The Lesser Dead

Chapter 1

Malik Andrews was completely unrecognizable by the time they found his body. It had been nearly three weeks since anyone had heard from him, and authorities had seemed less than interested in locating him. I had expected this. Why would they bother looking for somebody who was a complete nobody to them?

The "missing" signs some of the boys had posted around town during the three week search for our friend displayed the image of a young, smiling brown-skinned man with a round face, beaming briwn eyes, and dyed golden dreadlocks. That was how we all knew Malik. What the officers brought me down to the cororners office to help identify on that later Summer afternoon did not resemble him at all.

At least, that's what I tried to convince myself of as the medical examiner reached to peel back the thin white sheet covering Malik's body.

Underneath the flourescently lit dimness of the room, I had trouble adjusting my eyes.

"Are you sure you're ok to do this?" the examiner asked, seeing the distant look of dread on my face.

I nodded.
"This isn't my first time doing this, unfortunately."

It was an ugly truth, and it didn't mean I felt anymore prepared for what I was about to see, but I was one of the few people who could actually make the identification.

The examiner pulled the sheet down to the dead man's waist, exposing his painfully familar golden locks and bare tattooed chest.

A stab of shock hit me in the same area of my chest as where Malik's tattooed angel wings featured prominently upon his.

Confirmation was immediate from those traits alone, but I couldn't help looking at his face, trying to distinguish some aspect of the always-grinning 19-year-old I had known for nearly five years.

Instead, all I saw was a bloated human head, skin so discolored that it had taken on a purple-ish hue, two blackened eyes that were swollen shut, and puffy blue lips that had split open with several broken teeth protruding out.

His chest was sallow, making it look as if his tatooed flesh was barely a layer from the bone. His stomach was distended to such a degree that it looked like someone had stuffed it full rocks, and the stretched skin had turned a leathery black.

He barely looked human, and perhaps I could have succeeded for a short while in convincing myself that this was someone else, but that damned hair and tattoo were unmistakable.

He had been found floating near the pier on the southside of town where he had probably been for most of the time he was missing. Someone had spotted what looked to be a naked body smacking up against a wood pier post in the middle of a clear sunny day.

Two days later they called me, requesting that come downtown to identify my friend. I wondered if I had been the first person they called or if the other guys were just too afraid or in denial to do it. I had nearly declined myself, but I knew doing so would likely mean Malik's remains would sit in the county morgue for weeks or months unclaimed if I didn't do it.

Now it was plain to me that the search was over, and it had ended in just the way all of us feared.

This was indeed my friend Malik Andrews laying before me. Broken, battered, bloated, and showing signs of advance decomposition, there was still no denying it was him.

I forced my eyes away from the grosteque sight and focused on the shiny waxed floor.

"That's him," I choked out. "That's Malik."

"Are you certain?" the examiner asked, as if inviting me for an even closer examination.

"It's him, alright?" I shot back.