THE OUTSTRETCHED HAND

There is hardly anything alive left. Except insects. Their proliferation is actually quite staggering. The vegetation grew exponentially lush in the past few years. Sometimes I can see glimpses of a few birds flying by, but since I don't have any control over my head movements, I can’t really look at them properly.

It was one of my biggest frustration in the beginning, not being able to truly stare at things. You get used to it. You get used to everything. I have since found a way to extend my vision peripherally. It’s like looking at things through a peephole, from inside a coffin. Except that the coffin is moving. Either way, I'm not going to complain. Many of us are not so lucky because they have no more eyes left. Besides, I still receive signals from three of my senses. Well, more like four. Taste still works, but I was quick to block that one, for obvious reasons. Touch is well and truly dead, except for the nagging sensation of movement I always feel in my stomach.

My carcass has never been so slow. I haven't seen anyone in months, and there hasn't been any food in sight for much longer. I am not comfortable using the word anyone or someone when I think of them. It feels like the ultimate blasphemous idea. Still, I have come to accept that They is Us.

There has to be something like body or muscle memory, because my carcass will soon be back where everything all began. To this church where I once baptized so many babies, married so many couples, accompanied hundreds of folks with the loss of a loved one. I don't feel a thing when I see the dilapidated steeple on the horizon. No elation, not a single iota of nostalgia for this place that I once worshiped.

Maybe it is pure coincidence that I'm back here. A simple matter of probability. A concrete example of chaos theory. It is conceivable that my carcass has sometimes changed direction because of a simple pebble under the sole of its foot. A change of one single millimeter in a trajectory can one day cause us to change countries. Or it can make us come back to our own.

Still, if the place is no longer important to me, what it contains in one of its room has never ceased to obsess me. I thought about it every day since.

The red suitcase filled with 20 000$. In one of the pockets, the little black book swollen with calculations, symbols, sentences in various languages, dead and unknown. And the Hand, of course. This perfect hand, imposing, warm and soft, with the slight scent of vanilla and jasmine.

(…)

When the church was being repaired for its bicentenary, we found a suitcase behind one of the walls, caught in a block of granite. One of its red corners was exposed on the gray side, like a bone emerging from a wound. At my request, the workers had carefully removed the mysterious suitcase with expert blows of a jackhammer. A few days later, they had become my first victims. The first parishioners of my rotting congregation.

I was the first. I became so the day I opened the suitcase. At first, I hardly noticed that it was full of money and gold coins with roughly engraved symbols. It was the little black book that immediately captivated me. It was not adorned with the any inscription. Darker than black, like a window to another world, it seemed to be eating the surrounding light. It was a hole, bursting from the inside, empty from the outside.

Without even having opened it, it already terrified me. The pages made no sense. Illustrations, sketches, lists of names, Latin, Aramaic, but also characters reminiscent of Enochian and the Voynich manuscript. As I perused through its contents, an ordinary burlap satchel tied with leather cords in the corner of the suitcase stirred. My breath stopped as I watched the movement. My chest tightened so hard that one of my vertebrae made a loud cracking noise. Something was moving in the satchel. I don’t know why but I opened it. It was a hand. It was overwhelmingly, achingly beautiful. Rough, alive, deliciously scented. I wanted me to take it, touch it, kiss it. Laying my lips on its warm palm, I let my tongue stealthily lick the salty, floral skin. The gesture seemed quite normal at that moment. The fingers of the Hand moved as it was trying to get into my mouth. Instinctively, I bit it hard to prevent its insistent slithering towards my throat. Blood gushed out, smooth, warm and ferruginous. Alas, the effusions helped the progression of the Hand towards my esophagus. If the rape was atrocious, my torture was just beginning. After it finished its revolting wiggle towards my stomach, it proceeded to slash it with its fingernails. My agony lasted for hours, and my stomach was straining as a fist hit me hard from the inside. I was paralyzed. Then, I lost control of my body. I would never regain control of it.

Next morning, as my teeth were sinking into the workers muscles and I was ingesting bits of their skin, a rush of ecstasy ran through the carcass that would become my prison. Through the bars of my fleshy cell, I received a few crumbs of that feeling. Inside the stomach, I felt the Hand clench its fist and fall asleep. It stopped doing its strange, spasmodic arabesques. It is always at this point that the carcass becomes once again a vast web of increasing suffering. I don't feel it, at least not physically, but my prison cell becomes a narrow sarcophagus again. Over the years, the horror of devouring someone slowly becomes a mere detail. However, the baptism of blood remains massively obscene. I screamed and cried my heart out when I witnessed my first abjection.

