The next one

Ever see a someone just rot away?

Things puff up a little at first, and there's these little white specks everywhere, maggoty shits that slippy slide all through the softest of soft. Then the body colors something foul awful, brown and black and soupy. Smells too, boy ever, worse than you think too. You think dead horse along the road and that deep and sweet rot wafting up from the landfill's bad? Ain't the same. Judged it salty, and stingy-eyed, like some damn fool's gone and mixed bleach and ammonia.

Worst are the eyes. They turn all cloudy and just recede, leaving the body to gape at you like it knows its fate and ain't nothing to be done but just endure the horror. Course no way for the body to know. It's gone. And you're left to watch the sinking, stinking holes and think, damn, that used to be my brother or sister or best fucking friend in the whole world but now they're just a falling away bag of meat.

And you scratch your arms and check for marks, and you dig a hole like all the others before because that's what civilized folk do for each other. In they go, all easy. But the arms don't land quite right and the head cricks oddly when you push it in with your boot. Doesn't look a thing like Grandpa, rest him, in the pine box with gentle clumps of dirt tossed by weepy well-wishers. No it's just a mess in the ground and you shovel and shovel and shovel so fast because damn you need it to be done.

And then it is, and you move on to the next one.