engulfed by the relaxing sound, thump, thump, thump.