That
he even noticed in such circumstances was consistent with the queer horror of
it all, and later he would feel some degree of self-disgust to recall that he had
been thus distracted.
His
walking stick abandoned nearby, Skunk staggered, screaming, naked about the
garden with tears coursing down his face, water burned from out him by the
smoke and all else as small flames chewed their way into what remained of her
body, her ashes billowing up into heaven upon thermal draughts and slowly
descending to alight palely grey over all.
Still
somehow in the midst of this, in his confusion and despair and lunacy, there
was yet enough of him left himself to realise he had been, and was still,
urinating into the grass at his feet; his body recognising and in control of
its own need, functioning accordingly without ordained thought, the mental
connection occurring only mid-act.
He
stood now quiet and body-conscious, aware of the pyre burning somewhere behind
him to his left, the sound of piss falling into piss, pooling in the sodden
earth, and stopping.
Something
snapped loud in the fire, a redistribution of embers, a quick excitement of
sparks and sour smoke and Brother Skunk emerged completely from his fit,
loosening his fingers from the hair that was left his bleeding scalp.
The
breath in his throat distressed and aching; Jesus alone knew what words or
sounds had been expelled from his body in its mourning, but it felt to him as
if each of them had required more force in their expulsion than a consolidated
mass bulk of everything precedent.
He
caught sight of his ankle, bent out awkward with its markings flushed scarlet
in a bas-relief so intense it terrified him, and in that fear he lost whatever
it was the bones inside their wrap of ruined flesh conjoined to give; he
stumbled sideways, falling to his hands and knees.
It
was then, as he stared in horror at the knots of loose hairs twisting
out from the gummy blood upon his fingers in the grass, that he felt more urine
leave his body, insignificant drops, but enough to sense that he was not yet
finished, and in attempting to stem this tricklet Skunk could find no means
available to him, no muscle he might possibly contract.
The
smoke turned black behind him, black and sourer still, but Skunk was thinking
only of those moments when the body relaxed on either edge of sleep, when it
could give nothing to the making of a fist.
Skunk:
Spirit. Spirit... Jesus
and
he curled up on the grass tightly as his disabilities would allow, staring
blankly at the house in the distance.
