SOLIPSE

Emblazoned with a four, a numeral made of knives, having one more than necessary, the coffin hums with motor vibration. Inside a cranium is being cleaned by suckling drapery; fringed arrays of tubular frills, siphoning away the meat from maxilla and zygomatic; from occipital and temporal, with the loving selection of delicate organisms filtering and feeding. It feeds on the flanks, the cheeks of the body. It feeds on the arms, the legs, the feet. It feeds on the face, and the cheeks on the face are the cheeks of the face, like the flanks are the cheeks of the body. Cheeks that would rise in a too-generous smile (never quite overcoming the eyes) are hollowed out, along with all the meat of the body, in time. In time, only the churning fist of maggots will be left unmolested by the sarcophagic machinery-- only larvae alone are fit to deal with the heart inside. Hidden, snuffling detectors meter the isolated decay, waiting for a specific molecular threshold to be reached inside the chamber, to sound the electronic bell. They have ordained a sulking moratorium then-- a known quantity of time, prescribed at the moment of death. What will happen when the bell tolls?

The room conspires to arrange a kind of wake for the body inside. The bed is drunk already. The curtains sweat and sob. The TV performs  a eulogy in Korean. The clutter on the dresser mills about in a stupor, searching for a face in the mirror. The mirror shows the shining flanks of a chestnut horse flickering across its width, knots twitching, long black switch of tail sweeping for flies. Whatever hills outside muster up an echo of a smile, like those devoured cheeks used to smile-- the skull has eclipsed them at last-- broken free of its cage. All the objects in the room quiver in the static mania of a death party, awaiting the arrival of the guest. At last, a final figure enters through the door. There was no knock. A discarded phone ringtones an organ fugue, and clop-clip go the figure's steps, until it stands in the middle of everything in the room. It reaches out from somewhere in its cookie-cutter angel silhouette, caresses the coffin with a black gloved hand. It traces the four of blades, curved and rigid and glistening with stoic enumeration. No dust collects. No spores plume in a slice of sun. The sun is low over the valley the hills squeezed together. Golden hairs protrude from the back of the figure's hand, through the glove, and chime with the ray the curtains allow through. A rough bag of skin hangs from below its belt, swaying and heavy with leaden mysteries coursing inside it.

The figure is not death, but a Groom for the body. The body, rotting, breaking, running, might be confused for a horse if it were seen. It could be ridden if the lid happened to fly open. It would rear up and whinny and flash in a bowling shock, sending the tenants of the room into panic. But the Groom is the one being ridden. The Groom is the one being ridden by an unseen rider filling the space between shade and shape like an overlaid skeleton. Like a glove of animated light. The groom traces the four with elongating claws. Spines pierce the silhouette like spears of stiff, laminated hairs, punching into the walls, knocking curios off the dresser, fracturing the mirror. The mirror shows a hundred horses, all a-dance in disarray. The Groom whirls, ragged, pushed and pulled by the anchored spikes. It is cast to every corner of the room in neck-breaking, whipping violence. The TV gasps, vomits static. The curtains fly open and the computerized buzzer caws with a carrion-bird's dry cackle, having snuffed its target scent. The phone jitters to the floor and tumbles onto its back. On its screen there is an image of a black flower blooming in night. A darkling bloom against a dark background. The room withers. The Groom is ejected through the window, still connected to the puppet spines, that drain out as it falls, twisting and thinning, like an inverted parachute. One by one the anchors fail, snatching chunks of wall and wood out the mouth of the window. There is no more sound.

The room recedes toward a vanishing point. The coffin remains shut. Like the epiglottis covers the trachea. Like the back of the throat, when a head swallows something down.