Diary of a Maggot (3 page)

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM.
He's almost upon us. I tense, preparing
to move.

"This
cellar
isn't big enough for
all
of us." The Beast howls with laughter, his voice blasting directly above us. "Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

I hold my breath. It's time. Everything in my life has been leading up to this.

It's time.

"Say, Pop
." The Beast's voice
grows louder as he drops down to our level. "Have you seen 'em? Those freakin'
maggots
that got in here and
ca
me
after
us?"

It's time!
I let out a whistle, loud enough to carry from one eye to the next. My family on the other side of the ridge will know what they need to do
now
.

Which starts with counting to three right after the whistle. And ends with all of us, everyone, moving at once.

One.
Two.
I
stretch my body, and the others alongside me do the same. I hope against hope that this will work, that it will have the desired effect.

Three.
All together now.

Squeeze.

The
six
of us squirm over the sticky eyeball, dragging the eyelid on our backs.
The six maggots under the other eyeli
d do the same thing
.

Together, we pull up the lids
.
We open his eyes.

For a moment, nothing
else
happens. The Beast falls silent. I think my plan has failed.

But the moment passes. And that's when I hear it.

A sharp intake of air. One last clatter as something metallic falls to the ground.
Then a cry from the Great Beast himself. "
YAAAAAHHH!
"

My fellow maggots and I keep moving, pressing the eyelids higher. Opening the eyes wider.

Making the Beast scream louder. "
YAAAAAAHHH!
"

I poke my head out from under the eyelid just in time to see the Beast
fumbl
ing backward, wailing. His eyes are
as
wide
as puff balls, his skin as pasty white as mine.

"
Omigod omigod omigod!
" He scuttles away from us, unable to see my tiny form peeking out from
under
the eyelid. "
It can't be!
" He scra
mbles to his feet, giving off an odor of urine and feces.

And then it happens. A
surprise.

The Beast skids backward, howling. "But I
killed
you! I
killed
you
myself!
" Then, suddenly, one of his boots lands in a puddle of water mixed with blood.

And it slips.

As his boot flies out from under him, his towering form swoops backward. His
arms flail as his
enormous bulk crashes toward the
vast gray plain.

He just misses catching hold of a wooden post, his last chance of stopping his fall. Both boots leave the
ground
, and his upper
body hits hard. Hardest of all, one part of him whips back and down to strike the plain with an echoing
crack.

His head.
It bounces back up as I watch, spraying blood. It hits
again,
springs up one more time, then drops for good.

A pool of gleaming dark crimson flows from underneath that head, spreading slowly. A strangled cry gurgles up from his throat, then
fades in a long, rattling sigh. And chokes off forever.

As the twelve of us maggots squirm out from under the eyelids we've been tending, we
watch the Beast's final few twitches. Sniffing his scent in the air, we know the truth before he stops moving. Before his body goes limp and his bowels pour out their contents on the gray plain.

The Great Beast is not-dead no longer.

 

*****

You'd think all the death and destruction might kill our appetites. But it doesn't.

The Beast's
body is still warm when we wriggle over to it. When the twelve of us begin our great feast.

Climbing the slopes of his monstrous form, we nibble and gulp and digest. We devour him, but not as retribution. Not because it is just.

We do it b
ecause we
'
re
hungry.
Because each bite
makes us grow a little more and
takes us one step closer to
soaring.

How long will it take to consume this massive Beast
we've killed
? How long until the twelve surviving maggots of our clan strip the flesh from his bones?

More than
ten
days
, that's for sure
. That's how long we feast, barely making a dent in our meal, before
I lose my appetite
.

 

*****

Just as I'm stuffing myself on pungent morsels
of rotten meat,
I feel the hunger draining out of me. I try to force myself to take one more bite, but I can't do it.

The tiniest
maggot
, who's gorging herself nearby, notices I've run out of steam and asks what's wrong. Nothing to worry about, I tell her. I just need to take a little rest.

Bloated from weeks of nonstop feasting, I
drag myself down from the mountain of Beast meat. I trundle across the gray plain, moving at a slow crawl because I'm overstuffed.

