by Dan Dillard
*****
The stack of boxes in the bedroom toppled over a few days ago–maybe it’s been a week? I’m not sure what caused it, but many of my bottles shattered in the fall. I can’t get in there anymore to stack things back in order because of all the broken glass. Plus, the flies are horrible in there. There must be some food left in those boxes. Meat that’s rotting. The smell is awful. Maggots are everywhere.
It doesn’t smell like rotten food, exactly. It’s much worse, like a rotting corpse. It reminds me of the way that deer smelled when it was hit by that truck and landed on my lawn. I had three calls in to the city before they came to remove it. It was covered with lovely wriggling maggots. I remember staring at them one evening for a solid hour. Counting them. Picking them off and taking them into the house. I would’ve taken the deer—oh my monster would’ve loved that—but it was too heavy.