Mine Has Maggots

There is a shredded string that hangs at the top of a short staircase. It is attached to a single 60-watt bulb. When the staircase was constructed, I don’t think any thought was put into the aesthetic value. Meaning only that this bulb was never meant to have a shade or any sort of ornamental cover. It was only ever meant to be a bulb. It is possible that at some point the string was engineered to be metal or a chain or some combination of the two, but those lofty dreams are bygone at best, if they ever existed at all. The click when the string is pulled isn’t satisfying. It works, but there is none of that thrilling engagement or the magic of illumination. It just wafts a little puff of light at you. I suppose if your eyes were not adjusted to light, you would feel your irises tighten to protect, but only in the way that they do, and only if you were paying attention to such a thing.

The light is ultimately unimportant because there are only three short stairs until you are on the dirt floor of this root cellar. I keep a few things down here. They are my prized possessions. The first is my Admiral Craft BDCF-5 chest freezer. Measuring approximately 30.25" W x 22" D x 33". It is one of the smaller ones, and certainly, for practical purposes or as most people would use it, you would need 115 volts, operating on a single-phase, 60 Hz power supply. It draws approximately 0.92 amps, consumes around 125 watts, and is equipped with a standard NEMA 5-15P plug for connection to a common electrical outlet.

I don’t care about any of that.

I use it for simple storage. It is where I keep my second prized possession. This item is what I like to call my “dancing skin.”

Lastly, or possession three is a bundle of microfiber rags by the chest freezer; I like to keep it pristine. There is something about the white expanse of it. There is something about the shiny chrome latch and hinges. I spend as much time as needed making sure everything shines like new. I often get distracted and run my hands along that glossy surface, but when I do that, I am compelled to start the process all over again. I start at the top, where it is just an uninterrupted field of white. I work my way down, and particular attention is paid to the chrome. Occasionally, I’ll huff a little breath onto precise areas and buff it until there is a real sheen. This fastidious attention to detail is not really in my nature. If you were to see the rest of my home, you would understand what I mean. This freezer’s surface is where all my fantasies of cleanliness do the bulk of their frolicking. I am rancid other than this. My clothing, my home, my hygiene, all could use a bit of a tidy, as they say. Even my dancing skin inside the chest would be considered infested or rank.

As I mentioned before, I don’t keep the thing plugged in. It serves as a storage locker and shrine, in some respects. My fascination is with the ritual. I pull the string, walk down those three steps, take some time cleaning and polishing, and then I pull out my dancing skin.

Some might imagine this skin is a beautifully crafted piece of fleshwork or some type of animal fur. It is not, nor is it a garb inspired by some earth-based religion. There is nothing sacred or pretty about it. There is also nothing encompassing elements of satanism or dark magic. My dancing skin is a rotting and festering mockery of a human carapace. It fits like a latex body suit, but it is torn and shredded. It is made of organic material and has been left unrefrigerated to rot and decompose. So, while some of the more performative practitioners of the dark arts might want a suit that is macabre, elegant, frightening, or dripping with gothic glamour, mine has maggots.

It is not a suit of maggots, and there was no intention to allow it to get to this state, but somewhere deep within my nature is a proclivity towards apathy. I am disinterested in my own thoughts and my own body. I don’t really get a reprieve from this vortex of recursion, and it drains most of my resolve. So, I let things go by the wayside as they used to say. My actual body might have maggots, too. I wouldn’t know. My joints creak, all my cartilage is gone, my muscles are torn or strained, and my neck is held together with pins. My guts are rotten and ulcerous; my lungs are full of tar and cancer. My throat is mainly mucus, and my vocal cords just rattle around, banging against scar tissue.

All this digression is really an excuse to tell you about the process by which I put on my dancing skin. I return from work, and I drink the rest of the coffee in the pot I made this morning. It is cold and stale since it has been out all day, but I do not drink coffee for the taste. I drink it because I want the caffeine. Following this refuel, I descend the stairs, perform the cleaning ritual on the freezer chest, and remove the dancing skin. How I acquired this skin escapes me. I do not recall a time when it was not part of my life. I also do not recall a time before this chest freezer or this apartment. My first memory is of opening the chest and finding the skin. It was in much better condition back then. It wasn’t pristine, but it was free of any holes and free of the alterations I have made. As I said before, the dancing skin resembles a latex body suit complete with a head cover. It is made of some organic skin; I assume that it was taken from a human, mainly because of the shape.

