Imagine You Died Whilst Reading This

“Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.”

― Haruki Murakami

Let’s say some sort of immediate disease struck you into a fatally feverous state within the next five seconds.

I don’t know what you’re doing right now. You might be sitting down at a desk trying to get some work done, lying down in your bed relaxing, in transit between two places or in any other situation which the irrational human mind could conjure. What if, at the end of these five seconds, your heart collapsed into itself, your eyes went cold and every supporting muscle in your body submitted its reigns to gravity. You would fall onto whatever is supporting you like a sloppy pile of meat… but what next?

There are two possibilities of what happens next – one more likely than the other. The likely one is that you’re within distance of another human being, who’ll soon enough rush to your aid and attempt to resuscitate your sagging corpse. Someone will also telephone robotically for an ambulance. There would be a kaleidoscopic mixture of emotions in the air. You’d probably be brought to the hospital to fulfil formalities and your lifeless body would be lobbed into a frosty morgue to rest. Maybe an autopsy would be performed on you. That’s the most plausible line of action – the discovery of your body and appropriate measures to deal with your death formally.

We are almost always surrounded by people, but what if we weren’t? This is the second, more thrilling possibility. Say, nobody sees or discovers your body once you’ve waned into a crumpled pile of humid skin and bone. For purposes of imagery, let’s confine this idea to you in one room, sitting at a desk by your lonesome.

The five seconds are up. Your head smacks the desk with a dull noise.

1.      Mortis, Mortis, Mortis...

What happens first is that your blood pools into portions of your body under the influence of gravity. This stagnation of the blood causes a bruise-like discoloration – livor mortis. Around four hours later your body’s muscular tissues become bizarrely firm from the collected blood. This is called rigor mortis. Your body is constantly losing heat to the atmosphere and the temperature of your carcass drops. This is known as algor mortis.

2.     Self-cannibalism

Your intestines will teem of living microorganisms, living even after your death, slowly breaking down dead intestine cells. Simultaneously, chemicals and enzymes will be released by a decrease in chemical changes and pH, causing your cells to lose their structural integrity and to collapse, resulting in your body self-digesting itself – known medically as autolysis.

3.     Oxygen depletion

Any oxygen remaining in your body is exhausted by aerobic microbes and cellular metabolism. The depletion of oxygen results in prime conditions for anaerobic organism proliferation. These organisms multiply and consume the ammonia, hydrogen sulphide and carbohydrates present in your body.

4.     Bloat

Anaerobic metabolism results in the decomposition of tissues. This releases gas and green substances and discolours your naturally supple skin tone to a blistered blue. The accumulation of these gases in your body’s cavity causes abdominal distention, making your torso swell and your tongue loll out. The pressure from the gases may even cause seams in your body to split. Tepid fluid discharges from your nostrils and mouth, filling clefts and seeping out in a stream of liquid stickiness across your pasty skin, blessing your complexion with a repulsive sheen of ashen sweat.

5.     Breeding ground

There probably aren’t enough insects in your room for this to happen, but if there were enough, maggots would hatch and sup on the tissues of your body. Hair would detach from skin. Ruptures in the body carved out by maggots would fill with a stream of fluids to escape to the outside environment. These ruptures would be a two-way street, allowing oxygen into the body to create a favourable environment for aerobic microorganisms and fly larvae.

6.     Private pool

Ever dreamed about quick weight loss? The next stage would allow your dead body to lose its mass exponentially, with cloying decomposition fluid leaking out into the environment, filling the gaps between your computer’s keyboard keys like a tiny Venetian waterway. The fluids surrounding your body would accumulate, resulting in a Cadaver Decomposition Island (CDI). Your clothes would become saturated with bodily fluid, which would slowly evaporate into the air, creating a sultry stench.

7.      Drying off

Your body has diminished quickly, and in the advanced decay stage, decomposition slows down as there is barely any material left. Finally, all that is left is just dry skin, bones and cartilage. If your desk is exposed to sunlight then the remaining bodily elements will become bleached and dry. Your body will eventually skeletonise into a shoddy structure of weakened sinew and bone.

This would all happen quite swiftly if you’re in the tropics. Your room (assume the door and windows are shut) would soon become a festering site, the air layered with the smell of hydrogen sulphide (odours resembling rotten eggs) and some traces of thiols (odours resembling garlic). Any living human would gag on the thick aroma of putrid decay.

*

It’s all very exciting to think about this, and you can call me curious or sadistic, but the complexity of our bodies is stupendous. The tiniest microbes and cells and enzymes conspire together to corrode your cadaver down to its rudiments. Isn’t it incredible? We’re so lucky to be the drivers of these vessels, the possessors of such intricacy, and the sharers of ourselves with countless other organisms. To think, we’re so bound by our outward propensities, we fail to recognise our inward complexities. The world around us bogs us down to a state of unilateral weariness, and it isn’t that we should think we are so unique or special, but it’s important to realise there’s more to life than what we do and what happens to us.

There may be more to life than we think, but there is definitely more to death than we think. The denouement of our masterful lives ends and recedes with the help of those tiny organisms we share our body with. Our deaths are so inspiring. We end with timed care and craft, and it may not even matter how our bodies lose their animation, what matters is everything leading up to that point.

Now, we know those feverous five seconds preluding your demise didn’t actually happen… but what if they did?

In that bare moment of cognition before your expiry, would you be content?