In Death there is Only more life

I am dead. It's been hard to be sure, but the blood from my wound has stopped flowing. An abdomen wound that large does not stop bleeding, unless the circulation of blood has stopped - I’ve killed enough animals to know. So it has to be that I’m dead. Yet still, I am. At least the pain is gone. I just hate that the damn thing got away. Missed the killing blow by a hair, hope I blinded the damn thing in that eye. Not that it’ll make a difference with how many it has. Damn thing had been plaguing me for weeks. Murdering my livestock, trampling my crops. I just wanted to protect my kids. 

Well. I guess that’s on Bessy now. I wonder how well an old mule can fend off one of those beasts. I don’t know what I was thinking, if my king bulgoat couldn’t fight it off, how could I? Eh, maybe Bessy will have a better chance at protecting the kids then either of us. Ah! I don’t think I stomped out the coals of my fire. Ah, well, good luck to the guards seeking out the culprit for burning down a faction of the crown’s forest. Not much punishing you can do to me now. If that beast doesn’t end up destroying my farm, then I’m sure the guards will pillage it ‘for taxes’. Eh. Let them. Hopefully they’ll at least set up Bessy in a good stable.

Hmm. Dead…

It's an odd feeling. I mean, I don’t feel dead. Biggest thing I can notice is that I’m thinking. Never had been one to sit and ponder much, but it seems that’s all I can do now. For everything else is… muted. I can’t hear, I only imagine the sounds around me. I don’t feel, though I guess there’s nothing to feel. And I see, but yet not through my eyes. It's like a dream. As if all my senses are made up of what my mind would expect to sense but none of it feels connected.  

Even now, I see myself though I’m not sure how much is memory or truth. Despite that, I can see my eyes are closed. This vision, or dream, or hallucination – whatever this death sight might be, I don’t seem to be able to control it. Because even though it's expanding, I can’t shift it at all. Not that I’d want to know what was left or right in this freakish outer, yet inner body, experience. In this misty thought more than sight, I see the shrubs and treelings rustle in the breeze I pretend to hear. They drink my blood from the dirt it's soaking into, and though nothing in my vision has changed, I know its night. How long did it take me to die? I started my hunt midmorning and was gored no later than noon. But night? I had barely noticed the time pass. I can’t help but imagine its dark, coldness fall over me.

In the frigid thought, my stiffness cramps around me. I had never been one for sitting still long and the want to move overwhelms me. I feel trapped, bound, tethered, and I can’t stand it. In whatever way I can, I reach and stretch out trying to move anything, yet it only tightens my limited view. I fight against the uneven boundary around my useless mound of meat and bone but no effort is used and nothing comes of it. 

I begin to search every inch of this vision in hopes to free myself in any way possible. I want to, I need to, release this tension somehow! Even feeling the rapid fluttering of my heart or panicked uncontrolled breathing would be better than this even present stillness within this hollow vision. If I could only. Do. Anything! 

Morning is coming. I still ‘see’ no difference, but I know the sun is just under the horizon. 

And all my struggling has only rewarded me the knowledge that I can see under the foliage. Not just as if you were to move them and peer at the ground, but into the ground itself. Just a little ways down, nothing more than a handsbreadth. It seems to be my blood; soaking deeper into the soil. Expanding my, this, vision just a bit more.

 In my fit last night, not only did I find a bit more room within these depths, but also found bugs, mostly flies. Which entertained me for a while until I grew bored of them, for they couldn’t take me away from this bubble. As only their feet and mouths were dirtied with… me, when they left I could not ‘follow’. I still can’t help but watch their eggs, stuffed into any pocket they could find. I watch but am not eager for their hatching. A big help were the few beetles having come and taken chucks that large enough to actually escape with, if for just a moment. But one can only watch a bug carry off a piece of entrails for so long, causing me to ‘return’ to my larger whole. 

No, it was none of this that finally gave me peace. It was, of all things, the ants. Numerous and methodical, they gorged on me. And still do. Each, single, ant tearing chunks, far larger than I’d ever guess, from me and fairing them away. Down into their dark, damp nest – the depth of which I see only as they are coated in life giving serum. They dispersed and stored me, but mostly they feed me to their queens. At some point it rained and my vision deepens into the ground with it and I am able to see the entire hive. As it functions as one unit, I too become entwined with it, with them. Though I do not share their sight, feelings, or knowledge – I know them. I see the queens and their endless labor, the workers who expand the nest, the eggs waiting patiently to hatch. Perfectly ordered and functioning as a whole to better itself.

Something crushes my saplings and fear strangles my union with the hive out of focus. Once again I find my vision full of my Corpse Circle. The pallid, swarmed hunk of meat lays there as a mocking reminder of the one I used to be and the whole I had just been a part of. But I don’t have time, nor do I care to inspect the hive’s potential feast for I believe I have become something else’s meal.

Studying the indent of the mud, my worry is solidified. I am too familiar with these tracks not to fear them; an adult wolf. Though by the lack of depth of the imprint I guess that the beast I’d be hurting has not only been stealing food from me. And for just a moment I wonder if anything will survive these creatures manifestation. Then another, even larger, print is sunk into the mud on the opposite side. Mother and father? Father and son? Could I have died right on the border of two packs and sparking a war over my rotting remains? 

