Borderlands 4 Read online

  “I’m so sorry, John, I really am. I don’t want to put you though any more pain. But I could accept your death better if I had your child. After you’re gone I’m going to be alone.”

  He still didn’t know how he felt. The aura he had seen frightened him. He had sensed it before in Laura and in other women but never so vividly. But now it was gone and only her warm femininity remained. He held her, stroking her hair as she sobbed. The sense of belonging to the flesh and blood world, of having a relationship with Laura, slowly came back. The stark world he had visualized briefly was too painful and frightful to allow back into his consciousness. They sat on the couch and she gradually stopped crying.

  “I don’t know how I feel about it,” he began. “You know the percentages aren’t particularity good, even if I agree to try.”

  “I’ve talked with three specialists.”

  “What did they say about getting pregnant by someone dying of cancer?”

  “It’s not in your reproductive system. There’s no reason think the baby is at any more risk than normal.”

  “I asked the doctor who did the vasectomy about the possibility of reversal. He said it is very painful about a 50% success rate.”

  She started crying again. “With new techniques it’s probably a little better. I know it’s a very painful recovery period and I don’t want to put you though any more pain, it just that …” She looked at him, pleading with him to understand. He didn’t.

  “You know how I feel about the population problem” he said.

  “I know,” she said.

  “It’s not something I want to do at any level. Intellectually and emotionally I’m opposed to it. I’m not egoistical enough to think that my offspring are going to save the world and I can reasonably assume they will be the same sort of habitual consumers that we are, parasites on the eco-systems of the earth. And at this stage of my life I’m not crazy about some doctor yanking my balls and my prick around so he can tie them back together.”

  “So you won’t consider it?” Only a glimmer of the aura was still present.

  “When’s the last time I refused to consider anything you wanted me to do?”

  The aura disappeared completely. She laid her head on his chest and cried softly.

  That night as he lay in bed reading and listening to a blues show on the radio she walked into the room to get ready for bed herself. She spontaneously started doing a strip to an old version of Tin Roof Blues. He had always found the song erotic anyway, as it had been very popular when he was going through puberty.

  She started swaying her hips to the music, unbuttoning her cotton shirt from the top down. She let the shirt slide off her shoulders and then turned her back to him, swaying as she unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans. Pulling them slowly over her hips she kicked them into a corner. She turned to face him, wearing her bikini panties and flimsy bra. He put down his book and turned up the volume a little.

  She did a few seductive moves and reached behind her back to unsnap the bra. This particular maneuver had always been very erotic for him and he now had a tremendous erection. She tossed the bra in his face with an impish smile and put both hands behind her head and did some bumps and grinds that reminded him of the old time strippers from his college days. She turned her back to him and slowly worked her panties down over her hips. Keeping her legs straight, she lowered them to her ankles and stepped out of them. As the song wound down she turned to face him, totally naked, improvising an incredibly erotic dance.

  As the song ended she slipped under the cover taking his erection in her left hand. Running her other hand through his chest hair, up to his neck, across his ear, and through his hair. She gently pushed his head to the pillow, as he started to move she held him down.

  Before he could say anything, she had the head of his penis in her mouth, slowly moving it in and out. She gently rubbed the fingertips of her left hand over his balls continuing the delightful oral stimulation. All the while and her right fingertips kept moving from his pubic hair across his navel, up to his chest hair, his nipples and back again.

  A few minutes was all it took before he was consumed by his orgasm. He was surprised that she was swallowing as he ejaculated; she had never done this before. Usually her fellatio was foreplay to intercourse but now she literally drank him in.

  As his final spasms subsided he opened his eyes. In the subdued light he saw it again, more plainly this time, the female aura hovered around her, arms and hands raised in a peculiar prayerlike position. It was looking down upon them with a faint approving smile.

  His head was swimming with thoughts and images. He had a knot in his stomach but the rest of his body was glowing from the extraordinary erotic experience he had just experienced.

  She kissed him deeply, her tongue caressing his as he tasted his own cum. He had never known her to be so sensuous. She snuggled against him, almost snakelike. Her fingers stroked his hair and caressed his ears. Her head lay on his chest. She was no longer the sensuous temptress, she seemed more like a vulnerable child.

  “Will you go with me tomorrow to talk with Dr. Moore?” she asked.

  He didn’t have to ask who Dr. Moore was.

  “Sure, it won’t hurt to talk with him.”

  He squinted through barely open eyelids. As he expected, the green aura hovered above them, smiling gently, approvingly.

  In the fall the abdomen of the female praying mantis is swollen with eggs that must be fertilized. The male approaches her carefully from behind, clasps her body and transfers a capsule containing the spermatozoa that will fertilize her eggs. When finished, he disengages the embrace and flees as quickly as possible. Many are unable to escape the female after mating and are decapitated and eaten. Some are decapitated during the mating process.

  The next morning when he woke, she lay sleeping beside him. All night he remembered she snuggled against him, occasionally lovingly stroking his shoulder or chest. But he also remembered the green female aura and the stark vision of himself and Laura being nothing but energy forces. He closed his eyes again to try and sort things out.