I feel a twinge of sadness as I creep past the shriveled rinds of my long-dead brothers and sisters. If only they could have shared this incredible feast with us.

Or is the feast itself
a danger? I feel sluggish and sick; my guts are churning, my skin parched. Did the Great Beast's flesh
poison
me?

I feel like I just want to crawl under a rock and hide. With no rocks in sight, I head for the giant white cliff instead. I find the hole at the base of the cliff, the hole where the tiniest maggot and I once planned to hide from the Beast.
I crawl inside, push as far back into the dank darkness as I can, and curl up into a ball.

Then, shivering, I drift off to sleep.

 

*****

T
wo weeks
later, I awaken
in the hole at the base of the
cliff
...and
I'm a new person. Completely transformed.

Clambering out of the hole into the light, I stretch my spindly
new
legs and sniff the cool, humid air. I take a look around with my multifaceted eyes, catching every detail of the world in all directions.

The Great Beast's body lies in the same place I left it, sprawled on the
plain
. More of his flesh has been nibbled away by my family, leaving him pockmarked from the work of a dozen tiny jaws. What hasn't been chewed by maggots has been eaten away by the unseen hordes of the bringers of rot.

The other corpse, our original meal befo
re the coming of the Beast, has
been eaten away, too. There isn't much meat left on that one at all; he's little more than a pile of
gristle and
bones.

The Beast's metal pot, the one he carried the boiling water in, still lies on its side near the white cliff. The
metal
spray can he once brandished lies near his body.

But nowhere do I see a living maggot.
No glistening pale worms wriggling through rotting flesh or squirming along a scarlet blood trail.
My magnificent new vision catches not a trace of my brothers and sisters anywhere.

Then, suddenly, something catches my eye. A dark object hurtling through the air above the dead meat on the plain.

And I laugh.
Of course! I should've known!

Another dark object zips past the first, and then another and another and another.
I count five, then six, then seven, every one of them making a soft buzzing sound that's music to my ears.

I count eleven
of them
.
I should've
known.

If
I've
changed, then
they
must've changed, too. All my brothers and sisters,
radically transforming as their lifelong dreams came true
.

Like them, I've been getting ready for this for as long as I can remember. Rehearsing it in my dreams.

I shake out the
wings on my back and set them flickering
faster and faster
. My black body lifts from the plain, just a little...then a little more.

Then a lot.
Leaping up into the air, I swoop acr
oss the world and join my brothers and sisters
. Laughing, they do loop-de-loops around me,
swirling and zigging and zagg
ing with the greatest of ease.

One of them brushes
me with the tips
of her
wings
, then swoops
around
in front of me
.
Her
tubelike
new proboscis curls
up
in what I know is a loving smile. I can tell from her chirping whistle that she's the tiniest maggot, reborn.

Pure joy surges within me, and I
dance
with her
in midair. My family and I have
made it through the nightmare, defeated the
Beast
, and become stronger
by feasting on his flesh
.
We, the proud survivors, have made it through the crucible and b
ecome what we were
born
to become
, doing what we have
always
longed to do
.

We
are
soar
ing
.

 

*****

Special Preview:
Bloodliner

 

By Robert T. Jeschonek

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Jonah was drunk, pissed at the world, fresh from his mom and dad's viewing at the funeral home...and he was playing what might have been his best gig ever.

He had always been good, but he was great that night. He ripped through every song with unusual precision and ferocity. Instead of note-perfect renditions, he brought each solo alive with newfound fire and surprise. He pushed the whole band to a new level, and he could tell they loved it.

As they drove through one Jethro Tull classic after another, from "Locomotive Breath" to "Thick as a Brick," all four musicians grinned with rare and predatory intensity. It wasn't just a run-of-the-mill gig.

Too bad hardly anyone was there to see it.

The bar, a downtown Tucson dive joint called Halcyon, was tiny...and nowhere near full. Not counting the bartender, Jonah didn't see more than ten people in the room at the same time that night.

But he played for those ten people like he was playing for a full house. Like he was playing with something to prove.

