This Offering of Flesh

A Novel.

This Offering of Flesh

A Novel
by Dylan Bosworth

Chapter One

I am a monster. Yes, I know. I see the faces scrunched and turned ugly as they steal glances at me on the streets. Faces pained, as if these passersby were forced to chew molded bread, embedded with rot and larvae. Maggots popping between their crumbling teeth. Men guide their daughters behind them, and women look away as if I were the devil himself, dripping melted bits of flesh as I reach my claws to snatch their children.

They, my darling, are the true monsters in this story.

You have my sincerest gratitude for looking upon me and withholding your disgust for a time. Don’t be mistaken—I feel the disdain, the revulsion blooming inside of you like a Corpse Flower as it takes its annual breath. Still, I thank you for your perseverance.

Now, if you sit and listen for a while, you will learn how I’ve become what I am. Moreover, if you go beyond just listening—if you pay attention, maybe try to understand—you may learn why I’ve become this ragged, deficient thing sat here before you. Steel yourself, my sweet. This story has no happy endings.

Not for either of us.

# # #

I was born with the absence of nociception. You may have heard of this condition at one rare time or another in your life—heard it in passing and subconsciously filed it away like so many unimportant things. You may have heard it called CIP. Congenital insensitivity to pain. It is a rare disorder, so rare in fact, my mother told me it was a gift from God.

In my experience, gifts are seldom given without expectation, and God—well, let me tell you—will need to answer for this one day. You may question why this gift, the ability never to experience physical pain, has never found a happy place amongst my nerves as some scurrilous types have been apt to do, but soon, my dear, soon, it will all be made clear.

Pain is the true gift. The ability to feel—

I won’t bore you with the details of my childhood, although the proclivities of my father make for an altogether more painful type of story, as some believe, than the one I am telling now. Maybe we’ll have time for that later, but I doubt we’ll make it that far.

Anyway, as you can guess, the world is whatever the opposite of ripe is when you have an affliction such as this. So many things, as my mother would say, are just too dangerous, William. Don’t touch that, William. Stay away from there, William. Did you know that most with my affliction do not make it into their forties?

And here we are, darling—on the precipice of the 40^th anniversary of my belabored birth. How coincidental is that?

Now, my poor mother was right to worry, and she chased me around like a slaver, ordering me to do this or that, until I finally made my escape. I hadn’t necessarily escaped from her, per se, as she was the only one with a gentle hand as I grew in age, but I needed to get out of the iron gates. Free of the stifling, high brick-and-mortar fence that ringed my beautiful home, and free of my father’s hungry fists. Out into the open world, where myriad experiences filled the spaces between my father’s cruelties and my mother’s hawkish oversight.

I wandered aimlessly for a time, experiencing the world that had been so hidden from me during my life. My interests—my drives—brought me to some of the world's more vibrant cities. I indulged in every degeneracy and depravity I could find, desperately searching for that thing—that something that would fire my senses and flood my brain with sweet, sweet pleasure.

I needed to feel.

Something.

Anything.

I don’t think fate brought me to the loins of Chicago, either—so get that out of your head. I don’t believe in it and neither should you. What fate would grant me this? This life of want. Of longing. Although I could feel pleasure, in a limited way I suppose, it was never near enough. Every prostitute I entered in that city, every drug I imbibed—I felt too deeply the empty spaces that separated those moments of tactile mirth with the releases of that precious, hard-sought, chemical of satisfaction. I hypothesized that there was a deep interconnectedness between pleasure and pain. One of these could not be fully realized in the absence of the other.

As I wandered the windy streets of the city, in a deluge of whoring and drinking, and the sharing of more intravenous methods of self-discovery, my indulgences brought me not to the exalted heights of which I hoped to lie for eternity, but to the pits of utter despair.

The drugs brought nothing but inner torment as my consciousness expanded. The women brought me moments of satisfaction, but more often, left me feeling more alone than I had before. Part of me longed for the touch of my mother again, but I promised myself I would never return. I needed something else. Something new. Something that would shatter the mold of my confined experience.

What I needed to find, I found in the circus.

I can’t say what brought me there, much less the drive that led me to approach the ring man who managed the little freakshow that traveled along with the trapeze artists and lion tamers as they performed at every state, county, and city fair across the Midwest.

