"I cannot touch you," it said. "I would die to do so."
Dauphin was still, all sight and sound suddenly returned to him anew, clear and without corruption. "Plea...," he started, his arms lifting slowly. Painful tears had begun, cutting through the fresh burns across his face.
"I cannot harm," it continued, "even if it is your desire. I cannot."
Even as he watched, Dauphin could see the angel's fire dimming, losing heat and brightness, becoming the distant roiling blaze of a campfire left to smoulder. It blinked out as the blackness rushed from its shadowy confines to cover it once more. The dark shining thing blazed but not with fire now. It moved from Dauphin to resume its place at the table. Dauphin cried out, and at the sound, the noise and warmth of the angel vanished completely. Even as he watched, it became insubstantial, it became shadow, and then it became nothing. It was gone.
Dauphin screamed. He sat, aware that the skin on his naked body was fresh and pink, no longer scarified, no longer his obsession. His scars had been utterly healed, without exception.
His collection was gone.
Harris, crouching behind the locker, drew the Polaroid and clicked a picture. The camera spat the lolling tongue of paper and Harris snatched it away, firing off another, and another. They all showed the same thing.
Dauphin sat amid the mess of his clothes. His head was bowed, and his eyes were bereft of emotion. Thick tear streaks had washed a path through the dark soot that covered his face, but his body shone with the pink freshness of a moderate flagellant.
Harris went to him and gathered his clothes. He draped the jacket about his shoulders. It was Dauphin who spoke first, and his flat voice chilled Harris.
"It's gone, Harris. All gone."
"Not all gone." Harris said this softly, and elaborated not at all.
* * *
After two weeks, Harris removed the Polaroids from his jacket pocket and laid them face down on the table in Dauphin's room of pictures. Dauphin had not set foot in that room since the day on the docks, but Harris knew he would. Dauphin might not own the collection anymore, but he had proof that he once had. That might be enough. And of course there were those new pictures.
Dauphin would look at them one day, and in so doing, would realise that he had lost nothing. The scars were gone, yes, those you could see. But to look at Dauphin in those pictures. To see his eyes, devoid of humanity, devoid of emotion. To see the utter loss that he had endured. To have had the angel within touching distance, to have bared soul and skin alike for its touch, and to have been denied it. To see all that on a man's face.
Surely in that, he had all that he ever wanted.
The angel, in denying Dauphin its touch, in denying him its own mark for his collection, had given him the greatest scar he could ever own. It had scarred his heart, his soul, his very core. He hadn't lost those others. He had simply overcome them, incorporated them into himself so that he was the sum, much more than the sum, of their parts.
He was the scar now.
It had cost Dauphin his fortune, this last, and was a fitting end to his obsession.
Harris smiled and turned the pictures face up, ready for Dauphin, for the time when Dauphin was ready for them.
Crawling the Insect Life by Opal Edgar
The needles always felt too large when they crushed through the shimmering wings of beetle carcasses. Mervin paused, job only half-done, this was like skewering a cow with a lamppost, it created so much damage to the general structure of the insect there had to be a better way. He had tried glue and had regretted the inability to the see the belly of his beasts. After a second's more thought, he decided there was no other way. The hardest part now was getting the pin to poke through the abdomen of the insect to the other side, without shattering the brittle membrane of the exoskeleton. He tentatively prodded the inside of the shell, looking through his magnifying glasses so as to guess where the needle point lay. If he wanted the coleoptera to show its antennas just right, there was only one spot the needle could come out. The harsh neon lights left the colors of the beetle as unaltered as if it had been daylight. Mervin held his breath as he jabbed. When the phone rang, he reached the darkened skylight in a single jump.
