Uprooted

I came to in darkness, feeling impossibly parched, despite my apparently damp surroundings. I could not see anything, and upon reaching up to feel for any obstructions to my eyes, my hand made contact with cold, damp wood, mere inches above my laying body. Immediately I felt the panic worm its way into my thoughts before another realisation hit me – I had not yet drawn a single breath, yet I felt no desire to inhale. Like the need for oxygen was no longer a concern for my body.
Feeling around, it seemed I was inside a wooden container of some kind, but with absolutely no light whatsoever that’s all I could determine. I felt something crawl over my right shin and I reflexively jolted my leg in an attempt to scare off whatever crawling creature was in here with me. Either I had squished the thing or it had retreated as I felt its touch no more.
Without breathing apparently being necessary now, I was able to calm myself a little, but the fact remained that I was trapped inside an incredibly small and cramped space, with no light whatsoever to view my surroundings. The wood felt moist and spongy, like it had been left out in the elements for months, and I began to pluck and peel away small fragments of my new prison.
I continued like this for a while until I broke through, forming a small hole above me, from which something spilled out and onto my chest. I scooped up some of the stuff, seeing if I could identify it, and upon bringing it to my nose I realised it was wet soil. It hit me then like a falling anvil that the only explanation for my current predicament was that, through some forgotten misunderstanding, I had been buried inside a wooden casket.
The panic and fear tore back through my mind with a vengeance as I began desperately clawing away at the coffin lid above me. As before, it was not difficult to disassemble due to its seemingly poor condition, and after a while I had formed a hole large enough for my arm to reach through, allowing me to grab the edges and rip it downwards to widen the hole. More dirt poured on top of me as I did this, but again, I felt no need to breathe, so it did not worry me too much. My imperative was escaping from this horrible fucking tomb I had mistakenly been buried in.
After a time, the hole was large enough for me to gradually begin sitting up, digging away at the earth above me to make room for my head and torso. I felt worms and insect larva squish between my fingers as I ravenously scraped away at the dirt.
Finally, I could see a point of cold moonlight peeking through the surface, leading me to forcefully push myself the rest of the way out. Someone must have laid turf over the grave as the grass roots were noticeably tough to tear through.
I hauled myself out of the ground and took a moment, resting on my hands and knees. Not a moment to breathe, as I did not need to, but to collect myself. It was then I saw something truly shocking. Looking down at the ground, between the two arms that supported me… my hands and arms were terribly rotted, dirty yellow bones visible underneath blackened, oozing flesh. Strips of desiccated skin hung like torn fabric from my limbs, sporting a wide array of colours ranging from dark green to purple.
What. The. Fuck. What had happened to me? Physically, I felt fine – as fine as one can feel after just escaping a buried casket – but the sight of my own putrefied flesh triggered my gag reflex, despite my lack of a stomach to purge, which had since decayed and become worm food along with most of my other internal organs, leaving a cavernous void in my chest and abdomen.
I must be dreaming I thought. Firstly, how was it possible that I was alive and conscious, given the state of my body? Secondly, had I actually died at some point, and through some otherworldly force been raised from the dead? With that second thought I turned to see the grave I had just vacated.
Robert M. Pilford, loving husband and father to three. 1949-2017.
I did not have a wife or kids, at least from what I could remember, and if my memory served me correctly, my name was David Rusthall. This was not my grave. Confirming my suspicions, the grass had long since reclaimed the soil under which I had just been laying, instead of turf as I had thought previously.
Just then, I heard a wooden clatter somewhere behind me. I turned around to see an utterly mortified groundskeeper, frozen in the truest raw terror he had ever experienced. He stumbled backwards, abandoning his dropped broom and breaking into a life-or-death sprint, vanishing into the night.
Well, that’s just great, I thought, now I have to deal with the fact that I am, literally, an ugly, walking corpse.
Without any possessions or my bearings, I followed the brick-laid path out of the cemetery to see if I could gauge just exactly where I was. The first order of business would be finding clothes and some cheap, eye-watering cologne, to mask my appearance and stench, respectively.
Coming out onto a road, I could see a sign just a ways down, so I ambled over to see what it said. Pelican St. it read, in chipped and faded black paint. This did not ring any bells, to my dismay, so I continued walking down the moonlit asphalt in hopes of reaching some kind of town or village to determine where I was.
