Start Fiction:
It all started when I was nine, the first time I saw a dead body; swollen, bloated, discolored, deformed; its open mouth let out a silent scream that echoes in my ears still.
I tried all sorts of things the last twenty years to get the body out of my head, to stop seeing its face in the shadows, my dreams. Mostly, I just didn't sleep, and when I did, in spurts, it was always during the day with the blinds open.
It seems such a thing would pass for most people rather than linger on, festering. An average life requires attendance of funerals, which mine did. But a made up corpse never struck me the same; they never instilled the same intensity of fear, disgust, terror as a half mangled body, exposed to the elements for several summer days. Not to mention critters taking nibbles here and there.
Maybe I just needed to see a body like that once again to deal with such a scene as a adult with a rational mind, with an understanding of the human body, the nature of disease and decay. But where was I going to come across such a horrific scene other than in the confines of my mind?
End Fiction.
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