Something to forget.

The audience, small as it was, definitely caught the vibe and egged on the band. It was the kind of give-and-take that Jonah thrived on, with band and audience equally focused and serious and unified.

And some were more focused than others. One, in particular, was focused hard on Jonah.

She looked twenty-something, with shoulder-length blonde hair and impossibly bright blue eyes. A tight-fitting white tank top and black leather skirt hugged the curves of her perfectly sloped and rounded body.

If she ever took her eyes off Jonah, he didn't see it happen. She watched every move he made and locked eyes with him every time he looked out at her.

She didn't seem to be with anyone. She just stood with a bottle of beer in her hand, six feet away from Jonah, dancing to every single song with supple, undulating movements.

Which, naturally, made him play with even more fire. He had a pretty good idea what might be coming next.

Sure enough, at the end of the first set, the girl made a beeline for him. With a silent, knowing smile, she wrapped his hand in her own and led him out the back door into the alley outside.

Then, she closed the door behind them and pinned him against the wall.

Jonah's heart pounded as she flexed her body against his. Her hands, where they locked his wrists to the wall, were cold, but her gaze was filled with heat.

"You were amazing in there." Her throaty voice was a purr. "I am so turned on right now."

"I know the feeling." Jonah grinned. Playing with the band had taken his mind off his troubles a little. Maybe the blonde would take his mind the rest of the way off, if only for a while.

Without another word, the girl moved in for a kiss. Jonah's heart beat even faster as he finally made the contact he'd been anticipating for so long.

But the kiss was not quite what he'd expected.

The girl's lips were freezing cold, as if she'd just eaten ice cream or gone swimming. There wasn't the slightest trace of warmth anywhere in her kiss.

Jonah pulled back. "Are you chilly?" Even as he asked the question, he couldn't imagine that she could possibly feel cold in that alley. It was a hot desert night in Tucson, probably in the nineties...plus which, heat was rolling off an air conditioning unit in the window a few yards away.

"Low blood pressure. But we can fix that." The girl moved in for another kiss. Her fingers latched onto his belt buckle.

"We need you," said the girl.

We?
That was when Jonah realized something wasn't right.

He suddenly felt much hotter than he thought he should. His lower body, in fact, was quickly becoming uncomfortable, as if he were standing too close to a hot stove.

Jonah looked down...and immediately wished he hadn't.

He'd never seen anything like it. Thin streams of blood projected from the tops of his legs--a dozen streams per leg punching right through his clothing. They met in a glistening red veil that hung suspended in midair, rippling mere inches from the girl's face. As Jonah watched, new streams burst from his legs and added their crimson liquid to the veil.

"What the
hell
?" said Jonah. "What are you
doing
?"

But the girl did not answer.

Get out of here. Now.

Jonah was in for another shock when he tried to escape: his hands were stuck to the wall, and his feet were locked to the floor of the alley.

He couldn't move.

What's going on here?

Then, it got worse.

The girl opened her mouth wide, and red filaments reached toward her from the veil. The sinuous filaments twisted and writhed as they flowed between her scarlet lips and over her jet black tongue.

Black tongue? Black tongue?!? Why didn't I notice
that
before?

The girl spoke without closing her mouth. The red filaments splashed against the tip of her tongue when it moved. "How delicious," she said. "I love you."

She's a vampire! Vampires are real!

"I'll blow you a kiss," she said, and then she puckered her lips and squirted a flume of blood toward Jonah's face.

The blood stopped in front of his nose and hung in midair. It curled and contorted and rotated, forming into a gleaming red shape.

A throbbing cartoon heart the size of a quarter.

Since when can vampires do this kind of crazy stuff?

The girl giggled. "Happy birthday, baby," she said. "Wait'll you see what comes next."

Jonah couldn't take his eyes off the floating cartoon heart. It changed as he watched, twisting and kneading itself into a new shape.

A skull and crossbones.

That was when Jonah finally tried to scream. He tried with all his strength to scream as loud as he could.

And when no sound emerged from his throat, he tried to scream even louder.