The Maggot People

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Authors: Henning Koch
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open and hung his clothes from the curtain rail, letting the breeze waft them dry. Lying on the bed with the lights off, he smoked one cigarette after another. There was no need to worry about his lungs anymore. The maggots expanded and contracted inside him to simulate breathing. As they drew the smoke in, they worked to rid themselves of the nicotine.
    Poisons seemed to keep the maggot busy. Maybe a maggot person even needed copious amounts of alcohol, drugs, and nicotine to stay healthy? It also occurred to him that if one absorbed too much poison, the maggots might falter and die off? Surely they were normal organisms susceptible to disease?
    For a while he thought about Ariel and how he missed her. He remembered how once she had told him that every time one lost something, one gained something else in its place, which one wouldn’t otherwise have found.
    He wondered what he could possibly gain by the loss of Ariel.
    It seemed an inconceivable question.
    That first morning in Cannes wasn’t really a morning at all, just a sort of half-lit dawn beneath a sky of ragged-tail clouds, hounded by the mistral. His trousers had blown out of the window in the night, ending up in the narrow cul-de-sac below. For a moment he lay there wondering why he had woken so early. Then realized they must have roused him for some reason. Quickly he pulled on his damp boxer shorts and T-shirt, then carefully opened the door and listened to the murmur of voices from the reception desk.
    Tiptoeing over the corridor’s dirty tiles, he peered into the reception at two lanky, straw-haired Germans with backpacks and walking boots. They looked harmless enough, but they were showing their police badges and telling the proprietor to check the register for recent arrivals.
    Back in his room, he scrabbled together his few belongings and went to the window. It was the third floor: a jump would certainly be fatal to any normal person.
    The only important thing was to protect his brain; he must hit the ground feet-first, so that the full length of his body acted as a shock absorber.
    It was a curious feeling, casually taking a step into the empty air, as if going for a leisurely walk.
    He hit the ground with enormous force and, as if in slow-motion, watched his body compress itself into the ground. For a while he lay disfigured and broken on the cobbles. His left leg had snapped clean off against the side of a bin, and the maggots lay in piles all round it, frantically tugging at flaps of skin.
    Grabbing his severed leg, he crawled out of sight, hiding himself in a pile of refuse sacks.
    In the window overhead he saw the backpackers rifling through his room, then peering down over the windowsill. One of them waved a pistol about.
    He waited nervously for the maggots to do their work; pressing the stub of shinbone and foot against what remained of his leg, while the maggots reconnected the two. Waves of pain shot through him; punitive pain of such an excruciating kind that he began to tremble and moan.
    Don’t jump out of windows, they seemed to be saying. Don’t complicate our lives .
    When he was strong enough to stand, he glanced up at the window to make sure the men weren’t there, then gingerly made his way over to where he had hit the ground; the spot was marked by a scattering of maggots in the gutter. He scooped them up, grabbed his trousers and ran for his life.
    Twenty minutes later he was in a backstreet bar, studying the maggots in his palm.
    â€œFor once you’re in my power,” he thought. Their white serrated bodies squirmed; their black eyes were no more than specks. “You look harmless enough.”
    He took one of them and cut it in two between the nails of his thumb and index finger. As he did so, he felt a sharp cattle-prod pain at the back of his head. His arms shot out. His glass hit the floor, a chair was knocked over. He recomposed himself, waited a while; then, as an afterthought, put the remaining

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