P.S. An infestation came at the height of this summer, just as it was always bound to. Flies laid their eggs in the meat we left to rot, and so the maggots came in their swarms, bloated and lustful in the decay.
We watched the kettle run for a while, then made up our concoction: two parts
bleach, one part boiling water. I closed my eyes and poured, the thick stench of
chlorine making my nose wrinkle. After we were done, (when the last of them had stopped struggling), we drained the swill into the gutter, letting the sea of tiny carcasses disappear away from us forever.
Do maggots feel pain? I looked it up later; scientists are unsure. I know you would have laughed at me for that, lily-livered and sentimental, humanising creepy-crawlies in all my vegetarian sensibility and Catholic guilt. But I’ve never felt the pain of dying before, and not even that of a broken bone, and so I can only conceive of it through what I’ve read and seen, every white-hot nerve and receptor inflamed all at once.
At the time, it looked like they were wriggling for freedom, their pale bodies thrusting against the black plastic. But now I worry that it was agony which made them writhe. Awake some nights, I imagine them crying out in anguish, unable to comprehend that they are dying.
And then I always think of you, how quickly and quietly you seemed to slip into death when it came to you last year. Peacefully. No struggle at all.
Hannah Corsini
Hannah Corsini is 23, lives in Birmingham and works full-time as a data analyst in environmental compliance, but she also enjoys reading and writing both fiction and non-fiction as a hobby. Other passions of Hannah’s include cats, horror movies, cooking and feminism.
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