Me and my brother have no idea what hit her. We didn’t see it, we only heard it. Her last cry.
She helped us cross the road. We thought she was behind us when we reached the median. We thought we were tottering along in front of her. She always told us that the road in the vicinity of our house was dangerous.
We don’t know what happened. A big speeding thing hit her. Out of the blue, we heard her piercing cry. It gave us the shivers. When I turned back, all I could see was my mom’s carcass.
A pulpy mess crushed, a red lump of flesh by the roadside. The middle of her body gorged out by the impact. Her legs lying haphazard. Her black eyes popping from her face. They looked at me and my brother as if she still had some life. As if she was still looking over us.
My brother and I didn’t know what to do. We whimpered for help, we cried, we yelped out as loud as we could, but no one stopped. We couldn’t get close to her carcass from the median. Big speeding things were all around us. Those who rode them won’t see us. Mom told us that we were too small. She always covered us from the back. So that they could see her, at least. They didn’t.
No one stopped for a long time. We stared at her carcass from the median. After some time, the crows came. They pecked at her flesh by their beaks. I glared at their black squint eyes. We tried to shoo them away. It was my mother’s carcass, I yelled aloud at them. But our voices were too weak. We were too small. They weren’t afraid of us.
A few more scavengers flew in. They started having a feast of sorts. My brother and I howled and cried but to no avail. It was fruitless. Some scavengers thrust their beaks in my mom’s carcass to tear off another strip of her flesh.
The crows cawed, and the scavengers poked. It was endless. Merciless. We cried. Helpless.
Then a big speeding thing slowed down. It honked. It made such a big noise that the crows and the scavengers looked up. A man got off from the big speeding thing. He shooed them away.
They pulled up a big piece of flesh, held it in their beaks, and flew away. A small piece of flesh fell from the beak of one of the scavengers. It fell on the glass windshield of his big speeding thing. A few drops of blood spilled on it. Some more pieces of her insides fell from another scavenger’s beak. One fell on another big speeding thing that had stopped behind the first one. And another.
There was a row of them. All the men got off their big speeding things. I could see the irritation from the scowl on their faces. They didn’t like it. They assembled near my mom’s carcass. They saw it with disgust on their face. Their hands held their kerchiefs over their noses.
Some of them went away to a roadside shop to have sweets and snacks. The sweet shop owner came out and saw my mom’s carcass. He was not pleased with it. He called someone.
Someone came to clean the big speeding things of the men first. Then another big speeding thing came after a while. It stopped near her. Two men got a shovel and dumped her inside. We ran out of the shrub where we were hiding. I tried to hang on to the big speeding thing which carried her. My brother too ran with me. But our legs were too tiny. It sped away.
We could not even say goodbye. Big speeding things and their drivers haunt us to this day.
***
My Mom’s Carcass was first published in Indian Periodical.