Malherbe: You’re welcome. I hope we’ll meet again . . . before the Last Supper!
Clipping #7 (from a national magazine)
Laurent Malherbe, once a curiosity happy to see his follies covered in regional papers, has by now become a regular guest in all national and even international media outlets, a caricature of man’s desire to push his own limits and transcend himself, and an insult to the medical profession, all rolled into one. It could be said this is quite an achievement for a man who is, strictly technically speaking, no longer alive . . . depending on one’s definition of life. Malherbe, who roped in vast amounts of money with the sale of exclusive coverage rights, subsequently hired a legion of doctors and surgeons to execute his “will,” a term apt only for those who consider him dead, by all accounts a dwindling minority. Ever since the medical team known as the Malherbe Foundation started removing some of the vital organs of their patient (or their client?), as per his instructions, what remains of Laurent Malherbe’s body is kept alive artificially, a near-empty hulk devoid of what is usually considered “life.” Malherbe’s growing hordes of fans, however, worship the man as if he represented God on earth, and applaud his every move, however posthumous. Is this man, as his fans claim, still eating himself, as highly paid surgeons remove yet more slices of quivering flesh and force them down a throat that is attached to a stomach and a reduced set of intestines, with a brain and a heart thrown in for good measure? Or is this a joke perpetrated in bad taste, a scientific experiment gone awry, a waste of medical and surgical skills unavailable for more pressing needs? Needless to say, Malherbe’s fans are unwilling to even listen to any criticism of their idol’s progress, and hard cash appears once more to prevail over ethics and common sense.
Clipping #8 (from a Laurent Malherbe fan club magazine)
The most thrilling news is, of course, that the long-awaited moment is imminent: Laurent’s body has once more been stripped of some of its parts (considered vital by the narrow-minded), such as his lungs and a large chunk of his brain. What’s left of our dear friend, his digestive system, his heart along with a rudimentary bloodstream and a handful of braincells, is kept alive and fully functional thanks to state-of-the-art medical technology and a handsomely paid crew of doctors and paramedics. Dr. Gomez, who heads the medical crew, has confirmed in a recent interview that “nothing can stop Malherbe from carrying his ambitions to their logical conclusion. Modern technology will allow him, however unlikely this may seem at first sight, to eat his own last shreds of body tissue. For contractual reasons I am not at liberty to divulge any technical details of this procedure. But be assured that we will do anything necessary to achieve total success. Mr. Malherbe will definitely go down in history as the man who ate himself.” Obviously, we will cover the final phase of this awesome experiment in extensive detail, complete with full interviews of all those involved. No other paper or magazine has the kind of access to reliable sources that we do, so stay tuned for further news. Preparations for a mega-“Eat Your Heart Out, Humanity”-party are already well underway. If this doesn’t prove our unshakeable faith in the outcome of Laurent’s big plan, then what does?
Clipping #9 (obituary from a national newspaper)
Yesterday Laurent Malherbe died in a private hospital in London. He was 41. Malherbe had become a national celebrity by eating parts of his own body, a bizarre habit which quickly grew into an all-consuming obsession. As Malherbe’s rise to fame and fortune has been extremely well-documented, we need not repeat the details of his final year, which he spent devouring himself. It is debatable whether that is a fitting description for his condition in the last months of his “life,” when he was hooked up to a battery of machines, a Frankenstein’s monster in reverse, having its flesh and blood artificially removed and consumed until nothing was left. The video footage of the final phase of Malherbe’s descent into his own digestive system, released shortly after his death, is rumoured to be “digitally processed,” meaning that special effects-like elements have been added to the original footage. This is firmly denied by Malherbe’s vociferous fans and followers, but observers less blinded by worship, and spokesmen of the scientific community in particular, harbour serious doubts about Malherbe’s alleged success in “swallowing his own digestive system thanks to a cutting-edge technological sleight of hand,” discarded as “tabloid-style pseudo-scientific gibberish” by at least one acknowledged medical authority. It appears rather unlikely that the complete truth about Malherbe’s death will ever be revealed, considering the amount of idolatry (not to mention financial interests) among those who guard the facts as though they were sacred teachings.
