There is a place where all the bodies go.

It’s what I’m thinking about as Eddie and I walk the Corridors. The smell of mildew wafting up from the carpet is unmistakeable, encroaching up the nostrils before you can even get a chance to get your mind right for it. Like by the time it’s up your nose and you have the thought to get yourself ready for it, even if it’s the thousandth time you’re walking them, it’s already too late. You’re trapped in the smell, much like the moisture that’s trapped in these carpets, breaking down the organic material.

Not the carpet itself, mind. That’s obviously synthetic.

No, I’m talking about bodies.

Well, specifically the debris from bodies. Dead skin cells. Hair. Sweat. Sebum. Lipids. It’s all grist for the mill, for the fun guys in the carpet.

Yes I just made a fungus joke, sue me. I’m currently getting bent over my own sawhorse and getting fucked by the long dick of the administration for my fuck up, so perhaps you’ll afford me a touch of leniency when it comes to the form of levity I bring to the festivities?

But it’s more than just fungi in the carpet. There’s a universe of different microorganisms: molds, mildew, yeasts, bacteria. It’s all in there, no matter how much bleach you slosh over everything. With the right perspective, you can change the entire nature of existence and its meaning.

They’re all eating, and they’re all burping up their dinners, so to speak. The official term is microbial volatile organic compounds (or MVOCs for short). The gaseous chemical byproducts that microbes release in their constant, roiling, invisible existence.

There is a place where all the bodies go, yes.

But there’s another place where all the bodies go. It’s apparently where we’re going, though Eddie hasn’t said that out loud.

It’s funny, I haven’t been anywhere in the Corridors with Eddie since my first day. But he’s been a constant fixture in my life both in here and out there.

It’s odd how much a person can mean to you, especially where the cruelty of life is concerned.

But he’s talking now, and I’m trying to keep my mind from focusing on the micro flora of commercial carpeting.

“Obviously the client’s pissed, that goes without saying,” he says.

Our bodies are smarter than we are, I swear. Even as he speaks, I can feel my adrenal medulla dumping epinephrine into my bloodstream. A cup of jolt that spikes my heart rate, opens up my airways and I’m sure if I was watching, dilates my pupils.

They’re smarter than we are, but they also betray us. I don’t need this classic fight or flight. It’s so totally unnecessary. Most of this is.

But he’s obstinate. Determined. I’ve always known Eddie to be a bedfellow of Stoicism, but never in such grim terms. I can practically feel the stone in his voice, a bedrock of questionable intent. I can’t make it out what he’s trying to say here.

Up until then, he was chatting with me, as normal. Hadn’t even mentioned the event in question. Didn’t even touch on the slab of meat I’d manage to render useless for the client. But then he said that, and suddenly the years of knowing him, of fraternal bonds we shared, is suddenly at question.

See, a friend is not a friend unless they share blood with you, and I don’t mean the family kind. I mean the kind of blood that is spilled that means you share something, whether that’s shared pain or loss or the kind of blood you spill to get to the throne made of skulls. We share all three, as it happens, though not a shared event, per se, just a shared genesis, of sorts.

Basically, he’s a real one, and I love him like a brother. But here? In this moment? I suddenly realize nothing in this world of ours is above reproach.

And no matter how good your performance to date, there’s still the fact you can’t fuck up the client’s demands.

“But I’m working on a solution for you,” he then says, as if he can sense the glands in my body pumping differently. Like he can sense the sea change of solutions in me, and he knows to steer accordingly.

“Obviously it was unintended,” I start to say. He raises a hand, not unkindly I don’t think, but more in a way that says ‘think nothing of it, old friend’. But I press on, saying “And despite everything I was doing to monitor-”

“Look,” he says, and it’s not the word but the way it’s said. It’s a rebuke, and a sharp one. It’s not the sharpest I’ve ever heard him speak, not even close, but it’s the sharpest he’s ever spoken to me. And just like, I can feel my heart starting to hammer. I resist the urge to check my pulse, both with fingers and on feeds.

In that pregnant pause we are both cocooned, we are taken, and placed, dreamlike, in a state of calm. But there is violence beneath the surface.

There is always violence beneath the surface.

The smell of mildew is the belching of an infinitude of organisms, a trillion triumphant marks of meals devoured, by the flesh of the few who make it down here.

There is also another place where the bodies go.

And Eddie is taking me to see them.

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