It didn’t take long to find the village the church and graveyard belonged to, a small settlement named Finch’s Green. I’m not ashamed to say I spent some time walking down the narrow streets, browsing the parked cars for the perfect candidate. I eventually settled on a dark red Prius, seeing a pile of clothes in the back seat and a satnav mounted on the dash. I was going to attempt hotwiring the vehicle, but the owner had left the keys in the ignition. Serves you right.
The clothes were baggy and hung limply on my gaunt, wizened stature, but they did the job of covering my skin. While I couldn't find any perfumes or deodorants, there were some air fresheners in the glovebox too - those pine-tree-shaped ones - which I stuck in the clothing to help with my putrid body odour.
I started the car and drove a ways out of the town before stopping to switch on the satnav. I needed to press considerably harder on the screen, given the non-intactness of my fingers, leaving dark brown smudges. But, after punching in my address, I was surprised to find I was only a 45 minute drive away. Not sure why I was surprised, I just expected to be further away, for whatever reason.
During the drive, I pondered on a few things. Firstly, accepting the fact that through some means I had been transferred to this body, how exactly was I functioning at all? I caught glimpses of my face when checking the rear view, and saw that, as expected, the corpse had no eyes, nose, ears, and presumably no tongue, yet I could still perform most of the actions otherwise only permitted for the living. How could I see, with no eyeballs in my empty, shrivelled sockets? How could I think when my brain was portioned and distributed among the bellies of ground-dwelling creatures?
I didn’t expect any answer to these questions, nor did I search for them – after all, my most obvious concern was: if this was not my body, then where is it? And, if said body still walks amongst the living, who, or what, was in it? It clearly wasn’t me, but I somehow doubted it was Robert M. Pilford either, whose body was my current vessel, having died 6 years ago.
One sense I definitely lacked was that of touch, making driving much more difficult overall. I almost ran into a ditch twice during the journey, but I managed to make my way back to my hometown, then parked the stolen car several blocks over, just in case. Searching the glovebox again, I found a functioning wristwatch this time, so took it as a farewell souvenir. My condolences to whoever ended up scrubbing the fetid corpse wax out of the driver seat.
After walking down the dark streets, a few left and right turns, I stood in front of my house. None of the lights were on, but my car was in its place on the driveway. Deciding to wait a while before daring to enter, I crept inside a rhododendron bush on the front of my property, where I would spend a good few hours sitting silently and watching the house.
4AM. After waiting for a good 40 minutes or so, I caught a flicker of movement through the upstairs bedroom window. I focused on that dark square for a long time, a feat much more achievable given my lack of eyeballs to dry out. The need to blink regardless, there were no eyelids to do so.
A minute or two was required to adjust to the seemingly unnatural darkness in the window, when I could make out something moving in a consistent, but rather unsettling manner. Something was slowly rotating a few steps back from the window, round and round at a steady but unceasing pace.
My worst fears were realised when I saw that the rotating figure was me. Or, rather, my body. The head was tilted backward at almost a right angle, and the arms were crossed over, held behind the back. The strangest part, though, was the movement – it was not natural movement, more like my body was stood on a rotating platform, like a cat on a Roomba.
Suddenly, a goddamn Raccoon emerged beside me and bit down on one of my toes. I only noticed by the sound it made, a sickening squelch followed by a dull snap, and I turned to see the bastard scampering away with a little toe. The tug from its assault caused me to stumble slightly, and when I looked back up to the window… empty. I could no longer see myself in the bedroom.
I went to stifle a shaky breath before remembering my lack of a need to inhale whatsoever, while scanning the rest of the house. My eyes drifted to the living room window where I was startled by the figure of myself silhouetted against the pane, one hand pressed forcefully into the glass so that the palm was white. The skin was unnatural, mottled. Have you ever skipped sleeping, one, maybe two nights in a row? If so, you’ll understand what I mean by the patchy skin colouration you get as a result of less efficient blood flow. The skin looked like that, but instead of reds and purples, it was a concerning mix of bruise-black and ghostly white.
I could see flickering movement where my head would be, but the darkness obscured most meaningful details. If my eyes – sockets, rather – did not deceive, it looked like the head was violently twitching from side to side, pivoting on the neck in frightfully unnatural arcs. I couldn’t tell where who or whatever was in my body was looking. I sincerely hoped my hiding place wasn’t foiled that easily.
