The Earwig Flesh Factory It lives on a wrinkled hill made of rat-scabs and beetle shells, inky fluids draining from its exhaust pipes, creating puddles of a metal-scented tar substance. It bubbles poisons into the dark-sizzling atmosphere, churshes out ear-twinging noises that reach all the way to the village of melted spiky shacks and yellow pepper-fruit trees. It has a face on one side that mopes low to the ground, tilting. Its tongue dangles out of its wood-framed mouth, slithering, a lizard of a tongue. An old woman walks up this red-rusty tongue leading to the factory, passing some chittering cockroach-bugs who hide under the silver-speckled dragonplants. Her face is covered with earwig flesh, as is her body and clothes—a purple material that is slime-shiny with a thick fatty odor. A group of village children stalk behind, splashing through the silvery puddles within their earwig flesh, tugging on the old woman’s dress, begging for her to tell them a story. “Please, please, Granmama,” they cry. “No, no,” replies the old woman. “I must work with machines and produce the flesh.” “Just one story, Granmama,” they cry. “I must work with the machines and produce the flesh,” replies the old woman. She leaves the children on the front steps of the factory and marches across blue-veins on the cracked concrete to the machinery—greasy black boxes and ramps of teeth and rubber tubes. The old woman greets a pregnant woman at the machines without saying a word and then sends her home, replacing her position at the levers. The children stare at the old woman through the broken windows, watching her make the machines go whir-whir and churkle-choosh. They pout in her direction, trying to cute her into telling another of her stories, but she is grumpy when working and not in the mood. Please, please, please, their faces whine. She ignores for several minutes, but then gives in. “Okay, come inside,” she tells them through the earwig-ooze around her mouth. “I’ll tell you a story while I work, but afterwards you have to go home.” The children agree and hop through the window, little drippy goblins circling around her and a rust-caked drill. She fiddles with the machines for a few minutes before even looking at them. “Tell us about when the world changed, Granmama,” they cry. “Tell us about the beautiful ugliness.” The old woman continues working with the machines as she speaks: “It all started when the night sneezed on the world,” her voice muffle-raspy and thin, “It was a hurricane explosion of black toxic snot that came from the sky and coated the face of the planet, stripped buildings into skeletons, sprayed a thick film of disease over the lakes and oceans, filled the sun with globs of pudding.” “Tell us about what happened to the people, Granmama.” “The people were dying one by one and liked it that way. Everyone said their goodbyes to each another and slowly died away. Nobody in the entire world tried to survive besides myself, they didn’t think life was worth saving. They thought the world was too ugly to live in.” “But not you, Granmama,” cry the children. “You thought the ugliness was beautiful.” “Yes,” the old woman says, smiling underneath her slimy mask. “I thought it was extremely beautiful, more beautiful than before. The landscape was violent-colored, it was dark yet brilliant, silvery with metals and complex textures. I fell in love with it and wanted to live in it forever.” “Tell us how you did it, Granmama. Tell us how you survived.” “I figured out a way to transform human flesh into a coating that would protect my skin from the atmosphere and would absorb poison from my body, enabling me to breathe air and drink water without getting sick. I used the flesh of the people who were dying in the village, the ones on their death beds. I remember when I first put on the flesh. I looked so strange and . . . insecty.” “Like an earwig!” the children scream. “Yes, like the peeling of an earwig.” “Tell us what happened when the flesh went rotten, Granmama.” “Well,” says the old woman, “it didn’t take much human flesh to create the earwig flesh, but after awhile I was running low on my supply anyway. All what I had left was a single man who was the only survivor from the village.” “Tell us how you made him last years, Granmama. Tell us how you cut legs and arms and parts off of him to make the earwig flesh and kept him alive for so long. Tell us how you created flesh from your own body.” “Well, once I realized he was running low on meat and was ready to die, I put his last working part inside my body and forced him to impregnate me. Then I spent the whole next evening with his part in my hand, filling up jars and containers. I cut his throat when his part stopped working and he supplied me with enough flesh to last a few years. It was barbaric, I know, but I had to survive. The world was such a beautiful place, I couldn’t let myself die. And I was later able to create people of my own to turn into earwig flesh, my body grew them like a farm.” “Tell us how you kept some of them, Granmama,” cry the children. “Tell us how you let some of them grow up.” “Well, I knew I couldn’t produce them all myself forever, so I kept a few. Plus I always wanted children I could raise within this beautiful world. Many years later, there was a small community of people here, all of which began from between my legs. Half the people here grow poppy-fruit in the grove behind the village and the other half grow children for the earwig flesh factory.” “Tell us about how your first daughter didn’t want to give her children to you. Tell us how you had to start brainwashing your children to do what you wanted. Tell us how you found a poison-plant that messes up people’s thoughts.” “No,” the old woman says abruptly. “I have work to do now.” “Please, please, please tell us,” cry the children. “No, I need to get to work on the earwig flesh.” “Please, please, please.” “I said no!” the old woman screams. The children lower their heads, pouting again. Then she points at a small boy. “Billy, it’s your turn to get inside of the machine.” The boy groans but nods. He takes the old woman’s hand and allows her to guide him to the entryhole of a large black machine. Then he climbs within. “Give Granmama a kiss,” she says to the boy, who pecks her on the cheek and blushes in front of the other children. The old woman shuts the door and turns on the machine, hurrying to the other side to add bottles of green and pink fluid to the meat. “Tell us a story, Granmama, tell us a story,” the other children shout. “Which one?” the old woman asks with busy fingers. “Tell us about when the world changed, Granmama. Tell us about the beautiful ugliness.” The old woman looks at them and smiles at their beautiful goblin faces. She says to them, “It all started when the night sneezed on the world . . .”