Not-Bodies, Half-Truths
His sanity fractured in the dugout.
Reality cracked under pressure like the fissures spiderwebbing across ice beneath him. Mania offered Amir lies through the gaps, and listened as he spun them to himself. It heard his mantra of, “there isn’t a body here—there is no body,” over and over into the snow, watched as his gaze flitted everywhere but at the not-body with its frostbitten fingers and unblinking eyes.
The not-body dreamt of cracks.
Amir bent over the lip of the dugout, and pressed his forehead to the ice.
He expected a shock of cold. He felt nothing.
He dug fingers he couldn’t feel into the snow, tips black with frost, wheezing profanities to an audience of ghosts. He swore the red pooling bone-white ice meant nothing, the dry tears streaming from his eyes were the fault of winter’s touch alone—more spun half-truths. Sorrow burned the base of his throat.
Like ichor spilling from an open wound, the lies welled and slipped between his lips before he could catch them. He vowed the distance between the trees and their—no, his dugout wasn’t so far, that “my brother’s waiting for me,” and “dawn’s coming; the ice will thaw”.
Stale sunlight bent over the horizon, catching the corpse’s frosted-over eyes and black-bitten fingers, the pool of red beneath its torso. It caught on Amir’s silent, unseen breaths as he whispered,
“My brother’s waiting for me.”
The not-body dreamt up lies.