All news, good or bad, happens in the morning. Mundane, good, bad, but in this case, life changing, occurs during sunrise. It's a tall order really: I've got a full day of processing your fucking loans and on my shoulder is a monkey with a long tail jabbing it's scrawny fingers into my mouth. It makes the morning omelette tough; the migraine insufferable; other people become luddites, basically it's a hangover being chased by blinking lights and nude old men. Enjoy that thought because I'm not.
Usually these mornings have a routine: I wake up, and someone/something (a phone, an email) begins delivering bad news. It can be anything: a friend died, a parent is ill with a disease, a friend is ill with a disease, someone's cat died/dog died, this is a semi-daily occurrence, really, it is. In my life: deaths, divorces, break-ups, and ultimatums. I'm a happy guy, trust me, and I haven't even named this monkey.
The monkey, the dirty bastard, gets carried throughout the day, poking and prodding my neck, back and face. It hampers all energy that one may have, and insults people that they may come into contact with. Because healthy relationships are for suckers apparently. Why be normal with good news when one (me) can carry a cross (monkey) to my own death (miserable evening). It's what my parents did. It's what my grandparents did.
There was no indicator this morning, which is why I'm left in absentia. Waking up, my head felt no pain, there were was only one obscure text. No ringing phones, no important emails, nobody was arguing in the kitchen or crying in the bedroom with the playstation on and birds chirping. There was no monkey that was going to mount my shoulder and accompany into the shower.
There was only a reflection prior to the shower. My own. Baggy eyes, glazed red, sticky, blackened eye-sockets, fuzzy beard borrowed from a goofy hipster-turned carnie, chapped lips, swollen checks, defined jaw, and a scour that began to utter "fuck yourself" in a low, deep hum. It was the kind of look that could such the joy out of a grade-school recess; the kind look that could instill guilt into breathing electric chair. A long, fixed gaze of apathy coupled with misery, shame, and utter defeat.
"Fuck yourself" the candid reflection said before turning the shower on to the in-operable setting because showers are evil devices made not to work. "Because everything happens for a reason..." it trailed off, now looking for my monkey as the water poured and pooled due to poor plumbing, "...because you gave up."
The mirror, from a certain angle, still looked shitty. The walls were covered in dust. Old, dirty tattered towels hung from now-rusted red hooks. Grime and sin covered the mirror still. Even without the image, bad news began to pang again. "You gave up, this is why you're here." By now I was sitting in the shower under the water not-hot not-cold but there at the least. "You'll meet the person you could have been, on your death bed." I was out of soap.
The shower-bath was sort of the crying in the bedroom or the arguing in the kitchen / the awkward texts, left voicemail, or... monkey, fuck that monkey. Instead of carry said primate, it was swapped out for a nude-corpselike entity of myself. It was dropped from behind perhaps by the mirror. Unlike the monkey, this was significantly heavier and more humiliating for a variety of reasons.
Dead-me (dead) was four years younger. This meant that the body was rail thing with ribs jabbing out through the skin, a skeletal face and hips sharp enough to cut a back-pack in twain. It'd flopped in lazily, nude as myself only it's long hair was now getting wet (a constant urgency) and fingernails, including front teeth, clear from self-abuse. Unlike, what, bad news monkey, it'd hit me in the nose with it's big dumb head.
Carrying a bad news monkey isn't horrible, just life sucking. Everybody see's the monkey on your shoulder, just like a real monkey, and asks you about it. "What's wrong today?" or "Are you 'ok?'" people who care enough will ask. Otherwise, I'd get weird looks, concerned glances or judgmental glances. When something like a bit of good news would land, you'd get a poke in the eye or shit on the shoulder, just a service reminder that bad news from the morning still exists (and will continue to [and will continue to]). Tolerable? Yes. Manageable? With the right attitude.
This time though, with only a bad reflection, I was destined to carry the dead version of myself. It's eyes were white with malnutrition and skin hung from starvation; it's hair, absolutely disgusting (even with all the product in it). "Well, today is a new day" as I stood and grabbed the feeble cold wrist "and this is fucked." Managing a lightweight monkey is one thing, a dead human though, that's absurd, and it's not like I can leave it there, what if my roommates found out?
Hoisting a dead doppleganger over the shoulder isn't so bad when their frame is arguable more sturdy than a scarecrow. However, feeling corpsey-junk on your shoulder is disgusting. Our wet, slippery bodies finally exited the shower. I admired dead's frame: it fit into my old clothes. But it didn't take long until the reflection came back. It was still there, what, with its sharp features, and me behind it carrying a long-haired freak over my own shoulders.
Instead of saying anything, it peered. The bad news dealt in silence: this was my punishment. For what exactly, I'm not sure, maybe the misery or whatever? I wasn't paying attention, just focused on feeling water on my skin and the broken-nose afterward. It watched as I tried brushing my teeth with a dead-body over my shoulder. The sensation of a hairy chest rubbing the long of ones back is a weird one. Perhaps that's what part of sex felt like all along.
