“One, two, three. Shhhhh…” Eyes closed and

we lost touch with the world. One, two, three lovers in a room and I wasn’t counting sheep. I counted flies. Wasn’t looking for sleep. Light leaked through the drawn curtains – closed it real tight but some of the sun still shone through.

Tara and Ambrosia – the squirming flesh on the bed – they were consuming each other. It looked so fierce what they were doing. It didn’t resemble love. It looked like hurt. It looked like violence. Tara was beating the insides of Ambrosia with her fist while lapping the most intimate region of her mouth.

I pulled a seat close to the bed, sat down, opened another bottle of beer, drank it, wiped my mouth and exhaled but I could barely hear my breathing from all the racket they made.

Tara, the blonde, moistened Ambrosia’s stomach where the ridge of the muscles began and then she went up to her sternum.

Three times one is always three. Three divided by one is always three.

When I looked at Ambrosia to see her tremble beneathTara, she turned her face and pulled the blanket over her chest until a ghost materialized underneath – Tara’s head. The ghost seemed to glide down her torso leaving streaks of blonde hair where ectoplasm should be.

Then I imagined maggots. I saw them but they weren’t there. They chewed through the rot while squirming into each other – naked, segmented bodies, tiny black eyes, white runny skin, struggling to get all of their food. Consuming each other, growing longer and bigger and drowning in the vat of decay. This is why doctors use maggots to treat necrotic wounds. The little machines don’t know how to stop.

Ambrosia raised and then parted her thighs to give the ghost access as it glided in between and disappeared in the place that made Ambrosia’s head tilt back. It sounded like agony the way she grunted. I once heard that women become animals when they give birth. Something clicks and the woman you impregnated is no longer your wife. She becomes a beast. Tara seemed to call out to Ambrosia’s womb where no child would answer. I waited.

And the maggots, they grow wings, change shapes and become something different. They mean to fly but what they do is eat and lay eggs in the guts of rot where the smell beckons nausea. The long tube extends from their head and into meals. It’s called a proboscis and they use it to masticate and then eat. Flies, hundreds of them rapidly lap the food, eat, suck, digest for a month and then perish into the unknown. Sometimes they pass into oblivion while eating – ironic, I thought.

The room smelled of sweat and intimacy – a heavy sexual aroma permeated. It became warm and humid. Ambrosia removed the blanket from her chest as Tara peaked up, wiped her mouth and looked at me. I undressed and joined them.

Ambrosia kissed me on the cheek and said, “Don’t break her. She’s my number one.” I laid down and Tara kissed me. I could taste Ambrosia still on her lips and feel strands of runny orgasm twisting in her mouth. Ambrosia moved to the other side of the bed, her legs parallel to my arms, and her feet up to my waist.

“I want all of you,” Tara said. Electricity vibrated from her skin and I knew she felt authority. She climbed on top of me, rotated to face Ambrosia and then began to ride. The muscles of her back strained as she jerked up and down. She whimpered and then bent forward toward my feet and into Ambrosia. The fly’s face appeared to me as her ass lifted and dropped – two large eyes staring at me, lifting and dropping. The fly’s face ate and sucked while using my member as its proboscis.

I could feel us, like machines, like animals – an instinct to consume each other – amalgamating, unifying, breaking the silence of an early morning. All control relinquished and the power was in primacy and submission at once. Then our proboscis spat, spat, spat inside of her until there was nothing but the heaving of our lungs.