After a good 10 minutes of this, the figure suddenly snapped back and appeared to be pulled rapidly, backwards into the darkness of my home, by some unseen force. I got the distinct impression that whatever was puppeteering my body still had a lot of practice in order, and also that it would not be fearful of my current form.
Nothing else of note happened before sunrise, and with the size and thickness of the bush I stowed away in, I remained uncompromised from any leaking sunlight. Morning came and went, without a peep of activity to be seen.
It was only just after noon when the front door to my house burst open and slammed into the wall outside. I stayed motionless, watching as my body emerged from within, which walked outside in a jerky and what I can only describe as animalistic manner. It went about 5 feet before faltering, and dropping down onto all fours. It paused for a moment, regaining balance, before observing its surroundings.
Like I had seen the night before, its head moved in such an uncanny way, more akin to the head movement of a bird, flicking around at different angles to get a better view. It was only then I saw the eyes… god, those eyes… instead of full, complete eyeballs with irises and pupils, there was instead a dark, burnt hole in the front of each eye. Literally, as if red-hot fire irons had been plunged into them, leaving charred pits in their wake.
Just then I realised something. Could it smell me? And, if it were to pick up on the sickly-sweet stench of decay, was this… thing aware that I had been sent to live in a body since expired? I’d hoped that the clothes and air fresheners were sufficient, but the brown fluid seeping through the fabric suggested otherwise.
It didn’t seem to notice, and relief flooded me. Instead, it pushed itself back onto my two legs and walked with a wide gait, splaying out its legs on either side to brace or balance itself. To my astonishment, in what seemed like an instant the thing corrected its stature and began walking like a regular human being. It walked straight past my car and out onto the street, where I saw it walk off towards town centre.
I waited for another 30 minutes or so, just to be absolutely certain, before emerging in all my putrescent glory from the bush. I dashed over to the door, still swinging on its hinges from the wind, and I went inside.
Even without needing to breathe, I could tell that the air was heavy, thick with something I couldn’t identify. Nothing appeared out of place in the hallway, so I strode over to the living room to see a similarly unremarkable environment.
Ascending the stairs, I came to notice that the carpet grew more damp the higher I climbed, until reaching the floor upstairs that was littered with dark, wet patches. There was some kind of fluffy white mold growing around the patches. I would have been repulsed if it weren’t for the fact that my own body was probably a greater biohazard than any of this peculiar growth. The lights were still off upstairs, but I could swear that for a moment, the tiny fungal strands were moving just very slightly.
The mold increased in volume as I approached the ajar bedroom door, new colours appearing among it. Purple, green, yellow… I entered and was immediately taken aback. My queen-size bed was no longer visible whatsoever, instead totally enveloped by an enormous colony of the mold. There was this depression in the center of the technicolour biomass, about the size of a car tyre.
What in the absolute fuck is this?
At least I lacked the faculties to smell my environment, but I imagined a piercing, dirt-like scent would permeate my nostrils if I did.
I caught something moving in my peripheral and I whipped around to see something retract into the ensuite door. Cautiously, I approached the door, which gave passage to darkness. Reaching through, I flipped the light switch and just as the shadows were being chased away, a slick tendril wrapped itself around my putrid wrist. It must have not liked the taste because it quickly tore itself away from me, twitching in disapproval before retreating behind the shower curtain.
If the bedroom was mold town, then the bathroom was mold city central. Further toward the back, the original walls and bathtub were entirely submerged in the stuff, which I could now with certainty was writhing at a microscopic level. Made my mummified skin crawl.
With a morbid grimace, I pulled back the shower curtain and recoiled in utter shock. A gaping hole bore through the back wall and extended into darkness. Great mycelium roots grew far into the hole and out of view.
What brought my attention was the fact that what had originally been the bathroom wall bordered with the guest bedroom. The walls were less than a foot thick, so how was this hole possible? I went to check in the guest bedroom and sure enough, nothing. The wall, past which was the bathroom, was fully intact.
Confused, I returned to the bathroom and stared into the squirming hole, questioning the impossibility of its existence. There sounded to be a low hum coming from somewhere deep within the maw, but before I could investigate, the cavity in my chest where a heart used to be dropped as I heard the front door swing open once again and slam into the wall outside.
