Of Love and Corpses

One moment they were all dead and, suddenly, they weren’t anymore. Seven and a half nails dug to the surface, reemerging filthy and covered in dust. The rotten flesh in decomposition state of the skull peep out and looked around with only one rotten eye half eaten. 

“What…?” Murmured the stranger, with an unrecognizable accent. 

(She didn’t know it yet, but it probably was because of the partial disappearance of her tongue). 

She was in kind of a limbo state, disoriented. She didn’t really know where she was or how had she got there, but she was very sure that it wasn’t the place in which she was supposed to be.

She heard a hubbub around her, an odd hiss that she hadn’t heard before. She tried to focus with her half eye, but she couldn’t see much in the dark. She couldn’t see if it was an animal or a person, but she thought she had seen a deformed leg.

She tried to ask for help, but it was like her body didn’t obey her, like it didn’t belonged to her; so, finally, she let herself go. 

After multiple fruitless tries to stand up, she leaned on a soft object that she could not identify. She walked without seeing, guiding herself with what she could hear and feel. A sensation of recognition invaded her after smelling a… particular fragrance in the distance. The body (that wasn’t hers anymore) seemed to recognize it too, so she assumed that was the direction they were heading to (her body and her).

She heard panic and horror screams around her. 

“Please, no!

“Help me!”

“Junmyeon!”

She wanted to help, really, but she couldn’t see a thing, neither her body. 

“What’s going on?!” She tried to scream, but she nobody answered. 

The odd hiss was stronger now. She thought she had to be dreaming and that it was all a nightmare where she couldn’t see or move. Instead, her hearing and smelling magically sharpened and it made her feel like an irrational animal driven by instinct. She didn’t like it at all.

It smelled like... home.

Seungwan was a person and not a thing. Well, it wasn’t that clear now. If she had lost her reasoning capacity, was she still a person?

Seungwan was her name. She didn’t remember it, but soon she was going to. 

She crawled across the room because of her legs giving up. The rotten flesh smell was evident and she suddenly pondered where was it coming from. Was it her? Impossible.

Maybe, in another situation, she would have felt the suffocant heat that was threatening to cook her. Seven months ago Seungwan had bought an aerothermal device that could be a heating device on winter and an A/C in the summer for her family. However, not even in winter would they turn on the heat higher than sixty Celsius degrees. Someone was trying to kill her for sure. 

Because the flesh that was still covering her skeleton was rotten and her nervous system destroyed, it was logic that the girl couldn’t know this fact. Her heart (that didn’t beat anymore, not that she was aware of) was falling to pieces, literally. 

Suddenly, Seungwan remembered whose fragrance belonged to. She was… the love of her life. A sharp fear blurred her senses. «The brain has strange ways of working», her lover used to say. Her conscious self was still there, deep inside her brain (which was still working). Something told her that being there put all that she loves in danger.

She tried to run away, to get back where she came from, but her body didn’t answer, it wasn’t hers. Without warning, pain was all she could feel. Not physical pain, because she couldn’t feel it, emotional pain. She started to remember fragments of her life, a life past her. Seungwan shouldn’t be there, that was clear. 

She should be dead. 

The weight of that statement would have made her tremble, if it could. 

From the top of the stairs, Seungwan thought she had seen Joohyun. She couldn’t be sure and her body wasn’t into that either.

Taking advantage that life had given her a second opportunity, she wanted to say goodbye. Nonetheless, before she could say anything (ot at least try to), Joohyun hit her on the head with a metal bar.

Seungwan didn’t feel it completely, but the hit sent her stairs down. Actually, she wasn’t very conscious of what was going on. 

“Stay away from us!” Joohyun yelled. 

Seungwan felt sad. Why would Joohyun hit her? She was just trying to talk to her. 

Joohyun didn’t stop hitting her. There was an instant, after Seungwan started to see the bright end of the tunnel again, when she had enough clarity to see her wife’s face against the glowing light of the bulb.

“Why…?” She asked, hoping Joohyun could hear her.

Joohyun stopped in her track, trying to protect her son with her body. 

“...Seungwan? How is this possible?” She asked, freaked out. “Oh my god! Oh, my god. Oh. My. God. No, no. You’re not Seungwan, you… are… a… monster. Stay away from us!”

Joohyun held the metal bar up, decided to finish the reanimated being that used to be the most important person in her life.

«So, this is it» She thought to herself. «I’m going to die by the hands of the person I’ve loved more than anything in my entire life».

Unfortunately, her body wasn’t on tune with her thoughts. 

When Joohyun took impulse to give her the final hit, one of Seungwan’s arms held her leg with enough force to make her fall. The metal bar fell some centimeters away of Joohyun’s grip, leaving her and her son defenseless.

«What are you doing?», she asked herself. «No, no, no, no».

And like the very same god that had brought her to life was making fun of her, Seungwan’s conscious succumbed to her new instincts, saying goodbye for the last time to her wife’s face. 

Then, Joohyun screamed. 

Sometimes my mind can come up with this. So, yeah, my mind is a pretty weird place to be. I wish Wendy recovers soon!! Thanks to all for reading. Leave a comment below and a vote if you liked it!