The absolute worst was my first child. The little girl's wide gaze of terror never completely left my memory. It seems important to specify that this girl actually knew me. Imagine being devoured by a dead priest, dressed in a cassock on top of it all! Terrifying thing for a child! I can almost laugh about it today. It could have been worse. It could have been a clown.

We walked side by side for a few days, the little girl's armless carcass and I.

For a while, I liked to think that I was the only one who was still aware of his condition, for some elusive reason caused by the Hand in my belly. It is nothing but pure and vain speculation. But hey, I have a lot of time to kill.

Either way, you get used to anything. Almost anything. Babies are still a big no-no for me. When devouring a baby, is it better to ingest it all or to have part of its carcass moving pathetically on the ground in search of a breast to chew on? Luckily, I ate very few babies, but (wait for it), THANK GOD I ate them whole. They were so easy and quick to swallow that I never had to see a dead infant with missing limbs crawling on the floor. Far be it from me to err on the side of pragmatism, but in this world, you have to appreciate every little moment of relief you can get.

I have to admit that I have missed several things. Ice cream. Coffee. Books. Reading. All this time without being able to lay my eyes on a page made me start to think as one writes.

Music, too. At first, my carcass could sometimes get lost in a shopping mall where some radio station was still playing. The last song I heard was I Saw The Sign by Ace of Base. During the song, I truly thought about God for last time. If he really existed, he had to be one hell of a son of a bitch.

I lived the rest of my long and Sisyphean journey as diligently as I could. The living were beginning to get scarce. There were still a few communities here and there, but hunger and the elements got the better of them long before we did.

(…)

So here I am again today, at the entrance of the village where my cursed church is located. I have only one hope: to see the famous little book of shadows again. To return to where it all began. I wish that my body’s memory, or else chaos, guides my carcass there.

The Hand in my stomach opens like a carnivorous plant, ready to trap something. The carcass stands up and sniffs. Its pain becomes an electric shock.

There are living people here. Lots of living people.

My ordeal is over. As soon as these people see me, they'll cut me to pieces. They’ll cut off my head and burn it. Finally. I will disappear.

Around the forecourt of the church at the center of the village, the living crowd gazes at my carcass, eyes dripping with piety. My body accelerates in their direction, it regains an improbable vigor. Its growls. I jump when I hear my own voice. The parishioners enter the church and my body tries to catch up with them. As soon as it walks through the door, a fishing net is thrown at him. The thunderous sound of a poorly tuned organ suddenly saturates the space. My mind receives the notes like the epidermis receives an icy rain. I don't recognize this almost atonal music. The church is full, the people seated. My end is nigh. They will sacrifice me. Yes. Please.

In the center of the nave, a life-size cross rest on the ground. I recognize it. The statue of Christ that once adorned it has been shattered. As my tangled, wriggling body is dragged through the net, I see a ragged celebrant at the back of the nave. He is holding the little black book in his hands.

Two huge men immobilize my carcass on the cross. They drive the nails into my hands and my feet. The cross is raised and placed on a makeshift plinth behind the celebrant. My reaction surprises me: I am overwhelmed by an immeasurable rage. Instinctively, I know what's going on, what's going to happen, over and over again. The ground in front of me is strewn with dead leaves, mud and 20 000$ worth of dollar bills. The parishioners are singing.

(…)

Today is First Communion day. The children are standing in front of the celebrant, smiling, a little nervous. The Eucharist will take place, as it takes place every day. First Communions and Baptisms are always the most difficult for me. It’s one thing to see adults slash part of their flesh on purpose, it’s quite another to force children to do it. An emaciated little boy struggles to extract a token of skin from his forearm with a dull kitchen knife. He climbs onto the bench and positions himself in front of my face. His arm is bleeding profusely but he smiles with a hint of pride. My body tightens its jaw, panting. He deposits the token of his flesh on my wagging tongue. Like my other limbs, it has regained a lot of vigor from being fed daily. In fact, the rotting has stopped and my body is mostly intact. The Hand bangs on the walls of my stomach to say thanks. It presses on the upper abdomen and bumps can be seen where the fingers are pushing. The child kisses one of the bumps formed by the pressure, a few inches from the heart.

I hear the officiant's chants, but I no longer listen to them. I know what eternal life is, I know what is the blood and the flesh. I know what will come now and forever and unto the ages of ages.