BARE BONES

By the time I was fifty-five I had turned into a fully-fledged skeleton. My skin and sinew had wasted away, and all that was left were my bare bones. I should have been hanging in the Natural History Museum posing next to the dinosaurs, ogled by school kids peeling their doughy tangerines, spilling their apple juice boxes. Obviously, I had to avoid being seen by the public—the culture shock would have been catastrophic, and even I felt disturbed as I gazed in the mirror, aghast at my atrophied figure—oh, the horror of all the lack! Whenever I went out, I wore a trench coat, leather driving gloves, a balaclava, and simply hoped for the best. The disguise confirmed my status as a misfit in society—an alien cast adrift in a city of flesh, waiting, waiting, for my time to go.

One day, as dusk fell with haggard silhouettes, my cover was finally blown. I was seen by several passers-by in my bedroom window as I shed my bathrobe after a long cool shower while listening to soothing whale song. Soon enough, my doorbell rang with fearsome blasts, and my irate neighbours called for me to show my face. I sat on my bed, cradled my balaclava, and wept.

As I opened the front door, there must have been at least a dozen strangers jostling for position before me like vipers in a battery cage. I was stark naked—fully exposed like never before. As the sinister group eyed me up and down, they soon became silent, blinking furiously. Then their expressions softened. They cleared their throats and began to pepper me with questions.

“Hey, buddy, how’d you get that look?” someone said.

“Yeah,” said another, “You look…thin. Who’s your surgeon?”

“No, no, it’s Ozempic, right?” a skinny man with saggy jowls said. “What a miracle drug.”

A tubby young boy, bulging out of his threadbare T-shirt, said, “Mummy, I’m scared.”

The mother said, “It’s ok, honey, everyone’s different.”

I noticed the frail Mrs Greenwood from a few doors down scratching her thinning blue-rinse hair, looking perturbed. She said, “Oh my dear, are you going to be okay?”

Soon enough the crowd became bored and slowly dispersed into the heart of the night. I returned upstairs and lay down on my bed, letting the memory-foam cushions gather around my head. Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” pounded softly in the background in an atonal dirge. It was playing from a neighbour’s garden, the place where music always sparked joyous parties on summer nights, any day of the week. But, right then, this song seemed to be just for me. My teeth rattled in delight. I felt a warm sensation move inside my skull. A thrill danced through my ribcage, where my heart once gently throbbed.

As the heaving song dissolved, I was ready to explore the city without shame, and all of a sudden, my lonesome bag of bones felt like they belonged in this world, and the possibility of the next.