Free Husk by Corey Redekop

muscle. The lacerations were tacky and clung to the towel, tearing threads of terry cloth away as I continued to wipe. I guessed whatever blood I had left in my body had clotted and was drying up in the veins. I dug through my medicine cabinet and came up with a roll of medical tape I sometimes used to support my right knee (hurt in a racquetball accident and kind of iffy since). I tore the tape with my teeth into two lengthy pieces and wrapped each arm tightly. It wasn’t a great job, but a loose-fitting shirt would cover any bumps.
    That done, I set to peeling the bandages away from my chest. The flesh was still partially iced to the fabric, and frozen kernels of skin shucked away as I pulled. Freed, the epidermal shutters swung open and a chuck of veiny beef popped out and plummeted into the bathroom sink, followed by a rope of sausage, the whole mess slapping the basin with the sound of raw chicken being thrown against a wall.
    I had forgotten about the previous placement of my innards. Funny how you can completely ignore the little things.
    Like intestinal geography.
    Scooping the guts from the sink and letting them dangle to the floor, I stared at the heart, cradled in gore-spattered porcelain, forgotten, sad. The metaphysical ramifications of looking at my own heart from the outside battled with an overwhelming sense of incompleteness. Whatever else was happening to me, the fact of my heart somehow not being a necessary part of my existence anymore was obscene. This unhappy hunk of gristle and tripe was supposed to be the meat of my matter, the fundamental engine of my human machine. The mythological bassinet of my soul.
    A sound caught my attention, a lapping. Looking down, I saw Sofa taking exploratory licks of my bowels. I pushed her away with my foot and shut the door.
    I turned on the taps and bathed my heart until the meat was lukewarm, gently wiping off tendrils of pus with a hand towel. I stuck a finger in an aorta and slowly spun it on its axis under the running water, lettering moisture into every space, filling its ventricles. I lovingly squeezed the water out, now discolored and chunked with rubbish. I tamped the organ dry and stored it in the medicine cabinet for later.
    Looking back to the mirror, I took an unobstructed look at the monstrosity I clearly was.
    It was a dog’s breakfast. The lungs bumped slackly against the walls of the ribs. My various organs looked to be intact, but then again, how could I tell? Was I even aware of the proper feng shui of human innards? I would have to find an anatomy textbook to make sure (I had a Grade 12 biology text in a box in the basement, I remembered), or download autopsy images online for comparison’s sake. Regardless, everything save the heart and that one errant kidney appeared to be more or less where it should be. My stomach, without the cushioning of intestinal tracts, swayed at the end of my esophagus. I bounced on my toes, feeling the weight pull at the back of my throat.
    My stomach let forth a gurgle. It was a tiny squeak; in other circumstances it would never have been heard at all. But I had never heard it complain in the open air, and far preferred the muffled murmur of a bellybowl sheathed in dampening layers of muscle. It was a gruesome burble, evil, raw, festering, the digestive howls of Satan’s tract.
    There was a contraction and ripples of movement passed down into the upper intestines, now hanging far past my knees. Whatever I had eaten pre-death was still in there and wanted escape.
    Would I shit all this out? Did I shit at all? Was that me from now on, the incredible non-excreting boy?
    All at once, I was tired of the freak show. I didn’t know what would happen next, but gawking was not constructive time management. I once more bundled the muck back inside me, ignoring the blankets of gore that abandoned their posts and took up residence with the mildew of the bathroom carpet. The most pressing issue was the hollow; I had