ethics become aesthetics

There is nothing remarkable in a corpse—the stillness, the stench. The slow seeping of fluids, each body rendering itself unto the earth the same as the last. He finds no horror in it now, and little sorrow.

But this is no mere corpse. This is Alex, and Jack feels his death as though it were the first.

Behind him, Mary begins to weep.

Nausea burns in his stomach like whisky, an insistent heat that climbs up beneath his ribs as rage. He despises the God that enacted this horror, despises Alex for leaving him and Claire for failing him, despises Mary and Mary’s child and the life they will have without him, or the life they’ll be subjected to with him, and most of all, he despises himself.

His fingers dig into Alex’s throat, and his thumb crushes Alex’s lip. Beneath the thin pad of fat, he feels out the hard ridge of Alex’s teeth, rolling his thumb forward so that it presses down on the very edge of his bottom incisors. Deeper, then—he works his finger into Alex’s mouth, which is cool and only marginally damp. Jack inhales sharply, his hand spasming, and forces his thumb farther, seeking the wet heat that he has so often imagined.

It is not an easy intrusion. Alex’s muscles have tensed since his passing, and he resists Jack in death as he never did in life.