I am being dressed for my death.

It’s an odd feeling, really. The maid braids flowers into my hair, and each tress she pulls seems to unravel from my scalp in golden ribbons. The rouge on my cheeks cakes and joins with my decomposing flesh as it rots away. My eyes, clouding and sinking into their sockets, are accentuated with thin black lines of kohl that slouch against my drooping eyelids.

In a few months, none of it will be recognizable.

When you have been branded with an expiration date, the corpse that previously laid dormant under your flesh tears her way out to greet you. And she is a horrid thing.

She reeks of decay, stuffing my mouth with ash and maggots, her gnarled hands unsympathetic to the sobs that catch in my throat. I’ve known her before as an unwelcome visitor who crawls into my chambers at the dead of night, as a stranger lurking in the contours of my reflection—but now we exist as a twisted, muddied portrait of a dead woman walking.

We sit by candlelight, writhing in our shared discomfort. She smiles through it all, a twisted and gummy grin, rejoicing in the company that I’ve finally offered her. I know not the expression I offer back—the only feeling in my face is of slimy, rubbery skin sliding down brittle bone.

They’ve informed me that I am to be beheaded with a sword, and so I pray that the maid can braid my hair tightly enough to my skull to protect each lock from the blade’s wrath. I’ve spent much of my life growing it out, and a choppy haircut would do little to flatter my round features, regardless of how they trudge into grimy disarray. I shudder to think of my noble peers seeing me in such an ugly state.

The decision to sever my throat was a kindness, I’ve been told. They say that it can be quick and painless with the right executioner. They advise me to beg for mercy when he levels his weapon. Perhaps, they say, he will honor my pleas and end me swiftly.

Most women are burned to death for their betrayals, they reason. It’s torturous and prolonged.

And I envy those women. They go out in a blaze, flames wrapping them in an impassioned embrace before burning through to the very soul. Their deaths become a show of art, and the wretched corpses within them burn too, never to haunt them again.  

My death, however, will be messy and leave my body engorged and bloated, then miry and rotten, then blackened and waxy. The corpse within me will languish in the rancidity of my decomposition, and it will take ages for me to be reduced to the pretty, ivory-white skeleton I long to one day be.

How I yearn for a death that burns through the unsightly visage that burdens my future. I’d much rather be consumed by flame this very moment than sit with the knowledge that my once petite and pleasant body is fated to become so revolting.

I can tell that the maid pities me as she gives me a light dousing of perfume. She believes that my tears are out of fear of death, but in truth they soak my swollen skin only because I fear the ugliness that will follow. Neither of us speak a word.

The corpse cackles through the quiet, her putrid smell mixing with the flowery fragrance of my perfume. A sickeningly sweet odor permeates the room and turns the sludge sinking into my stomach. I grip at my midsection and hold my breath, wishing my lungs were full of smoke and ember, then wishing more that they weren’t becoming mush against my ribcage.

I turn to the fireplace. It’s warm, welcoming, and grand. A gift from my late betrothed.

The maid follows my gaze. She says something—probably a mumbled apology—but I cannot hear her. My ears are plugged with ash and wax, and the only sound I can imagine is of crackling hearth.

The room surrounding it is bleak—cobblestone and iron and stiff silence. Contrasting against the grayness of the environment and the brackish brown shades of my spoiled flesh, the fire births vibrant, warm hues. Inside the mantle is another world, a universe where embers burn like suns and smoke curls into stardust.

I tumble from my seat on brittle, crumbling legs and drag myself forward with the carnage that my arms have devolved into. I watch muscle slip from bone. I watch the fire rage. I rage.

The corpse—my corpse—kicks and claws and screeches. She begs. I let her.

Past the wailing and the squalor, I feel one of my eyeballs shift and morph until it pops out of my skull. It rolls against the floor until the string of flesh connecting it to me pulls taut. I see the mantle in front of me. I see the maid behind me.

She is unmoving, unreadable. She watches as I watch. And does nothing as I reach the foot of the flames.

I shove an arm into the flame and feel the rotten remains of my throat protest as a gurgled scream escapes me. The heat sears into me, and I open myself to it. I struggle to force more of my dismembered body into the hearth. I shriek as I realize that I do not have enough muscle left to bring myself further into the inferno.

The corpse is inconsolable all the while, pushing back against me with heavy wrath. She gags and scratches the stone floor until her nails tear from her spindly fingers.

I am weeping with what is left of me, my cheeks nothing more than rouge and heat and decay. I do not want to be killed. I simply want to die. I want to die and be pretty once again, a pearly, unblemished skeleton.

I yearn as I’ve never yearned before, watching the fire eat through my festering arm. I beckon desperately for the flame to follow the curves and dips of my body, to devour me fully. But it is all for naught, and I am helpless again.

But then, my wayward eye spies my salvation: The maid steps forward and levels a fireplace spade. She gazes down at me softly, but her knuckles are white and her hands quake.

I gurgle a plea past bile and blood, and she receives it with a grimace. She thrusts the dense metal of the tool into the mound of meat I’ve become. Piece by piece, I am slung into the blaze. I am welcomed by hotness and ecstasy.

Midway through her labor of mercy, the maid drops the spade. She begins to shove me into the furnace with her own hands, not withdrawing from the soot or even the fire that jumps to her sleeves. The flesh of her forearms bubbles against the heat, red and fervorous and angry.

She simmers as I boil over completely.