A jagged slash split the centimeter long insect now resting on Mervin's thumb, still impaled by the needle but only loosely so. Copper oozed and stained Mervin's skin. He stared, anger welling in his chest. It felt as if someone had dared poke a gauging finger in his brain while he made love, picking his most private and suppressed thoughts. It was foul, his body felt sickly warm and in a swift movement he ripped the phone line out the wall, dust and chunks of paint flying. White cord wrapped around his hand, he shattered the receiver with the heel of his shoe in a satisfying crunch. A tar monster bubbled up the handset, faceted eyes sliding up and down its slimy body, shimmering like gangrene-filled blow flies. It flew up to buzz about Mervin's head. Only then, with the black horror laughing at the scattered plastic about the room, Mervin noticed his trembling hands. It took a while for the information to ripple up his nerves and sizzle brain cells. The intensity of the anger shocked him out of it and embarrassed he laughed at the absurdity of the situation. This was just a bug, just one tiny little common bug, and he had thousands of them to ruin. The black monster popped into trails of sticky substance and out of existence, leaving Mervin lightheaded as if he'd yawned blocked ears away.
Dropping the beetle into the wastebasket, Mervin got up and stretched his large back. He spent way too many hours parked in his office chair. Once he had run for an hour every morning, forcing another hour of crunches at night, and routinely pushed metal at the gym. But he didn't do any of that anymore, hard muscles had grown soft and started to bulge under tight shirts he'd never thought to replace. He hadn't even noticed the change until one day he'd seen his skin flow over his waistband. At first he'd panicked. Was that aging? But then he'd let it slide, like all the rest for that matter. He didn't remember exactly when he'd started letting things lapse, during the divorce perhaps, or when his father had gotten sick. Because he had to be available at odd times, he'd stopped the weekly mountaineering to hunt the wild insects and bought terrariums so he didn't have to go out anymore. Now his insects bred on their own. He just had to spend a few minutes a week dropping dead wood, flowers, and a little water in. What took time was the taxidermy.
Mervin walked to the door of the office, followed by a large green mass that left a slimy trail over the carpet. He walked right past the glass showcases of beetles and rows of chemicals. The office smelled ephemeral, as if in a moment of absentmindedness, the flick of a match would cause the whole place to explode into flames. No ether fumes remained, but the permanently locked windows and doors had made the smell everlasting. It impregnated the wallpaper and clung to the furniture in ghostly remnants of eternalized insects. The showcases flowed through the corridors, starting from the floor and reaching the ceiling. Mervin had them custom made. He would have liked to carve and sand and lacquer the wood himself, but he was allergic to wood dust. At least that's what he told himself, but then again he didn't have much spare time — filling those cabinets took way too much of it already. Terrariums replaced the showcases in the main part of the house. They were scattered all over, on the kitchen bench, next to the TV, by the window, on the coffee table, in the guest chair.... Mervin knew it was a little over the top, but he rarely had guests anyway and the damned insects kept on breeding no matter how fast he worked at the taxidermy.
The green eyeless, mouthless, lifeless slug followed on, leaving parts of itself behind to remind Mervin of how many times he had made this ridiculous journey between his office and the rest of the house.
Tomorrow was Monday. He'd have to sit through another awful business day, waiting for his ex-wife to boss him into smiling on the phone with clients. The slug dripped corrosive pus-colored fluids, which ate at Mervin's rubber soles and the linoleum. Mervin used to walk barefoot in his house before the divorce, now he had to buy a new pair
of shoes every week. He knew he should have gotten a new job, but it wasn't easy.
Opening the fridge door, Mervin nudged the pile of boxed Lebanese takeout to the side, hoping a beer was hiding amongst its fellow junk foods, but none was. He probably had a warm bottle somewhere he could have shoved in the freezer, but there was no room for beer. The freezer was too full of boxes waiting for his attention, and if he looked inside, he'd spend another few hours locked in his office. Still, he wondered how it was going in there, almost forgetting the existence of the green blob on his foot. Could he chance a peek?
The rubber seal of the freezer door cracked as Mervin put his weight on the handle, hesitating between want and self-control. It was like when he was small and everyone lay presents on the side table for his birthday. He was allowed to see them, almost to touch them, but couldn't open them until the last morsel of the cake was gone. One year he'd choked on the crumbly mouthfuls in his haste to get over the ordeal. He'd never dared tell his mum he preferred those normal days when they didn't have desert because it was too expensive. Somehow, he knew she would have been sad to know he didn't like sweets. The freezer door swung open with the slightest pressure. Mervin had forgotten about his dilemma during his existential questioning of parental relationships. A cloud of cold insect souls escaped the frozen drawer. The mist took a few seconds to dissipate in the smoldering summer heat. Tupperware dishes of murdered beetles materialized from the fog. Mervin gingerly lifted a dish up, careful so as not to break any little legs. Frost clouded the plastic, and he had to break the seal to see if this revolutionary killing method was a success.