Clipping #10 (from a published letter in a newspaper’s readers’ column)
Frankly, I fail to see what all the fuss is about. Does it really matter then whether or not some ultra-high-tech contraption was made allowing old Laurent Malherbe to serve what was left of himself by way of his own private Last Supper? All right, I admit I wasn’t immediately convinced when I heard about this fabulous machine that broke down Malherbe’s last strips of flesh so incredibly fast and raced these particles down his not-just-quite-vaporised-yet throat almost instantly that, strictly technically speaking, this procedure could count as “eating yourself completely.” It sounds like pure hogwash, but even if such a machine was indeed developed and this process (a giant leap forward in “fast food!”) was indeed applied to our ever-hungry friend Malherbe, what difference does it make in the end? Lots of money was wasted that could have been better spent, lots of attention was paid to a man out to immortalise his name through an act of unmitigated sensationalism (without any redeeming qualities), lots of people did their best to create or get involved into a hype that by all accounts ought to have been ignored for the cheap thrill of a media-saturated and money-driven society it was. As I said, I fail to see what all the fuss is about. Now that Malherbe is gone to Fast Food Heaven, can we please get on with real life? Thank you so much.
NO STRINGS
By Josh Shiben
“I’ve got no strings,” muttered Evan to himself through gritted teeth as he hauled his heavy body roughly up the side of the metal structure. The song had been stuck in his head, on repeat, for days, just endlessly looping like an annoying commercial tune. “To hold me up.” Sweat of the exertion dripped from his body, making it sheen in the baking Virginia sun. He watched as his forearm gleamed in the light, watched it ripple and distort as something inside him slithered just beneath the surface. It was one of the worms, or parasites, or whatever they were. He wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter.
Evan grunted and continued climbing up the ladder. His mouth was so dry. So thirsty. They used to hurt, the worms. He remembered the pain they’d caused as they stretched his skin and bored through him. He remembered the fear, as he lay there on the hospital table, worrying that some parasite was turning him into a human-shaped block of Swiss cheese. But then, the doctor had given him drugs and it’d stopped. The pain. The crawling under his skin. They’d assumed the worms had died, but now Evan knew better. Poisons didn’t kill them. Antibiotics just drove them deeper into his body. They were still there—still hiding inside of him. Burrowing into the very core of him. But when they came back, the pain stopped. Evan knew why—he was getting used to them. He was numb. Even the thought of pain was fuzzy—he knew it was an unpleasant sensation, but like a blind man thinking of color, he could not summon any impression of it. Pain, like most other sensations, was something that had passed out of his life. It had become alien. He tried to worry about it, but all he felt was dry. Like a leaf in the fall, threatening to crumble to dust in the slightest breeze. He licked his lips and continued his climb.
“I’ve got no strings.” He only knew the two lines, so he sang them over and over like a skipping record.
His hands were blistering on the rungs of the ladder, but he ignored them and climbed on. They didn’t hurt, and he was too close to the top to stop now. It was so hard to climb with the heavy tools st
rapped to his back and his stomach distended the way it was; too heavy and awkward, and the writhing inside sometimes pushed him off balance. He had no attention to waste on something as trivial as blistering hands—he had to focus on gripping the ladder tightly, dragging himself up one rung at a time. Evan needed more water. He had to hurry.
He’d tried submerging himself in his bathtub, but it hadn’t been enough. He’d just lay down there, watching as his breath bubbled to the surface, staring up through the ripples at the ceiling. He had drunk until he vomited the water back up, and then kept drinking, desperate for any kind of relief. After all of that, he’d still felt parched.
