God and Taxidermy

God and Taxidermy

A horrifying return to nature, a creature living deep in the woods.

The light in my workshop was dim, a soft yellow glow from the single lamp casting long shadows across the cluttered space. The air smelled of formaldehyde and the faint, lingering scent of decay, a smell I had grown accustomed to over the years. My hands moved with precision, the scalpel gliding through the fur of the fox laid out before me. It was delicate work, the kind that required patience. I had done it hundreds of times, yet tonight something felt different. A heaviness clung to the air, a suffocating pressure that made the simple act of breathing feel labored and tedious.

I paused for a moment, setting down my tools, staring at the lifeless eyes of the fox. The curve of its back, once nimble and swift in life, was now stiff, its movements forever stilled. I had always thought of taxidermy as a kind of preservation, a way to capture something beautiful before it was lost to the rot of time. But tonight, the silence of the room felt oppressive, the walls too close, as if the creatures around me, the ones I had preserved, were watching.

Photo by Sean Foster on Unsplash

The fox, the deer, the bear; they all seemed to loom larger in the shadows, their glassy eyes reflecting the dull light. I had always admired their stillness, their eternal preservation. But now, in the dim light of my shop, they seemed less like trophies and more like something I had stolen.

The thought came unbidden: What if they wanted it back?

I shook my head, pushing the thought away, returning to my work. But the unease lingered, gnawing at the edges of my mind. I had often considered the cycle of death, how life gave way to decay, how the body, once vibrant, returned to the earth. But there was something unsettling about my part in that cycle. In my hands, death was halted, interrupted. I took creatures at their peak, captured their forms, and held them here, in this stasis, a moment before the fall.

But death, true death, couldn’t be escaped forever.

I leaned back in my chair, stretching my arms, my joints cracking from hours of work. A strange thought drifted into my mind, something I’d imagined before but never quite like this. What would it feel like to follow the animals into death? Not just the act of dying, but to be led to it, willingly. I imagined a deer standing at the edge of the forest, its large, dark eyes watching me, its body still and calm. In my mind, I would follow it.

Step by step, into the woods, through the underbrush, the night wrapping around me like a shroud. The deer would guide me silently, until we reached the edge of a lake, a vast, still body of water that shimmered under the moonlight. I wouldn’t resist. I would walk into the water, feeling it rise around me, cold and unyielding, pulling me under, into the darkness, into the womb where I felt a familiar cradling,

Maybe that’s what the animals wanted, I thought. To reclaim what was stolen from them, to lead me to where I belong.

The clock on the wall chimed softly. It was late, too late to be working, too late to be thinking in these riddles and visions. I forced myself to stand, shaking off the creeping dread, locking up the workshop for the night. As I made my way to the bedroom, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the eyes of the animals followed me, their glassy gaze heavy and accusing.

Sleep came reluctantly, tugging me down into a restless state. But even in sleep, the unease followed me. I dreamed.

I was standing at the edge of the forest. The air was thick with mist, the trees towering above me, their branches swaying gently in a wind I couldn’t feel. In the distance, I saw it; the deer. Its form was barely visible in the fog, but I recognized it instantly. It turned its head slowly, watching me, its antlers like sharp, jagged branches that seemed to reach toward the sky. I followed like a lost lamb to whatever slaughter was waiting for me.

The forest was silent as I walked deeper, the only sound the crunch of leaves beneath my feet. The deer moved ahead, always just beyond my reach, its steps light and deliberate, as if it had done this many times before, had been born and died before I even existed. The trees parted, and there it was — the lake. Its surface was like glass, perfectly still, reflecting the pale moonlight. The deer stood at the water’s edge, its head lowered as it gazed into the depths, eyes mirroring the waters surface.

I felt a pull, a force urging me forward. I stepped into the water. The cold was immediate, biting into my skin, but I didn’t stop. I waded deeper, the water rising around me, until it reached my chest, my neck, my chin, just below my mouth. I kept walking, my feet no longer touching the bottom, the water swallowing me whole. I sank into its depths, my lungs burning, my vision fading into darkness. Euphoria.

Photo by benjamin lehman on Unsplash

I woke with a start, gasping for air, my body slick with sweat and throbbing. My heart pounded in my chest, the image of the deer and the lake still vivid in my mind. For a moment, I thought it was just the dream, that I had been caught in the lingering aftershock of it.

But then I felt it, something moving beneath my skin.

It started slowly, like a ripple, just beneath the surface of my chest. At first, I thought it was the remnants of the nightmare, my body still shaking from the imagined chill of the lake. But the movement didn’t stop. It grew, pulsing, twisting, a sensation of something alive, something slithering under my skin, something snakelike and dark.

I bolted upright, my hands clutching at my chest, but the feeling was everywhere now. My stomach churned, my muscles tightened as something pressed against my insides, stretching my skin. I looked down and saw the first bulge, the skin warping, pressing out as if something was trying to break free, something hissing and unseen.

I woke to the sensation of something stirring beneath my skin, an impossible, crawling pressure that I first mistook for a dream, a hangover from the hours spent working late into the night. But as the minutes passed, it became undeniable. The slithering movement within me wasn’t fading. It was growing stronger, more palpable.

