Free Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls by Alissa Nutting Page A

whispered to me. “They’re not eating it anymore.”
    I whispered back to him. “Can we start feeding them something more enticing? A different bone-substitute? Ground bones from animals? Or maybe even dead people?” I knew it was a tasteless suggestion, but I did have money and my life was apparently in danger. The authoritarian doctor scooted back in his rolling chair and looked at his shoes.
    “No,” my doctor said, and then he stood. His hands lifted slightly above his head. “This is not about consumption. It is an act of interspecies war!”
    In the following weeks, my strength and health deteriorated until I was finally admitted to a very special hospital ward. It was a room my doctor had built onto his existing home just for me.
    Around this time, the doctor also started wearing a large sack around his waist—to conceal his organism, I assumed, whatever it might be. It must’ve grown larger since when I’d first met him. I was grateful my organism wasn’t making me wear a sack around my waist, even if it was eating me alive. The sack made a swish noise when he walked; in motion the doctor sounded like a giant broom.
    This swishing became more and more of a comfort as I gradually lost my vision. The doctor reminded me that when one door closes another opens, and this was true; I did seem to be gaining a sort of ant-sight. My ears began to turn away from human sounds as well, but soon I could pick up more ant noises. Around the third week I requested that my room’s television be taken away. When my eyes were closed I could see various dark caves and swarming ant-limbs, and these images gradually started to feel preferential to anything I might view of the outer world.
    “I’m becoming them,” I said one night when I heard my doctor swish in. “I’m becoming the ants.”
    I heard him pull up a chair and sit down next to me. “It is wonderful, isn’t it? My swan, my pet?”
    He hadn’t called me those things before, but I was in no condition to disagree. My arms and legs could no longer move—I could only move through the ants. It was like having hundreds of different hands. I could make them go anywhere and do anything inside my body; I’d even started eating with them. Though I didn’t necessarily want to devour my own bone, I had an insatiable hunger, and there was a commanding voice, Eat, Walk, Lift, Chomp . It was my own voice but much deeper, not exactly masculine but echoing and confident, like my home was a large cave and I firmly believed in everything I said. I seemed able to express only one word at a time, but this felt more liberating than restrictive—suddenly every word could be a full representation of myself.
    I lost all track of time. Eventually I was certain of only two things: the appetite was getting out of control, and my old eyes were completely gone.
    “The rest of the world thinks that you’ve died,” the doctor told me. As he swished into the room, there was the sound of yards and yards of material being unwrapped and lifted. His words seemed round with satisfaction. “You cannot see it, but I have just unveiled the portal.”
    I would’ve answered him, but I was no longer sure if my voice still made a sound or if words even came out when I felt like I was talking.
    “It’s right here on my waist; I’ve been making paths inside of me just as there are paths inside of you. After you first came to see me, I reported to the government that I, too, hold ants inside my body, but I don’t. Not yet. It is your ants I’m after. You have become the ants who ate you; your consciousness is united with theirs. And when you all crawl inside of me, we will all be one forever.” As his voice continued I could feel the ants rallying, see their legs beginning kick with heightened motion. “I never actually fed the ants you’ve become; I simply allowed them to eat you whole. But you will not eat me. I will feed you properly so that you don’t. We will share my