Year's Best Body Horror 2017 Anthology

by C. P. Dunphey

  By now his words were almost incomprehensible as he gagged and struggled desperately to draw breath through his slowly constricting air passage. His head was sinking slowly into the sweaty, quagmire of mutated flesh that his body had become. The stench was quite appalling as were the sounds of belching and flatulence as the contents of his bowels disgorged themselves.

  Frankes ushered his household out and was about to make his own exit when he was distracted by the sound of shuffling feet. From the gloomy depths of the anteroom sauntered an old man in a shabby suit. He smiled briefly at Frankes and then with a look of obvious delight examined the quivering mass of blubber and bone that Evan had become. If ever Evan could express a look of surprise, it was now. His eyes widened and bulged as though about to explode from his face. He even managed a few strained words.

  “Veeecctooor!” he blurted, and then with a look of bewilderment he turned his tortured stare towards Lilith and uttered, “Veeectorrr . . . conssseeeerge . . .”

  “Victor Sauvage, chief curator, bibliophile and editor extraordinaire,” corrected Lilith as she began her own retreat. Such a visit during the inauguration of a new book was indeed an honour.

  “Oh, dear Evan, didn’t you realise that Cedar publishing owns Darkwood Estates—you really should have read the small print. And Victor is our custodian of Dakota House, not just a silly old concierge, although he does seem to enjoy those awful old paper books. Barnaby Wright, the previous owner of your apartment was such a perfect specimen, but unfortunately, he lost the plot while we were working on him.

  “And then of course you came along, and we couldn’t believe our luck. Victor kept you under his scrutiny for a while, and here you are, approaching the final part of the publishing process—and so we will bid you adieu.”

  Evan, no longer a man, had become a grotesque malignancy of flesh and bone. A tidal wave of madness had washed over him and now he was drowning in his own visceral swamp. But he still, if it was any consolation, had consciousness and spirit, and would continue to for longer than he ever cared to contemplate.

  It was early the next morning that Lilith returned to the anteroom. Evan’s book, Nine Lives, was laid open on a presentation stand, ready to take its place on the shelves of the living library. Brushing her palm across its clammy pages, she squealed with delight. So much more than just a book, it was a living tome, born of flesh and possessed of life. A spine of human vertebrae; skin, crafted into the finest parchment pages; prose masterfully scribed in congealed blood. But what really sent a shiver through Lilith’s trembling body was the quivering mouth that screamed so silently from the cover.

  And the tortured, weeping gaze of Evan’s always watching eye.

  HOT FLASHES

  By Jenya Joy Preece

  “Damn these hot flashes!”

  Vi Matthews sat in front of the wide-open window fanning herself with a spiral notebook—even though it was the middle of winter and there was enough snow to build an entire city of snowmen with. She was burning up. Kenneth, her husband, turned from his nightly news report to look at his sweaty wife.

  “Will you just shut the friggin’ window already. Our gas bill is going to be through the roof this month because a you.” It was Kenneth’s job to bitch about the bills because he was the only one making money to pay them. This was about all he was good for, too.

  “Seriously, I feel like I’m gonna ignite or worse, melt like a snowman in summer.”

  “Yur not gonna go in flames,” he said, adding, “I wish ya would though,” under his breath so his wife wouldn’t hear.

  Vi reached up to wipe the sweat from her face. She sat there fanning and wiping in just her bra and panties. Once upon a time Kenneth would have come and torn the set off her in urgency, but now he spent his free time watching the high-def plasma god. Taking in all the sights and sounds and in the process turning his brain into a sort of mush. Vi felt her bra strap slide off one shoulder. By this point she didn’t care nor did she care what her piece of shit husband had to say about the bills. Sweat rolled down her spine in a long line that ended in the waistband of her undies. The band soaked up the liquid greedily.

  The sweat made her face begin to itch from all the salty bits of body dew. She reached up and scratched at the center of her forehead. The skin underneath her nails felt foreign to her, but she went on scratching away, seeking relief.

