The Maggot People by Henning Koch Page A

is?”
    â€œWhen they want more lebensraum you really don’t have much of a choice. They start to multiply; you feel them pressing against the inside of your skin, and you know you have to start looking for the pressure valve.”
    â€œThe pressure valve?”
    â€œSex…” She laughed, tears glittering in her eyes. “We don’t own our bodies anymore. We can’t do what we want with them. The only time they ever let me feel sexual excitement is when I’m with a straight man. I mean a man who’s not been maggotized.”
    â€œSo the first time we slept together…”
    â€œâ€¦ was incredible. I must have had twenty-five orgasms that night. Maggot orgasms, you know—simulated orgasms because your body no longer has the ability to… I mean, they just send the impulses up to the brain. I even had an orgasm when I came out to speak with you the first time. That’s why all I could think of to say was that silly thing about ice cream. Who cares about stupid orgasms, anyway? I’m tired of them, personally.” “So it’s just procreation for them?”
    Ariel laughed. “Yes. For them. Go forth and multiply. That old chestnut. They reward sexually aggressive behavior with strangers. That way they find new host bodies.” Her face clouded over. “But they take away a woman’s ability to have a child. They rob her of that. Not maliciously. They don’t think; they don’t do it on purpose. But all the most evil things are senseless mechanisms. A snake, the way it lashes out and bites you without even thinking about it. A tsunami. Are these things evil? I would say they are. Probably even maggots are evil.”
    Michael sat up in shock, the realization striking home. “So when you told me that thing about how good the maggots were it was just bullshit!”
    â€œAch,” she said, “you were ripe for the taking. Anyway, you had a tumor, you were seriously ill.” She met his accusing stare. “Michael, if I apologized to you now it would be an empty gesture. I knew what I was doing when I picked you up. I’d probably do it again if I had to. I found myself a Provençal backwater, a village full of repressed, sad fuckers with generations of stupefied lunatics behind them. Moldering scar tissue in their attics. I put on my best dress and I walked fresh as a daisy through the village square until some dolt of a peasant came sniffing at me. By that I mean you , of course. I have to admit you were more sophisticated than most peasants I’ve had. Men who pick you flowers in a ditch and come to you with dried sweat in their armpits. With callused, dirty hands… smelling of shit, red wine, and cheap aftershave. They ask you to marry them as soon as you wake up after the first night of fucking… because they want a woman to do the cooking and cleaning, someone they can screw when they come home in the evening.”
    He breathed hard, trying to contain his panic. “How did it first happen? I mean the maggots.”
    â€œIt was this mierda . A German immigrant from the south of Brazil. Tall blond creep. He delivered the gas bottles to my parents’ hotel. My mother used to talk to him, give him coffee in the kitchen. She liked him, or lusted after him, more like. He had very thick arms covered in hair and his face was always very brown and shiny like mahogany. His chest looked like a tree trunk, his legs like two thinner tree trunks bolted together at the top. And his crotch bulged like a mozzarella cheese hung up to dry. My father was always at work… he was a very good worker ant. Convenient for my mother.”
    â€œAriel, is there anything you respect?”
    â€œYes. People who shut up.” She laughed. “You know, Michael, I actually like you, and that’s bloody rare. Anyway, I think my mother used to suck him off in the kitchen sometimes.”
    â€œHow can you talk about