“A Socratic Dialogue on Disfigurement”

By Kaylin Zech

An incision ran through the corpse—a beam of white light through the flesh. Sure as rain in April, the corpse wept blood. A bruised peach of a body, the skin was blue, black, and engorged, cut through from the shoulder to the chest and down. She laid the scalpel on her tray and wondered if she would even find anything worthwhile in the organs—the external exam had produced nothing of consequence. Why did it matter? This lump of rot was a John Doe. Very few dead bodies had interesting things to say, their tongues weighing down their mouth, as they waited to be filled with stone and earth.

With her tongue, she swiped a bead of drool from her lip, then she slid her fingers into the wound. The body was of course apathetic to this intrusion. She imagined if it were alive, it might moan and curl and writhe like an eel.

Upon folding open the right side and lifting the skin—that first boundary that defines us against the rest of the world—she saw something peculiar. It was familiar, and she thought perhaps her mind had lapsed and her vision lagged behind or had flown ahead of her, to when she’d move on to the left side of the body. She pressed the flap between her finger and thumb. Flesh reaffirmed flesh: corporeal, real and present.

She had expected to reveal a series of cavities—a world of reds and browns cut through with stark bone white of the ribs. Normal guts. The inside of a corpse is perfect, an omission of self, devoid of heat, of soul. And of judgement and threat. That was why she liked this kind of work. Everyone looked the same on the inside, more or less. But beneath that flap in her hand, under a sheen of red, was a second laceration. It was spurting fresh blood through a gash straight through the decolletage of another body, a mirror of the flap she held in her hand.

Dead people didn’t bleed. They sopped blood onto the table in a last pathetic attempt to interact with the world. It was a violation that she felt the residual blood on her hands through the gloves. But regardless of her feelings, underneath the initial layer she had stripped from the corpse lay another body. It wore John Doe’s skin like makeup.

The blood was afraid of the outer body; it pooled in inverted puddles in a desperate attempt to escape the oils on the skin. She let go of the flap of the original body. It folded over the shoulder with a wet sound. The noise was what she imagined her stomach to sound like, if it could give voice to her unease. The familiarity was perverted by this new entity. It was so close to being normal. Maybe she just had to cut through this body too. Then everything would be safe again.

When her fingers pressed into the skin it felt warm, wet with blood that was still bubbling out of the cut like a sticky-sweet diet soda. That thought made her wet her lips. Her focus crawled from her mind to her fingertips as she felt out the body through the incision in John Doe. The skin—stretched so thin like wet paper—rolled over the clavicle under her touch. She retched. Like a poor poisoned rabbit. What if the skin were to keep sliding over the bone, smearing like oil pastels, revealing the bone beneath? But she could only scrape away the flesh with her nails, gathering blood and decay under them. At that the body tensed. Not as a freshly dead thing would in rigor mortis, but in the form of a contraction that further indicated life. It occurred to her that not only was its heart pumping blood through its system, but it had just responded to her. She was having an interaction with a real, living, dead thing… A body in pain.

Portrait of a Stoner #1 by Isaiah Hogan

Pen and Paper, 2025

She thought it good that she cut into dead bodies that don’t know how much it hurts. There is a lot that hurts about being in a body. It is always such an insufficient vessel for a person’s soul. So people cut them away, starving themselves until others can see the trees through them. They believe the trees are more beautiful, more worthwhile to gaze at. A wisp of a person would be more lovable anyhow, more digestible. A waif to be thrown about by the wind. After all, to diminish the body is just an attempt to kill the soul. Always too angry, too loud. Since so few people really love each other’s souls isn’t it better to get rid of yours? That would make it easier for people to settle. The soul lives in the bones, and if one could only shatter them, the soul could slip through the cracks. And if a person could cut away enough flesh, their soul would drain out and into the ground. Eventually it would make its way through the rivers into the ocean. No one would hate your soul if most of it was in the ocean. It would probably get eaten there by little crustaceans. Wouldn’t this be for the best, for the happiness of the rest of your soul in your decaying body? Apparently, there is something erotic about decaying bodies.

