TAXIS DERMA
Jenny Irish
Motheaten, flea infested, a corpse killed twice, first shot then stabbed, gutted, tamped into a trunk for transport, turned-inside-out, split into halves, skin scraped smooth, stroked with poisons, then stitched seam to seam and stuffed with saw dust and rags, history, retaining in its preservation, the thinnest resemblance to its living form. Behold the beast. Some wicked work. A maneater, devil sent. But in preparation for display, dissection of an eye discovers only an eye, with no evidence of advanced malevolence, no sign of the anticipated spiritual infection, only an eye like a hundred other eyes, enucleated from the cracked skulls of monsters tracked by red mastiffs through massifs to caves full of bones, first shot then stabbed, then shipped, tamped into a trunk, to a baffled naturalist squinting through unsteady light at the remains, trying to see what he has been told there is no longer cause to fear. The maw of a boar? Lion-like, though not a lion? Tusked? Spectacle and specimen, eyes enucleated, dissected, submerged in fluid chemicals and sealed in jars, replaced with discs of flat black glass. The reconstruction of an animal you have never seen in life, is a complex exercise in the application of hearsay.