It’s a photograph . . .

“I point the camera at the real thing and snap.”

She slams the book shut, the force making the items across the table jump, and runs. She hurries back up the stairs, back down the hallway and into her room, and leaps over the lifeless creature, paying as little attention to its body as she can. She lands on her mattress and curls her legs into her chest, burying her face in her knees so that she can hide in the darkness.

She takes deep breaths, in and out, trying to pretend, even if just for a second, that everything is back to normal. That she’ll lift her head and the creature’s body will be gone, replaced by her daddy standing in the doorway with a lollipop in his hand. He’ll come and sit next to her on the mattress and hold her and tell her that everything will be okay. That he will keep her safe. And she will forget everything she has seen. The world will shrink back to the size of her room.

When she lifts her head from her knees, she is still alone and there is still a body before her.

She sucks in a rancid breath and shudders. Something doesn’t smell right. Something smells awful. Filthy. She looks at the body in horror and reluctantly crawls back to it. Hovering, she takes a whiff. Decay fills her nostrils and she jerks away, one hand over her mouth, trying not to gag. The flesh looks sick, putrefying to gray at the edges of the neck and chest cavity, the skin a gray-blue hue, nearly translucent now. The smell is unbearable and she is worried it will stain her room, slip into the cracks between the concrete, and remain there forever.

She gets up and drags the body by what she now recognizes as its thick rubber shoes, out the door and down the hallway. The fabric on the body’s back shushes against the concrete. But even as she returns to her room, the smell follows her. It slithers up and taps her on the shoulder with one wicked claw.

The hairs on the back of her neck rise and she shudders again.

She tries to sit back down on her mattress and ignore it. She gets up and paces her room, hoping the breeze she creates will whisk away the rot. She covers her nose with the skirt of her dress but knows she cannot hold it there forever, all the while watching this body decompose into gray mulch just a few paces away.

Moments later, she drags the body back to the center of her room. She gawks at it, thinking of all the stringy veins and bones that create it. How the insides on display right now look so intricate and fragile. How it looks so similar to that sketch in graphite.

“How do you know this is what we look like on the inside, Daddy?”