CW: body horror, gender horror, decomposition of a body, gender dysphoria, birth, parasites
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I found a body decomposing in the woods and it was me and I was it. Its flaccid flesh sagged in folds of buttery fat. Its skin wrinkled like fine-pressed linen. Mealy-mouthed, maggot-infested. Her eyes were a glassy gray, glazed over with crusty flecks.
And as I stared at her, I could have sworn I saw her stomach rise and fall, almost as if she were taking her last shallow, shuddering breaths. I walked towards her, leather boots, worn to the bone, leaving imprints on the mossy forest floor. A stick snapped beneath me and her stomach burst, hissing like a deflating balloon. Something oozed out of her, covered in blood and amniotic fluid, screeching wildly, shrilly. A parasite that had carved its way through her body. It withered away all at once, leaving nothing behind but dust and the not-quite-me from before I was really me. Is this all that I’m good for? Is my only value in what I can create? In the forest, in the darkness, cradled by the trees, I could not remember if this had already happened. Perhaps it was the future that would have awaited me had I not made myself anew. Either way, time passed me by in the blink of an eye as her own eyes dribbled out of her skull like a runny egg. Her hair thinned, unraveling in the wind. Picked apart by sparrows for their nests. Her skin loosened and relaxed finally, before falling off entirely. And then it was bones, and bones I could work with. Her body—my body—sunk into the earth with every passing moment. I would have to act fast, lest I be lost entirely. I turned those bones over piece by piece, studying them fastidiously. I stretched the femur. The tibia too. I narrowed the hip bone and sloped the forehead. The elbows, shoulders, fingers, and thighs all changed as well. And when I was done crafting my frame, I fashioned myself new organs from the stones and sticks and fallen leaves of the forest, leaving no hollow spaces. From the dirt, my skin too was made anew. And there I was. The air in the forest was crisp and cool. I could feel it in my nose, my throat, my chest, my lungs with every new breath. The wind stirred, leaves rustling. Just a whisper against now-cropped hair. Still new and itchy against the back of my neck. In time though, it will grow and I will grow and the forest will grow too until her lifeless form is nothing but a dream, a starting point. When I awoke the next morning, I found I could not change my bones, but still I could change enough. I would create something new for myself, not because I had to or was expected to, but because I wanted to. And so I did. I found a body in the woods, still alive, growing closer to the me I would choose to be. |
T.S. Moran (he/they) has always had an affinity for the strange. He is a midwest-based speculative fiction novelist, scriptwriter, and lifelong storyteller. T.S. can be found writing about the wild, weird, wretched, and wondrous or waxing poetic about the monstrous. Follow him on Twitter @ts_writes.
