The Forgotten

Hero. What is the definition of the word.

A few yearsa ago my brother asked me to cut his grass, I needed the cash so I said sure, even if it had been raining al week. Most of his back yard was under water, and the day was warm and humid muggy and wet the day was not going to be easy. On the way thier the song Rooster from Alice in chains came on the radio I always liked the song so it was still fresh in my head when I arrived. When I got there he said "by the way my dog got run over 2 days ago and died in the back yard could you take care of it. Stupid me I said no problem just give me a shovel, but by the time I turned around he had split to work. I soon found out the dog had acutally died a week ago and the rain did not help any either. By the way he had no shovel. By chance my brother's wife's dad was there and he said hey man I'll help you out. I never really spoke to him before but I figured what the hell anything is better than doing it alone. With no shovel our options were limited. We looked around and found a kiddie pool that was my nephews, ahh fuck it daddy can get em a new one. Rubber gloves would have been great but how are we kidding all we had was plastic bags around our hands. We picked up the dogs rotting body and placed it into the pool. The smell was horrendous. The biggest suprise came when the fur began slipping off the flesh exposing the mass of wiggling maggots gorging themselves on the dog. It was then Adan became dead silent. With all the parts in the pool we tossed the bags in the pool as well it was then I noticed some of those white devils slipped in and were crawling on my hands. I paniced and freaked, Adan just then softly said don't worry, they won't hurt you. They only eat the rotten he said, I did not ask anymore. Since I had a hatch back and there was no way I was sticking that in my car we put the pool dog and all into his truck. We needed to ditch the dog somewhere away from there quick. So we hauled ass to the nearest trash dump. As we were driving he told me what happened to him in the war, and what the maggots had done for him. I never even knew he served in veitnam, but I learend alot that day. He was wounded as were his freinds so they allowed the flys to lay thier eggs on thier wounds. Then they wrapped them up to keep the maggots inside. A few days later they cut the bindings to let the adult flies out. The maggots would eat away the damage in the wound and leave it clean to dress. I looked back at the dog only to see a trail of fur two miles long. It was flying everywhere and left a trail in the air. After we dumped the dog Adan went back the porch to finish his beer and I went to go start cutting the grass. It was still humid and the heat of the day was still high. Everything went smooth it I got to the spot the dog was in. The water was really highand the machine was getting clogged. I could still make out the shape of the dog in the grass. It was then I realized I was humming the tune of Rooster. I was ankle high in muddy rain water smell of dead all over me and sweating a storm in the thick humid air. My mind began to wander and I saw things that were not there. For a moment I saw my self in Adans shoes, the hell he saw. I finally finished and went home cleaned up and went staright to bed. That night My dreams were not my own they were memories of thing I never saw. I woke up in the middle of the night and began to draw the last thing I remembered from my visions. I can only imagine what Adan saw, drawing it was the only way that I could get my mind to stop.