'Burial Rights' by Richard Oxenham
Posted by sregan | Filed under prose
The insects came ticking, buzzing and glowing from the edge of the forest. Some scuttled on frail legs, while others hovered overhead.
They could sense the corpse, decomposing slowly in a shallow grave, settled nectar lining their antennae.
They welcomed the healthy breeze that had slid down the mountainside; it had gathered the scents of the Sakura and Matsu trees before awakening the decay, carrying it towards the fringes of the forest.
The body was buried across the pathway to a Shinto shrine and its impurity stirred the soil and air.
Swarming, the insects burrowed eagerly through the thin fold of earth, and the corpse was besieged and blanketed by hosts of spiny legs and bulbous bodies.
The prime pickings of the face and scalp were taken by the arachnids; a Giant Wood spider wrapped its thorny legs around the contours of the head, while smaller yellow and white varieties nestled in the ear and nose cavities.
A Stag beetle lumbered through the long grass, overtaken by a multitude of Tiger beetles, their metallic green, bronze and copper shells reflecting the high sun before entering the earth. Woodlice burrowed passages in the soil for the slowly descending worms. They clung to the body and undulated in waves between the bones of the ribcage.
A number of centipedes coiled around the spinal column while soldier ants consumed the cracked surrounding flesh.
Swallowtail butterflies drifted in a cloud from the canopies of the Take forest, settling upon the topsoil above the body, forming an iridescent mantle.
Only a single, deep blue and green damselfly kept her distance.
She balanced upon a risen stone, feeling the distant footfalls of an approaching army along her sensitive legs.
The Swallowtail butterflies left the soil when the horizon became a bright band. Hundreds of yellow banners rose in a tide, more mesmerizing than their dazzling patterned wings.
The damselfly felt the first flecks of rainfall patter the stone she balanced upon. The grey rock became darker, black and heavier in the loose soil.
The banners grew and their symbols became vivid. The sound of rain striking steel armour, banners billowing against a resurged wind and heavy marching footfalls created an elemental percussion.
The insects began to filter from beneath the soil, forming their own army.
The ants carried leaves in their pincers, raising them up like banners.
The centipedes littered the moist soil in uncountable prints and the rain splashed from the ceramic carapaces of the Tiger beetles.
They'd stripped the body clean and the saturated soil was ebbing away, exposing the skeleton.
- Richard Oxenham