There is a slit that runs from the back of the neck all the way down, only ending where the legs begin. I essentially step into it. Starting of course with the feet, and then I pull it around myself. The feet were the first things to go. I replaced the organic material with a pair of yellow rain boots. I sewed the flesh into that glossy plastic. I always wanted to learn how to sew properly, but my mother never taught me. She thought it was beneath our station to wear mended clothing. So, the job is loose and not very professional-looking, but nothing about this skin is professional in that sense. Boots are an important part of any outfit. Honestly, I question whether we would need feet if boots didn’t exist, but that is more of a social question and less about style or preference.

The next thing to go was the hands. I could never get the hang of the fingers, and I know historically, especially in the artistic community, fingers are always tricky. Mine are stiff and arthritic from a life of lifting and straining, so I was happy to not have to shove them in their respective holes. I just stitched the ends of the hands closed when they finally ripped off. I lose dexterity with my hands, but it hasn’t really taken away much. The thighs and the torso are in very good shape. A few holes or rips, and some of the skin is getting threadbare, or whatever the term would be. I tend to lose and gain weight with the seasons, so there is some stretching around the midsection. Naturally, the maggots take their share, but they work slowly in movement and are sparse in numbers.

There was never any hair, which I did not care for. So, I glued a wiry wig to the top of the head. My placement wasn’t great, but it serves the purpose. I am not trying to convince anyone this is real hair; I just want the essence of it to come across. The eyes are just holes. Initially, they were a bit small for my taste, but over time, they have been gnawed at by the maggots and are now larger. The nose is gone, which I delusionally and romantically attribute to syphilis. I just left it off. I have a rather good sense of smell, and I didn’t want to be trapped in the suit with any foul odor. The mouth was just never present, so my breath gets stifled and the skin in front of it gets wet, but I don’t mind those sensations; it is almost sensual in a way. While we are loosely on the topic of sensual, there were also never any genitals or any nod to something sexual about this skin. If there had been, I might have dismissed it. Whoever gifted it to me might have known about my prudishness. One might think this is a fetish or BDSM object, but those things are not where my habits were born. I remember being interested in flagellation for a brief period of time, but all those roads intersected with sexuality, and those notions pushed me away.

Let me tell you about my living situation. I share a two-bedroom apartment with another person. At some point, I have forgotten their name, and besides passing pleasantries and rent collection, we rarely speak. At all hours of the day, they can be found lounging on the couch in the main living area of our shared space. They look at their phone for hours at a time and occasionally eat something or use the bathroom. They have the run of the house because I am employed full-time, and when not at work, I am either in my bedroom or down here in the basement. I don’t think they have ever been down here. They certainly have not looked in my chest freezer, because that would have led to some questions. Although they could be a harder person than I imagined. They might have seen my dancing skin, but wisely chose not to rock the boat. Well—today I chose to rock the boat. I will have my coming-out party in my dancing skin.

I made my way up those three short steps in my chosen garb, and I pulled that shredded string. The long hallway from the basement to the living area was dark, but I could see my roommate reclining on the large couch. There was a bucket of canes by the front door. I again am not quite sure why, but it was always something I did; another habit I learned from my parents. One of the canes was a thick piece of oak with an ornamental Asian style dragon head as the grip. I picked it up and carried it with my right hand as my yellow rainboots trampled down the hallway. My roommate heard my approach but never looked up from their phone.

“How was work?”

Was what I heard, and I returned a muffled but stern,

“Fine.”

I usually would take the left into my bedroom, but tonight I went into the living room and sat down on the old Barcalounger positioned next to the couch. I waited, my breath huffing and stifled, the flesh of my dancing skin sticking to the leather of the recliner. I had my right-hand stump in my lap, and the left was clutching the cane, keeping the tip of it to the floor. I was wondering what would trigger or illicit a response from my roommate. I figured the smell would alert them instantly, but nothing happened for a while. I saw the blue and red lights flashing in the room. I looked out the window, and several police cars had screeched into our parking lot.

It was the maggots that got my roommate’s attention. They had crawled from my dancing skin onto—their regular skin, and I guess they looked around at that point, noticing my state. They must have texted the police because I never heard a sound. I wonder what the response time was. I wonder how long they sat there. I wonder what they were thinking while maggots inched along. I turned my head to the left, and despite my voice being muffled by this mouthless outfit. I clearly said,

“Wish you hadn’t done that, you’ve never even seen my dance.”