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The sky has changed colour and glows orange, red, purple and yellow. Fog lingers in the air, it is cool and damp. Few people are out and those who have ventured outside walk past me with disdain. Avoid me.
My remains lie in a hole. It is dirty. Little stones, drowned ants and beetles and the dirt of the road lie at the bottom, inside me. It was cruel to have to watch the ant in its death throes. To have to witness it. It wriggled for minutes, squirmed. Getting slower and slower. Sluggish. Until it began to sink down. Then, it still turned slightly, the legs twitching in agony, rotating it around and around and around. Now the ant is bedded at the bottom. It's fucking disgusting to have to live with this corpse. Little by little the body has disintegrated. For the first few hours the chitinous shell was hard and smooth. Then it slowly became soft, squishy, sticky. Through cracks in the carapace, I involuntarily came into contact with the innards. I can never pull myself together, hold myself back. My nature commands me to spread out whenever and wherever possible. An iron law that cannot be circumvented.
I've never been able to stand organs. Now a part of me was in non-stop contact with them, skin to skin. Twenty-four-seven. What had been only a squishy matter before now merged with me. Dissolved and became part of me. An unloved part that I would like to cut off. Have it operated out like a malignant tumour. I have felt filthy ever since. Mucky. Dirty. Not only on the surface, but especially on the inside. It's beginning to affect my psyche.
So I cling to the beautiful things in life. The bright, colourful sky distracts me from my agony. The last few days consisted of an endless sequence of sunshine and heat. I was able to recover a little during the short nights, but early in the morning the sun was slamming down on me again. A bit of sun is very nice, it warms me from the inside. I could sprawl around in the sun forever. However, the last few days have no longer been pleasant. No light breeze, no beautiful spring days. Instead, a brutal heat was bearing down on the city, driving people into their flats. And when people were coming outside after all, they hardly moved at all.
It is torture for me. I could neither retreat into the shade, nor seek refuge, nor beg for help. Helplessly, I had to watch parts of me evaporate. It is a slow process that is less painful than expected. Well. It is painful to have lost a part of you at the end of the day. Sometimes I've tried to imagine this happening to people. A man steps outside the door into the sun and his fingertips slowly dissolve. Fingernails fade into nothingness. Not one hair, not one drop of blood remains to testify that there was once an actual being. A body part that no longer exists. A woman whose legs have scorch marks that continue to eat into her body on their own. None of the people affected would scream. It would be ... normal. In the evening they would simply have one limb less, that's it. They would simply cease to exist at some point. Just be dead.
Beautiful things! There are so many beautiful things! - I recite this mantra to myself almost every hour. Supposedly you can influence your mind that way. It didn’t help me much in the last few days when I saw how I was shrinking more and more. I used to be almost four slabs long at the beginning, now I fit easily on one. Actually, I fit into a tiny corner of that slab.
The beautiful things. Quietly a melody wafts in. It hangs mournfully in the air along with the mist. They envelop me comfortingly, the tones. They lie heavy on me, like a blanket, as the sun breaks through the mist and scatters the last of the night. The melody does not break off, it guides me, consoles me and stays with me as I vanish into thin air.