I saw a living corpse today, and it has me freaked out even now, hours later.
I won't get into why this young 20-something kid came to be how he is today. I barely understand it, myself. He's not anorexic, but he's wasting away and the end result looks the same. Except, his forehead has one giant gaping open sore that goes from one side, all the way past the middle of his head. I wouldn't doubt that he could probably peel his skin off, if he had the notion. It's thin enough. Now, under his nose has another large open sore. The little hair he has left is thinned, wild, and dead. His eyes are sunken and the sockets protrude. I could barely dare to look at the rest of him, but happened to see his shoulders and some of his arms. Good God, I can't even describe what they looked like. Just, skeletal with a bit of flesh. And, the skin that was intact and not an open sore, was pasty grey/white. It was so fucking scary.
The last time I saw this kid was in February. He looked pretty deathly even then, I thought. But, that was nothing compared to what he is today. Honestly, he's a living corpse (I would write "walking corpse", but I don't know if he actually can walk at this point). The only time I ever saw something like this was when I was a kid and my aunt was dying of cancer, and was so close to the end. She was laying on a bed and one of her daughters had to feed her her cigarettes, as she couldn't hold them herself. She was dead a week later. After today, I don't know which scene was more scary, my dying aunt, or this (probably dying) kid. Both have scarred me for life.I don't know how my sister can live day in and out around this thing.
As we were leaving, his nurse came in, as he gets fed intravenously every night. I did all I could to not make it look obvious that I was desperate to get the hell out of that damn house, but once I was out the door, I actually ran down the street to Tom's car. I just came back from an hour walk and I still can't shake it.