The beetle lay on its back, huddled in a corner with legs hugged to its abdomen, exactly as Mervin would expect to find his own frozen body in a meat locker. The thought only crossed his mind fleetingly. Disappointment quickly replaced it. If the legs stayed shriveled as they were now when back at room temperature, the whole batch of beetles would be useless. Dejected, Mervin slammed the box on his counter and whacked the drawer back into its arctic cave. The acid of the green slime had done its job better than usual and acrid fumes burned Mervin's eyes. This thing was going to give him cancer, just like his dad's. He simply knew it. He coughed as he grabbed the slug between thumb and index finger. Was it his imagination, or had the thing grown again? It felt like it was at least eight kilograms now.... Soon he'd have to go to the doctor to get it weighed. How long had he been putting off the appointment?
He dropped the slug in the sink and mopped the floor. The laces of his shoes smoldered to dust. He'd have to wear his shoes as loafers for the rest of the evening. Soles trailing, he reached the sofa, but before he sat down, he noticed the terrarium in the guest chair filling with black. He blinked as a dollop fell in from the heavens. Tar covered the ceiling. Reflective eyes, forever moving and sliding into the soft fleshy substance, dripped down to become rising goop in the terrarium. Mervin swore and snatched the glass case from the chair. A hundred little beetles floated on their backs trapped in the bog. Putting the terrarium in the chair had been a bad idea. But oppressive loneliness had squeezed his chest with prickly purple tentacles. He couldn't help it, he'd dropped the insects in the guest chair. They were the only companions he had left. And now they were dead, and he couldn't even immortalize them the way he so much desired, like good memories happily trapped forever in his mind. Tar dripped on his hand and circled his wrist like a cold forgotten wedding band. The blank slug was back, trailing after him.
They were growing in number; Mervin couldn't help but notice, as if they were trying to fill the hollowness. Scrubbing at the glass and throwing clumps of dirt and wood into the sink, he wondered how long this could go on. He wasn't exactly the friendliest fellow, but the specters were feeding the growing social vacuum around him. He told himself he didn't care, but then he remembered those happy years when he'd partied with any occasional friend that came his way. The wet grit embedded under his fingernails made heavy ploc noises at it came down onto the metal. When had he started changing like that? The tar leaked down and clogged the drain but wouldn't come off the glass surfaces of the terrarium, no matter how much Mervin rubbed. It took 20 manic minutes of useless effort for Mervin to give up. He threw an appalled look at his green featureless slug and carried the aquarium to the curb — perhaps it was only ruined to him.
Stepping into the entrance hall, Mervin paused and for once looked around himself at the dead insects. Each little beetle on the wall was an exact copy of the one next to it. It could have been wallpaper. Mervin had chosen all of them to be the same exact shape, color and size. They were all catalogued and pinned down by the same loving hand. Mervin read this as the confirmation of his insanity, and under his self-loathing gaze, the green slime took on another five hundred grams. It had never grown so quickly in one shot before. His wife had been embarrassed when he had worked on a small-scaled insect collection, as if this was a hobby only Norman Bates could indulge. What would she say if she saw it now? Not that she came to the house anymore. She found him repulsive, he could see it in the crisp lines around her mouth, and in the coldness of her eyes when she looked at him. When they first met, she'd found his habit of bug collecting cute, a confirmation of a softer side to his muscle mass. She didn't understand that this was the only gift his father had given him.
The cold husk of a man in the funeral home couldn't have been Mervin's dad. That thing in a suit was a masquerading stick insect. Eventually, Mervin accepted the death, and it came as a bruising hit. He would never see his father again, and he would never know if the man had ever loved him.
