I am a maggot, a decomposer, a consumer of the dead, and most importantly, I am the last witness of a dead body.
My family is excited to move me and my brothers into our new home.
I overheard this at this woman’s funeral, that Elyse Gabel was a psychology professor at the college nearby.
“She’ll be great for your first,” Mom says “She’s smart. The smartest ones have the sweetest brains.” We take her advice.
My brothers and I slither through the edges of Elyse Gabel’s casket. I inch my way across Elyse’s shoulder and into her ear and start gnawing. Sweetest remains I have ever tasted.
I feel the pressure of my brothers sinking into Elyse’s flesh and eating her torso. She gets heavy with us on top of her, then lighter as we eat her. I imagine this is how breathing is. It’s like we’re giving the dead another life, a new purpose.
What a life it is—providing a feast and a home to smelly bugs. I know she wouldn’t understand this.
Humans move. They switch houses to get a new start. They travel for jobs, for freedom, for their families. Maggots only change our places in search of the next meal. Elyse is fresh. We won’t have to move for quite some time.
Dirt starts to fall through the edges of the coffin. I slide out of Elyse’s ear. The earth sprinkles atop of the family. I curl my body around her pearl earrings.
Something bangs on the coffin, hard. There’s a click. Elyse Gabel’s dead body lights up. I’ve never seen an “alive” human until now. It’s strange to see someone’s mouth move on its own, and to finally connect a voice to a face.
“Jackpot.”
I know he can see us, smell us, chewing leftovers of something he’d saved for himself.
“He must think we’re disgusting.” My brother creeps behind me.
“So then why’s he here? To stare?” I say.
I’ve never seen a human open their eyelids by themselves either. The only times I’ve looked into a human’s eyes is when I’ve eaten them. But the eyes never moved. It’s unsettling to realize how much control you really have over someone.
“Nah. He’s one of those—” my brother says.
“What?” I uncurl to look at him.
“Grave robbers.”
“Aren’t we technically the grave robbers?”
“You could think of it that way, but we’re after the guts and the skins. It’s ethical. We need death to live.”
“And this person?”
“Grave robbers use death to get a thrill and some money. Why do you think they put bodies in the ground? So the living don’t get greedy.” He looks up. “See?”
The grave robber kneels on Elyse’s knees. Some of my other brothers start to crawl atop him, but he smashes them down. Dying in another’s coffin seems rude. But we have no control.
The living human squirms about. A noise escapes his lips. I’ve heard this noise before, at burials. It’s shock.
People don’t accept death the way that maggots do. They get scared, sad. I hear it in their trembling voices. It sounds like the noise that comes out of my mouth right now. This body is my home.
He removes her shoes, picks out a ring and dumps it in his front pocket. He moves his hands up her body, shaves some of my brothers off her legs along the way. Her tights already have holes from where the other maggots have bitten through.
A different noise from the grave robber. This is not a scared, shocked or sad noise.
His arms circle Elyse’s waist as he moves up her dress. Maggots wiggle under the fabric, but he puts his arms under anyway. He palms Elyse’s chest and pulls a gold chain from her neck. Then he gets to her ears. He works carefully, as if avoiding piercing Elyse and getting formaldehyde all over his clothes, even when he’s already got smashed maggots all over them.
He pulls on Elyse’s left ear, pulls the backs off of a gold hoop, a pearl, and a diamond. Three piercings to match the ear I’m in. He holds the prizes in his fist. Grave robber slides across Elyse’s arm. Maggots crawl under her fingernails. He ignores us, takes some jingly bracelets off her hand.
The noise again. He lines up every inch of his body atop hers. Almost like he is dead, too.
But his heart pounds on my home, blood rushes through his veins, noises that pouring out from his lips.
His hand creeps near me as he removes the last of Elyse’s jewelry. I squiggle away when he picks out the hoop, pearl and diamond.
He shoves the treasures in his pocket, then presses into Elyse, hard. That noise. He’s smashing my home, taken all the pretty things she was left with. And he’s not even finished.
I crawl back through Elyse’s ear and to her brain, but I no longer taste the sweetness. Just the bitterness of defeat.
Thud.
Another living human. This one holds a shovel above his head. Another thud, this time on the grave robber’s skull. Finally a different noise from his mouth. Something scared and sad. Blood gushes from the wound.
A feast.
The human with the shovel slams the casket shut, and I hear the earth bury us again.
The grave robber’s body smashes against Elyse’s, but now, my brothers and I swarm over both of them. We have complete control.
Alix Gregory is a sophomore at Capital Area School for the Arts Charter School (CASA).