  For the next few days he relaxed in the back yard, enjoying the late summer days. He spent a lot of time playing with Rex, their Golden Retriever. He allowed himself to accept the world of energy forces as natural. That must really be all there is, he told himself, these horribly complicated situations we build out of emotions and matter must just be another version of the iron filings reacting to the magnet’s forces. Finally he decided that if he remained a bit of energy after his death, he could be quite happy.

  The praying mantis lives for a single season. It breaks out of the egg mass on a warm June day and feasts on bugs and worms. The victim is eaten alive, held like an ear of corn. After eating the mantis goes through a cat-like ritual of cleaning itself. In the late fall, after mating, its movements grow slow and by November it is dead.

  The doctor leveled with them. He could try to reverse the vasectomy. There was a 50 or 60 percent probability of success. John was due more radiology treatments. They agreed it was better to wait until they were finished. But John had another agenda.

  He had made his peace with the situation. His will was drawn up. Insurance policies guaranteed she would be comfortable, wealthy by some standards. His children were grown and successful. She would have the dog and cats and her friends to comfort her. And she would have other options. He had consulted another doctor without telling her. His time was drawing near. He didn’t tell her how near.

  Pose features

  1. Shave men

  (Do not remove beards or Mustaches.)

  2. Prepare face with massage cream, oil, etc.

  3. Apply massage cream, Vaseline, etc. to dehydrated areas

  The more he thought about his death the more important it became to be a part of the cycle. Living, dying and rebirth … the essence of nature. He didn’t want his body posed in a casket, his friends and relatives forced to come admire the mortician’s art. He wanted to
die quietly, without fanfare, to have his death be as meaningless or as meaningful as that of a bug in the swimming pool.

  He planned his escape with considerable detail. He didn’t want her or his children burdened with details of the funeral, disposal, where to bury him, etc. But not leaving a body caused its own problems. There were all sorts of legalities, he discovered, concerning when a person who has disappeared can be considered dead.

  Finally, he decided it was worth it. Any doctor would surely testify he couldn’t have lived more than a year and he was leaving suicide notes. Besides he would make sure that not all that much was tied up in the estate.

  He sold the business for half a million, less than what it was worth but he was in a hurry. He deposited the money that was in their joint savings account. He put cash in two envelopes for his children. Enough to let them know he was thinking about them until he was declared legally dead and they got their share of his estate.

  Both the red fox and the gray fox are primarily hunters. They will occasionally eat carrion and carry bones of the larger animals back to their den to gnaw.

  All of this took a couple of months. Time was running out. He had considerable pain at times but he could still walk and drive. He had one more thing left to do.

  He entered Johns Hopkins for some additional tests but this time there would be something additional. He was there for 10 days. Laura visited every day. The doctors told him everything had gone fine.

  He planned it for the following weekend. She was in charge of a charity fund-raiser and would be very busy. He told her he was going to Kentucky for the weekend. They had an A-frame on the farm in the foothills of the Cumberlands where he had grown up. He would take Rex even though the dog would present a logistics problem for him. But he knew that she would be suspicious if he didn’t take him. Also he wanted a companion on his final voyage.

  Close the Mouth

  1. Relax face and relieve rigor mortis

  2. Observe the normal bite and points of natural expression in closing the mouth

  3. Secure the mandible

  a. Normal methods

  * Run suture from the mantalis muscle of the chin through the septum of the nose and then tie the remaining suture in a bow; or

  * Use a needle gun

  b. Gun Shot Wounds

  * Use a hand/manual drill

  * Bore a small hole through the mandible and through the maxilla at the root of the teeth

  * Pass a wire through the holes

  * Position the mandible

  * Twist the ends of the wire together

  He spent several days composing his final letters. Are letters this long still called suicide notes? he wondered.

  The common crow and its cousins, the rook and raven, are found throughout most of the world. The common crow is gregarious, boisterous, and very intelligent. It eats corn sprouts, mice, insects, and carrion. Its main source of food in the United States is road kill.

  He kissed her goodbye on Friday morning. It wasn’t as difficult as he had feared. He still had a couple of days and he would call her that night to tell her he had arrived safely. He told her he had made an appointment to have his vasectomy reversed. It was something of a lie but when she got the letter she would understand.

  Pose Lips

  1. Raise corners of the mouth slightly

  2. Fill the cheeks out slightly with cotton

  3. Apply stay cream to cotton

  4. Use aneurysm hook and forceps to insert cotton in the mouth to keep lips together

  5. Place wet cotton strips above the upper lip and under the lower lip

  6. Exert pressure downward and upward to keep lips closed

  The drive from Baltimore was emotional for him. Like the last day of a summer romance but with a heavy finality looming on the horizon. He exited the Baltimore beltway and headed west on I-70, a maneuver he always enjoyed … the idea that beyond the western horizon lay the cornbelt, the plains, the Rockies, and the Pacific always stimulated interesting thoughts about the early settlers or plans for future vacations. But this time the memories of a thousand or so like maneuvers bombarded him. Every exit he passed brought back memories of times he had taken the exit and what direction his life was taking then. The memories were vivid, high density video with surround-emotion. He knew he was passing each exit for the last time. Mentally he followed several by-roads from the interstate exit, visualizing what lay around each bend, remembering the reasons he had followed them in the past.