One summer, years ago, Evan had gone to the beach and gotten a nasty sunburn. But the burn hadn’t hurt—it itched. The itch couldn’t be scratched—it was under the skin, down deep in the muscle, and so he had paced his room in agony, thinking that if only he could cut the skin back, flay his chest and shoulders like a butchered animal, he might cure the irritation. That was his thirst now—a deep-seated, unquenchable itch, burning in his throat and mouth. It permeated every solitary cell in his body—his entire being cried out for water. He needed more than just a bathtub or a pool. He needed something drastic. He needed the impossible weight of thousands of gallons. He wanted to be buried in that crushing, impossible wetness—that black, freezing gulf, where even the sun cannot penetrate.
Evan had once seen a submarine flood in an old World War II movie he’d watched with his father. The hull had been breached by a depth charge, and the crew frantically sealed bulkheads to stop the implacably rising water from taking them all. As a child, Evan had stared at his ceiling, shuddering at the thought of being surrounded by the icy depths in that cold prison. He would lie awake, trying to exorcize fears of a black tide sliding up to consume him. Now, he fantasized about it. The icy cold grip of the water rising, promising more than he could ever drink.
He reached the catwalk, and with some effort, rolled himself onto the structure, where he rested only a moment before rising slowly to his feet. His legs were so weak and he was so heavy. He wondered-how much of him was still Evan, and how much was worm. Two-thirds? Half?
He looked at his bloated, bulging stomach, wriggling with alien mass, and considered how much it must weigh. He’d been fit before all of this. Not in great shape, but good enough. He would have at least passed for a healthy person. Not now, though. The lesions on his flesh and undulating shapes under his skin removed any doubt as to his condition. He wanted to feel angry, or sad, or anything about it, but couldn’t seem to muster the emotion. The thirst outweighed it all. He moved along the catwalk, to the small ladder leading to the top of the rounded tower, and with some effort, began hoisting himself up.
“No foreign travel or anything?” the doctor had asked. Sitting in his hospital gown, looking down at his feet glumly, Evan could only shake his head “no.” He’d never even left the state. He didn’t have the money or the time away from work to go anywhere exotic. That was back when he still felt—the pain, the fear, the anger—it all bubbled up in him like a volcano. He was alive, then.
“Have you had any water that was maybe contaminated?” the doctor had tried. Again, he’d shaken his head. He only ever drank tap water—provided by the city, and purified by chlorine. The worms couldn’t live in chlorine, could they? Tap water was clean.
Evan wet his lips again, and his tongue felt like sandpaper rubbing over a cracked and dried riverbed. With a grunt, he hoisted himself up another rung on the ladder. Some part of him realized he was dying, but he couldn’t bring himself to be upset or bothered by the insight. The knowledge only gave him more motivation—better to receive this one last satisfaction than to die without it; a baptism to cleanse him, to wash away the wretchedness. It would bring relief. It had to.
“To hold me up,” he whined out deliriously, his hands only two rungs below the edge of the structure. He looked down to see the tiny town beneath him, and briefly considered just letting go. The fall would certainly kill him—end this struggle in a splatter of worm-infested meat. But then, he’d never get his satisfaction—he’d die, never knowing relief. That thought alone was enough to spur him upward, toward the salvation only a few rungs above him. He tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry—his tongue felt like a burned piece of leather in his mouth, and he had to hold on tightly to keep from retching.
He pulled himself up the last two rungs and then clambered up on top of the hot metal structure. His arms and legs were weak with thirst, but with some effort, he hauled himself into the center of the circle. There was a round door in the roof, with a spinning handle on it that reminded him of the door of a vault. It was held in place by a simple padlock, and with a satisfying click of the bolt cutters he had brought along for just such a complication, Evan was through. His hands trembled with anticipation as he took the heavy crowbar he had carried up all this way and used it to force the wheel to slowly turn, unsealing the door with a metallic groan. He eased the door open, and was almost knocked backwards by the scent of chlorine that assaulted him.