Leaving the bathroom, both of us nude and for the roommates to see wasn't fun. There was a hiss from the bathroom after turning the lights off, but I'll leave that to my imagination. Monkey was nowhere to be seen, perhaps even he'd/she'd/they'd've gotten tired of me. Maybe even ashamed from being associated with a guy who carries a dead version of himself around. I wouldn't want to hang out with a guy like me, carrying a dead-body of his former self around either. Especially if he isn't even going to clothe himself either. The bad news hadn't hit yet, but perhaps the fact that succumbing to this laborious task was the bad news.
I've seen people punched in the face, ran over by cars, even stabbed. One can only empathize. You somewhat feel the pain of victim in a sort-of metaphysical way. In the case of bumping a corpses head into a wall and feeling their spine whip underneath their skin or their ankle snap when turning a corner, that metaphysic way is also valid. Sort of like grinding teeth, their bones run through your own.
It's obvious this task is too much for me. Hell, I can't even dry myself from my shower, the highlight of my day. How the hell can one make eggs with god-forbid long alien-like fingers and limbs getting in the way. And be damned if this corpse gets a fragment of them self in the actual pan. I already have my day of misery ahead of me and I don't need this now.
That's an idea: why carry this flappy corpse around. Aren't dead bodies meant for worm-food anyway? Who set me up for this task?
Monkey's you can't set down, they carry the news with you because they attach to you. However, dead bodies and all their memories can be buried where they belong. Even better, we can cremate them! What was once an aunt, grandfather, friend, serial killer, celebrity, judge, janitor or ward of the state can be reduced into the very thing we wipe down with a cloth and a bit of solution. Why not cremate this corpse and carry it with me? That's a solution!
I've always complained to my roommates to not use cocaine where I eat my eggs: the breakfast table. In this case, they're going to have to live with a dead-former self propped up there, even for a short while. It was a relief flopping the puny-hairy-boney-lanky-broadshouldered-longboned-sharp-adjangled corpse onto the table. It landed with a loud thud. The head slammed against the table landing face up. My own back of the head reeling in an empathetic pain.
The bathroom was humming with the door closed. Apparently I was missing a message.
There it laid in state for all the peach walls in my apartment to see. It's sole living audience: myself. The eyes had turned white. The skin greyed over time. It's teeth more crooked than a barrel of snakes. Hair, flakey and thin. Worst of all, the hip bones influenced by skinny jeans now jutting almost straight up. It was a pathetic sight. The only people who had seen it were long-lost friends from a different era. Them and myself.
It was a combination of decomposition and of course self-inflicted... whatever it was. But this had never gotten a proper funeral and me, the poor bastard, was about to carry it around so that nobody important such as roommates would see it. It was vastly different from myself so it'd look like I'd be doing the human thing by carrying it to a morgue, when in reality, the thing would be jammed under my desk at work, pushing papers, death-knelling loan applications. To what, bring back home and hide under the bed? You hide money and guns under a bed, not dead-selves.
Around its neck and hairy-lower back were bruises. Sinew will always discolor even post-mortem when exposed to trauma. You can bruise after simply carrying weight. This body had been carried before. Who the hell would carry my own sinew around? Why? That's not only disgusting but humiliating. Humiliating only if they identified the body. A new sensation beyond bad news: anxiety took over. Maybe it was a cosmic way of my turn carrying the body after everyone else had carried it beforehand. Or even worse, maybe important people had been carrying for me out of pity, or further worse: spite.
The idea is a lingering-horrific one and being in no mood to do so, I slapped it's stupid corpse. It was a mistake though: cracking it's jaw made it go agape. It's crooked and damaged teeth exposed removed my appetite. Now, this young gross waste of youth horrific gleam in its face, something reserved for war atrocities. Humanity can hardly comprehend a dead body, and me, my own one.
At any rate, I'd rather take the monkey, but its nowhere to be seen. The idea of carrying a body for the day is becoming less and less appealing. Unless I'd, in a drunken stupor, forgotten that I've done this before, this task was becoming more intense and terrifying. Much like those who'd've carried beforehand: think of the embarrassment? Maybe someone would grab a good look at the face and make a connection. Maybe someone would recognize both me and the body. Maybe someone would call the cops on a young man carrying a corpse through the streets of Chicago.
Nobody called the cops on the monkey? They always humored it... enough.
Either way, I wasn't about to stare at my own dead terrifying face another moment. I grabbed it's shitty-ankles and pulled it off the table with a loud thunk followed by a crack loud enough to pop a shoulder through it's frame. Its spine contorted as I pulled it slowly into my room. Full of dust, a few shitty posters, a broken chair and aged day-bed, kicked the sad corpse underneath my bed. Later in the day, after filling out a few spread-sheets and general paper-pushing, I'd hopefully give it a proper burial in Humboldt Park where there is no emotional attachment to the land.
It's weird when you realize that a dead-body is underneath your bed. It get weirder when its yourself and you're simply ignoring the urgency of the situation. Work is work I suppose. In a way, I feel like I've carried that body of bad news before but I simply don't remember it. It may account for the bruises, or my general delayed reaction. After all, there I am, for the tip of my toes; tip of the dick, tip of the nose; I'm figuratively crammed away and out of sight.
How hard is it to forget that I've done this? More specifically, do other people forget that I've done this? Or that they've carried me?
There's no way I'm the only one whose had a dead-self dropped on me, let alone an angry reflection bark sorrow during my only happy moment.
I've been to busy to notice, up until now, at least.