  Rex kept looking at him quizzically, a half-smile on his face but with worry in his eyes. The dog usually loved riding in the van, in the front seat looking for horses, cows, or other dogs. But Rex sensed something was wrong. This should be a happy time but Rex could sense the sadness. He patted the dog’s head and forced himself into a happier state of mind. He wanted Rex to be happy on their last trip together.

  A host of insects, primarily ants and beetles, survive by living off death. Every dead bug, mouse, bird, snake, rabbit, squirrel, possum, deer, or any other organism composed of flesh, blood, bones, or cartilage, means days or weeks of subsistence for the tribe. They come to the wake as individuals, as groups, or as highly organized societies to pick the bones … to cleanse the earth as they nourish their own bodies.

  He arrived in Summerville a little after dark. Jimmie and his family were expecting him and had prepared supper. He played the father and grandfather roles for the last time. They ate and talked for a couple of hours. He called Laura to tell her they had arrived safely. About 10:30 PM he left his son’s home town and drove the 10 miles out to the farm.

  He loved driving the dark country roads, with no street lights and most of the homes along the way dimly lit. He turned off the main road and took the one lane gravel road up the hollow to the A-frame. The motion detector controlled floodlight came on as he entered the driveway and Rex recognized the place of former good times and got excited.

  He was weary from the long drive, the pain, and the drugs but the night sounds brought back 50-year-old memories. He carried in his backpack, gave Rex some food and water, and got out a bottle of Maker’s Mark. Sitting on the porch, he let the bourbon and the pleasant ambience of the Kentucky night sooth his soul.

  The last of the katydids were going strong, proclaiming that frost wasn’t many weeks away. A host of other bugs joined the chorus.

  Eye Closure

  1. Lift eyelid with aneurism hood

  2. Use flat forceps to insert eye caps

  3. Apply stay cream

  * under the lids; and

  * on top of the eye caps

  4. Close eyes at the inferior 1/3 of the eye socket

  Position Elbows (close to sides of the body)

  Position Hands (leisurely position)

  Position Legs (straight and close together)

  He sipped the whiskey slowly. Rex lay beside him on the porch, his ears twitching at unfamiliar sounds as nightbirds and insects filled the hollow with a primeval symphony. A fox barked on the opposite hill and the sound echoed down the hollow. Rex leaped to his feet, his back hair forming a Mohawk, a primitive growl welled up from within him. “It’s okay,” he told the dog, “It’s just one of your distant cousins.” Rex searched his face to be sure there was no cause for alarm and lay back down, resting his chin on his front paws. His ears stayed cocked to the degree gravity would allow, however. His being was not far removed from that of his ancestors who had guarded the mouth of the cave.

  Pre-embalming analysis will determine what type of solution to use and what arteries and veins to use for injection. Usually for a head post you inject the femoral artery and drain from the femoral vein. In cases of generalized decomposition a 6 point injection may be required.

  Incision

  1. Make incision 3 inches deep (go through skin and superficial fascia)

  2. Use aneurysm hook to separate artery from vein, nerves and fascia.

  4. Ligate artery/vein with 6 inches of suture.

  5. M
ake a transverse incision in the artery/vein

  6. Insert cannula tube and tighten ligature

  7. Determine locations for the drainage points

  8. Insert drain tubes into drainage points far enough to pass all valves

  In spite of his circumstances, being able to orchestrate his final exit gave his a feeling of control. The sense of being one with the earth, the universe, was becoming more powerful. Sounds from the trees and ponds and grasses merged with the buzzing within his own head and they harmonized into a comforting mantra. He took another sip of whiskey and planned his final day. On the hill behind him a whippoorwill gave its last plaintive call of the night.

  Vultures have an “industrial strength” digestive system that lets them filter out even the most pernicious bacteria. They have no trouble digesting the putrefied result of the most vicious plagues or infections. They literally eat disease and turn it into nutrient for the earth.

  He arose at daylight with only a slight headache from the whiskey but the pills would take care of that along with any serious pain. He felt some numbness in his right leg and knew the cancer was starting to attack his spinal cord. He only needed another 12 hours. God forbid that after 50 years of service, his central nervous system would succumb on the eleventh hour.

  Embalming Machine

  1. Pour embalming fluid into machine

  2. Add cold water to make approximately three (3) gallons of solution

  3. Set rate of flow (moderate flow for generalized decomposition)

  4. Set pressure control (low pressure for generalized decomposition)

  He called Rex and they walked together through the barnyard.

  His neighbor boarded two horses and a mule there and the horses strolled over for a closer look at Rex. Rex only barked a couple of time and tentatively approached the nearest horse. They sniffed noses.