Tirzah's death

An alien world, based on a true story from the annals of insect pheromone research.

Tirzah was sitting in the resting garden when a gelled sphere of liquid hit him from behind and he smelled death.
His antenna twitched as he looked around. There were no others around to give off their last pheromones. He slowly spun around with his antenna spread wide to catch where the scent might be coming from, but it wasn’t from away.
He gingerly arched his antenna back, smelling himself, and then all his legs collapsed.
The pheromones were coming from himself.
He tilted his head. He didn’t feel dead, or at least not what he thought dead would feel like. But smelling himself again, he knew he was certainly dead.
Tirzah expelled the scent of sadness. He had been waiting for publication of the latest poems by Adah for three winters, and the preorder was due to be delivered in just days! His whole body collapsed, his head joining all six of his legs flat against the ground as he keened over the unfairness of the timing and all the other unfairnesses that would come from being dead.
He could rejoin his closest from his colony to ask for help, but they would probably send him to where dead bodies were stored even if they could resist the message of his scent, so as to be proper in front of the little ones housed with them.
Tirzah gathered the reading materials he had been holding and placed them in his chest pouch and sealed the flap, so as not to lose them when he left this world.
It was strange, he still didn’t feel dead, and he could still move and hold things.
But he was dead.

Tirzah waited in the resting garden for all that afternoon before his corpse was found.
He could have gone to find others to collect him, but he didn’t feel like it. Also, he felt that moving away from where he had died would be somehow wrong.
The worker who found him had been startled to come across the smell of a corpse, a corpse that raised his head and scented a greeting at them.
They ran away a short distance and it had taken Tirzah standing still until one hundred and fifty two seconds had passed before they had been brave enough to return. Feeling petty, Tirzah had counted.
After coming back to finish smelling him, they left to report that he was dead.
Soon two guards came running to Tirzah, and rising their forelegs reached out to grasp him, prepared to drag Tizrah away to where dead bodies were stored.
They paused when Tirzah handed the closest guard his identifications, which he had gathered while awaiting their arrival. The closest guard slowly reached out to gather the identifications and place them safely in her pouch.
The two guards confirmed that Tirzah was dead, and then confirmed it again, touched their antenna to communicate outside of his ability to smell and then confirmed again that Tirzah was dead while he waited, standing patiently.
Finally the two guards reached out to pull at Tirzah. They both tripped when Tirzah began walking along with them, giving them none of the resistance of an unmoving dead body that they were expecting.

The guards left Tirzah just inside the entrance of where dead bodies were stored, not moving him back to the pile of dead bodies several steps away.
Tirzah considered moving to his proper place himself, but after some consideration decided that he couldn’t be bothered, and settled down where he had been placed.
At first he tried not to think, since he felt that thinking would be inappropriate for someone who was dead.
But thoughts kept floating past his attention, making him focus on how long the afterlife was going to be if he remained constantly aware of the passing of time.
Rifling through his pouch, Tirzah considered the literature he had been planning to read, but it was an educational matrix, and not only did he not want to read it, he didn’t want to consume his only literature so soon into eternity.
Taking out his recording tablet Tirzah began to write.

Dead I am still here,
I move and think and smell dead
Dead the time will pass

Eternity this
Where dead bodies are stored still
Boredom does not fade

Pheromones can’t lie
Life is gone, thoughts have not passed
Boredom lingers now

Darkness fell and Tirzah lowered his head and slept. In the morning he reached back his antenna to find himself still dead.
Later in the afternoon, two guards came with another dead body. They looked at Tirzah as they passed, but after smelling him and confirming that he was dead, quickly took their charge to the pile and then left.

Dead, another joins
Company, pulled and unmoving
Why am I aware

Sleep sought and hard caught
Awareness, unwelcome stays
Boredom lingers now

After sleeping and waking the next day, Tirzah found himself slightly less dead and tried to leave where dead bodies are stored, but was soon led back by the guards. He settled back into his spot and contemplated the coming eternity. Would he continue to be aware? The other dead didn’t seem to be able to move. Did they think and smell and see like he did, or was it just him?
Tirzan pulled out his education matrix and began to study

Days pass slowly on
Learning what I will not use
In time after life

Two more nights passed without any new dead joining Tirzah. And on next day guards brought in another of the dead. After they deposited their charge they walked back towards the entrance.
Passing Tirzah, the guard closest to him stopped and stuck their antenna straight out.
She expelled the scents of confusion, shock and then irritation, and charged at Tirzah making him jump up. Nudging him towards the entrance, the guards barely paused to let Tirzah pick up his education matrix and recording tablet. They chittered at him for lying in the place where dead bodies are stored when he had no business there and continued nudging him as he hesitantly walked to the entrance.
Tirzah stood confused at the entrance for some time after the guards left, and then slowly moved to the records shelter. Finding his identifications had only partially been entered, the guard in charge of the shelter allowed him to retrieve them.
Arriving home, Tirzah found a package waiting for him at the entrance of his living shelter.

Waiting while I’m dead
Poems of beauty by my idol
Greet my returning life