Soul Shells (A Short, Dark Story)

Crab Hides In Gastropod Shell (Photo credit: Maitri)

He was dead.

I knew it.  Deep in my bones, where you know things.  He was dead and I knew it.  I still couldn’t believe it, because sometimes the mind cannot accept what the bones just seem to know, but my brain accepting it or not didn’t change the facts.

I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.  I’d never seen a corpse before, outside of a funeral parlor, and a morbid curiosity I hadn’t known I possessed seemed to draw me closer.  Closer, and closer still.  The whole time I was inching forward, I watched him.  Looking , searching for something.  What, I’m not sure.  Perhaps a shallow rise and fall of his back, or a whisper of breath, enough to move the scraggly hair that had fallen over his face.  Something, anything my disbelieving brain could use to tell my bones that they didn’t know quite as much as they claimed.  I hoped for a sign of life.  I would have prayed for it if I still believed in God, but I did hope.    Once, I thought I did see something, but my mind recognized the illusion for what it was.

When I was close enough to touch the body I stopped, unsure.  I’d seen enough crime dramas to know you weren’t supposed to disturb a crime scene, and I had the type of luck that I could be pretty sure that right about the time I touched something, someone would come along, and I’d end up taking the rap for killing the guy myself.

Standing there beneath the bridge, I stared at the body lying there in the sandy gravel, struck by a jolt of familiarity,  and thought that it wasn’t dissimilar to a conch or snail shell found empty once the resident had moved on.  I was staring at a soul shell, its occupant no longer in residence, but something about him terrified me, and I would have given anything I owned to be far away from that place at that moment.

I was suddenly sure that I did not want to know who lay there at my feet.  I didn’t want to see the face behind that greasy, unkempt hank of hair; but despite my fear I found myself crouching down beside him, trying to see his face.

I reached out my hand to brush away the hair that was hiding his features, but stopped mid-gesture, telling myself that I didn’t really need to see his face; didn’t need to know who he was.  Despite this self-lecture, my hand continued moving closer, trembling, and I wanted to shout in frustration.

As my hand was mere inches from his face, a great gust of wind came from behind, scattering the debris that littered the ground.  Shuffling paper, and the clank of a lone aluminum can on the rough ground, not yet picked up by some homeless person for its deposit, startled me.  I looked up, heart pounding, then mocked myself for my jumpiness.  Still smiling, I looked back toward the man on the ground and, for a moment, the smile was frozen on my face.  The smile fell, replaced by shock and horror.

While I had been distracted by rattling detritus, the wind had blown the hair back from the face of the dead man.

The vague familiarity of his form and my own innate fear made sudden horrible sense to me now, as I stood locked in a silent scream, staring at my own eyes, staring lifelessly back at me.

Sometimes the mind can’t accept what the bones just seem to know.

 

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~A

Please let me know what you think about my short story… I’ve never posted this particular one before, so I’d love to hear your thoughts on it… were you surprised by the ending, or was it too much foreshadowing?  LOVE to hear reviews/critique on my work, so, fire away! 🙂  Thanks for reading!