The tar shone on the ceiling and dribbled down the walls. Mervin was tired. Would his dad have loved him if he'd become an entomologist like him? Would he have accepted him if he'd been smarter? Mervin had taken too long to understand that he could have gotten friends without being a semi-pro footballer, and that admiration wasn't friendship. It faded overnight. Mervin didn't bother to get the slug off his foot as he walked to the back of the house.
The bathroom light blinked a few times before coming on. Mervin's eyes looked back at him underlined by dark circles. They had appeared one day in the mirror, after another sleepless night. When he'd noticed them, he grew scared. Mervin had never seen a trace of his father in himself before, apart from his odd shade of grey blond hair, but at that instant, he saw that his dad had taken his eyes over and spread his vision onto Mervin's world. Mervin's father had been a busy man, working instead of living. When Mervin's mother had found another man to notice her, Mervin's father had been left with a little boy with a foreign ritual of eating habits and talking patterns. Mervin had been seven. He was scared when he came back from school to the empty creaking house that reminded him monsters waited around every corner to skin him like the ox tongues his mother use to prepare.
The toothpaste froth swirled down the drain. Mervin examined his teeth. He'd had to throw the slug off his leg twice in as many minutes because it kept climbing over him. Goosebumps covered his legs, and millions of beetles, like so many soldiers leading a prisoner to execution, supervised the dreaded walk to the bed. This was his hell. Between the empty sheets, Mervin couldn't hide the absence of a caring presence in his life anymore. Every night, in his large double bed, he stared at the emptiness.
Forehead pressed to the door of the bedroom, Mervin had to gather strength before the ritual could proceed. His wife must have known how much he'd suffer when she left him the custom-made bed.
After fifteen minutes of dread, Mervin pushed the bedroom door open. It was work in itself considering all the creatures agglomerated in there, bubbling from the ceiling and walls and cupboards and floor. They reached his waist now and rolled over each other, inside each other, popping in and out of existence, merging and swimming over his flat pillow-less bed. No, the soft, slimy creatures hadn't eaten the bedding; Mervin had simply gotten rid of the pillows. He was a simple man of simple tastes, and pillows left him feeling awkward and sleepless when they engulfed his head in thei
r soft folds. Pillows felt, he wasn't quite sure what, but if he'd thought about it, he might have said suffocating.
Undressing amongst the slime was awkward. His clothes disappeared inside the goo. Usually, in the morning, the monsters disappeared long enough for him to find them again.
The bed was comfortable and so damned big and pink. His wife had chosen the fabric. She sewed it into quilt covers and pillowcases during her student phase of 'back to the origins.' The fabric was the exact shade of pink as the flowers growing on the Azalea bush in the back garden. She'd loved those flowers, and the day she'd left him that was all she'd taken. He'd come back from the hospital and found her in the back garden with a spade, digging up the surprisingly extensive root system. She'd yelled at him even before he'd asked what was going on. She couldn't take him anymore, she'd said, shaking the uprooted bush in her hand as testament. Dirt and tiny centimeter long cerambycidae beetles had flown out. He'd caught one as she'd dumped the flowers on the car seat and drove off with grit-covered hands.
With his proud antennas propped up by a well-placed pin, that very beetle accusingly pointed at him from behind a little glass case hanging close to the bed. Its clones covered the rest of the house.
The sheets felt wet as Mervin slid into them. Once, he had asked himself if you could die of yearning. The answer was yes. As the specters of dead hope grew and multiplied in Mervin's sleepless night, they rolled over his face, attracted like chicklings to their mother. At first, Mervin lazily swatted at them like they were flies. They weren't just trying to lay by him, close to him; they were reaching into his nostrils, plugging his ears and crawling into his mouth. He tried to grab them, but they slid wherever they wanted, squeezed however they desired. They filled his mouth, slipping through his fingers like water. They slid down his throat to touch him on the heart and remind him that it still beat. It was too late. Aborted dreams had lost their meaning to him, and they only choked him further. Mervin had gotten his answer, as he lay cold — finally free of his cumbersome emotions.
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