Love You Rotten Excerpt #1
I believe cannibalism is the purest form of love. To offer one’s body to another is the ultimate sacrifice, sure, but to be so in love with another person that your body craves their flesh is undeniably romantic. The beauty of horror is that it displays reality through extremism.
I have taken an excerpt from a book I am writing to share with you all. The story follows Dor, an elderly, masculine Lesbian whose wife passes away before the start of the novel. Dor is so overcome with grief and longing for her late wife, Rosey, that she digs up her grave and takes her home. The story switches between the couple's past and present lives, displaying the parallels of their love in life and death.
In this excerpt, Dor bathes Rosey’s rotting corpse. Scenes of similar romantic extremism, when pieced together throughout the story, reveal the cause of Rosey’s death and the consequences of untamed love.
TW: This is a HORROR. It is weird and uncomfortable! This excerpt is particularly gross.
She wrapped her arms around Rosey’s middle and proceeded to the upstairs bathroom. With each ascending step, maggots leaped from the craters in Rosey’s skin onto Dor. She pressed her lips tightly when one of Rosey’s parasites grazed her bottom lip.
The door kicked open, and Dor held Rosey against the wall as she ran a bath- the forearm that pressed across Rosey’s chest sunk unnaturally deep into the flesh below it. She stripped Rosey bare and placed her in the bathtub. From a stool beside the tub, Dor poured water over Rosey’s head. Maggots on the surface washed away. “Just like before.” She tipped a cup at the crown of Rosey’s head.
In her youth, Rosey enjoyed being washed by Dor. Until her death, she would run a bath once a week and request Dor’s assistance in her cleaning. Dor obliged, wanting to fulfill her wife’s every desire, and scrubbed every inch of Rosey’s pale body.
Dor lathered a loofa with Rosey’s signature lavender body wash. She applied pressure, remembering how Rosey savored roughness in her cleaning. Rosey demanded Dor scrub so harshly that she emerged from the water a layer of skin lighter and a vibrant shade of newly born mice pink. Dor washed her more gently this time, knowing that if she rubbed too hard, Rosey would lose what remained of her skin.
Dor locked her eyes on the grout between the tiles on the wall and let her mind wander.
[REDACTED SECTION OF WRITING]
The bathwater turned a shade of brown as Dor stripped a film of dirt and ooze that coated Rosey. The lavender scent did little to mask the perfume of spoiled flesh. Rosey rested against her wife’s shoulder as her body was lathered in soap and rinsed repeatedly until maggots evacuated their flooded homes. Dor’s face reflected in the brown, muddled water.
Her arms ached from scrubbing, rinsing, and picking at bugs that were stubborn to leave. Tears cascaded down her cheeks to her chin, then down her neck; they flew haphazardly and quickly. She did not wipe them away or feel shame for them, although a bolder rested on her heart. Dor did not fear her wife’s vacant shell; she didn’t flinch at the icy touch that met her skin. She loved Rosey in this form as much as any other, but she missed the feeling of a room occupied by her specter.
When Rosey stepped into a room, the light that outlined her perimeter stretched to each corner. Dor, a dull light from birth, found warmth in the blaze bound to Rosey. The first moment they met, it was as if Dor felt the sun on her face for the first time- she basked in it without care of becoming sunburnt.
Her tears turned into harrowing wails. Her mouth gulped air while drops of her weeping slipped in with a salty sting. She ceased washing Rosey and permitted her arms to go limp in exhausted heartache. Dor nuzzled her cheek against the top of Rosey’s head, allowing the brittle hair to scratch at her living skin. When her heart felt inconsolable, she rose to her feet, removed her clothing, and submerged herself in the tub alongside her wife. With the loofa, she scrubbed her arms with vigor, removing the layer of skin that had once existed without Rosey. She could not continue living inside a casing of her past self. Rosey was back; she was loved again- she was anew.
The skin of her arms and knees reflected the harshness of born-again skin. The water in the tub, now a murky gray, harvested the decayed epidermis of both women. Dor pulled her knees to her chest and rested her chin atop them as she watched Rosey’s black socket eyes stare at her. A need grew within her.
Dor sunk her hand to the bottom of the tub where the sentiments of their shedding bodies fell and swiped it with her palm- her hand broke the surface, dripping with residue. With her sight on the black holes that were once the beautiful green eyes of her wife, she pressed the hand to her lips. Water droplets from her palm fell down the curve of her upper lip and collected at the crease between it and the lower. With increasing hunger, she tasted- the tip of her tongue pushed through her lips and grazed the droplets. The taste was as sour as the stench that consumed the room around them, but as her belly growled for more, her tongue took on a mind of its own. The large pink fleshy muscle of her mouth licked her palm from heel to fingertip. When nothing was left but the taste of her own skin, she dipped her fingers, skimmed the slimy bottom of the tub, put her four fingers in her mouth, and slurped the hydration from them.
In bed, dressed in a fresh night down and her hair brushed, Rosey sat against the headboard with Dor admiring beside her.
Dor caressed her wife’s gaping cheek. “I wish I were a better poet so I can express my admiration with flowery words.” She traced Rosey’s jaw with an index finger. “I have never loved someone more than you, Rosey. I truly believe if I were to muster more affection, I would bleed out on the floor.” She twirled a strand of silver around her finger, took in the decaying edges of Rosey’s profile, and recognized the privilege of witnessing the markers of long lives spent together.
Dor placed a kiss on Rosey’s temple. She then kissed her cheek- then her chin. On all fours, she crawled to rest her lips on Rosey’s lips. They were tough and receded to crusted edges that exposed teeth on black gums, but they were heavenly to reacquaint. Dor kissed her wife like they had countless times before. She held Rosey’s face between her hands and reenacted the passion she felt before their bodies grew old and unforgiving. Dor placed herself on Rosey’s lap, knees on either side of her petite frame. With each kiss, the familiar hunger of her youth rose to the surface, encouraging her to go in for another. Her knees suffered under her weight, but she pressed on, her spit building up without Rosey’s full lips to catch it. Her tongue grazed over the tar-black gums and browning teeth. She tried to ignore the pain in her joints for more time, but the cramping up her legs caused her to dismount.
Returning to her bedside, Dor placed one last peck on the bend of Rosey’s lower jaw. “Goodnight, my love.”
Her breath stiffened at the sight of the lump on the duvet.
A tooth.
She pinched the tooth to her line of vision. There, held between her thumb and forefinger, was a piece of her wife. Her Rosey sent her affection in the only way she knew how. The tooth rotated with her wrist. The dark brown root faded upward into a band of green and then yellow. Her face gleamed with the comfort of being so loved. To be loved is to be fed, and Rosey nourished what Dor lacked.
In the same act of taking her pills each morning, Dor popped the tooth in her mouth. Unlike her medication, she let the tooth rest on her tongue and then pushed it from side to side so it became acquainted with the inside of her oral cavity. The tooth clunked, clinked, and collided with hers. She sucked on the tooth like a hard candy given to her in childhood. Dor balanced the tooth between her back molars- she balanced her temptation to bite down and crack the tooth with her desire to become one with Rosey. Her mouth watered.
The tooth rested in a pool of saliva on her tongue, and she swallowed.
A triumphant grin spread across her face.