I try to push my sight back down the ant colony but its too small now. I see it and all its caverns, but my vision refuses to diminish to its level. Three of the larger paws depress the scene as the lighter timidly takes her first step toward the food. It's still hard to tell if they are familiar, rivals, or enemies, until the larger one makes a smear in a threatening leap. The sound echoes like a memory I think I hear. Due to desperation or stubbornness, the lighter one stands its ground though it does bow in submission. 

The larger one stands nearly over the meat now, threatening when the other wolf makes even the slightest move. Despite this, the smaller one continues to risk each step. Finally, mere inches away from the meal she flops down – the larger’s print fully protecting his find now; two paws on each side of the carcass – no longer barking out warnings but emitting a continuous, rumbling groan. For a long moment, neither move, both go quiet – only the alluring smell wafting between them. After the queen had passed a dozen eggs, the larger wolf stepped backwards over the body and a peace of understanding falls over the area. 

A snout with barring teeth buries itself into my intestine. The eager teeth pierce them and with the ease of shucking corn, he disembowels me. Flinging my inners to the other wolf. She crawls the last few inches to the stomach, gently she picks it off the ground before violently shaking it. What little contents I had in them spill and scatter causing new lights of vision to plop in and out, as my guts are emptied through force. 

The insatiable snout within me will not relent. Ravishing, it rummages up into my ribs, gnawing on my lungs. And as they dine on me, a wave of euphoria washed over me. I feel united. I infuse their starving bodies and allow them some peace of mind knowing that for at least this day they have a meal. But dawn is coming and she must return to her cubs, only a few weeks old. But the stomach lining will not be enough to keep her milk flowing, she needs more. 

Keeping low, head to the side, neck exposed, she inches her way to her life line; the freshest meat she’s come across in days. He nips at her, gory fangs snapping in the air – coagulated chunks and saliva sling about with the threat. She grovels onto her side and, cautiously, while pushing herself as close to the food as she dares, flops over on her back. 

He growls, teeth still bared, for a moment longer; watching, waiting, thinking. Deep within her scent he can still smell the afterbirth, and that’s enough. With a lick of his jowls and another threatening bark, he finally concedes. This meal is too much to dine on alone and he is far from his packs’ territory anyhow. 

A whole tunnel to one of the food wings in the hive collapses under the combined weight of the wolves diving into the meal. While a multi-legged thing passes unnoticed over a partial intestine laying a few feet away. 

A sudden primal panic begins building within the area. Growing and growing it swells into an eruption of terror. The wolves, they are not eating just to fill themselves. They chew and gnaw, crunch and rip with intent. Far too late does the fear finally condense into thought once more. They snap my spine in the clutches of their jaws and rip me apart. The shock of realization almost makes me suffer the pain. I grasp with nothing, though I’m so many things, hoping to change this horror. But I can’t. I can only watch in confusion and fear of what will happen as my halves are dragged in opposite directions. 

I can feel my mind, this vision, the bonds that hold this pocket of what I am, was, and becoming, expanding even now as the halves drag ever closer to the border. Will it be like the beetles? Once outside this circle will this sight fade? Will I be left here with the hive? Will I have to choose a piece to follow? Is it just my blood that I’m connected to? Given enough rain, will I simply fade into the ground? 

I try to will my bubble to stay. A scream of thought that nothing that can hear. I beg the wolves to drop and leave me. To keep me together. Consume me here so I mustn’t find out that truth. Of course, they do nothing but what their single mind forces them to do; consume, produce, provide, LIVE. 

Uncaring they carry on. 

All I know is torn apart.

Like a chameleon whose eyes are forced in a direction they can’t look, the scene is split and expands unnaturally, uncomfortably. My – whatever that term means now – sight of the blood circle stays, but now it trails throughout the woods as well. Not only am I still deeply part of the wolves, as I still am with the hive, but the flesh they drag is scraped and torn against rocks and twigs. And quicker than I would think possible, the bugs, birds, and scavengers scatter those pieces about. 

The wolves sharing what little meat is left with her children and his partner; too weak to conceive this year. 

A lone fox missing an ear and half its tail, nibbles on a half rotten chunk of thigh meat – not normally safe to eat but it’s the only meat she’s been able to catch in nearly a week. 

A bear gnaws on a vertebra he had stumbled upon in search of berries.

A skunk paws at the hive, digging in hopes to get at the eggs or larva.

Worms and maggots coarse through countless sections of unnamable flesh and mounts of indigestible pieces.

A full nest, entwined with hair clumps, frantically shakes. 

A snake winds through a trail of decay-slime, unnoticing, as it comes upon a rat surprised by the extra ‘flavor’ the slick sapling was covered in.

The bird’s nest continues to flick and flutter. The hatchlings or mother, inconsolable about something. In a naturally encoded desperation, the nest is rapidly emptied, one hatchling at a time. Before the mother herself flees in from something truly terrible. One of the beasts that plague these lands? 

In a dazzling flash, the relieving horror is revealed. 

Everyone, everything flees as uncaring flames sweep through the woods. Fur is singed. Skin boils. Carapaces crack. Cocoons burst. 

All is conformed to thoughtless, motiveless ash that drifts and falls over the land. 

And our collection grows, though this one joined us sooner and more violent than most, she too finds her peace as she unites with all.

Unites with us and we with her. 

Peace in all as one.