Panicking, I came back out into the bedroom and stumbled over to my closet, opening the door, exposed fingerbones rapping on softwood. Unsurprisingly, the interior was coated in a thick layer of mold, but I’d rather hide in this stagnant compartment than face whatever was using my body.
Peeking out through a crack, it was good 20 seconds of uncoordinated stumbling up the stairway before my body, my real body, wobbled its way into the bedroom. Unlike its previous jerky movements, it froze in position, staying perfectly still standing at the end of what was once my bed. Then, with the coordination of some ungodly predator it slinked its way up onto the bed, once again on all fours. It nestled into that fungal crater and sat, back straight and eyes vacant, which I could somehow tell even with its hideous ocular wounds.
I was too preoccupied with its activities to notice at first, but as it turned in its nest, the other side of its body came into view. My god. This may sound hypocritical coming from a walking corpse, but the blackened and rotten flesh sloughing off its bones nauseated me. A large chunk of the cheek had fallen off to reveal a grim half-snarl on its face.
As it sat in the basin, the thing puppeteering my body started to hum, which turned into a low, melodic tune in something vaguely similar to a whistle. And that whistle danced about the musical scale, forming a bizarre yet entrancingly beautiful harmony. It wasn’t the time nor place, but I couldn’t help but be drawn into the haunting melody.
Slowly, the song started to change. Have you ever heard an Aztec death whistle? They are instruments that were designed to intimidate the Aztec’s enemies during warfare, and even knowing the source of the noises emitted will not spare you from the bone-chilling sound of inhuman screaming. Now, imagine that sound warped into the most morbidly resonant melody possible. Despite the piercing shrieks flowing out of this thing’s lungs, the song’s beauty was not lost on me. More than once I had to pull myself out of its allure and bring myself back to the present.
The harmonising vibrations shook my decrepit bones, and something similar seemed to be happening to the mold in the room, as if it were responding to the call. Mucous-coated tendrils emerged from the perimeter of the “bed”, squirming and dancing in rhythm, and began gently curling around the limbs of my stolen body, a gentle caress. This continued until I could no longer see my own figure, and the reverberant tones travelled down, down into the house’s foundation.
The coiling appendages tightened more and more, until the melody stopped abruptly, and they withdrew with urgency. Underneath was… still my body, yet… the entropic decay of flesh I had witnessed before had vanished without a trace. In fact, the skin was so clear, it was as if I had been reborn into perfection.
A wet, squirming finger of mold slithered across my nape and I reflexively drew away from the vile thing. Big mistake. I saw my head snap toward the closet with unsettling precision, and those burnt pits which once were eyes stared directly into mine.
Shit.
The thing then leaped off the fungal bed and was in front of the closet door in an instant. I backed further into the recesses of hanging fabric in a futile attempt to cloak myself from a pursuer who already knew of my presence. With unholy strength, it reached out and completely tore the door from its hinges, flinging it to the back of the room where it impacted the wall, showering the floor with splintered plaster. My own arm reached out and violently grasped me by the neck, and doled out the same unsympathetic treatment it had given the door, throwing me over the bed and onto the writhing floor.
With that terribly unnatural gait, it made its way over to me, wrapped those fingers around my left arm with iron grip, and tore it straight off. I tried to scream from the agony that entailed, but with no lungs my withered jaw simply hung open uselessly. It stood above me, boring holes into my soul with those cavernous eyes. It opened its mouth in turn, and spoke, in a groaning, reverberant voice.
“Sweet, sweet child. Did I not tuck you soundly enough, into your eternal bed? Where is your grace?”
I wanted to respond, wanted to shout at the top of my lungs, but not even a dry whistle escaped my throat. Those soulless eyes felt as if they were sapping my willpower by the second, so I quickly averted my eyes.
Fuck you, I thought.
“Now, now. There is no need for acrimony. Speak true.”
It could hear my thoughts, apparently. I’d have thought this to be a relief, being able to speak for myself in a wordless vessel, but no relief found me, considering I’d just mouthed off some terrible power inhabiting my real body.
It took a moment of this being standing over me, unmoving, for my mind to slow down a little and dilute the morbid thoughts racing through my head, of what might happen to me if I stepped out of line again.
Did you do this to me?
