Death of an Urban Hermit by Matthew Parker

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Read by Ben Crystal

Your body starts cooling down as soon as you die, at a rate of 1.5 degrees Celsius per hour. Rigor Mortis sets in after six hours. That’s a problem for me. I passed on in a chair, seven hours ago, and I don’t know how they plan to get me into a coffin when I’m not all flat. Can they reverse the stiffening somehow? Do Lenor do a corpse softener? I doubt it, although their sensual infusions range has done wonders on my jeans recently. I’m a man of small pleasures. I was a man of small pleasures.

 

After a few days the body loosens up naturally. It’s Wednesday and I’ve been here since Sunday. I should have called my mother more. If I’d been a good boy like my brother, and phoned regularly – not just when I needed money, or someone to moan at – then she’d be a lot more likely to realise that something was up by now. I should never have quit my job. I’d have colleagues to worry about me when I didn’t turn up for work. If I’d been friendlier with my housemates, then there’s a chance they’d have noticed that I haven’t left my room in three days. Sometimes you hear about people like me on the news, being found months after death, surrounded by mess and old newspapers, but they’re normally old women from rural communities. I was twenty-four years old and living in Kilburn. This sort of thing isn’t meant to happen to people like me.

I’ve come to realise that people are going to think this was suicide. “He couldn’t have been so stupid as to accidentally overdose on paracetamol” They’ll say. And they’ll blame themselves for not spotting the signs, and then they’ll blame me for being selfish – for taking the coward’s way out; and they’ll make my death all about them. I was always a bit of a wallflower, but I’d like for the events surrounding my passing away to mainly be about me.

If I’m lucky they might remember the time in university when I took so much pro-plus that I stayed awake for 60 straight hours. Also, if they knew me at all, they must surely realise that I’d never pass up an opportunity to leave a note. Maybe they’ll check my internet history. I’d never off myself without deleting a significant portion of that.

God I’m bored. Someone needs to find me soon; being a ghost is not as much fun as you’d imagine. I can’t wander the earth or pull any poltergeist style pranks. I’m stuck here, in this room, unable to do much of anything. I don’t know what’s going to happen after they find me, but something will change, surely, I can’t be stuck in this room for eternity.

My housemate is having sex and I can hear it through the ceiling – that familiar slow arrhythmic creaking. Were I alive I’d pop outside to smoke a cigarette and it would all be over by the time I got back in. I can’t figure out how to leave the room though. The thing about ghosts being able to walk through walls is nonsense. I can, through a real force of will, float around the room, but as soon as I come up against anything solid my spectre gets stuck. Being trapped in a room with nothing to do is starting to get to me. I’ve always been lazy, but this is too much.

After a week the skin starts to blister and fall off a bit. The body goes purple and starts to smell putrid, like death, although my room already smelled pretty rotten; I was a young single man. It’s Saturday. I wonder what’s in this week’s New Yorker. My landlord slips a note under my door to tell me I owe him rent, offering a small ray of hope. He seems pretty mad at me; his handwriting’s all messy and he’s drawn a little frowny face at me. I don’t know how many days it will be before he comes into my room, but I guess I’ll be found within a week.

Being alone with yourself for seven full days and no sleep is a demoralising experience. Seventy-two hours used to be my limit, and even then it was only if I was binge watching DVD box sets. I wish I’d done more. My eulogies are going to be dreadful. What can they possibly say about me that makes me sound even faintly interesting? “Paul loved doing crosswords. He sometimes finished the one in the Observer, but never sent it in to win a dictionary. Paul loved television. He frequently cancelled social engagements to finish a series he’d illegally downloaded off of bit torrent. Paul loved to make jokes, even though nobody ever laughed at them.” I was so boring, maybe they won’t even bother throwing me a funeral.

How did I end up like this? Or that, I should say. It’s not the death that’s bothering me, so much as the life that came before it. I used to be fun, I swear, but things fell apart when I moved to London. I didn’t know anyone, and I couldn’t figure out how to make friends. My best friend from school was a guy who lived three minutes walk away. That’s all it takes when you’re young, “Hey, we’re proximate to each other,” you’d say, “let’s form a lifelong bond.” It doesn’t seem to work like that in the big smoke. There’s too many people, any they’re all smarter and funnier and better looking than me. The competition’s too much for a shy kid from Northamptonshire. So I gave up; got fatter, and dumber, and boringer; to the point where the only conversations I can contribute towards are ones about bus timetables or new Lenor products. It’s not that I never tried to improve myself. I did the occasional jog, and read books by French philosophers. I even made a bucket list last year, but did I ever cross anything off? Yes, once. “Number 7, try eating tripe.” It wasn’t worth it at all.

After two weeks gases in the stomach build to a point of near explosion. Other parts of the body start to swell too. My testicles look like a pair of old-fashioned leather footballs. The landlord is definitely very angry with me now. He’s left a couple more notes under my door, the last one was a single expletive in all caps. I left my phone on charge before I died so the power hasn’t gone out. Nobody’s texted me since before I passed away. My being incommunicado for half of a month doesn’t concern them at all. They’re probably glad of the break. I’ve had a few emails, but they’re mostly from twitter. Have I considered following Danny Baker? That sort of thing.

My favourite housemate – which is to say, my quietest housemate – is knocking on my door. “Are you there?” she’s saying, “I’m doing a laundry and you said I needed to try your fabric softener.” She tries the knob and opens the door. I stop to check her reaction, and she deals with the shock admirably. She takes her phone out and rings 999. Then she finds mine and rings my mother, consoling her for a few minutes. Then she gets her phone out again, takes a picture, and uploads it to instagram.

With the door open I can make my escape, I go into the kitchen and leave through the window, which has been left open thanks to my worst housemate’s fondness for burning his food. The fresh air feels good, which is a surprise. I haven’t felt anything for a fortnight, assumed I couldn’t. The sensation might be psychosomatic, but I love it either way.

How long the skeleton takes to decompose depends on the acidity and temperature of the soil. It can be anywhere from twenty-five to five hundred years. The point’s moot. I was cremated, and scattered off the top of the Wrekin in Telford, which my family and I used to climb on Sunday afternoons. Death’s not so bad, as it happens. I got to see my funeral, and it was really sweet. People found things to say about me. Nobody thought it was a suicide, I didn’t die from an overdose, but had a massive aneurism, which I guess is why I took all the paracetamol in the first place.

I still spend a lot of time by myself; it’s pretty hard to hang out with people when all your friends are corporeal and you’re not, but I’ve seen the Grand Canyon and the Northern Lights. I’ve been to the moon, and to the bottom of the ocean. All the things from my bucket list.

© Matthew Parker, 2013

Matthew Parker was born in the West Midlands, but spent most of his formative years on the Hampshire-Surrey border. He has a degree in Maths & Philosophy which he has never used. He is currently living in Hounslow.

Ben Crystal is an actor, writer, and producer. His ensemble can be found at www.passioninpractice.com and his latest books, Springboard Shakespeare, at www.springboardshakespeare.com