Dying

Dying, he had said, was supposed to be an exquisite emotion, torturously painfully and infinitely slow. He said, too, that it was the last sensory sensation an human being would feel, so it should be gratuitously enjoyed, with the knowledge that one is still alive. I hadn’t think so at that time. But  now, after  dying for so long, that even pain have abandoned me, leaving behind a numb carcass and a callous mind, I begin to wonder.

Overhead, a few crows flew past, dark silhouettes against the azure blue sky. I smiled. Crows were such pitifully wondrous creatures, traversing areas where my own brethren would never deign to tread on again. The once red sky torn asunder by war and dyed crimson by the blood of the fallen soldiers had already started to heal, reverting slowly but with an unyielding certainty back to its original hue of pale lapis lazuli. If that was the case, then other parts of the world, parts far and well protected from here, must also be renewing itself. It was not hard to imagine crops growing again in those muddy paddy field, of villagers and city-dwellers returning back to their peaceful life as though war had never probed them with its dreadful fingers and thrown everything in chaos and massacres. It was such a happy thought, and perhaps, a small consolation for someone like me, long forgotten by the likes of others.

I don't know.

I don't know, if there were others alive as well. It was still fresh as daylight, the memory of how I fell, as that nicked rusty blade sliced through my thigh. Blood had spurted out, raw, red, undiluted blood, blood of a living wholesome being. I cried out at such a mutilation, and tried to draw my sword at the attacker, but what had once faithfully supported me was now broken, and broken I was too, lying on the blood drenched field and trampled and stamped on by a million feet, and sometimes a few bodies,  bereft of warmth.

Then sometime later, the din stopped. It was as though a noise I never knew existed had suddenly disappeared, leaving only a cold, empty dreadful silence. It was as if the gods themselves had decreed the very essence of sound to be erased away, for every creature to be robbed of their sense of hearing. Such silence permeated the air that suffused my lung, the sand that had fused with the scabs of the wounds, the rotting fabrics of what was once my garment. It was a blanket that had covered everything like the layer of pearly white snow in the harshest of winter. Even space has stilled itself in this profound silence, for there was no wind. Time too,  had abandoned this tainted place, and me.

Then, the crows came, but they were just the first. Vultures, flies and every other carrion eater followed in their steps. I would once have called them filthy creatures, but who am I to judge now, soiled as I am, by war, and by dirt. But even so it was a deplorable sight, and the smell dank and fiendishly stinky, even though whatever pools of water on the ground should have already evaporated under the harsh rays of the bitter sun. I was sure, if only I could twist my head around, lying as I was on the sandy battlefield, that my skin was cracked and blistered wherever the sun’s rays reached. I had felt pain once, on my skin, in my inflamed flesh, in the infected wounds, at the spots where my ribs had cracked and splintered like a sapling under the brunt force of a woodcutter’s axe. But then nerves, starting at the extremities, and started to die and then later decay, so much so that I feel nothing, nothing at all now. It would have been a blessing, a relief from the agony of dying, yet now I longed for it, begged and pined for its return, for it was the only anchor between me and the semblance of life.

I heard buzzing around me. I knew what they were. Flies. Flies looking for nourishment and a suitable place to lay their eggs, which would eventually hatch into maggots and feed on my decaying flesh. I should no longer be adverse to the idea, for one who no longer feel her own body, yet I still shuddered at this unconsented defilation.  I looked up to the sky for consolation.

Once again, time flowed by. One of the frustrating things about lying on the ground was that one can only look up. I had already seen uncountable days and night pass by me, not bothering to count the number of passings.  What frustrated me more, rather, was the state of my body. I could not tell whether I no longer had one left, or were the maggots still hard at work. I had already lost all my sense of sight. I could no longer move, or feel the sensation or presence of my limbs. The air had no smell, no taint. Noise was distant, non-existent. I could not know if there was truly an absence of wind or if a breeze had brushed against my skin but I simply could not feel it.  I could only stare at the sky, and continue to die, for eternity.