Book by its Cover

As my carefree companion and I skipped carelessly down the street, home from another elementary day at a school where conduct grades matter more than academics, we saw--much to our boyish delight--a box turtle, shimmering in the sliver of afternoon sunlight that my street’s looming cindero of pine trees allows. The creature seemed to be in a struggle of dire consequences from the distance we glimpsed him; he must claw his way over the cement curb, or admit defeat and bake in the sun to become a crispy tortoise tart.

Yet somehow, despite all its struggling, the creature seemed to be getting nowhere at all, but appeared to simply wriggle with agony, as if it were collapsing upon itself. It must be saved! My partner in crime and I exchanged the slang of the nineties and dashed to the unfortunate reptile’s aid, its situation focusing more and more into detail as we neared and began to doubt the turtle’s existence completely. Was this a pile of glass, or sand? It glimmered in the golden sun like a pirate’s treasure!

What I saw with my friend remains one of the most horrifying experiences of my life: a turtle it was, indeed, but of no recent movement at all—at least not of its own accord. It had dissolved into a pulpy mush on the pavement, rotted nearly beyond recognition, but wait, was it breathing? No—it throbbed with more life than it ever had, filled with the sinister, merciless minions of decay: the gossamer maggots that would later sprout wings to consume the rest of the greenish-black flesh. To keep track of an individual was impossible. The great white hoard functioned as a whole organism, squirming through the turtle’s body cavities endlessly as if its goal was to bring the turtle back to some mutilated form of undead existence. Much to my disgust, the combined force of the maggots was great enough to move the turtle’s now skeletal claw up and down, scratching at the curbside as if pleading for mercy. I could hear the clicking grind of the nails on the concrete.

This was not what I’d wanted to see. I fled for my life—even my childish instinct to kick the jellied organism or poke it with a stick had left me, hid behind the rush of adrenaline I felt at the sight of the sparkling shell’s repeated scratching. This, like a frog one shouldn’t pick up, was the worst form of childhood’s cruel propaganda, luring me into simple pleasure and nearly killing me with the rumbling of digestive juices that ensued. I made a note to be more careful, and to this day I possess a skepticism of anything that has a promising appearance: the media, politics, moral doctrines, advertised products, and whatever else I judge to have a false cover or an unlikely virtue. Never trust anything or anyone based on appearance. You may end up dealing with a rotten turtle.