Bonus Day - How Exquisite, Your Corpse
Reading time: 2 min
This piece was written by:
DamonWakes, Francsart, Teela-Y, Caitlan Zufelt and TuesdayNightCompany as the final collaborative challenge for the amazing FlashFictionMonth.
Photo by freestocks on Unsplash
“This isn't my body,” the monster said, staring into the mirror and poking at his neck bolts.
“Some of it is!” The doctor pointed at the tip of the monster’s toenail. “See?”
The monster raised his left eyebrow. It was, to his dismay, a different colour than his right one. “Dare I ask where is the rest of me then?”
The doctor glanced awkwardly over his shoulder, where his mighty chihuahua was feasting on a rotten thigh. The monster felt a strange kinship with the chihuahua in the corner; like his own, her neck bolts were far from subtle.
The doctor noticed him staring. “It’s the only way I can get her to keep the cone on,” he explained.
“You could at least have used human neck bolts. We have the same model, me and Matilda over there.”
“I did use human neck bolts! Only the best for my pupper. Also, how do you know my dog’s name?”
“It was difficult to miss your impertinent shouting, even over the roar of the thunder and that awful blinding from the lightning! And that uncomfortable slab—oh, I’ll have back pain for weeks I say!”
“Note for the next time: use more earwax,” the doctor said.
“...For my ears?”
“Nope. For the slab.”
The monster’s shoulders sank in response. Matilda was more than content to remain silent on the matter, or at least she seemed to be for now. The monster didn’t know how he’d feel if the dog started speaking all of the sudden. This whole thing was all a little overwhelming.
“Would more earwax have made me less hideous?” asked the monster, gazing at his reflection in the mirror.
Several emotions passed across the doctor’s face.
“Alas!” The doctor threw a hand to his forehead in extremely hammy fashion. “All the earwax in the world could not have helped. You are marked by the vileness of my misdeeds! I shall be condemned to spend my days with my hideous creation as my only companion! I am doomed to fall on the sword of my own iniquity!”
The monster squinted his mismatched eyes, trying to gauge whether his creator was being entirely serious. He wasn’t sure what the point of play acting would be. It couldn’t have been for his benefit, surely.
He felt himself, trying to reconcile with the thing in the mirror. This body felt strange, lumps in places where they shouldn’t–
The monster seized his own skin and with one mighty tug, ripped it off like a matador waving a gory cape. The doctor could only stare as the monster turned to him. Dripping with blood, which seemed to sparkle in the candlelight, the monster was now a buxom woman.
There was a brief silence. Then, slowly, the doctor grasped his own skin. With a motion like an erotic dancer whipping off a pair of tearaway trousers, he removed it, revealing that he was in fact a monster.
“I swore I would never reveal myself for who I truly am,” said the monster-doctor, moving closer. “They all said I was mad, that it would never work.”
“But look at us,” replied the woman-monster. She placed her new hand on his new face. “We’ve done it. But neither of us were sorry, were we?”
