Another cold day. Snowing. Another etch for the prolonged winter. I am finishing up my rounds of the day collecting garbage and feeding it to the compactor. I pick up a plastic bin in a cul-de-sac of nice-looking homes and out stumbles a tiny limb jutting out from a shopping bag. I empty the bin before examining my discovery, a grey little limb belonging to a child. I tear away the rest of the bag and see my macabre gift: a blond-haired blue-eyed infant girl. I go back in my truck and grab a nearly empty cooler and stuff the body inside before completing my rounds for the day.
My home –a condemned trailer- reflects an immense ugliness, especially in the falling snow and rain showers. My footsteps in the snow are slightly filled in by the time I arrived home with my package. The hill I walk up every day discourages me from continuing, reminding me that the people and animals that once resided here are long gone. We have a new guest now.
I pull open the door, take my shoes off and leave them on the dirty carpet. As I unzip the cooler I pull up a folding chair to set it into place; facing me and me alone away from my dilapidated surroundings. Rigor mortis has begun to set in the cadaver, giving it the appearance of a realistic doll used in grisly murder reconstructions. I carefully set it on the chair, making sure that it sits in a way where it at least looks like the eyes are affixed on me.
I brush aside some disgusting sheets on my bed and remove my book on Descartes before sitting down facing the empty vessel across from me. I can’t help but hold my face in my hands when emotions can no longer be held and my cries are more like gnarled inarticulate screams. This goes on for several minutes before lifting my head to look into the eyes of the dead little girl. My history leading up to this very moment is unfurled, I reenact the rage and pain in an unintended theatrical way as though I’m fighting invisible monsters. After several hours, I feel I have caught up to myself and look into the thing’s eyes knowing a sense of something I can’t yet describe but I know it isn’t the judgment that fellow man would pass onto me.
When I woke up, still dressed in my work clothes, I made sure to undress in the neighboring room despite the steep drop in temperature. The next day was the same as the last. At home I recall an event from last week where, as I was doing my laundry a dead mouse fell out of my waded pile of clothes. It got a non-reaction from me at the time; I’m used to this casual disgust. But I take it now as an omen, perhaps another gift.
As I’m about to fall asleep I can see my gift slumping over almost falling. The stench doesn’t bother me.