I wrote a 3-page rough draft of the first half of the story (the monk finding the body, and the first few days watching). The following are rough sketches and notes for the rest of it. As with all my note-taking, they're a patchwork mess: right sentiments, but most likely the wrong order.
~
I didn't even touch him yet that first day. It seemed inappropriate to leave. He seemed so alone. An inchworm landed on my finger. I placed it on his shoulder, watched as it crawled in his ear.
The odd thing was on the third day when it began to scab. It seemed impossible, unnatural even, that this should happen. But I was certainly no expert. Pigs are not humans. It could be common for the organs to be dead but the chemicals to still b working. What does a platelet care if the heart is stopped? Wouldn't it still collect? Wouldn't the air harden it? After all the gases and bacteria inside are still active. If decomposition is an active, not a passive process, then other processes must continue unaware that the organism as a whole is dead. That must be it. That was the only explanation. Tomorrow I would get to see the tides turn.
"Bob," I said, and then corrected myself, "Bobu-san, sumimasen," and sat. I named all my animals Bob. Most popular name in Queens at the time, back when I was a butcher, the name of the deliveryman who first installed my freezer, then the animals. It was a sign of respect, my dad was a hunter, one day he brought home a bear, my brother the bear. It was the respect that you knew you were eating a life. This Bob deserved no less. It seemed wrong to refer to it simply as a body. Would naming him be a gesture of attachment? Aoki-sensai might think so. This dead man, this Bob, was obviously not a monk, and not working for a monk. Perhaps he was disgraced, a thief, a failure. This was my test. When I was a child a dog caught its leash on a tree in the woods behind my house.
Day 4 ~ Bob's shirt was white, but has been graying, becoming sun-bleached. It looked now like the cotton was absorbing the ink as the earth took his body's fluids. His shirt had changed and the wound certainly, but I was disappointed with how slowly the rest was decaying. It wasn't bloating yet. Maybe the cool of the forest helped? Maybe the time of year had few microbes? I was agitated that it wasn't going faster, but quickly felt ashamed at my impatience. I resolved not to hope or expect. But then, oh, the horror of the sixth day when I thought that maybe the wound was healing!
I counted the days and hours. Eight days later it looked different, of course, but not different enough. I was a butcher, so I've seen what dead things look like when they decay and I did not see it here. Insects fed on the blood, the spray of brain and skull, maggots coated the exposed area, but there was no smell aside from the wound. And it was starting to heal. A scab was starting to form, the edges crusty, green and blue sure, but there was activity, more than just microbial. There were platelets, which meant there was oxygenation, which meant there was respiration and circulation. Which meant there was life! Of course, I could be mistaken. It might have been just the insects, or just the effect of drying in the hot days and the wind of the cold nights. Could I tell the difference between drying and healing? Not yet. And the lack of predator, scavenger certainly indicted he was still dead (not dead, still dead, as if once dead but now come back). There would be many more noses and teeth interested in fresh, oxygenated, injured flesh than dead. They could smell it. For a moment I wished I could too, but what if I smelled life? If there was life there might be consciousness and then imagine the torment I had put this poor man through. It was more than not helping him. I had studied him. We had spent time together. He might have watched me watching him, mind moving as fast as his body was stationary, wracking what was left of his brain as to why this person, this monk, what kind of person he would be to sit and watch and inflict this torment? Imagine the hate fuming from him for me, justifiably, despite my best of intentions. Any just God would see through such opinion, but in the absence of one, with the greater possibility of a larger comprehensive consciousness existing as a compilation of all of our individual ones, the spiritual currency could be held to the sway of opinion, and could the hate of this man weigh more than a thousand mediocre likes and loves. What good was intention in the face of such torment and torture?
I don't know.
I leaned close, up from my stone, and smelled the wound, and gagged, gagged, fought it, and then vomited. I covered his head in vomit. No, there was no way he could be alive. It would be too horrible. I had done nothing so strong as to allow such a farce into the reality of my life. This was imagination, horror, fear, just a challenge of mind fighting the training. If I told the monks and brought a doctor after ten days and he was alive they'd think me a monster, though it would be worth it. If he was confirmed dead though, they would laugh and I would be a failure, confirming I am not meant for this work. "Go back to your bars and malls and dentist offices," they'll say in their sandals and scarves sipping tea on their long wood tables. And what if the doctor says he died only hours before. Would I be complicit? And imagine viewing the vomit, and maybe they'd smell the beer in it, the meat. I might surely bring the carnivores now, though I have no idea what kind are here. No, it is best to let things be as they will be. If he is alive he will be that way without my interference. If he is dead, as assuredly he is, then tomorrow I will see the next sign of rot. Of decay. Of transition. Of emptiness. Of form. Of nothingness. Of everything.
Did it move? If I could confirm that it moved, would I pick up this rock and hit it? Would I help it remain dead?
Watch how it crumbles, how it eats itself from the inside and creates life. Can you imagine the billions of universes contained and released. How active, death! You need only smaller eyes to see it. You see what a sloppy and poorly designed mess we are, unless we are designed only so that we may die appropriately for the maintenance of all these other organisms.
Think of all he would see, all those brain cells working as fast as these lies, imagine what he might be imagining. The memories being reviewed, the horrors imagined.
I stole a mirror. I stole a stethoscope. I checked his breath. I checked for a pulse. How long can someone last without water, without food? He was dreaming at least, resting. Did his chest move? I pressed my foot against him, pressed down, and I swear he gurgled.
They would exile me, send me back to wander Queens, but where would I go? Who would take me in? Would the think me a murderer? Oh, the hue and cry!
He had stubble. His fingernails. I drew a line on his face where his hair fell and the next day checked against it. I couldn't tell, but other hairs looked longer so I drew more marks.
I was not without the need to study, to exhaust all reasonable efforts.
Yes, I served the Turks the lesser meats. Yes my hand drifted over the cash register when the kid with their beanies came by. Yes I harassed the Jehova's when they came knocking, taking my learnedness too seriously. Yes I paid for my dog's surgery yet I was too late to save that one in the woods.
It was when I shaved my beard that my wife became frightened and realized our time was done. We were holding on to only archetypes, but there are no real things as archetypes. They are only approximations that reduce us from what we are to the least common denominator of a much larger set of associations we have utterly no control over. It is unfair to think of each other that way. We loved each other enough to not want to do that anymore.
And so ten days later I am here waiting for him to die so I may see him finally he released from the torment of my watching him. Yes, now, I can see the bloat start. Now I will begin my learning. One more day. I am a butcher. I deal in meat. The meat becomes the earth becomes the meat becomes the thought becomes the meat. This is not abstraction. The thinker is abstraction. The sitter is meat. I am a butcher. I am a student. I am a human. I deal in meat…
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