Fresh Blood
Published in Scavengers literary journal // by Querencia Press
Bite
The wobbly ceiling fan above my bed moves so fast that the blades are all a grey blur. When I was a kid, my younger cousin’s ceiling fan spun so fast that it unscrewed itself from the roof and fell, nearly slicing her up. So, naturally, when I am awake, I keep my eyes on the fan, watching it swing around and around in violent circle after violent circle.
It clicks each time it completes a full loop, in perfect metronomic rhythm. I cannot keep watching the fan, because you have loomed over me in a sudden and glacial canopy. My flesh becomes goose-pimpled and raised; the hairs on my arms, the fullness of my lower belly, the stubble on my legs, the peaks of my hips, all parts of me are lifted in resurrection.
Every ambient light in my room is switched on and buzzing. Glowing against their warmth, you are practically transparent. I can see right through you. It is as if you were made up entirely of honey-coloured light, some golden spectre descended upon me like an angel!
Not even a whisper could fit between us now. I want to melt against you, for your body to become my body, for your skin to become my skin, for your pulse to become my pulse. It is so easy to distract myself with your unearthly beauty as you crush the air out of my lungs, and take in all my breath as your own.
I swear I can hear the lamps humming, in perfect synchronicity. I am worried that they have been left on for too long. I want to reach over and turn them off, but you are open-mouthed and desperate. So, I let them murmur to each other. They speak low and sonorous. I can’t make out what they are saying; I am scared they are talking about me.
You are charting a map of unfamiliar terrain. The lower you get, the more I can see the fan again, so I start to keep time. Inhale, as your lips hover over my chest; hold, as they navigate the curves and bends; exhale, as you raise your eyes to look at me, and flash a wide, toothy smile. Inhale, as you begin to move again, invading new flesh.
I can feel the edge of your teeth at my neck. My body goes still and quiet, and I cannot look at you. Instead, I think of the time I got oral surgery. Stretched out in the long operating chair, making shapes out of the dirt on the ceiling, as the orthodontist approached me with a needle. I have never been able to watch the needle going in; I have always averted my gaze and pretended I didn’t know what was coming. So, naturally, the sharp, piercing sensation was always a shock. My lip involuntarily trembled as he poked the tender and fleshy part of my gum. The orthodontist called me a brave girl. You whisper over and over that I am okay, I am okay, I am okay.
I am laid out biblically over the mattress. The heels of your hands are pressing mine above my head, and your knees keep my legs pinned in place. You have martyred me in my own bed. Your gluttony collects on my chest and at my stomach. It pools in my belly button and slides off of me onto the sheets.
Rolling over, you pat your full stomach and wipe the leftovers dripping from your mouth. I bury myself under layer after layer, sinking into the hot soil of my sheets.
Death
From our place on the mattress, you can see through my bedroom windows. Tonight, there is a tapestry of constellations, and in the morning, there will be perfect cotton-puff clouds and the very blue sky, and the early morning sun will make everything warm again.
There is a weight in my stomach that keeps me tied to the mattress; the bed will have an impression of me when I rise: my feet pressed tightly together, arms folded over each other as I squeeze myself closed. I am scared of disturbing you by moving. Your cold touch has turned my body stiff; when I move, every bone creaks and clicks into place, so I stay painfully still.
When I close my eyes, all I can picture is you, red-flushed and golden against the blank canvas of my sheets. I think I must have dreamed you up; you are a perfect vision; my sweet boy, honey-dipped, spiced and saccharine.
You roll over, and a bright light illuminates the back of your head and casts a harsh white halo; my angel, my angel. I wonder if you have fallen asleep.
I do not think I can sleep. I do not feel like I can ever sleep again. The same frantic thoughts turn over and over again in my mind, in perfect tempo with the click…click…click… will you love me now? - click - could you still love me now? - click - please, please love me now - click. I promise to be good. I promise to be glad. I promise to be grateful.
My teeth ache; I have been grinding them down to a stub. When I wipe my tongue over them, I half expect to feel red, raw gum instead. Finally, I move, peeling myself off the sheets to reach for my nearby water bottle, an internal baptism.
There is no stain on the sheets; you took it all from me. You have drawn out everything bloody, full-bodied and beating.
Turning
There is a book that I keep on the nightstand. It is about a woman who feels like a voyeuristic intruder in the interiors of her own desire. No matter how ardently she tries, she is too illusory and fragmented to be wholly true or devotedly earnest. I had pencilled, I think I was made to love, on the first page margin. A wishful admission fading out into the page.
The room looks different now that you have been inside it, smaller somehow, hollowed-out and cavernous, and smells like rotting wood. When you leave, I think I will need to fill the space; I have found that I starve better in company. This place is a trap; in here, love is lured, ensnared, and digested.
A part of you stays behind, circling and roaming; the phantom moans used to scare me, but they sound a bit like music now. I had been so desperate for you to stay, erecting altars of abrasive iconography in your reverence; paintings on the wall, photos on the mirror. Did you feel flattered to see yourself, so warm and alive?
My body is repenting you. On some cosmic level, it has recognised you as a great spiritual evil, an insidious intrusion, and has taken to discharging you in thick white clumps.
In this tomb, the same thoughts oscillate continuously in my mind. I think I was made for love to move through. I think I was made to hold love in my hands and watch it slip through the seams of my fingers. I think I was made to host love, to let love kick up its feet and rest from a long journey.
You will never know what it is to be restless, starved and helpless. There is always someone to keep you fed, and full, and happy; someone else to bleed.