PEACE IS MOMENTS AWAY, I think as the drugs swim in my system. There is a hastily written note on the kitchen island. The marble beneath the paper is pristine. That’s what really matters. Leave the property in the condition it was in when you signed the lease. I take my contractual obligations seriously. I like to think I’m a good person —even honored the contract my parents signed when they brought me into the world. I waited until they were both in the ground. One last act of nobility, you know?

You’re probably expecting me to tell you what’s written in the note, but does that really matter? I’m sure you can imagine what a girl like me might have scribbled in her final message to the world. Something about a guy not returning my affection. Something about a dream I never got to live out. Something about it all being too much to bear.

Hey, I made it forty fucking years. That’s pretty good if you ask me.

Anyway.

I think it’s almost time. I’m lying on the floor now. As I fade, Midnight sniffs my face, and Onyx grooms my left hand with somber diligence. With the last of my strength, I manage a weak smile for Midnight and extend a finger to stroke Onyx’s whiskers.

And then, nothing.

***

Slowly, I become aware of my surroundings. Why is everything shimmering in a cloud of, what is it, exactly? My next, anguished thought is that I’ve failed. I’m not dead.

But the body on the living room floor is indeed mine. My mother used to say that Heaven was familiarity, that arriving would feel like the truest kind of coming home. I’m pretty sure this isn’t what she had in mind.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I try to run, but can’t move. Without a body I’m useless, immobilized, incorporeal madness. Helpless, I gaze down on the unbreathing mess of a human I murdered, but when? Was it seconds ago, or minutes or hours? She —the transition from I to the third person comes immediately and naturally —is still as pristine as the marble countertop, so I don’t think hours have passed. It was winter the last time I checked. Had I left a window open? Cooler air in the apartment would slow decomposition. But how would I know what season it is now? I exist outside of time.

But she does not.

Autolysis

Something twitches on the marbling skin of the corpse. It is green-gold and I imagine the buzzing that must emanate from it, although the room is the too-quiet of a vacuum, an absence that is somehow also a presence. It is a blessing. I watch as the fly is drawn to the left nostril. It wriggles inside, pressing from within like an anxious expectant mother seeking out the perfect den in which to give birth, testing the structural soundness of the walls of some cave she’s happened upon. I’m still not sure why I’m here or how to get unstuck from the scene unfolding before me. The body is decaying meat, beyond saving. What can I do about it? Why can’t I look away? How can I see it at all? Is this what hell is? Watching the smooth terrain of the features that once belonged to me develop fissures as some inner plate tectonics does its awful work?

I’m not here. Not really. I can’t be. It makes no sense. Maybe she’s not even dead. This must be a fever dream, right? Perhaps drug-induced?

Another fly lands. Then another, and another. Where are they coming from? I wonder again if I had left a window open. Or has the sick-sweet body conjured out of thin air like hungry sprites?

They maneuver into the ear canals and alight on the lips, which aren’t quite closed. Their iridescent wings shimmer and I look past them and into the colors. They are dancers, I decide. Their trajectories are a little erratic, but that’s to be expected at a rehearsal. And don’t the striations in the marbling resemble a stage? The cast is unusually large, with other specimens pirouetting on from the wings. They move to music I can’t hear, but I bet it’s the drone of Om at a perfect 432 hertz. Don’t ask me how I know that. I’m not sure how I know anything anymore.

***

Bloat

I don’t know why the fuck she gets fat, but she does. She looks pregnant in fact, and her skin squirms. I wish I had teeth so I could break her wide open. Her lips shiver and her tongue protrudes past them, a bloated island of decay. A maggot bursts from inside the orifice of her mouth, white and wet and still unsure of its movements. Another follows. Then another. And another. The black mounds of flies find her flesh and their proboscises dig in. As I watch the swarm cover her I am filled with rage. Because how is she theirs? She is mine if she is anyone’s. The flesh on her stomach bursts and adipose butter sprays the heads of the feasting fiends as new life springs from the dead one. This bitch really should have gone to the gym more. She should have known something like this was coming. Fuck, I hate her. I hate how easily she opens wide to receive the hosts that hunger for her flesh. This corpse is a slut, but instead of spreading her legs, she spreads her abdomen until it bursts with mingling insects fighting over her liquefying fat.

She inflates like a balloon someone has spent too much breath on, growing round and translucent, her skin thinning under the strain. The flies suck her bounty down their greedy throats, and she sits useless, letting them do it. It kind of looks like a blowjob, I reason, as her body engorges to twice its normal size and they wrap their wicked mandibles about her and suck her dry. Her bloating body is the shaft and her head threatens eruption. And they find her openings and suck, suck, suck, violently, like she would cum soon and fill them up. Like they had been born to swallow down her excretions. I don’t know how long I watch them come. I don’t know how long I watch her cum. But it is a long time. And to my credit, I do not look away. Not once. Not when she starts to deflate, not when they clean up the mess she’s made with their obedient mouths, not even when I remember that this was me once, filled with the fast-moving gaseous molecules of internalized anger (always a secondary emotion), constipated with infinite rage in a body not built to contain it, pushed at long last to the painful breaking point.