  She gazed out the open window at the snow and ice. She wanted so badly to jump into it and make angels, even in her underwear. Then she thought to herself, it would be just my luck for all the snow to melt before I got cooled off and we’d have a lake in our yard.

  This thought made her laugh a little and Kenneth replied by telling her that she needed to shut up and to shut the window. She continued to ignore him.

  Vi’s upper lip began to itch much like her forehead. She wiped at it at first with her hand then began using her nails to scratch it. She felt the skin beneath as it stuck like clay. She clenched her jaw in worry. Her muscles were sticking now. She unclenched and her teeth felt loose inside of her face. She reached in her mouth and pulled out one of her teeth. They all wiggled as she grinded her jaw.

  Oh, my hell, what’s happening? she thought as she gently removed another tooth. She examined this one carefully then stuck her tongue into the gap where the two teeth had just come from. She noticed something odd. She opened her hand and began spitting tooth after tooth into her palm. Tears mixed with the sweat on her face. She knew that her age would catch up to her, but she didn’t think that it would happen all at once.

  She scratched at a small itch on her cheek. She noticed that there was a slight blemish on her skin so she picked at it, her nails digging into the flesh. She felt her face again making sure that she’d gotten all of it, but to her astonishment she’d created a hole in the side of her face. She shoved her tongue into the hole and could taste the salt of her finger. Her tongue expanded the hole.

  “What the hell,” she tried to say, but as she made noise, she felt a chunk of something slide into her throat. She swallowed hard, but the object wasn’t moving up or down. She choked and wheezed, trying to get her husband’s attention but the T.V. was much too loud for her to be heard over the reporter.

  Her tongue was gone. She felt her breasts start to slide even closer to her knees. She couldn’t explain what was happening to her. She was still dying from the heat inside her, scared and alone.

  An hour later, Vi had grown eerily quiet. Kenneth noticed because her bitching had come to a halt. He paused the T.V. to check on her and take a leak.

  “Damn it woman! I’m freezing my friggin’ ass of in here!” He got up, noticing that his wife was missing from her spot at the window. Now he was really mad about the bill he would no doubt be paying.

  He stomped over to the window, slipping and falling on his slightly frozen ass. There was something all over the floor.

  “What in the name a . . .”

  He stuck his hand into the muck. The dark red hues were nearly black under the dim light. He sniffed at it and a metallic smell wafted back to him. Then he decided to lick it to make sure that he was sure. It was blood all right, but where did it come from. His heart fluttered inside his chest. He got up from the floor and peered out the window onto the snowy lawn. There, with the notebook, lay the bones of his wife. Vi had melted like a snowman after all. He laughed to himself, shutting the window and going back to watch his beloved T.V. He knew that he could clean her up in the morning.

  THE IMPLOSION OF A GASTROCRAT:

  AN EXPERIMENT IN AUTOPHAGY

  By Frank Roger

  Clipping #1 (from a regional weekly paper)

  As Mr. Laurent Malherbe showed up with a bandaged hand in The Paper Rose, the local pub where he’s one of the regulars, all his friends and drinking buddies, including this reporter, assumed he had had an accident while fixing something at home. However, Laurent quickly reassured us there was nothing to worry about. The bandaged hand, he explained, was the result of
an experiment he had embarked on after watching a TV programme about a man who ate light bulbs and bicycle parts. “You see,” he told me over a pint of Guinness, “eating light bulbs and other objects usually considered inedible may appear sensational, but actually it’s an act totally devoid of meaning. A man eating light bulbs is a freak, but nothing more. Yet the sight of this man merrily munching crunchy bits inspired me to attempt something more profound and meaningful. I decided to eat a fragment of my own flesh.” He proudly lifted his bandaged hand and said, “I chopped off the tip of my little finger, scraped off the flesh, pulverised the bone and ate it all. This way my body swallowed a part of itself. Just think of the philosophical underpinnings of such an act. And, mind you, this was just the initial phase. The last few days I chopped off and ate a few more finger tips, and right now I’m thinking about tackling an earlobe or so. Be assured I’ll keep you informed of my progress!” Laurent Malherbe then turned his attention to his Guinness and his friends, and engaged in heated conversation. I have this feeling we’ll be hearing more from our dear friend in the near future.

