Exanimate
by Katherine Souza
A blue jay cawed, capturing the atmosphere in words better than I could, and I was alone; me, my body, and the rest of existence.
How melodramatic, said my body. It was correct.
But I was right! At least in this moment. I could be right for one moment.
What do you want? A ribbon? My body was often exasperated like this. I was its paired soul, neither of us consenting to the co-dependent bond. I wondered why I was burdened with such a broken animal.
If matter and energy were finite, yet space and time are not, then where on the crossroads sits the soul? Finity or infinity? Is finity a word?
The autumnal breeze made my arm hairs stand attentive at that nothing time, that empty space. There is a solace in hearing everything sleep for a few months. After all, there are no booming sounds, blinding lights, and long days to chip away at my focus.
My body groaned for a jacket, so I trudged inside, leaves crunching under my feet. I felt more alive than humans usually are, but that was ridiculous, said my body, your heart is beating the same as in summer.
My dog, Bam, licked my hand and panted.
My dad once joked people are not as alive as they used to be, which I thought at the time was ridiculous: a romanticization from a generation holding onto heroism and patriotism. It mutated into a discussion on the ethics of breeding, and whether humans were domesticating themselves into an ape equivalent of pugs. Bam wasn’t a pug; probably for the best, considering pugs made me sad. They all have scoliosis. Talk about a broken animal body.
Why was Bam’s soul given to the wrong animal? One he didn’t seem fond of, either. When we walked he’d show forced interest in the squirrels, the way someone at a party who didn’t like alcohol might do with a drink . He knew he should be interested, but never was. A cat would leap from the bushes and relieve Bam of the social pressure.
Dogs weren’t as alive as they used to be.
“Why did I come inside?” I said aloud.
Bam misheard it as “Let’s go outside”, squatting on his arms. No one else had been home in hours and his poor dog body was aching to go out. His soul felt so many things, but his body could only whine and beg. The leash was on the counter between some unlit candles which reeked of ‘apple pie’. I liked them; they gave an unspoken anticipation of holidays yet celebrated.
You’ll just be tired those days too, mocked my body.
Bam waited as I put on his checkered jacket which was a bit too small, but he was getting older and would tremble without it. After clipping his leash, I remembered why I came inside and found my sweat jacket: a dirty thing bearing the emblem of the lacrosse team I played with for two seasons. Lacrosse took too much time, too much energy. The jacket still fit, however, and had a spacious front pocket. The moment of darkness while pulling it over my head detonated a visceral awareness.
“Bam, what are you inside of that dog body?”
He panted and looked around; the question was too much for him to handle right now. No matter. When we walked outside he had already forgotten it.
It was around 4:30, but as Bam and I trundled around on the crisp afternoon, we could have mistaken it for the 25th hour, a nevertime. Thankfully there were no squirrels to put Bam in awkward situations. The sun illuminated everything well enough through the cold overcast, but still the street lights flickered. No one was outside, but every once in a while a porch light buzzed on, breaking the illusion that it was just me and Bam in the world of the living, which I preferred to knowing there were dozens of souls and bodies a mere brick wall from us.
Did those souls get along better with their bodies? Did they give each other awards for accomplishments?
“#1 Body” written in gold on blue ribbon.
“My other soul drives a mustang!” on a cheap mug.
And so on.
I decided souls must be finite, like energy and matter, but exist outside of time and space. Our bodies were the caretakers of a confused creature. The human body had the audacity to let souls try to make sense of things.
I was jolted out of my realization by Bam sniffing a deflated-football-sized mass wedged in the curb. It was a heaving opossum, blood caked on its mouth and nose. I knelt and pet Bam for being a good dog and met the opossum’s eyes. What could I do? For a moment its soul exceeded its body and I was overwhelmed with its plea.
“Help them.”
Our gaze broke and it continued rasping. Should I cry or call someone or put it in the bushes to die in peace? A blue jay in the oak above us jeered at our situation.
Whining and yelping, Bam was just as distraught as me, but he had figured out the opossum’s dying wish, sticking his nose into its bloated belly pouch and pulling out one small baby.
“Holy shit.”
I took the baby from him. He pulled out a second, fuzzier than the prior, and waited for me to grab it too; and after he pulled out the third, the dying mother looked at me with glossed over eyes and let out its final breath.
What kind of soul deserves an opossum body?
What kind of soul deserves to lose its opossum body?
The babies smelled bad, their wiry fur pressed against their skin, and one of them started making a dry, heaving noise. I stuffed the silent one into my jacket pocket, took the third from Bam, and did the same.
“It’s okay, Screams, it’s okay,” I said to the second hairy one I had just named Screams.