My eyes fluttered open, and the dim moonlight filtering through the curtains only deepened the dread. I could see the outlines of my trophies, their still forms lining the walls like silent sentinels. The fox, eternally mid-leap, the bear standing on hind legs in that powerful pose, the deer with its majestic antlers: creatures I had frozen in time, forever captured at the pinnacle of life, a moment I orchestrated to convey their eternal once was.

I couldn’t move. A numbness spread through my limbs, giving way to something deeper. A warmth, a slow, pulsing rhythm, as if the blood in my veins wasn’t mine anymore. I lifted my trembling hand to my chest, and then I felt it, a bulge, like a snake coiling beneath my ribs, pushing out, warping the skin.

I stared, horrified, as a claw, long and curved, glistening burst from my chest, wet and raw, sending a jet of blood splattering across the bed. A scream ripped from my throat as the claw flexed, tearing through muscle and sinew as though my flesh was nothing but wet paper. My skin, so solid, so permanent, was now a fragile barrier that cracked and split beneath the pressure of the tendrils.

The claw was followed by another. My ribs creaked as they shifted, bones snapping and reshaping to accommodate the birth of something inside me. I looked down to see the snout of a wolf emerging from my chest, its wet nose glistening in the pale light, fur slicked with my blood. The wolf’s jaw opened wide, teeth razor-sharp, dripping with red as it clawed its way out, its amber eyes staring into mine, wild and hungry.

I tried to scream again, but my voice caught in my throat. I could feel more movement. My stomach rippled as another shape pressed against my abdomen. This time, it was furred. Thick, coarse fur that scratched against my insides, forcing its way out. I doubled over as something tore through the skin of my belly, and I realized with unspeakable horror that it was the leg of the bear. The beast I’d mounted with such pride was alive, reborn, from the depths of my own veins and guts. Its paw, black and shining, flexed as it emerged, claws tearing apart muscle and viscera, leaving me gaping and torn.

I could see them now, all of them. The fox, its once glassy eyes now lit with an unnatural, savage hunger, slithered down from the wall. The deer’s head, mounted on the mantel, twisted on its neck, its mouth gaping open in a silent, primal roar as antlers, thick and wet with blood, thrust from my shoulders, growing from my very bones.

But something else was happening. Beneath the searing pain, beneath the tearing of my flesh and the cracking of my bones, there was a pull, a deep, primal connection that vibrated through my marrow into my intestines. I could feel the animals inside me, not just in a physical sense, but deeper, like they were part of something larger, something ancient and primal.

My skin no longer felt like my own. It was loosening, peeling back in long strips, exposing raw muscle underneath. But instead of falling apart, the muscle began to knit itself with fur, with bone, with talon and antler. My chest split further, revealing sinew and organs as the wolf emerged fully, its form pulling me apart, and yet I was still there, still connected, still feeling every twitch of its movements as if it were my own body, the architecture of my thoughts beginning to become hazy.

I couldn’t tell where I ended and they began any longer.

I tried to rise from the bed, but I was no longer in control. The bear’s massive leg shifted, taking my place, rooting itself to the floor with a power I’d never known. My spine snapped with a sickening crack, but instead of pain, there was only the sensation of expanding, my bones lengthening, reshaping, my skin hardening into something new, something ancient. My arms twisted, contorting grotesquely as they became the fox’s slender limbs, ending in sharp claws that scraped across the wooden floor.

The deer’s antlers spread further, splitting my scalp as they branched outward, turning my skull into a crown of living bone. Blood cascaded down my face in warm claret rivulets, but I could feel life rushing into me, surging through every cell. The agony of transformation was no longer horrifying. It was something else, something transmuting.

The fox leaped onto my chest, its sharp teeth sinking into my exposed neck. I should have felt terror, pain, death, but instead, there was a flooding warmth, a liquid ecstasy as our bodies intertwined, my blood mingling with its essence. My vision blurred, but not from fear. I was becoming something more, something untethered from the flesh — something antediluvian.

I could feel them all now, not as separate beings, but as part of me, as though the boundaries between taxidermist and specimen had dissolved. My flesh was theirs, their fur was mine. The wolf, the bear, the deer. They had always been inside me, waiting to return, waiting to pull me back into the primordial womb, into that ancient lake.

The tearing of skin, the ripping of muscle… it wasn’t destruction. It was rebirth. Bliss. I was delirious, euphoric. I was no longer a man, no longer bound by a frail human form. My consciousness expanded, stretching out across fur and feather, claw and beak, until I could feel the heartbeat of every creature, every beast, in synchronicity. My body was their body; their instincts, their power, was now mine, I was theirs in a loving and bloody symbiosis.

In those final moments, as my human form faded into something else, something godlike, I understood. This wasn’t the end. This was a return back to the wild, back to the dark symbiosis from which all life was born.

The animals had not risen to destroy me.

They had come to reclaim me. To complete me.

This story is published on **bloody sweet writers — where the new generation of storytellers redefines creativity. Here, words pulse with passion, imagination knows no limits, and bold ideas take flight. Want to share your voice? Join our community and be part of something bloody sweet**! 🚀

[embed]Bloody Sweet Writers — A Publication New Generation, New Blood, New Ideas!medium.com