Creative Decomposition

You died and you rotted. There was no reason to call an ambulance. An ambulance is for the living. Dead people get wrapped in a glad bag and unceremoniously thrown into a van. But the police on scene knew that my partner and I were rookies and perhaps would be interested in something different than the usual; pick up the homeless guy off the streets, take him to the hospital then pick him up again the next day. We pulled up to the three-family house in Southie. Police and medical examiner already on-scene. We started to walk up the stairs and each step brought us closer to the smell you left behind. My partner was the first to gag. I was quite proud that I was able to hold off. Early on, EMTs learn to breath through their mouths, but when we did that today your putrefaction blanketed our taste buds. We literally tasted death.

We entered your room. The first thing I noticed was that your TV was still on; tuned to The Price is Right. I saw the drug paraphernalia, such as spoons, candles, crystalline substances, pipes and other stuff I never saw before.

My eyes went over to your body.

Your bloated head was the size of a beachball. As a body decomposes, the skin, whose job in life was too keep the bad stuff out was now serving as a container for the by products of decomposition. As bacteria breaks down the body, it produces the equivalent of a fart; billions of farts. This fills the body like it was some cartoon character balloon at a 4th of July parade. Your naked torso showed the violaceous, tell-tale sign of “really dead”, called the line of lividity.

The bloating did not shock me. It was the surreality of seeing the casual, almost peacefully normal position your body was in at the precise moment that your life ended. Your hands were behind your head in a self-satisfied, head-propping manner perhaps to better see the TV at the foot of your bed. Your bloated face contorted your mouth unnaturally agape, which almost made it look like you were smiling. Your feet crossed at the ankles were now rigid with death.You could not have known that your final breath, final heartbeat was pending. You would have fought; you would have flailed; you would have fallen out of the bed. But you looked perfectly content.

You even had a picture of a woman on your nightstand. Will be police be calling her to tell her of your fate? Will she weep for you? Will she be surprised? Who was she? At that moment, that was all I wanted to know. Who the hell was this woman?

My stomach held it together up until this point. But then, I looked more closely at your face. I noticed your skin undulate as if a balloon was filled with jello. Then I saw what made my knees weak; the maggots crawling out of your nose and mouth. One of these maggots crawled out through the corner of your mouth. This made me involuntarily itch the corner of my own face as I imagined how it would feel. I then realized your “human-ness” was no more. You became food for microorganisms and a condominium for insect larvae.

I ran to your bathroom to throw up. The veteran officers on-scene laughed at me. I continued to wretch as I made it out to the ambulance. Your smell permeated the polyester threads of my uniform. They say that you never forget the smell of rotting flesh. I say that smell has never left my nostrils.

Since that moment, I have seen many bodies in various stages of life and death. But, I will never forget the day I understood that death was final.