When Bridget Guts was born her nerves hadn't fully developed. If she could have spoke she would have told her mother that her trip through the birth canal felt like fleshy needles pricking her innards. If she could have only told her mother and father that, until the age of five, every pat on the back to burp, every soggy diaper, onsie, pajama scratch pant, t-shirt, bib, or hand that touched her skin felt like electrical penance, she might not have been afraid of them.

When Bridget was ten-and-a-half and vacationing at Disney World she pissed her black sweatpants three times while waiting to ride Space Mountain. No one knew. With her father sitting in front and her mother at her side wondering why Disney Land perpetually stunk of urine, feet, and sweat, Bridget fidgeted in her seat wetting it once more. Had the Gut family never rode Space Mountain, Bridget’s father wouldn’t have had his bald scalp coated in vomit or slapped his daughter so hard across her vomiting mouth that her jaw had to wired shut for six months.

A day before her eleventh birthday the wire came out. Now Bridget wasn’t much of a talker, but the second that wire was removed she never shut up. She jabbered away the whole way home about seemingly nothing. Her mother didn't say a word.

She told her mother that she didn’t feel human. That her stomach always stung and her skin was tougher than tungsten.

Her mother, cooking dinner by that time, flicked a milky spatula at her and said. “You’re fine.”

Bridget unwound the knotted guts in her stomach and walked outside without responding. Her mother called after her, but Bridget just passed the mailbox at the end of the quarter-mile drive, crossed the road, and disappeared into a proceeding bog.

*

Two years later her clothes gave way to threadbare lingerie. The Florida swamp didn’t seem to mind, just sloshed lime-green under her feet.

Bridget was splayed out on a large lily pad raft she had carefully constructed by threading pliable vines through the largest pads she could find. She would lay out most days, trailing her fingers into the apparently stagnant mush that constituted wet lands. The water snakes didn’t seem to mind, something about her smelt familiar.

She poked her navel and dug her finger into it, working on it as if she was removing a suture by hand.

Over the last two years she had perfected the method of undoing her button and unraveling the contents of her stomach. She would warm her intestines in the humid afternoon, stretching portion of them taught so she could pluck them like a bass. They emanated a low thud that ducked subtly through the swamp sounds of bug buzz and methane gurgle.

When done amusing the bog with her little songs she would carefully fold her stomach and its attachments back through her navel and tie the button securely. She would rub her tummy and finish out the mid-day sun. Not once wondering what had become of her parents.

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