Plastic Man Horror – The Weird Side of the Internet

Plastic Man Horror – The Weird Side of the Internet – by Liam Sweeny.

In the world post-breath, there is a technique called plastination. Using special polymers, they inject clear plastic into corpses that are carefully flayed to reveal one anatomical feature of another. Bodies are allegedly “ethically sourced,” and it’s all incorporated into traveling exhibits. It was at just such an exhibit that Kim Erik met what she believed was her son, a son that committed suicide in 2023. He was the exhibit.

The exhibit itself offered their deepest sympathies, and also offered the polite rebuttal that the corpse in the exhibit had been touring since 2004. And this is right about where the official ticker on this story rests… but time marches on, and there’s so much to this.

Is it ethical to display a real human body to the masses? You know, probably it’s ethically neutral, so long as the deceased had a say. But walking into some museum and seeing actual corpses, dead husks of our living husks. And I have to ask what aliens think of it. Because if I saw mice paying little cheddar nubs to go to a Decon station and take selfies.

I do think that Kim Erick, whether she was right or wrong about it being him, she’s a mother who lost her son and she sees this horrifying thing that looks just like her son because we’re humans and that might just happen.

So final business. Would you do it? If they were offering you like two grand a month, but when you die you become a medical dummy. Do you do it? I do. When I’m gone, I am not sentimental about my bodily preservation. But I do have conditions. I don’t mind if they add body parts, but I don’t want them to take anything off. And it would be cool to be fitted with a super hero’s cape and a skipper’s hat. Honestly that’s how most of those people are going to be remembered over the years.

 

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