My girlfriend and I both do freelance work as translators for the same international company. I won’t mention it here, but you’ve probably heard of it. I specialize in Italian and she in Spanish. This weekend we carpooled together with our supervisor to a mandatory seminar a few hours away. After it was over, we spent most of the drive home trying to remember one very specific word that we all know but just could not recall. It is the Spanish word for a private, family courtyard and by all means please comment if you know it. Patio is not the word we are looking for, by the way.

As we approached our car in the parking lot where we’d met for the carpool, I noticed something amiss. There was a man doubled over halfway through the passenger window, his legs sticking out from the waist down and still touching the ground. I jumped out of the car and ran forward, yelling at him, but he would not move. As I rushed to open the driver’s side door, the expected blast of locked car heat carried something else with it – something more powerful and unbreathable. The man was dead – his hand still stuck in the glove compartment. It must have happened soon after we’d left our car there two days before. He had been baking in the sun the entire time.

We carefully opened the door and rolled the man out onto the asphalt. His pale, parched skin broke and cracked like a jigsaw puzzle – revealing the bright pink, sun-cured meat underneath. Each time we moved him the slightest amount, more cracks appeared with the most sickening, meaty pop. His swollen tongue protruded through his clenched teeth, dried in an expression of eternal disgust.

We drove home with the windows open and decided to keep driving because it was warm and the fresh air was nice. What was that goddamn word?

~ by Golden Knuckles on May 3, 2010.

Posted in prose
Tags: death, forgetfulness, hot cars, language