The Beauty of Death Vol.1

Metamorphic Apotheosis-2

As Paul went on about the desert, his friends, and his mission, Francesca sat up and went into the kitchen. With her free hand she reached out to the crystal fruit platter and moved a couple apples before choosing a banana. She squeezed the phone between her head and shoulder then peeled the sides. Her eyes focused on one of the dangling strands. It moved and she noticed something wriggling its way up toward the fruit. She turned the banana away. Several maggots squirmed around a dark, rotted spot on the other side. Francesca didn’t hear much of what Paul said after that.

“Okay, I will. Love you too. Be safe.” She hung up and then set the phone and banana down on the kitchen counter.

The black mouth hooks of the worms moved in and out, eating their way through the gray flesh and nothing else. For nearly an hour, she watched them, and when they’d finished, the fat worms crawled out and inched their way across the counter. Francesca picked one up between her thumb and forefinger. It wriggled to get free.

“So, you like dying and dead things.”

The maggot stopped writhing and directed its pointed head toward her.

While falling asleep that night, the sallow worm came to Francesca’s bedside, whispering vile things it wanted to do to her, promising resolve, freedom from the suffering and loneliness. The relentless maggot described a utopia it would show her, if only she’d succumb to its desires. The slick fluids that flowed from her s*x when it spoke of the perverse ways it would satisfy her needs disgusted Francesca. But night after night it came, and what she remembered most from its words was resolve. And so she yielded.

A slow strobe flashed in and out behind her eyelids, waking Francesca. The ceiling fan with its rotating arms above displayed the white bedroom in flashes. Her swollen groin throbbed in time with the whirring blades. She reached toward the bedside table, knocking empty prescription bottles and lids to the floor. Francesca pawed a chipped, blue cereal bowl and brought it closer. The assortment of pills she’d dumped into it went halfway up the sides, resembling an unhealthy breakfast of rainbow marshmallows. Grabbing a small handful, she funneled them into her mouth then picked up a squeeze bottle and watered the medications before swallowing.

Francesca lay back and waited, staring at the drugs that had spilled from the bowl now resting sideways on the mattress corner. Everything her doctor had prescribed to make her life better after losing her baby, the post-miscarriage infection that followed—antibiotics and pain killers, some for postpartum depression, insomnia, then more antidepressants after Paul had left.

How long ago did he leave? No matter. Her clean womb would be ready for his return. To begin again.

Second Larval Instar of the New World Screwworm

In half sleep, the worm lay with her among their offspring, overseeing and encouraging their progress to eat the dead away while also continuing to seduce her. Maggots teemed, and every squirm against her tingled, electric. Their movement sizzled and crackled the air all around. Exposed to the fan’s continuous downdraft and the squiggling of a nomadic handful, she moaned and whimpered with the stimulation across her hypersensitive skin. Pain skirted every pleasure, creating a sentience of earned bliss Francesca had never experienced before. She knew she’d become addicted to it and wondered if she could ever live without it.

The little ones had grown, wriggling deeper, rooting that slow itch, traveling across synaptic highways where traffic inched forward, alerting every neuron to fire. A sprinkle became rain, building up to a torrent at release, leaving her body weak and quivering, only breathing to feed them on in their work.

Voiceless but communicating through smell and movement, the great worm, a lover now beside her, the color and sound of crinkling parchment, insisted the unrelenting spasms helped rid her of what was left behind.

While she rested between contractions, the worm enveloped her in darkness and whispered of its heavenly realm. In time with the circling fan blades above, Francesca saw a place swathed in lead monochrome, the only light coming from a platinum glow of an ethereal ammonia atmosphere, the chemical odor she’d grown accustomed to. Life in constant motion below, they surrounded her with their nurturing love, carrying her among them, through layers and mounds of decomposition, lifting her high.

Francesca writhed among their warm bodies, ebbing on their undulations. Above, millions of tiny wings fluttered, creating iridescent teal stars, fanning her like peacock feathers. Everything had the purpose of caring for her, revering her for what she gave. They wanted her to stay and always be their matriarch.

Pain swept Francesca away and brought her back to the heat and humidity. Cramps rolled under her abdominals. A war between the living and dead struggled inside. Sweat trickled from her skin, cooling slightly as it soaked through the sheets to the mattress. Moonlight cast silver stripes across the scattered pills on the bed. Shaking and moving in quick, uncontrolled jerks, Francesca swiped at the glowing rounded shapes and brought them closer. Some of them appeared to scramble away, but she pinched as many as she could then thrust the gathered fingers into her mouth, sprinkling the tablets and capsules onto her parched tongue, now a crusty, desert road. No energy to search out the water bottle, she worked them down, swallowing chalky bitterness until there was nothing left to feel.

On the beach, warm and calm, gold strands of Paul’s blonde hair gleamed in the sunlight. Beautiful and muscular, he picked her up and carried her toward the milky green water.

