I was dead
Expired around February 26, 2012.
I was dead.
There was no doubt about it this time. I was not in the Brundlesphere. I was not merely asleep, unconscious, catatonic, or comatose. I wasn’t simply lost in an unlit room or trapped inside a rolled-up carpet; I hadn’t simply misplaced my head again, or accidentally plucked my eyes out in a potato-peeling or mussel-nuzzling accident.
I was dead.
I tried to move once again. I still could not. Perhaps I was trapped under a duck’s butt! I thought. But, the dead do not think—so I stopped at once and pondered instead. (The dead can ponder, typically between the stages of algor and rigor mortis.) Yes indeed, I was dead. Deader than a doornail, deader than a doorknob, deader than a toad with a brick up its butt and a tiny American flag planted in its left nostril.
And I had been dead for weeks now. My decomposition was coming along nicely. I was quite liquefied by this point, and nearly unrecognizable as the six-foot-tall man–squirrel I had once been.
The bright, colorfully striped carrion beetles marched in and out of the room. The blow flies blew by, and the worms wormed and squirmed. I wouldn’t leave a beautiful corpse, but I would probably make some forensic entomologist’s day.
I relaxed and decomposed further. The sunlight was turning golden.
I wondered how my toilet was doing in the next room over. It had been a couple whole weeks since I visited the old girl, and she was probably getting lonely. No one had lifted her seat or stroked her handle in so long! But then I remembered: The dead do not poo, either, so the point was moot. (Poot, poot, poot!)
I sighed and relaxed further. The beetles swarmed and munched. I awaited meeting my Maker.
I wondered: Would I see a brilliant, white light at the end of a tunnel? Would I meet St. Peter at the Pearly Gates? Would Jesus save me? Would I be dragged down to the sulphurous depths of fiery Hell, or left to be blown about unendingly in the winds of Perdition? Would the Devil laugh and gloat at his latest Pnårpy acquisition? Or would I awake butt-naked in a tub of translucent goo surrounded by Cylons?
So far, all I seemed to be doing was waiting. Waiting and decomposing. No angels had come to lift me to Heaven, no demons had come to drag me down to Tartarus. No gaggle of Sixes or Eights had pulled me out of a tub of goo. The voices in my goaty little brain had even fallen quiet these past couple weeks.
Zippy had left the building and Elvis was quickly following.
I relaxed and waited. The Sun was setting.