How to make a deal with the ladybirds that live in the walls of your childhood home

1. Wait for the ladybirds to come to you. You cannot summon or call them, no matter how much you beg. You can cry for them at four am in your tiny studio apartment, a thousand miles away from the cottage in the field you grew up in, and they will hear you, but they will not come. Only when you give up, pack your bags, accept that you are just another unemployed graduate failure, accept your parents ill-concealed disappointment, accept the return to your faded-pink childhood bedroom, accept your failed escape attempt; only after you stop calling all together will the ladybirds arrive.
2. Do not be afraid. Let go of that child-shaped fear you held when you tip-toed across your bedroom carpet twenty years ago, sharp memories of their angry buzzing bodies crunching beneath your bare feet. Breathe. Relax. Hear them thudding against the outside of the glass and yank the ancient rusty window-frame open; watch them crawl inside over the rotting wooden frame, tickling your arms as they make their way through the fuzzy hair. Let their tiny legs brush against your throat like a lover might, if your teeth weren’t so yellow and your breath didn’t smell. Feel your body relax under what it thinks is the touch of another. Close your eyes and pretend. Lie still and relax as they crawl into the tight hole of your ear canal, your nostrils, pushing against the tight press of your lips. Feel their tiny mechanical wings swilling in your saliva. Swallow.
3. When you hear their legion of voices crooning from inside your ears, your mouth, your skull, asking you what you want, what you need, what you desire; when you feel your soul quiver like it’s been tickled, the satisfied pleasure of an itch being scratched teetering over into just slightly painful; when you realize that someone, something, is lingering here, just beneath your skin; think carefully before you make your wish. The ladybirds will always take their payment, and they will always take more than you are willing to give. Ask for things you cannot afford. Might as well make it count.
4. Mark the changes in your body. Presently, your body will be empty, clean, and under your control. Note down where they break the skin, where they stretch it, where it tears. Note where it becomes bumpy and hard, where it crunches under pressure, where, if you put your palm against it, you can feel the millions of tiny creatures crawling over one another. Despair in these changes, or revel in them.
5. Keep it a secret. Hide in baggy trousers, plain shirts; cover as much skin as you can. Don’t let anybody touch you, lest they feel the gentle vibrating push of bodies moving between your tendons. Don’t let them see your sigh of pleasure when they shift inside you. Your friends won’t understand. They’ll tell you it’s a bad idea–as if you didn’t know that already.

Charles Abbott is the world’s clumsiest bartender. He lives somewhere on Earth and writes about death, queerness, and the body.