“Stop! I don’t think I’m supposed to—” Francesca shielded her face as he sloshed into the waves.

Too late. She laughed, licked brine from her lips, and looked into the mirrored lenses of his sunglasses; her pleading eyes reflecting back. “Please, don’t go. I want to stay like this forever.”

“I wish.” Paul lifted her as a wave rolled past and rocked them against one another.

She nodded then turned her head, staring out across endless ripples to the seam where water met sky. “I’d like to go there someday.”

“Afghanistan?”

“No. There.” Francesca released his shoulder and pointed. “I’d like to float all the way to the end.”

“To Mexico, then?” Paul laughed, skimming her backside over the water. “Seriously, though. It’ll go by fast. I promise. When I get back, I’ll have time off, we can take a vacation. Maybe I’ll even take you there.” He faced her toward the horizon and let her go.

Everything quieted. The blue above and water below darkened to carbon black. Francesca drifted out alone, keeping her eyes ahead. A roar of crinkling and crackling sounds filled her ears. The seam at the end of the world disappeared as she sunk into soft, twisting mire.

Third Larval Instar of the New World Screwworm

She woke dripping in the blackness, sobbing and gasping for breath. Coughing threw airborne shadows from her mouth that settled over her torso. Black bodies and red eyes bobbed everywhere across her field of vision. Buzzing vibrated her skull while thousands of hairy legs crept over every inch of flesh. Francesca’s jaw dropped open and flies flitted out and in.

Slowly moving her gaze down her body to look upon the worm that once more stood at the foot of her bed, she watched thousands of black flies and fat maggots with screw-shaped bodies migrate toward the great one. The insects embraced it with their loving darkness, and she envied it.

Is it done?

The great worm seemed to nod then turned around to leave. All the flies flew after it, leaving her perfect body on the mattress covered and soaked in everything foul. Francesca strained to sit up. Unbearable loneliness pushed her back, and she wept.

After coming back from the beach with Paul, Francesca showered. Her eyes closed, she lathered her body in silky bubbles, gently circling her belly using hopeful hands. She hunched with a sudden contraction. Pink foam, darkening as she watched, swirled around her feet on the tiles below. Paul ran to her as she screamed, his eyes widened at the sight, and he stood frozen.

Emergency room bright lights faded to a world of grays, and a subtle peace overshadowed the pain and shouting voices. Francesca melted into it. She woke in a similar room. Saw a basin filled with gore. A figure in blue covered it with a towel as they moved her onto a gurney. She knew then what had happened.

Home with Paul, hearing him on the phone trying to explain the circumstances. No one listened. He’d have to leave soon. No time for grieving.

Nightmares left her screaming and feverish for a couple days until lethargy set in. Once more the intense fluorescents of an emergency room darkened to the quiet place. Francesca knew she’d traveled to the seam where ocean met sky. It comforted her to be there, away from the pain and chaos. She drifted on her back and slowly glided over glistening white peaks, miles of green corn stalks, and sand dunes. But underneath the surface of everything, something waited. To catch her, she thought.

Movement caught her eye, but she couldn’t focus on anything specific. The entire place moved like clouds, billowing and reforming. The faint crackling of electricity hummed in the background. Pain jolted her back and forth from the real world of the hospital and her escape.

When she finally returned for good she didn’t want to know about the infection and what it had done. The possible difficulty of trying again. Paul’s time before deployment coming sooner. Francesca wanted to go back to the seam and drift.

“The doctor says you’ll be able to go back to work in a couple weeks,” he said.

She nodded, eyes swelling with tears.

Paul sat next to her as she lay on the couch. “I think it’ll be good for you. Keep your mind off of things.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead.

His departure felt long ago, a vague memory. Saying goodbye felt final, like she knew then she’d never see him again. Francesca would find a way to return to the seam and fold into it.

Circling fan blades above had the sway of a hypnotist’s pendulum. First the baby left, then Paul, and now the worm that had become Francesca’s everything. Francesca doubted she could handle another love and loss. The great one and all who followed it began to fade into the haze of the room. Her opportunity to go was departing now, too. The thought of being left alone again unbearable, she cried out a weak utterance. “Take me.”

Francesca raised a shaky hand from her side and reached up.

The room exploded in swaths of black, furling from the doorway, closing in across white walls and carpet. Swarming with flies, the worm stood next to her once more, lowering and extending shadow arms formed from a multitude of the buzzing insects. They gently lifted her from the bed. Francesca, light and listless gave them no resistance.

They glided her toward the foot of the bed where a vortex of them swirled downward into an abyss. Their nacreous wings flickered, creating a star tunnel, a wormhole. She leaned into the sallow worm and tucked her head against a thousand wings as it stepped over the circling darkness and floated down with her in its embrace.