After you die, your body goes through a very horrific process called decomposition. First, you go through algor mortis, liver mortis, and rigor mortis. After rigor mortis is gone, things start getting gross.

Algor mortis happens as soon as you die. This is the process of your heart and blood flow coming to a complete stop. Your body will start to get cold, dropping one degree fahrenheit per hour until you reach the temperature of the air surrounding you. How long it takes for your body temperature to drop depends on how warm or cold you were when you died.

When you’re dead cold, you start turning the color of death, as it’s called, in a process called liver mortis. After the heart officially stops, your blood cells drop to the lowest portion of your body. In about two hours, if you are lying on your back, your back will turn a shade of purplish-red while the rest of you goes pale. This is called the lividity or “postmortem” stain. After eight hours, the stain is permanemt.

Rigor mortis, or “going stiff” sets in about two hours after you die (sooner, if you were in the cold, or had been doing some sort of labor or excercise just before your death). This process starts in the jaw and neck and spreads from there. At twelve hours, your body is stiffest and afterwards, your muscles begin to relax and go limp. Within forty-eight hours, rigor mortis is gone, and the fun begins.

If you haven’t been embalmed after a day, and for the fun of it, let’s say you haven’t, your body will begin to break down cell by cell. In two to three days, you should start looking a little green. This process is known as putrefaction (commonly known as “rotting”). It starts in your abdomen and spreads from there, hitting the chest, thighs and so on. To accompany the color, you’ll also start smelling pretty bad. You can blame this on your decaying red cells and sulfuric intestinal gas.

The gas spreads through your body, making you swell up almost like a balloon. The pressure inside you will cause your eyes and tongue to bulge out of your face. Eventually, the gas forces itself out through your vagina (concidering you’re female) and rectum. And at last, your skin will turn from that lovely shade of green to purple and then to black.

After a week, your entire body is discolored and your skin starts peeling in large chunks, complete with more stenches. In two weeks, you’ll have fluids seeping out of our nose and mouth. In three weeks, you’ll finally start to loosen up. Your hair, nails and teeth start falling out and all your internal organs begin to rupture.

Wasn’t that fun? That’s it. You’ve decayed. Assuming you didn’t die in water (which would make this process go four times faster), you’re just a skeleton with some skin now. I hope you like bugs, because your only friends now will be worms, maggots and flies.