It takes a while for me to realise that the neon orange ahead of me is a sleeping bag keeping a dead man warm.
The winter afternoon grows fast towards evening, and the tree branches above filter the milky light of the overcast sky. I make my way home from work, nose to the ground, hands plunged deep into my pockets in search of warmth. I think about my day as I walk. I think about how my boss looked as I left the office this afternoon: hunched over his desk, eyes gaping at spreadsheets and becoming more cuboid by the second. I recall the receptionist as I had walked out the office’s main entrance. She had smiled at me and wished me a goodnight as I departed through the rotating doors out into the cold street.
I don’t know why I look up. Either by a gust of wind or something more subconscious, something more primeval that senses I’m not alone, my chin is lifted, and I see him. Partially concealed by trunks of other trees lie spools of bright orange and a figure sitting still. I move closer and the edges of the figure harden. Its clarity grows from the grainy dark revealing hair, a nose, a line for a mouth and two eyes that look at me.
I stare at this man now, at his eyes in the fading light, at his skin white like porcelain, at his lips which are a dangerous shade of red. I crouch down as I peer at him, and I pity this man. Not so much because he is dead, rather that he is here alone. It’s a dry night this evening and cold enough to snow. When it falls, the snowflakes will cover this man in a blanket of white. The layers of snow will build up on him as he poses with his head slightly tilted, eyes wide open. And in the silence of the forest, he will be buried slowly, forgotten until the morning thaw.
This is not the first time I’ve seen a dead body.
My mother and I visited my father on a morning three days before his funeral. The mortuary was by a busy road, and its car park was potholed and dusty. My mother’s keys jangled in the dry air as she walked away from our car. I was preoccupied by the rolling plumes of dust that I had kicked into existence to move along with her, and I watched as the particles of dust began to stain the cuffs of my shoes a pale shade of ochre.
Come on, my mother had snapped, taking me by an arm and dragging me towards the entrance of the morgue, towards its blue double doors that squeaked loudly on their hinges.
She held her hands in her lap and one of her knees jolted up down whilst we waited in the foyer. Eventually we were called to see my father, and we entered a windowless room. I stopped just in front of the entryway and allowed my mother to move ahead. I watched her go further to him, her outline becoming a silhouette defined by the trim of her dress.
I always saw my father as an alien being, a monument not meant to be understood, only admired. Even in sickness, when his cough shook his body and brought up blood, he was a tall and impossible thing so far removed from anything I could ever be. When he died, he left an empty throne, and I assumed it was my duty to take his place. There is a certain sweetness to a child trying to be a man, made slightly bitter when no one explains it’s not a role meant for him to fulfil.
I remember one evening when my mother and I were sat in silence eating dinner. She pawed at her food with a fork whilst I ate greedily. When I saw that she wasn’t eating, I reached for her spare hand and squeezed it like I’d seen my father do before. I felt the muscles in her hand contract, and she looked up at me and smiled in a way that carried the weight of her grief in one smooth motion.
I should call someone and let them know what I’ve found. I sit down next to the man and extend my legs so they’re straight out in front of me. With numb fingers, I rummage around my pockets and feel for my phone. The warmth of my thigh gives the flesh around my fingers a sense of respite, but my bones are still icy, and my joints are uncooperative. I dial a number and hold the phone to my ear. Being this far into the forest, I am surprised to hear a voice at the end of the line.
Are they responsive, the voice asks.
No, I reply.
Are they breathing? Do they have a pulse?
No.
I’m going to need you to start CPR. I can walk you through the steps.
They’re dead, I say, and they have been for some time.
The end of the line pauses, and I hear the sound of a keyboard drumming.
Ok, sir, what I want you to do is stay right there if you can. You might need to guide the police to where you are. Is it safe for you to do that?
Yes, I mumble, I can stay.
I slip my phone onto the ground and rest my head against the tree. My eyes land on the man’s hands: held together, fingers interlaced, a position of an unheard prayer. Carefully, I reach out and clasp one of them and return my focus to the shadows which grow like flames.
My wife will be wondering where I am soon. Perhaps she will think I’ve been tied up with something at work or just taken a longer route back. Or maybe she will think I’m sulking after our argument last Sunday.
We don’t argue often, but when we do, they are painfully exposing. There is no loud shouting or hateful comments about our most intimate insecurities. Instead, we talk flatly and reveal truths we always knew were present but were too shy to confront.
