Phenomenon 45 - "Pseudo-Hypothermia"

When I was a child, Mother took me out for a walk along the coasts of Normandy. Father had just died two days prior in a work accident. It was a day in early January, so it was cold. I liked it, because there were no other people there.

I felt bad about being happy, because when Mother squeezed my hand, I could feel that she was silently weeping.

We were barely able to scrape together enough money for the funeral services. I remember feeling more bored than sad during the funeral. They allowed us to look inside the casket, and so I did.

He looked dead, not asleep, just dead.

They couldn’t bury him yet, because it was too cold and the dirt was too hard to dig through. So they had to keep him in a freezer until spring came, the thought of which bothered me a lot. For a long time I vividly imagined his gray face in a freezer, preserved like a butchered husk of an animal. It greatly upset me, and for a while, it seemed to have caused me to develop an irrational fear of frozen raw meat kept in refrigeration units. Funny how these things happen.

The last time I saw the snow was when I worked in a tall commercial building. The building was smooth and gray and monotonous and cold. I thought about dying quite often back then. I thought about what other people would think if I died; how many people would’ve shown up to my funeral and cried over me, how many would’ve left flowers at my grave after years past. I thought about the look on my boss’ face when he saw the result of his horrible mistreatment, rejoicing in this idea that this cold, dead body that would haunt him in his sleep for years to come. Then I thought about my mother, because she might be the only person who would miss me.

I stood, sipping on a cup of coffee by the railing on the roof of that dreadful building. I peered down at the city, seeing if I could spot home somewhere in the distance, where the necks of construction cranes and the chutes of factories spitting billows of white smoke perched over the horizon. I left my coffee on the ground, climbed over to the other side of the railing, and that was when it began to snow.

My dead body will lie naked on a cold metal table. It will be dissected like a bloated, upturned cadaver of a frog. A group of men in surgical masks will loom over it, with shiny silver tools in their gloved hands. They will not be delicate. They will hack through muscle, saw past bone, and turn the body inside out, spilling it of its secrets.

Inside the body, they will find stuff resembling the shapes and colors of organs. They will be just that—shapes, forms, fluids and sinew. Worthless things. When all of it is gorged out, they will not find me. A vast emptiness has taken over my body, and it has evicted me from it.

What’s left of it will be kept in a freezer.

The CRT television buzzes to life. A logo on the screen reads “anamnêsis”. The logo remains onscreen for a few seconds.

Then, a grainy landscape of a snowy forest fades into view. The camera is stationary, as if it were taken from CCTV footage. The dead limbs of the trees sway slightly. There’s something too familiar about it.

A cloaked figure appears, stumbling around as if he were disoriented. He loses his balance suddenly, and falls forward with his palms outstretched. An edited-in, forced laugh track plays.

He pulls himself to his feet. Not even bothering to pat the snow off of his clothes, he continues walking, each step forward a tremendous effort.

He falls over again, this time face first in the snow. The same laugh track plays again. He rolls over, suddenly alert, and begins to undress. A louder laugh track can be heard. It continues on for the next few moments, where he struggles to remove his belt, and then gives up.

With his remaining strength, uses his hands to burrow into the snow. After managing to form a small ditch, he curls up like an animal and closes his eyes. Fake applause and cheering is heard as the screen fades to black.

Someone once told me, “Heat builds tolerance in a man. The cold breaks him.”

One day, Mother collapsed and I went to see her at the hospital. It was a heart attack. I had never seen her look so unlike herself, weak and fragile. A tube ran through her thin forearm, and she was so pale I could see the veins rooted in her skin. Her cheeks were sunken, and her hair a knotted mess. She saw me, and I went over to touch her trembling hand. I felt a lump in my throat, because I saw from the look in her eyes that she didn’t want me to see her like this.

After a week, she recovered as if nothing had happened in the first place. I saw her talking to her friends; she was smiling from ear to ear, and her laugh was as lively as it always was. I had always thought, for some naive reason, that I would die before she did—that she was the type of person who, no matter the obstacle, had enough sheer will crammed in her thin body to last an infinite lifetime.

I hope that she’s waiting for me.

In my dreams, I return to that pale winter beach. I’m always alone. Sometimes I think I can hear Maman’s voice coalescing with the waves. I think the sea is more alive than I am.

I think the last time I’d felt warmth was when I was unaware, when I was unseeing, when I was unborn. An ancient reptilian instinct whispers to me that I must burrow to return to that warmth.

Maman always had warm hands. Warmer than anyone.