I was drawn to the freaks—this wonderful little gathering of outcasts, sharing their most disgusting parts with the crowds—but when I first saw them, I never thought I’d join them. My family had come from money. Stature. For someone of my pedigree to be a lowly jester for coins seemed so far below even the creature I’d felt I’d become.

Yet, I watched them with awe. At my first viewing, a boy who sat upon a stool, ragged trilby atop his head, wearing torn and patched overalls. He waved to the crowd, and at first, the crowd looked to each other confused. “What is this?” I heard some say. “Where are the freaks?”

Patrons began to rile, and a man stood, pointing at the boy, yelling something foreign and, what I would assume, obscene.

The boy just smiled.

When the crowd began to froth, finally, the boy held up a hand to silence us all. Even the standing man listened. The way the boy smiled, a smile that never touched his eyes, grinning a grin that seemed to have too many teeth—I was mesmerized.

Very slowly, he moved his grimy hand and unclasped the buttons that held the straps of his overalls. As he pulled them down, I wondered what kind of show I had paid for. I turned as the boy lowered his overalls to where they reached his groin, not wanting to participate in the exploitation of the sick and afflicted—the perverts that fund this kind of thing, yet…

…yet between my fingers, I risked a peek, and stretching from the crotch hole of the young boy’s underwear, unfurled his third leg. When you hear this, I can only assume what your mind envisions. I can assure you, the truth is far more magnificent than anything you can conjure inside even the darkest shadows of your crown.

An appendage, thin and knobby, and jointed in two places like some insect’s, slowly reached down from between the boy’s legs and placed itself on the floor, like another foot. Instead of a foot, though, the thing at the end of this leg had a large pincer, and the spiked ends clicked together as it rested on the floor.

The crowd gasped, and I felt a smile stretch across my face.

The boy used the appendage to support his entire body weight and lowered himself from the stool until he stood on his regular two feet.

Some of the older couples and families with children flung their seats behind them and headed for the exit up the walkway of the little room. Even in the dimness of the showroom's audience seats, I could see their faces white as sheets. I could hear the contents of their stomachs swirling, gargling to be freed.

I couldn’t help myself, so I laughed. Loudly, I laughed, and I stood from my seat and clapped for the boy.

He curled his third appendage behind his back, put his left arm high in the air, and his other over his heart as he bowed. His clawed appendage appeared over his head when he bent over, holding a shining top hat of all things, and he stood, just so, and it nestled atop his head when he straightened.

“I’ve got crabs!” the boy yelled and his pincers clicked as if in applause, and he waddled off the stage.

Over my clapping, I heard someone cough.

Curtains closed, and shuffling beyond filled the space—the next performer getting ready, I supposed, and I peered around the room. To my surprise, it was only I and a few sordid-looking fellows whom remained, and a woman dressed too extravagantly to belong.

She wore a figure-fitting, slim black dress that ended just above her knees, hugging her curves from her chest down her hips. The necklaces and bracelets that adorned her pale skin glimmered in the low light of the viewing room. Her black lipstick, matching the shadow of her eyes, made her face appear porcelain in the gloom. Viewing her from afar made my heart shudder—cowering from what, I did not know.

She eyed me from across the room with a look I couldn’t determine. I’d seen those same eyes in some of the women of the night that prowled Chicago’s alleys, promising things that should never be uttered aloud; and although this woman’s eyes ran over me and blinked slowly with long lashes as she let her gaze fix on mine own, they didn’t beg the same way the women of the streets begged. Instead of inciting lust, unintentionally of course, although I couldn’t help that she more than tugged at my predilections, her look masked a competent arrogance. A watch this, if you will.

And so I watched.

Chapter Two HERE

I've had this idea floating for a while with bits and pieces--parts of scenes--written here and there. I want to force myself to write it, so I think it'd be cool to write it directly in the editor. Here's chapter 1. I have the the main transition scene in chapter 2 written, so I just need to play with it a bit a plot out where I want to go, and I'll post chapter two as soon as I write it. 

I can't promise rigid consistency as I have a few other projects and some health-related stuff going on at the moment, but I think a new chapter every two weeks to start is reasonable?

Now that I'm finishing the my other main project, I can devote more time to this and the Vivisections episodes.

Thanks for reading!

This Chapter of This Offering of Flesh is featured in Top in Fiction Vol. 2 Iss. 18