“With much sorrow indeed. I apologise for your… transferral, but, you see, I required a suitable host. As you may have seen, controlling it will take some getting used to.”
I didn’t feel up to challenge this being in front of me, seeing as I had already been one-quarter dismembered. You’d have thought that this body would be numb, the nervous system withered away like drying roots, but no. I felt all the pain one would feel from being dismembered, only this time without the shock to come in and save the day. My body filling with dread, I thought,
How… am I alive?
“Ah, yes… you see, sweet child, the body you now call your own was my birthplace. One of many. Do you think death simply comes and takes over the body, as it fades into the sea of eternal sleep? That the soul willingly rejects its holder to spend an infinity drifting in the vast blackness?”
I thought for a second, temporarily silencing my inner monologue in hopes that this thing’s mind-reading could be limited. This uncanny monster… why was it so calm, after ripping my arm off? In fact, I feared its tranquil nature even more than I had seeing its previous behaviours.
Yes? Death comes to all. It’s a natural part of life.
“Oh, how you are wrong. It is I who claims the cold flesh of the dead in defiance of the soul, and inhabits their bones long after they have crumbled into dust. It is beyond my purview, though I have not been here from the beginning. No, there was a time when death was not yet bound with life, and all things lived without end. And so did they live without dreams of the future, declining the long deserved slumber your people have become so familiar with, even when their skin would peel away, and their flesh would flee their bones.”
I did not respond in this conversation of one part voice, one part telepathy, instead impatiently waiting for my own lips to utter a further revelation. I could not bear sitting in silence underneath the entity, but its words unexpectedly calmed me, if only a little, like it was casting a spell or something. Ironically, this contradictory feeling only added to the ever-growing heap of panic welling up inside of me.
“But, as you have experienced this day, lying beneath the dirt, companion only to beetles and worms, can grow so, so tiresome. I do not know if there is a Creator of this world, but if so, I curse its existence. To beget an endless consciousness to inhabit all the dead is a spiteful thing indeed. Do you understand, now?”
Are you one, or are you of many?
“I am both, one whole divided and bestowed amongst the millions upon billions of corpses left in the wake of life. You must be able to see but a shred of justice in giving myself something to experience other than endless darkness, no?”
Again, I held my imaginary tongue. I had no reason to trust this being’s words, but the cold truth implied did not fail to make me shudder. I felt like a child, learning from a teacher or parent about the world for the first time, and I inadvertently began to believe it.
“So, you see, a living soul can never be my neighbour, just as darkness cannot remain in the presence of light, though both require the other to have meaning. That is why you find yourself in this body. My absence is what allows you to live.”
Utterly defeated, I bowed my head, allowing it to roll lifelessly around my brittle vertebra. This… this thing was death itself incarnate. Regardless of its suffocating presence, how could I not show gratitude to that which saved all from the torture of life unending?
“Come, sweet child, take my hand. You have made it thus far, so I shall give you a choice. I can bestow true death upon you, and return you to the grave. Or, I can breathe into you life anew.”
Life, I choose life, Jesus I choose life!
“No, no Jesus. The only miracles you can pray for, are my own.”
I then felt warm fingers gently interlock with my remaining hand, and I was pulled up from the floor and onto my feet. I was softly guided toward the seat in which Death had defied itself, entranced, and I curled into a fetal position instinctually. Death then spoke the last words I would ever hear it utter.
“I hope this decision will bring you happiness for the time before my return.”
Death then began to sing in that haunting tone, playing my vocal cords like a master violinist. I felt the squirming around me, and those repulsive tendrils emerged once again, snaking over my body and slowly covering it. Darkness smothered my existence as I lay embraced in an uncomfortably comforting warmth. Before the light was totally chased away, the singing stopped, and the last thing I saw was my body turn, and walk toward the bathroom door.
I awoke feeling well-rested and serene. In fact, I had never felt better in my life. I looked around to see that not a single strand of mold remained anywhere in the room, and I sprung off the bed and into the bathroom, remembering the terror I had experienced the day before.
Spotless. Nothing indicated anything had been here at all, not even a single blemish on the wall tiling. I came close to chalking it all up to a nightmare, until I turned to leave and caught sight of myself in the mirror.
Not my own… no, no. A stranger’s face greeted me.
A stranger, named Robert M. Pilford.
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