Anon

He sat with the dead, his back to the open coffin. The collar of his suit was undone, escaping the bounds of ordered symmetry. One lapel came up like a dog’s pointed ear, and the other, un-ironed, hid itself beneath his coat. He had a flask with him—it was appropriate, some thought—but had hardly tasted whatever spirit waited in the silvery darkness. The open mouth of the flask waited.

“You owe me,” he said. There was no one left in the chapel. The dead was silent. “What am I to do now? I am undone.” He pointed, waving his flask before him at the empty pews, “They are all gone. Come and gone. And gone. All gone. With their veils and their suits. Their silence. Their cries. O what mourners have come for you.” Here he tilted his head back, resting it against the solid wood of the coffin. “and I of them, weeping without sound. I saw your friend,” he remembered, sitting up. “Very fat man. Big beard. Old saint Nick, I presume. Whatever his name. He’s greedy. Not for money, no. He knows money is nothing now. Did he not see into the coffin too? What a cure death is for evil, what a breeding for evil! Aye, what man can covet money in a chapel looking at a coffin. He was fat, but there’s room in it for him. He sees that. But greed, what a wonderful thing it is, a chameleon, ever changing its colors to fit its humor. He wants no money, but time, he’d have time if he could. I saw him looking at me, his eyes so heavy, but hungry. And I so young, but I looking into the coffin too. Time, what’s the difference between an hour or a thousand years if it ends, if the coffin’s open for us, ready with more room? You, he, and I will fit nicely, in times to come, and there will still be room. What enlargements can be gained to choke that devouring maw, to break time, defeat death? I see a shadow,” he said.

He was not drunk, though anyone overhearing, seeing the flask, seeing the redness of his eyes, he would seem very drunk. But, he did see the shadow there, silent, in the corner.

“You,” he sneered. “I’d have words for you if only there’d be a point to it. There’s nothing that can fill this hole, is there? All the theories and philosophies fall into you and are silent. Are you ever sated? Was there a before? Was there not some time when you did not consume? Were you hungry then? Before anything was, were you starving? Is it better now that there is some light for you to suck at? Will you not be filled? We are ever pouring our blood into you, and for what hope? We are born in your teeth, and it is only for us to be chewed to your liking before we’re swallowed.”

The shadow was unmoved by his words, and he was tired of speaking them. Finally, he lifted the long waiting flask to his lips, felt the burning drink tingling his teeth. Then, in his breast, the warmth spread. Resting his head against the coffin once more, he said:

“I’ll follow you anon.”