When the parachute fell in my backyard, I assumed it was a prequel to a story about
a plane crash or something nefarious like that. But the body attached to the parachute, it
wasn’t Christian. Looked like it had been dead for years. Melty face, droopy skin, lotta
bones.
    I didn’t scream.
    I’m not like those folks in the movies, what scream at every face that doesn’t look
like theirs. Granted, I saw his feet first, on account of him hanging upside down in my
Lodgepole Pine. I wondered if he’d aimed for my house or something. Maybe he had a
special delivery, or he was an old lover of mine, brought me a romantic notion.
Hard to tell now, given his status.
    Then again, I can’t even assume his gender, even though I just did it again. I don’t
have it in me to check the nethers, not least of all because the clothing and the skin has
essentially fused into one hybrid fabric.
    There isn’t really an action plan for this kind of situation. I live alone, in the hills,
tending my garden. Plop, in falls a dead guy in my tree. Doesn’t really fit the aesthetic of
what my property boasts. I’m big into hippos and rhododendrons, got plenty of both. My
big ceramic hippo, life size, in fact, is my pride and joy and the bushes of purple flowers
complement its amethyst eyes.
    This fellow, though, there’s nothing purple about him. Just grey.
    I walked back into my house, put on a kettle of tea. It’s such a great tea kettle—a
hippo, if you can believe it. Steam comes piping out of its mouth and it pours out of a little
tail spout. As the pot whistles, I find my gaze locked out that back window at the parachute
again. What business that intruder has on my property line escapes my ability to
comprehend. Surely it was a mistake.
    And like most mistakes, probably best be ignored.