Dead Turtle

The turtle had been dead for a very long time. I could tell by the maggots and the smell. I cried very hard, not because I loved the turtle, even though I did, but because of my failure to take care of it. It happened one Summer day and I regretted immediately my decision to throw the turtle into the garbage instead of giving it a proper burial, but it’s decomposed body gave me the shivers, and I could barely stand to touch it, even with gloves.

So instead I threw it in the trash, and hoped the feeling would go away. It didn’t though. It persisted for a very long time, until finally I got on my knees and prayed to a God, who I didn’t believe in anyway, to forgive me for the mishandling of the turtle. He didn’t answer, but I felt slightly better about it, though the pain didn’t go away.

I went downstairs and saw my mom making stuffed peppers. I asked her, “Why do we die anyways?”

“Honey, that’s a strange question. Where is this coming from?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, looking at everything except my mother’s eyes, which often pierced through me, seemingly penetrating my very soul. “ I just feel so. . ,” I couldn’t finish the sentence. Confused? Angry? Hurt? Upset? I didn’t know what to say.

My mom simply smiled and said, “Everybody and everything dies at some point. We don’t know why. It’s part of life’s mystery.”

Although it brought about more questions than answers, my mom’s reassuring answer gave me temporary solace, and went back upstairs to sit and think.

As the days passed, so did my thoughts of the turtle and soon I was back at school. At school, there’s a place where many people gather. It’s grassy and there are benches where the students can sit and eat their lunch. I always ate my lunch alone though, because I had no friends. I liked to sit there and write poetry while others were laughing, talking, being loud and making jokes that made me slightly comfortable. As I watched them, their bodies seemed to be in slow motion and I thought about the turtle again. Taboo thoughts began to enter my head, and I tried to think of something else but the image of the turtle, without its eyes and it’s skull popping out, suddenly became a thought I could not get rid of.

The thoughts became so unbearable that I did not want to die, but I did not want to live. So I took the middle road, I drank. I walked into a convenience store, put the 40 ounce of Olde English on the counter, gave the woman five dollars, left with two dollars and proceeded to get drunk as fast as I could. I forgot all about the turtle for the moment, but the next morning the first thing I noticed was that I had a headache, and the turtle was back.

Who could I talk to? Who would understand that I was obsessively thinking about a dead carcass of a turtle? Who?

I put my father’s gun to my head, cocked the hammer, pulled the trigger, and nothing happened. The gun wasn’t loaded. I wanted to disappear. I would do anything to see the turtle again, and beg for forgiveness.

That’s when my mom found me.