#22 prompt obituaries25

[nat-a-nat]

25. Forest

He thinks about the corpse in the woods sometimes. Hard to forget where you are buried

He thinks about the corpse in the woods sometimes. Hard to forget where you are buried.

It's October now. It's getting colder. The leaves are falling. They must be covering it by now.

They crunch under his steps as he walks. Something CRUSHES under his foot. His mind pictures bones. Ribs breaking in two.

It's just a branch.

He continues his walk.

The sky is bright, but the mood is gloom. The air is moist. 

It's been a while. It must have decomposed by now, with how much rain they get. Sometimes, he thinks he can feel the dirt on his bones.

He puts a finger on his pulse. Thump. A pause. A painfully long, long, pause. It shouldn't be this long. Thump. He is alive. But his skin is cold.

His hoodie is thick. It was always enough to keep him warm. Now, he is always cold.

The ice of his core. Slowly freezing him from the inside out. 

It's shallowly buried. His corpse. Barely a few centimetres underground. A lump in the dirt hastily covered with soil. Six feet, that's how it's supposed to be.

He strays from the path. Disappeares through the trees. Like a ghost.

There's a few hiker trails in the forests surrounding Amity, but he disregards them all.

He moves through the thick foliage. There are broken branches, broken saplings. He tries to not further disturb it all.

He crushes a flower about halfway through. The stem is mangled, his shoe sole imprinted in the bud.He picks it. He rolls it between his fingers the rest of the way.

He reaches a clearing. There's a big rock in the middle. 

His soul aches. A corpse with no grave, a ghost without rest. What a pity.

He goes up to the rock. The ground underneath it is uneven, disturbed from digging.

Is it still wrong to stand on a grave if it's yours?

He kneels on the forest floor and sets a candle down. Lights it. He lays the mangled flower beside it.

A single broken flower for a lonely corpse.

He feels sorry for it. It must be sad. All alone. In a dark, cold forest. With nobody to know you died, with nobody to mourn you.

Leaving his makeshift graveyard, he felt lighter. That single candle flame keeping him warmer than any blanket.