As if in personal offence to her thoughts, the body screamed.

A thin sound, muffled from its origin inside the hollowed-out carcass. The skin on the face rippled with the vibrations, like it wanted to part its blue lips and spit at her.

The blade glided like a ship through water. Through her disgust, she felt the form beneath the incision, scalpel clenched in the other hand to free the being inside. Blood squelched under her fingers. Oh, she had cut deep, and the poor thing didn’t like it. The screaming pierced through numb senses and settled itself in the hollow of her stomach. It was a roomy place for panic to grow, as there was no food stewing in there. How could she eat when her soul was so loud, so angry?

When she ripped her hand away, hot blood shot up her arm. It reminded her of the last time someone had kissed her. Panic flooded from her guts into her throat. From there, into her hands that scrambled across the skin. Ripping and tearing to free that writhing thing that lived beneath.

Her hands melted into the chest in their work. A smudged portrait of three people as she painted everything red. She wondered what this neglected third person would say—not the subject it was thought to be, just a fleshy covering for this new thing beneath. All it was now was a mess of pieces on the floor, as if it wasn’t already violated enough. It would probably be screaming too. She certainly was.

It was blackout poetry, the art of subtraction. Frenzied slicing and peeling skin to reveal more and more of the screaming creature. She cut away the folds of the neck and wondered if someone had ever gently pressed their lips to that skin. The flesh she peeled away there was fatty. It looked like the thing inside had been negligent when hollowing out the corpse. Bits of jaggedly cut muscle were still attached. The fat-marbled skin slipped through her fingers, a fish trying to get to water that doesn’t exist. For years she had wondered what it would be like to grab at the fat on her body and cut it away. Teeth met tongue, and she sliced away the skin on the face. It screamed every time she cut too deep and bit into its skin. Now, the sound was choked. God, she wondered if it could even breathe.

Hooking her nails into the jaw she peeled the face away. John Doe splattered to the floor in chunks of skin. Flaccid eyelids stared into the floor as it landed face down, the flesh photo negative exposed to the room. Pulpy bits stuck in her hair; her glasses were spattered with red and a piece of neck hung from the frame. A new face stared at her.

Again, it was familiar. The panic dripped out of her limbs and onto the floor. Her piss swirled with the red pooled there. She didn’t even think to stop it, there was no thought, no screaming. There was nothing except the body in front of her. Lying on the table, half-embraced by the decaying flesh of the corpse, was herself. It was a perfect reflection, smeared with blood, but not dead. Its skin was flushed, the lips wet, all bizarre human signs of vitality. Looking at this mimic was worse than the mirror. It felt crueler to be in absolute authority, outside of yourself and holding a blade. Maybe if it was dead, then she could guiltlessly cut away pieces of it. It was a gift from God. She could finally make herself beautiful. As if it knew her thoughts, the eyes scrunched shut, wrinkling the nose. It reminded her of rotting vegetables. The tremor in her fingers told her she should touch it. She clenched the blade, the other hand reaching for the face.

Somewhere the wires crossed in her brain. She had meant to be gentle. She dug into the mandible and brought the scalpel across its cheek, cutting fat away in chunks, until she saw the cheekbone. It was so pretty. She carved a white rabbit, red eyes and nose twitching as the blood gushed. She leaned in to examine her work; she could feel the heat of the blood that splattered across her glasses, into her eyes. The mimic screamed again. She kept slashing and stabbing—blind, blood dribbling into her mouth, the thing filling all her senses—until she saw nothing.

She stayed for a long time, long enough for the blood to cool on her face—both of her faces. She did not sop up the remains. With her hope that gnashing teeth of gutter rats would find it, that last remnant of her soul dribbled down the drain.