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They dined six feet below the surface of this planet, glutting themselves on the decomposing flesh of thousands of bodies, all at various states of decay. Each body presents them with a different delicacy and even those newest to life knew that, in death, no two body parts ever tasted the same.
They were of a generation who, placed there by their predecessors, would never see the light of day, but this did not bother them even the slightest. They had never known another life. Among the graves, an existence of coffin flies outside of the moist grave was only known in the stories the older flies passed own to the maggots through solemn whispers, stories of how their ancestors had dug their ways through the cracks in the soil above the buried coffins, jeopardizing their own lives to plant their larva within the rotting corpses concealed beneath the many tombstones so that they might form the underground colonies and prosper among the dead.
Had they still been alive, their ancestors would have been proud. What had started with two desperate coffin flies, had grown into vast, underground cities. Now each easily consisted of no less than a million flies and intricate tunnel systems had been built between the graves to accommodate their steadily growing population.
It was their world, hidden away from both the unforgiving elements of nature and the blissfully unaware eyes of those humans who remained part of the living world above them. There was not a single grave in which they did not dwell, carelessly sorting the water from the blood, their larva lazily eating themselves plump among the putrid stench of thousands of rotting, human, corpses.
Although their tombs granted them darkness, it did not grant them silence. Even six feet below the surface, the voices of those who mourned their dead friends and family embers were still audible. In death, these voices alone told who the body had been in life. These voices alone spoke of how the body had finally came to rest in the fly infested graves.
While crawling through the dark fluid that had gathered on the satin pillow beneath the long dark locks of one of the dead, the flies and their youth could not help but listen to those voices as they feasted.
Out of all the voices, one stood out among the others. This voice was steadfast in his grief. He knelt by the same grave, at the same time, every single day. He did not care if the sun was shining or if it was pouring down rain. He was just as fervent as he had been the very day the grave he frequented was erected.
"Davey . . ." he began, his tears already forming in his eyes. "It's me, Jade . . . I've brought you some fresh flowers since the sun has already withered the ones I brought you yesterday. I'm glad the fans keep flowers here for you too, Davey . . ."--His voice broke.--"Oh God, Davey . . . If only you could see them . . . you would have loved them. They're even more dedicated to you now, than they were . . . before. They. I. We miss you so much, Davey.
"I wish there was someway you could come back . . . I wish . . . I wish I had been a better friend to you before. That I hadn't of ignored the bruises on your wrists or the broken fingernails . . . I should have saved you Davey! I should have died, NOT YOU! I just . . . I didn't know your love for him could kill you!
"When they first told me you were gone . . . When Hunt knocked my door down that morning at 3-fucking-A.M., screaming that he had tied you up . . . and . . . and suffocated the life out of you . . . Oh God, Davey! I didn't believe him!
"I didn't believe anyone, especially him, could ever truly hurt you!
"We all thought he loved you! God, we loved HIM!"
The coffin flies paused from their tasks for a mere moment when the man pounded on the ground with his fists. His tears ran down his pale cheeks and merged with the soil beneath him. If he remained there long enough, his tears might even reach down into the grave, slip through the decaying wood of the coffin, and fall onto the, now unrecognizable, face of his beloved friend.
The friend who he lost over six years ago.
" . . . and then he had the nerve to plea innocent?! To look the jury in the fucking eye and tell them that you WANTED to be tied up?! That you fucking ASKED him to suffocate you, to momentarily stop your breathing! He told the whole world that you 'liked it rough!'
"Sure, we knew you did . . . Fuck it! That's what I figured the fucking bruises were from! We knew who's fucking collar you wore around your fucking neck! But that doesn't make what he did okay, Davey! That didn't make it okay . . .
"Then rumors started spreading about how people had seen the two of you in various underground 'sex clubs' together . . . and members of the fucking jury started asking to be removed from the panel . . . because they didn't want to be involved with a sex scandal . . .
"And . . . And fuck it, Davey!"
A group of eggs that had been laid the day before began to hatch, causing the colonies attention to shift as the new lava instantly began fighting for their right to feed on the fluid exuded from the body. Part of the mass had already broken apart from the others and started to migrate deeper into the rotten flesh which had once been highly praised for the colorful artwork embedded beneath the skin. Now, what remained of Hallowe'en Town served solely as a nursery for the corpse fauna which inhabited every square inch of the former diva's body.
After several moments of silence, the man who ripped at the cemetery grass above them once again found the strength to speak.
"Do you hate, or love, Hunt for insisting that they lay him to rest in the grave beside you?" Jade whispered, his fingers tracing over the words engraved in the granite tombstone. "Hunter said you would have wanted it that way . . . He said no one had the right to separate lovers in their final sleep . . .
"He did love you Davey . . . I know . . . He proved his innocents to us all when his grief and his guilt drove him to take his own life, because he couldn't bear to be without you . . . I just never thought this would happen.
"I loved you too, Davey . . . I FUCKING NEEDED YOU TOO, DAMMIT!"
The sound of footsteps barely rose above the roar of millions of wings, but they did not go unnoticed. The pre-pupa larva, the ones who considered socializing a greater task than gouging themselves on the finesse of the human body, looked up from preparing their pupariums in the pupation site. They knew the footsteps always came around the same time, but they still could not help but wonder how long the man would lay in the dirt above the grave if he was not forced to leave everyday. They gathered their entertainment from his spectacles. The could not understand why he constantly spoke to the crumbing, adipocere covered, carcass in which they called home.
"Jade . . ." the new voice said, calming the seemingly violent sobs which emitted from his friend and lover. "Have you laid flowers by Adam's grave this week?"
"I was going to do that tomorrow . . ."
"That's what you said yesterday, Jade . . ."--The man knelt next to his friend, all of his strength focused on masking his own emotions and remaining strong for him.--"Maybe you shouldn't come out here so often, hun . . . they would have wanted us to move on . . ."
"I'm getting better, Hunt . . ." Jade whispered.
"Yeah . . . I know . . ." Hunter replied, his hand on Jade's shoulder. "Say your goodbyes and head back to the car. I'll be there in a second."
Jade nodded and gently pressed his lips to one headstone, and then the other, before leaving Hunter alone with the dead.
Once he was sure Jade had gone out of site, Hunter picked up the bundle of flowers he had left on top of Davey's grave and untied the silk ribbon that bound them.
"For you . . ." he whispered as he laid half of the flowers by Adam's barren grave.
The rest of the flowers fell to the ground, adding to all of the others which Jade and various fans had left Davey over the years.
As he voiced his final prayers and walked away, those thriving below his feet did not even miss a beat.
Because to them, death was nothing more than a means to survive.