The warm sunlight shone onto his face, blinding him even through his shut eyelids, like being awoken by an alarm clock without a snooze button. The soil covered him partially as he sat up slowly, his joints aching from his slumber.
"Where am I" he stammered out, for nothing seemed familiar to the man, neither did his name, for he had no wallet, fingerprints had been meticulously smoothed, the removed skin nowhere to be seen.
He sat up, the dirt rolling off of his tattered clothes, the thought of what happened last night wasn't there, along with the rest of his life. He thought that he might have had a bit too much to drink last night, he started feeling around himself, finding a hole in his chest "well that's just great" he muttered to himself, the blood falling along the right of his body until reaching the deep brown earth turning it to the crimson was slow to get up, his joints aching mixed with the want to stay in the soothing cool soil as if waking up up in the middle of the frigid winter under the warm blankets.
The patch of dirt he was in was surrounded by corn and had been meticulously cut out as so it would be difficult to find his hiding started in the direction of the sun, he had no knowledge if it was morning or evening, so he walked just to find civilization in any sense.
After walking for awhile, he stumbled upon a body, laid out almost the same as he had been, but missing parts of itself, the smell of the corpse oozing its way into his lungs, making him wince in and gag out of the pain in the smell, with nothing to use to block the scent, he tore off a piece of a corn husk and held it to his face, yet the necrotic stench filled his lungs from the holes in the leaf. He gave up on on the attempt then saw the piercing blue eyes and went to close what was left of the eyelids. As he went to close them, they fell into what was left of the skull, some of the maggots in the eyes staining his hands with them and the darkened blood still coursing through them. He tried to brush the blood and maggots off his hand and back onto the home vessel, instead the flesh followed it, the lost skin almost wrapped around his hand, then he decided to rub the decaying flesh off onto one of the stalks, which worked after multiple attempts of it just taking a bit off of it, eventually he looked at what happened, the rotted skin almost like a gel against the green of the corn. After analysing the flesh, he turned back to the little bit left of the body, which more looked like a pile of parts, the skin around the stomach was gone, revealing a chasm of nothing but what was once a spine and the fluid remains of organs, the limbs had fat and muscle missing in places, the scalp was just gone, the skull caved the time he finished scanning the body a plane flew overhead, he decided to follow it towards civilization.
When he got out of the field, he made it to a lone worn down road that looked like many street races had happened there, the street was covered in trails of rubber burnt off of tires long gone. Then out of the blue he heard the sound of a semi rumbled down the highway towards him, without thinking he meandered to the middle of the street to get the truck to stop for him or he'd be killed for no reason, the greying road becoming a crimson splatter. Alas the truck saw him, leaving another tire mark along the road, the sound of the piercing shrill of brakes and tires being eaten away by the asphalt that time forgot about, with a final hiss, the behemoth of a vehicle came to a halt. He wandered up to the passenger door and stood on the steps, the man in the seat was a big burly guy who had the usual signs of a trucker, big burly bead, big gut"where are you going" he growled.
"Anywhere, I just need to find something out" he said, afraid of the response.
"Then get in, the names Bubba"he barked in his deep southern accent while the man from the corn clambered into the cab, "what's up with your clothes, they're a wreck". For the first time he really got to look at his clothes, or at least the rags that still had the smell of decomposing human.
"Just a rough day is all", he falsely chuckled
After many countless hours of listening to bubba's voice drone on and hum along to the old sounds of sad lone western songs and the hard rocking heavy metal, they reached the town and let the man from the corn get out of the truck with some new clothes, none of which would ever be small on him, and wander the tiny town that nobody bothered to put on a map let alone name, but some residents liked to call it hope, for they hoped to be able to one day get themselves onto a map, for their life to prosper and flourish, leaving a legacy, while others called it hell, due to the long hot summers where everyone wished for winter, the ice cold winters where snow would pile deep where they'd wait for spring, and the constant never ending storms and constant flooding, the only time it wasn't a nightmare was when it was the fall, it wasn't to cold or hot, it wasn't constantly raining, and the fair usually came around, sure it wasn't much, a ferris wheel and a merry-go-round, but it was still a breath of fresh air.
As he wandered in, the heat hit him square in the jaw, he wondered if it had been better if he had just kept the rags on him instead of the overly large shirt and jeans. A child walked up to him, a little girl "sir, would you mind helping me?"she asked him.
"What's the problem"he replied,feeling in his gut a regret of asking.
"Can you help me find my mommy and daddy?"she looked up at him, seeing her piercing blue eyes made him wonder about that body from in the field.
"How long have they been gone"
"Awhile, like a week"he could easily have guessed the father, but the mother was another story, yet he had an eerie feeling it had something to do with the solid grey brick of a building
"Ill help, but no promises."
Hours later, after finally buying clothes that fit him with what was left of the bills in his wallet, he made it to the building that had overlooked the tow, it looked new, a reminder that things change over years, since this building had no sign, yet it looked better than most in the town. He walked into it, the glass doors sliding smoothly along the grey marble floor, almost as if saying we know we're better than you, yet it didn't stop him, for he had no quarrel with whatever was going on. He just wanted to find to find the little girl's mother.
He wandered the building, there wasn't really a receptionist, just a desk that sat empty with a sign on it with "go ahead" emblazoned onto it. He thought it was weird at the time, but it just looked normal to him, the long corridor stretching as far as he could see, it smelled like farm animals were being kept there, the smell of animals who hadn't really been cared for resonating down the halls, then out of nowhere he heard what sounded like a woman screaming then being muffled. He started to run in that direction, banging on the walls until a wall flung open revealing a room of pregnant women being kept like cattle, they all turned towards the door, showing none had those piercing blue eyes like the child, he started to look around more though, they were lined wall to wall, caged almost in little pens. He walked to the back wall, pressed on it and it opened, this time leading to a room of corpses, yet the flies and maggots nowhere to be seen, he wandered the room, it was all women, he looked into each and every one of their eyes, until he came across one, a woman with piercingly perfect blue eyes like the little girl's eyes. He realized that she was an orphan. He left the room of corpses, freed the women, and wandered the building until he found an ornate wooden door that led to an office that looked almost out of place, it was oak almost everywhere, the floors, the walls, the ceiling was bare metal though, a titanium, with a large window at the back wall, and yet nobody sat in there, it seemed empty, until he saw why, a picture of him and a family on the desk.