The thing that was rotting [horror story]

I wasn't going to post this but here we go.

There are things from childhood you just walk past without thinking. Random memories. And then years later you suddenly see them differently and it hits you out of nowhere.

This is one of those.

When I was in elementary school, my walk to school was this rural road. One side was all rice paddies. Halfway down the road there was an abandoned mannequin factory, and past that, a cheap snack shop. The village was so far across the fields it was basically a dot on the horizon.

The factory had been shut down for a while by then. Never saw anyone working there. In the corner of the closed-off lot you could see mannequin parts piled up through the chain-link fence, scattered everywhere. It was kind of funny-looking but also just... gross somehow. Wrong.

A wide drainage ditch ran around the whole property and the smell was AWFUL. Murky, rotting water. Trash piled everywhere.

One day I went around to the back of the factory instead of the usual road side. The ditch back there was even worse. And mixed in with all the garbage, there was a female mannequin floating face-up, upper body above the water.

Her white face just. floating there. Like a pale dot in all that filth.

I thought about pulling her out to show my friends, they would've loved it. But the water was too disgusting and she was too far out. I gave up. Also decided not to tell anyone about her in case some other kid dragged her up and took her away. She was my find.

For a while after that I made it a daily thing to go check on her.

And this is the part that got to me, even then. Every single day she was rotting more.

After a few days her white skin started discoloring. The shine faded. Then her thick hair started falling out, going patchy. The skin darkened, started caving in. There were parts that looked like something had been chewing on them.

She didn't look like herself anymore at all.

I lost interest pretty fast after that. Last time I saw her she was mostly submerged, buried under layers of trash covering the water, only a little bit still visible above the surface. And that little bit had soaked up so much water it was bloated and swollen.

She was just garbage at that point.

I went to look one more time after a while. She was gone.

Graduated elementary school. Never had a reason to walk that road again.

---

Third year of high school, summer break. I got nostalgic, hopped on my bike, went back.

Everything had changed completely. The rice paddies were filled in, houses built over them. The factory lot was a parking lot now.

I stood there thinking about the mannequin, hit with that wave of childhood memory.

And then it hit me.

Something I'd never thought about as a kid.

Does plastic... rot like that?

I already knew the answer. I'm older now. I know too much.

The way it decayed. The hair falling out. The skin darkening and caving in. Bloating in the water.

that's not what plastic does.

that's exactly what a human body does.

I'll never know the truth now. Can't know. And I think that's the part that gets me the most. What used to be this kind of weird nostalgic childhood memory is now something I can't bring myself to tell anyone about. Something I just have to sit with.

I really wish I'd never remembered.