THE BODY -Short Science Fiction

Untitled Part 1

I could have just left him there. After all, it was a dead body, and I had my kiddos to think about. I had seen dead bodies before at parties where Lady Caine made her appearance. But I abandoned that life to embrace my role as a mother, a nurturer to the spirit of little people.

Freedom, my six-old daughter spooned into the dead body. "He just needs a hug. He's sad, Lila." My kids addressed me by my given name. I wouldn't force the conscript of Mom on them. She kissed his neck where blood had dried from a torn patch of skin. I hoped he didn't have a blood disease. Maybe that is how he died.

I cringed, trying to keep things low-key. "Freedom, however so kind of you." I pulled her off the corpse, its skin turning leathery. Creepy invisible bugs danced across me. "How about you rub your hands in the dirt? You don't want to carry his essence on you." My antaratma hummed.

Freedom looked at me with her maple syrup brown eyes. "But I love him, Lila."

I took Freedom's tiny hands in mine and rubbed them through the dirt. Other moms drenched their offspring in sanitizer any chance they could, destroying life-saving bacteria. No, I wouldn't subject my kids to that. We cleansed impurities with Mother Nature. I picked a brilliant dandelion and rubbed it on the lips that had smacked the corpse. "Let's give you yellow lipstick."

Freedom hit my hand away, and the dandelion fell to the grass. "No. I want red lips."

In an airy tone, I said, "There are some tulips over there. Why don't you go rub five petals on your lips." Maybe that would neutralize any contaminants she had picked up.

"Yay!" Freedom let go of my hand and ran to the flowers.

Billowy clouds cast a shadow over the body. I peered up and became lost in the shapes and how they formed perfect figures of a flying pig and a boat. I smelled ozone and wondered if it might rain soon-poor dead man might get soggy.

Revelation, my seven-year-old son, wrapped his arm around my leg as I watched Freedom pick tulips.

"Is he dead or sleeping?" Revelation asked in a feeble voice.

"Death. Death. What is death? His spirit has rejoined the realm of souls, waiting to return as ladybug or butterfly."

Revelation scratched his forehead and leaned toward the body while tightening his grip on my leg.

I had a mystery sprawled before me. A man had died in the back acres of Forest Park. How long had his body laid there?

I took a deep breath through my nose. I didn't smell decay. Perhaps he had died during the night or even just hours ago.

-So many ways he could have died.

Drugs?

Murder?

Heart attack?

Had the universe called me to his side? What should I do? Did I play a role in his unification with the end of his mortality?

"Should we call the fuzz?" Revelation asked.

"Hmmm. No. I don't believe we should. The departure of the soul from the body is a sacred experience. He might have family who wants to perform a hallowing to his body. If the POPO carts his body to the morgue, it could disrupt that. Let's see if he carries identification on him."

I pushed Revelation from my leg. He stepped behind me and wrapped his arm around his belly while I slid my hand under the cadaver's stiff buttocks and pulled his wallet out. I squatted and smelled the oaky wallet.

I held his driver's license. "Marcus Trenidy. Marcus, Marcus. Who were you in the living?"

According to his government-issued ID, he lived in the Elms Suburb--a place where people trade adventure for security. -passion for mundane.