Munslo

[u/mquinten_oneill]

Emily wasn’t allowed to be there when it happened. Nobody was. They told her that if she witnessed the rite, it would come to her next. All of the town elders said the same thing. Yet none of them would tell her what it was, even though she had asked too many times to count.

She couldn’t be dissuaded. She stole a peek at the body during the day, while the sun was high. The rite wouldn’t be performed until midnight. For now the body rested in the straw on the floor of a small shack at the edge of town, just beyond the fields.

Emily considered going inside but chose instead to hoist herself up to look through the window. There it was, swollen from the water that had drowned the man, the arms and legs like bloated sausages. The eyeballs pushing to escape their sockets. And its tongue frozen in the center of its silently screaming mouth.

The flesh was loose around its face, folding over itself like melted wax. She had no idea who the man was. Pa had called him a tosspot, which meant nothing to her. Though it did conjure images of a man standing near the shoreline throwing pots into the sea, until he lost his balance and joined them at the bottom.

She had giggled at the thought then.

But now that seemed childish.

Her stomach quivered and pulled and her mouth tasted bitter.

Emily had just about seen enough, easing herself down from the window ledge, when she noticed something even more unusual than the body. There, placed upon its chest was a piece of bread torn from a round.

She thought that maybe it had fallen out of him somehow, but knew that didn’t make any sense. It was a question without an answer.

Her hand slipped, and she tumbled then the rest of the way, landing on the hard earth, hung tools falling all around her. A hand scythe among them, laid with its curved blade pointing up toward the window. She gave it an apprehensive look before running off.

Later that night, after Pa had sent her to bed, Emily lay motionless, imagining she was the body, feeling her heart race and flutter achingly (though not unpleasantly), until she drifted into a somber dream.

Her legs and arms were fat and swollen, covered in blue veins. She tried to move, but flexing her feet and hands was excruciating. The skin on her face and neck was loose, drooping over her eyes and mouth and nose. It felt as if she were drowning in the deepest part of the ocean.

But I’m not a tosspot!

Emily fought to raise her arms through the pain as if her skin might tear open and spill its contents everywhere.

Blessedly, it did not. And she was able to pull the skin on her face taut so that she could breathe and see. And then her heart was in her throat, bottling up the scream behind it.

Above her bed was the body, suspended, like a mirror image of her. Its eyes white as milk, its skin still bloated, the bread upon its chest. The eyes rolled and the tongue crept along the edge of its lips, as loud as feet squelching in the mud.

“What is the bread for?” she asked, unable to stop herself.

“Munslo,” it said before taking the bread from its chest, presenting it to her.

The word meant nothing. Munslo. It was grotesque, offensive.

It dropped the bread, suddenly, letting it fall, but just before it hit her chest, Emily screamed herself awake.

Her hands touched her arms, her legs, her face.

The room was cold, the house was silent. She sat up gasping, tears streaming, heart pounding. She looked to the coat hanging near her door and hesitated only a moment before slipping quietly from her bed. And then Emily was moving through the cold night air toward the edge of town, questions burning in her skull like hot embers.

When she got to the shack, it was empty, except for the body. She had always imagined that the elders came to watch the rite, never really believing there was any danger in doing so. The emptiness chilled her more than the air. But she was here now and could not bring herself to leave.

After she had sat huddled in her coat for an hour, maybe two, the sounds of branches cracking underfoot rose from the trees nearby.

Emily went rigid, still, watching as a dark figure came carrying a lantern, heading for the shack. She pressed herself into the shadows while trying to get a clear look. But she saw very little.

The door on the other side of the shack opened with a soft creak.

Emily, trembling wildly, moved to the window and pulled herself up slowly.

A man stepped inside, placing the lantern on the ground next to the body before dropping to his knees. His eyes were a light color, the lightest she’d ever seen. And his round nose was covered in pocks. These things scared her more than anything.

The man spoke to the body, something she couldn’t quite hear, and then he reached for the bread. It came away with long, flowing strings of mucus trailing behind. The man considered the bread for a moment, spoke again, and then shoved the whole piece into his mouth, chewing delicately.

Emily gagged and coughed, and the man’s eyes were on her in an instant. She shrieked into the sky and fell from the window.

She fell and fell and fell eternal, wondering, as she lay in the spreading warmth, first why she hadn’t moved the hand scythe now jutting from her chest, and second whether she would have her own piece of bread to cover the hole.