Screams kept crying, letting me know it was not okay. A human could never properly console a baby opossum. I stuffed it into my pocket. No one was around to witness this, only Bam, the blue jay, and me. An overwhelming rage consumed me toward whoever had hit the mother opossum and left it on the curb to die. Bam felt the same way, his brow furrowed. I grabbed his leash and we continued on the walk.
Perhaps it was the sparse, askew Halloween decorations, or the cricket that would intermittently stop its song out of embarrassment, but the neighborhood itself felt like it was mourning.
Did opossum souls become a new opossum?
Was there a limited supply of opossum souls?
I heard on the news the other day opossum populations are dropping, yet they didn’t seem any less alive than I imagined them to be thirty years ago, before I was born. Maybe they received an abundance of souls, since there were less bodies to fill.
Bam lowered his head and raised one ear to the blue jay’s cawing. It took a crow screaming its own proclamations to catch my attention, and it dawned on me then that it was dusk. Time to return.
Once home, I took off my jacket and found a box. I put Bam’s unused bed into it and then the babies, Screams returning to its namesake. I turned on the space heater, set the box near it, undressed Bam, and shuffled outside.
I wept under the darkening sky. Not in a gross way, but the closest word was ‘awe’. How was it, on a planet of 8 billion people, that one of them went out of their way to kill it and I had to watch it die? There are too many people and not enough souls to fill them. I shivered, once again without my jacket. The crow sounded out, stronger and deeper than the blue jay. It was a frequent annoyance where some epiphanous obsession would plague me for days, weeks, to scratch off like a poorly scabbed wound so conclusions would come out like blood.
That opossum tasted the conclusions too, when they came gushing out its mouth and nose.
I recalled a documentary thatmade me nauseous about a scientist who kept active, processing brain neurons on a plate to play flight simulators. They were alive and learning but never had a body. Their whole reality was to prove a point; to fly a plane which did not really exist. My eyes welled for those poor neurons stuck in the most broken bodies; maybe my soul was lucky. The scientist even bemoaned that one had died recently. I wondered if its soul was relieved.
My body awkwardly interrupted to ask for food. I blinked the tears dry and returned inside. Prophetic. Was that what I was?
My body groaned.
Dinner consisted of leftover Chinese takeout my parents left and a soda I had bought as a reward for something I didn’t quite remember doing. As I ate at the counter, I turned on the TV, but the box had been tipped over.
“Bam?!” He must have taken the babies somewhere with his tendency to tuck things he liked into corners of the house. His head popped up in front of the couch. Bam was watching TV with the babies piled on his back. He looked like a fat opossum.
I retrieved the rest of the takeout and a small tupperware of dog food. I set the takeout in front of Bam and the tupperware on his back. The babies stirred, knocking over the container. They ate the pieces caught in Bam’s fur. He attacked the noodles.
More news about how shitty the world was and how many people died or were suffering. There was no way there were enough souls for 8 billion people. Portions must have been cut thin, and with every birth grew sparser and sparser. 900 million dogs. Did dogs and wolves share the same soul pool? Probably not; dogs are not as alive as they used to be and the news says wolves are making a comeback. I guess the world was not completely shitty.
I turned on my phone to call animal control, watching the screen flash texts from parents, notifications, and emails. Bam’s pleading eyes drew me away from the distractions. I set the phone aside. I could call them in half an hour.
Bam was at peace as the babies fell asleep. Their souls found their bodies only a few weeks ago. Bam found the babies only a couple of hours ago. It was a pretty big moment for a dog who found excitement from hiding drumsticks in coat closets.
“World’s best opossum dog” would be Bam’s ribbon.
But animal control came and went, my parents arrived home, and I went to bed. The stars twinkled outside my window and said your definition of life was too strict. The stars nodded in agreement with each other. I smiled at them. I bet they had wonderful tales to tell for how long they have lived. Did star souls like their bodies?
Quiet cold goaded my soul and my body said see you tomorrow, partner.
The following morning, sunnier but still quiet and dry, Bam and I decided to go for another walk, needing to get over what we went through. As we rounded the corner, we saw the dead opossum surrounded by three vultures that flew off. A brazen crow used the opportunity to pick at the entrails sprawled out like searching hands. The crow looked at me. I could not understand what it was trying to say. Bam and I continued with little regard for what we saw. No tears, not even disgust. I didn’t have the energy; Bam didn’t have the capacity.
I am positive my soul is stretched too thin.
Katherine Souza is a visual storyteller and writer currently living in Maine. She designs quests and characters for The Elder Scrolls Online, designed the Jabberwocky module for Northstar’s Paint the Roses, and her illustrations have appeared in several board and video games including Northstar’s Oceans. After writing for games for years, she’s excited to have her fiction debut with Cold Signal.
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