Last Sunday’s argument had stemmed from a question of hers. She had sat at the kitchen table gripping a mug of coffee after hearing my answer, and with one finger traced the rim of her cup.
I don’t know what to do anymore, she had said, how many times can we keep having this conversation?
She looked down and her hair fell across her face. I wanted to push it away from her eyes and love her the way she wished I could. I wanted us to be young again, heads full of high reaching ambition, a weightless sort of love not bound to any real responsibility.
You know that’s how I’ve always felt, I replied.
I know, she had said with her back to me now, silly me.
The ground beneath me is softened by a layer of pine needles. Their scent is strong, and the sweet aroma is pushed around by a slight breeze. The first of the snowfall has begun – only light sprinklings wafting downwards. There’s enough light left to see the tufts as they tumble. When I look up at the sky, it seems as though I am the one who is falling, the snow rising around me. My phone is on speaker and the line is still active.
I’m going to stay on the call, the voice says, what are you doing out there during such a cold evening?
I’m walking home from work, I reply.
The line remains quite for a moment, and I place my other hand on the ground beside me. I pick up a few of the pine needles and roll them between my fingers.
Is there anyone at home, someone you can call? Family nearby?
No, I reply.
Oh ok, the voice trails off, well I’m going to stay on the line. I’ll let you know when the police are near – it won’t take long. You let me know if you need anything.
My mother lives a ten-minute drive away, in a house with a rusty gate and black front door with a silver knocker. She spends her days watching TV and brews cups of tea that she never ends up drinking but leaves to go cold. Every surface of every room in her house is stacked with framed photographs, of faces from throughout the ages staring in at her and smiling.
My wife accompanies me when I see her. The two of them get along better than I could have imagined. They have inside jokes that I’m not a part of and they hug each other tightly when they greet and say farewell. When we saw her last Sunday, my wife and I held hands as we sat opposite her. My mother looked at the two of us curiously. Her eyes seemed to glint a maternal sageness, one that wished and hoped, that prayed for her child’s good fortune to last forever. It had been raining that day, the sky a mouth that poured endlessly, and as we spoke my mother reached out to me and squeezed my knee.
You’re such a lucky man, she spoke softly, such a lucky man.
The initial look in her eye had melted away whilst she said this, swept along by a blueness that made my heart ache. For my mother knew, as they all do, that nothing lasts forever.
I worry about her often. Her weakness scares me. When I take her hand, I feel the lines of her skin, intricate patterns marking the palms of her hand. As a child I admired how her strength was like that of my father’s, different only in that it beckoned me nearer. Like a painting on a wall, she invited me to look closer, allowed the colours of her composition to swirl and take me to abstract places only my dreams could clarify. She was not designed to become old.
The trees stand tall before me, and the forest stretches out as a pattern of leaves and branches. I can see my wife’s face amidst it, looking up at me like she did last Sunday, her dangerous question poised on the tip of her tongue. She had asked me this question when we had returned home from my mother’s, and it dug a pit in my side. It forced me to recall that look in my mother’s eyes whilst she labelled me a man and squeezed my knee like a child.
It does not feel so long ago that I stood behind her at the mortuary, a boy stubbornly refusing to accept something so undeniable. Part of me still holds onto my boyish conjecture that my father is still out there and so, when my mother reaches for me, I feel to have usurped my father’s position, stolen a role that hasn’t truly been earned. And when, last Sunday, my wife had gripped my hand and posed her question, I could not hold onto her tightly or bring myself to respond any differently. I can hear how she phrased it, cautious but excited: Do you want to start a family?
I don’t know how long I have stayed with this man, but my feet have gone numb, and the muscles of my cheeks have tightened. When I visited my father, I stayed there for 17 minutes and I didn’t move an inch, scared to realise what had become of him. And yet I hated leaving him there. So, I hold this man’s hand and my father flies back to me; I become a boy again, heart full of admiration and inadequacy. But he leaves as quickly as he arrived, and I become a man once more holding a corpse close to my chest.
The voice on my phone tells me the police are nearly here. I don’t acknowledge what they say. Instead, I look upwards to search for my father’s return and watch as the sky slips gently towards oblivion.
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Ben Craig is currently a full-time university student studying medicine in the UK. He is also interested in creative writing and journalism, having written for local newspaper outlets and a regional student health journal.
© 2025, Ben Craig
Halfway Down the Stairs 