When he’d first found out the worms were living inside of him, Evan had researched parasites. Now, as he looked down at the dark body of water, he remembered the Horsehair Worm. It reproduced in large, freshwater lakes, but grew inside the carapace of crickets. Sometimes, it would grow to be nearly a foot long, coiled tightly inside the little body like a spring. The problem was that, in order to complete its life-cycle, the worm had to return to the water. The solution was simple—it would convince its host to hurl itself into a lake; the vessel apathetic to its own self-destruction.
Evan remembered reading about the Horsehair worm and wondering, how could something subvert an organism’s drive for self-preservation so effectively? What did a cricket feel, when poised at the edge of the lake? He wondered, now, if it felt anything at all. Perhaps, only thirst. The thought almost stirred anger inside Evan’s mind, but instead he gazed down through the open portal, and the feeling passed almost as quickly as it had started.
The water looked so calm and cool, and Evan was so thirsty. A soft drip from somewhere inside the water tower echoed through the door to Evan’s ears, and without any more hesitation, he threw himself into the black water, mouth open and eager. His stomach ruptured when he entered the liquid, and Evan felt the tightness in his gut relax, as thousands upon thousands of worms fled the confines of his body for the cool freedom of the water around him. They spilled out of him, like flies fleeing a rancid piece of roadkill that’d been kicked, uncoiling from his belly like a disemboweled man’s intestines.
The water tower echoed with the splashing of the worms as they undulated through the drinking water. Salvation choked Evan, pressing in on him from every direction. But he didn’t thrash—he only opened his mouth as wide as he could. He’d finally found enough. He wasn’t thirsty anymore. He’d never be thirsty again.
BABEL
By Ian Steadman
Ptolemia used to be known as a party planet. That was before things went south in ’92 and it dropped off the map. No contact for over thirty years, then some bright spark had the idea of sending an expeditionary team to see what was left. I’m guessing the dancing girls are all long gone. I’m also guessing we’re heading for a vast, hollow pit of nothingness.
“Welcome to Vegas, baby!” Maxi shrieks into the comm as we drop out of orbit.
That was one of its nicknames from back in the day. Others weren’t always so polite. Preachers tried to convince us that its excesses were the start of the Second Coming, a modern-day Sodom. Given the way things ended, they may have had a point.
“What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas—right?
That’s Sarge. His name, not his rank. I guess his parents were on a military fix when he was born, which might explain why he’s turned out the most gung-ho of us all. He’s recently had a new graft added to his upper arm, insignia and rank molded into the musculature. We give him grief about it, but privately I think it’s kinda cool
. The only 3D augment I have is a slightly elongated trigger finger on my right hand. I had it done to meet the minimum physical requirements for the corps. Go figure.
Burnsie is the silent one. He has more augments than the rest of us put together: extra-wide kneecaps, protruding collarbones of an unbreakable polymer, a scary-looking bone ridge down his forehead. He doesn’t say much but he scares the shizzle out of anyone we come up against. Sometimes we joke that he’s more plastic than flesh and blood.
The ride is bumpy, but the landing’s smooth. It’s all sand out there. At least that hasn’t changed. Burnsie once told us a story around the food-synth unit, about a desert planet so blasted with nukes that the entire surface turned to glass.
“Got anything on the readouts?” Maxi says, once we’ve all unstrapped and moved to our stations. “Something’s wrong with mine, can’t get a fix. Is that stuff out there breathable or not?”
“Nothing here,” I say. “Get suited up, we’re going to have to take readings manually.”
Burnsie had his suit custom-made, to accommodate all his augments, but the rest of us just chop and change as we see fit. I think Sarge had mine last. It stinks of sweat and synthesized barbecue.
The sand outside is grittier than the stuff back home, rising and falling in gentle drifts. There’s barely any wind to speak of. Ptolemia had a near-breathable atmosphere when it was colonized—one of the reasons why it was selected—but they were meant to have been running purification filters nonstop. Given the lack of any visible cities or dwellings when we flew in, I can’t imagine that’s been happening. If anyone’s still alive, they’ll be relying on personal filters or lung augments by now.
Year's Best Body Horror 2017 Anthology Page 36