  Clipping #2 (from a national newspaper)

  Mr. Laurent Malherbe, a forty-year-old man from the greater London area, is building quite a reputation ever since he publicised his bold plan to attempt an experiment never tried before in recorded history, to quote his own rather grandiloquent words. The man has been steadily eating parts of his own body, starting with the chopped off tips of his fingers, his earlobes, layers of fat and callus that were removed with surgical precision by himself, and other parts that were deemed superfluous and hence available for consumption—or perhaps bio-recycling might be a better term. Until recently, media attention for Mr. Malherbe’s remarkable experiment was limited to a few regional and national papers, but his announcement of his next “Big Step” landed him his first TV interview. “It is my intention,” Malherbe declared before the camera, “to remove one of my testicles and eat it. Each new phase in my experiment only serves to sharpen my hunger, if you allow me to use this exceptionally apt term, for bigger and bolder steps forward on my chosen route. I am currently looking into the possibility of having some of my internal tissue removed, and hope to eat as much of my own body as medically possible. I am curious about the limits of this autophagy, to use the term I coined for my endeavour. How much of his body can a human being miss? How far can I take this mind-boggling consumption of myself? What is the deeper meaning of this drive, this seemingly nonsensical ambition? Or, to put it bluntly: Can one eat oneself?”

  Clipping #3 (sidebar from an in-depth article in a magazine)

  “I decided to mount fund-raising campaigns after watching Laurent talk about his plans on TV,” says twenty-nine-year-old Jennifer Sandoval, a London bank employee and active member of the recently founded Laurent Malherbe Appreciation Society. She is only one of the many men and women who chose to actively support Malherbe’s bizarre quest for self-consumption. “I quickly realised,” Sandoval confesses, “that Malherbe would soon run into financial troubles, which would cut off all his hope for success. I went out and found other people willing to support his wild plan, formed the Society and now we help keep Laurent on the road to his chosen destiny. We think he fully deserves our unending support.” Need we still present Laurent Malherbe, the man who’s nibbling away at himself, and who looks prepared to continue nibbling until there’s nothing left to sink his teeth in—supposing he will still have teeth by that time! When Malherbe chewed on fingertips and earlobes, he only attracted the local press, but now that his testicles and parts of his organs and intestines considered non-vital have been removed and disappeared down his oesophagus, he is basking in full media attention. Not only did his grand dreams give rise to several fan clubs in the U.K. and abroad, they also led to controversies and harsh criticism from conservative and religious milieus. Yet Malherbe seems determined to continue his mission, especially now that his steadily mounting medical bills are paid with the funds raised by his Appreciation Society and some of his fan clubs. “I feel more stimulated than ever,” he declared to us, “knowing that so many people actively support me, and put their money where their mouth is.” Malherbe himself appears to have opted for putting his body where his mouth is. . . . In his latest TV interview, he announced his plans for removing what’s left of his genitals (“completely irrelevant body parts in my current life”) and having his toes and left hand amputated. Will this man go all the way? Will he swallow himself down to the last mouthful? Perhaps his next interview will reveal more. To be continued, doubtlessly.

  Clipping #4 (Letter from a newspaper’s readers’ column)

  Why does every newspaper in the country devote so much attention to this Malherbe nutcase? I would say there are more important things going on in the world worth covering. But no, a man who eats his own penis is infinitely more interesting to the sensation-craving crowd, a man who’s now wheelchair-bound after losing his feet and lower legs to his insatiable hunger, a man who appears willing to sacrifice anything to get his face on TV and on the papers’ front page. Please do not give in to this slip into tabloid-style sensation-mongering, and leave the coverage of this man and the misguided souls active in his fan clubs to the specialised psychiatric journals for whom this “case” may be of some scientific interest.

