Kushal Poddar
The Heart
The moth-eaten body, a nickname the crime scene guys gave, was found on the flat roof of the
deceased. It began to stir in its freezing tray and then gathered its tattered flesh and fibres in the
very last hour.
Hadn’t the gossiping clerk spilled some beans in front of the bored coroner the body was destined
to slide into the flame in a few minutes.
They never solved the mystery of the carnivorous moths.
The body scooped a few rotten parts loosened from the bones and ran. The noise made the men
at the morgue turn. They saw it, now a shadow, now naked man, now nothing except a breeze.
The body didn’t find its memories and couldn’t find time to look for those in the file cabinets.
It ran to the river. It toddled in it and stood midst the waist-deep part of the grey sapphire stream.
Water flowed through its sieve. He felt nothing at first, a tickle next, and saw the boys on the
bank run screaming so loudly that no animal could hear that noise.
One girl stayed. She wore yellow floy and pink grass. The boys still running didn’t even turn or
call her name.
She said, pointing at the holes in the wholesomeness of the corpse, “My mother can sew you
together.”
“Is she a seamstress?” The dead one startled by his own word. Seamstress. Wherefrom did it
learn a word none needed any longer?
“No, a psychiatrist,” said the girl. Now it could see the flowers she wore were withered. It looked
at itself. The space where its heart throbbed looked like a Hallmark card for Halloween. It
occurred to him that the girl should have been afraid, scared, and should have fainted.
“I am not.” She shrugged. “No one in my family was alive since the last great witch hunt of the
East.”
A bandicoot nibbled the corpse’s toe. He shooed it away, but it didn’t scoot far. Darkness waited
on the other side of the river. The shape of the dim had the form of a crane patient in the water.
The town was its prized fish.