***

Active Decay

Nothing can subsist forever unthreatened. The beetles come. They gleam in the lone sunbeam coming through the window —I had left it open, after all. The maggots are dumb hungry things, and they do not see the beetles. The beetles strike without warning, jaws snapping. The maggots’ soft bodies succumb. The meat of the girl that was me is less, I notice. Her bones glint somewhere beneath the remaining layers of flesh. Thin. So thin. A shred of gossamer skin hovers over the joint as the beetle digests the maggot of some breed of fly I cannot name. It does not have the beautiful green-gold wings of the one from before.

I do not have eyes, but still, I hone in on the beetle. My erstwhile corpse is in its teeth and it only feels right to greet the thing. I entreat my god to see me.

“She deserves to live. Let her be!” I scream, though I know she is dead, her decaying body opened up before me.

“Please, I will worship your kind, most numerous on the Earth. I will bow down and give thanks. Just please, spare her.”

I scream it in syllables that are equal parts rage and despair as the beetles march toward the carcass.

This can’t be happening, I find myself thinking as it buries itself into my remaining flesh.

Her remaining flesh, I mean.

But is it not also mine?

I continue to beg, but my prayer is not heard. When was my prayer ever heard?

I can see the bone, the thing that gives my —her —abandoned body shape.

I try to apologize to her for what I’ve done, realize I’m speaking to ears that can no longer hear me, ears gnawed to unrecognizable flaps on the living room floor and ears of the gods I try desperately to believe have abandoned me here.

***

Advanced Decay

There is a moth now, papery and thin. What are moths but butterflies not qualified for the day? Rejects, same as me. We might as well end this thing together. I did this. I did this. I did this. I’m fucking dead. I am smaller than I’ve ever been. Not unlike my —her —body. Is the moth going to eat her? Consume what I used to be? Is it attracted to the thought of me? What do moths do exactly? I didn’t even think they were part of this to be honest. I don’t think I can face what happens next.

Whatever it is in me that is allowing me to watch this shitshow unfurl bores into the thing’s wings. They are cream-colored, intricate, shot through with a color I can only describe as caramel. It reminds me of this pretty dress I used to have back when I looked pretty damn good in pretty dresses. The bodice was tight and it hugged my waist, but the skirt was rich and full and fluttery. I wore it every year to the Renaissance Festival. It’s happysad to think about. What is it called when you want to remember so that the sense of loss never leaves you? Desiderium. That’s it. Don’t ask me how I know that, either.

How is any of this happening?

I feel the richness of memory bring me lower still. Unable to look any longer I zoom out, away from the girl in the dress, and find myself drawn to the hair of the corpse. The moth is tangled up in it. I see then that it is one of many. Little harbingers of doom, winged night freaks hungry for scraps. There’s a lot of hair to get through, but I’m sure they’ll manage.

Eat your heart out, moths. I hope these particular strands are to your liking. My hair’s not been dyed in months, so I’m sure it has that cage-free, organic fresh taste about it.

***

Skeletonization

I think it must be close to over, and then the spider comes. She builds a web and it’s beautiful watching her work. Nature’s little weaver. I begrudge her nothing. We all have to take what we can get. I am nothing at this point. Nothing but bare-bones structure. Cold calcium splayed in rib cages and clusters and…

Nothing like the creature that catches insects in the trap she has set. Dedicated to life, even among the ruins of the world, the spider is not a quitter. Not like the body that was once the girl that was once me.

I killed that one. Stopped her heart forever. Sacrificed her flesh in a heartbeat. I did this. I get that now. She has been consumed, and my memory? It is uneaten. It is fresh. I accept what I did. I look down and I squirm, caught in the web of what I have done. Not the spent body, but the me telling this story. Do you understand? The spider strikes and I flail. What a reprieve it will be to at long last feel nothing.

***

She is me and I am gone. Why has no one come? What has become of the outside world? Why has no one come to save her, to save me? I recognize that, like the words scribbled on that faraway note, it doesn’t matter. In the end, I saved myself —from a million horrors that others endured because they couldn’t part with life. I saved the girl I once was, and now I can sleep in sweet oblivion.

And this new life can begin.

About the Author:
Amanda Worthington is a writer of horror, science fiction, and fantasy, and often finds herself blending them all together to create some new hellscape. Her favorite subgenre is cosmic horror and her least favorite is gothic—her newest work-in-process combines them both. She founded and serves as current chair for Horror in the Heartland, the Heartland chapter of the HWA, or, if you prefer, “The HWA chapter for Midwesterners outside of Chicago.” Serving members across eight states, Horror in the Heartland seeks to elevate horror in the rural outposts of the Bible Belt. Amanda has been in all but one issue of Carnage House because she’s deranged that way. She’s also had work published in Space and Time and The Sirens Call. When not writing, she’s probably playing Zelda or trying to argue with her two recalcitrant black cats, Apollo and Artemis.

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