  Clipping #5 (from a weekly paper’s news roundup)

  The media’s current number one sensation, Laurent Malherbe, also affectionately known as “The Man Who Eats Himself,” may by now be reduced to a legless man strapped into a wheelchair and constantly hooked up to a variety of machines intended to keep him alive after some vital parts of his body were removed, his business acumen seems to have survived his endeavours unscathed. Now that his plan to consume as much as possible of his own body has reached a critical point, and medical bills have surpassed the level that could be covered by the fund-raising efforts of his fans, Malherbe has sold exclusive TV rights to Sky Channel to cover his progress for a substantial amount of money—no doubt much more than his entire plan will cost. Firstly, this ensures his “experiment in autophagy” of reaching its completion, financial problems being the only possible barrier against success, and secondly it provides Sky Channel with a guaranteed audience of many thousands (millions?)—and hence with advertising rates soaring to dizzying heights. The burning question, however, remains: How far will Malherbe take this mad plan of his? Will he, as his die-hard fans claim, indeed go “all the way?”

  Clipping #6 (from a leading monthly magazine)

  An interview with Laurent Malherbe

  Mr. Malherbe, how would you describe your current condition?

  Malherbe: I feel great! No, of course, that’s not what you wanted to hear. Let me put it this way then: I’m a man without legs, without arms, without private parts, without hair, without . . . well, let’s just say I’m a man stripped down to his bare essentials. I am still fully alive, I am happy, I still harbour ambitions I’m itching to carry to their limits, I still have hopes and dreams, I have everything it takes to be a full-fledged human being.

  But without all this medical equipment you’re hooked onto, you would die within moments.

  Malherbe: That’s true, but isn’t that also true for many handicapped persons who are yet considered full human beings? The fact that I arrived at my present condition on purpose is totally immaterial. A man is more than his mere outward physical appearance. My soul is intact. My mind vibrates as it never has before. My thinking is of crystal-clear lucidity. I am more convinced than ever that I chose the right path for my personal fulfilment. And I will walk that path down to its very end.

  You still think you have not proven enough?

  Malherbe: Have I proven anything yet? I’ve proven you can cut off a few bits here and there and wash them down with a glass of water, so to speak. The hard part is yet to come. Can I eat my lungs and survive? My heart? My brain?

  Surely you cannot be serious?

  Malherbe: Be assured that I am. To quote an old
movie star who shall remain nameless, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” I will indeed attempt what some still deem impossible, and continue eating body parts considered vital. I am determined to take this experiment to its very limits.

  Will you go “all the way,” as your fans keep chanting?

  Malherbe: I will go as far as humanly possible. It will soon become clear exactly how far that is. No doubt it will be a lot further than people have assumed. My experiment will have tremendous scientific value, besides its profound ethical and philosophical repercussions. I hope I will have the time and the opportunity to convey all my thoughts and theories regarding this matter to viewers and readers out there.

  Do you have any final thoughts to wrap up this interview?

  Malherbe: Oh well, let me put it like this. My ambition is now foremost in my mind, pushing all other considerations into the background. It has become the focus of all my thoughts and actions, to the point that I no longer have any interest in what you might call a regular guy’s worries and woes. In a sense I transcended that kind of existence. My ambition to eat myself has become my true raison d’être. I know very well that I’ve come in for some criticism in certain quarters, and I’m not deaf and blind to their accusations, but basically it doesn’t matter to me anymore. What matters is my burning ambition, how to make my dream come true, and how to do that tomorrow rather than the day after tomorrow. To put it succinctly: I truly live for this all-consuming passion of mine.

  Thank you for this interview, Mr. Malherbe.