“Go
out and play. Far from here.”
That’s
what his mom had told him. She had been uncharacteristically stern with him.
“There’s
nothing to do.” He complained to his mom.
So
his mother had given him a pail and told him to pick blueberries. She told him
not to come home until the pail was full. But he had carried this pail with him
for quite a while now, and while he thought he had collected plenty of
blueberries, the pail seemed less than a quarter full. For someone so young,
the pail was becoming heavy.
It
was a beautiful summer day, the sun bringing light and warmth to everything
around him. Being young, he was curious. The island he lived on was all he ever
really knew. While not very large, there were still parts of it he had never
seen. He was in such a place now. He was far from the village, farther than he
had ever been alone before. He was searching this new territory for all its
mysteries, poking his head into a hole in a tree to see what was inside. He
looked down on the ground to see a knot of grubs near one of the roots of the
tree, sucking nourishment from the moss that grew there. From the massive tree
with a swing attached, to the grass that moved slightly from a gentle breeze,
everything around him was alive. Birds chirped and fluttered somewhere above
him while the buzzing of insects could also be heard amidst the rustle of
leaves.
His
eyes to the ground, he beheld it. It was hidden in the grass so that he could
not see what it was. At first he thought it was a rock, but then he thought he
could see something moving. But it was not alive. It was a baby bird, but the
life that it should have contained was replaced with something repulsive and
black. It was not merely dead, it was death incarnate, a young boy’s first
encounter with the dark truth of existence. Although he had no experience with
it, an instinct older than his species knew what it was he saw and made him
recoil from it. It was just a baby, a young bird not yet capable of flight. It
laid there, its body twisted in an unnatural position from its fall from its
nest in a branch far above.
What
had been new life a short while ago was now this. He did not know if it were
merely insects that had been feasting on its body or if something larger had
been gnawing at it. But whatever it was, it had eaten through its skin,
revealing the strange and nauseating sight of its internal organs to the young
boy’s eyes. The sickening reality of existence that had been covered by soft
downy feathers had been exposed. And it occurred to him that all he had ever
known of life had been proven false because he had not known of the reality of
death. In an instant, one horrible instant, this creature’s life had been
extinguished because of some small event. Some slight misstep or an unusually
harsh gust of wind had ended this life without chance for reprieve. And the boy
knew, beneath his tanned but soft skin, he too was full of the same soupy mess
that was now poking through this bird’s skin. And he knew that he too could be
brought to the same end with merely an instant of misfortune. This creature
that had been nurtured by its parents now lay abandoned and forgotten, left
alone to rot and be eaten by the lowly things that crawl upon the earth and
suck upon the underbelly of life. And he realized that he too was very small,
that he too was very fragile. And he was alone. He never knew what alone meant
until this moment. And even though his mother had sent him away and told him
not to come back until dark, he found himself running back to the village, leaving
his pail of blueberries behind. He knew he would never find answers to what he
saw, knew that he could only try to forget about it, drown it out with other
thoughts and experiences so that his mind would not have time to think about
it. He would live in the village and surround himself with the life he used to
know, before he became aware of death.
It
was very quiet when he returned to the village, even more so than when he had
left. In the morning, the people had been talking in whispers, when they felt the
need to talk at all. Now, there were not even whispers. Even the place where
the little death was had contained whispers.
He
looked towards the center of the village, and there he saw the villagers,
sitting at the tables where meals would be eaten in good weather. But there was
no movement, no noise of any kind. The people were like statues, their faces
twisted in sickening smiles of pained madness. He saw his mother there, but she
did not look at him. Her gaze was fixed crookedly towards the sky, a cup still
grasped in her hand. All of the people, his uncle, his cousin, all sat like
photographs, frozen in the past. He was alone, completely alone, with his
newfound awareness of death. But death was no longer lurking in the grass, it
no longer needed to hide. It was all around him. Everyone he ever knew was
staring at him with death in their eyes. He gazed at the faces of those around
him, contorted from the pain that had been their last moments. Their mouths
were shaped almost in the form of smiles. It was though they knew something
about death, something he did not. They appeared not to be frightened. Perhaps
he could learn from them, if he could only hear what it was he thought they
were trying to tell him. After all, they were still his family and friends. And
in his need, he began to think he could hear faint murmuring, as though the
dead were willing to tell him their secrets.
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