She’s all knives of fire
just like you were.
She’s all rage and hatred and love
just like you were.
In this place, this version of us
that never existed,
you never knew her face,
but she was a beauty,
just like you were.
Instead, many women
gave you many fine sons.
You have loved none of them,
because you knew one day
they would all be
just like you were.
First cut, to bite deep into the bracelets of fortune;
second cut, to lay open the fault lines;
third cut, to make it like a hat trick.
How many times must I show you
the insides of everything I
have already given?
Watch me dwindle
away to nearly
nothing in
your arms
until
I
Drastically out of place, she sat herself down on a small board laid over the raised garden bed. The sun beat down in a way it never did in the place she’d grown to call home, and she closed her eyes and listened to the hum of bees, and the quiet rustle of wind moving through the trees. The mid-June heat made the smell of strawberries warm and sweet, like fresh jam; she reached pale fingers into the green leaves, and plucked out the glistening jewels hidden in the damp shade. Mildly rough, the seeded exterior of her first bite made her tongue ache in remembrance of things both sweet and not; she felt the flesh of the fruit give beneath her teeth, and the simple joy that filled her brought tears to her eyes. They mingled with sweat, and rolled over her cheeks, leaving tracks through the blood and dirt dusted there.
“I’m tired,” she said, to the hum of the bees, and the warmth of the June sun. “M’so fucking tired. Y’don’know what it is, to carry this. Or maybe y’do. Maybe y’do, n’that’s why you’re gone.”
Another bite, so ripe, the juice of it staining her fingers. She peeled off her gloves and dropped them aside, no longer concerned with what they covered. Scarred hands showed, so pale, so very white, save for where her skin is stained with the fresh and alive pink of the berries.
Another berry. Boots were unbuckled, unlaced with shaking, eager fingers. She kicked them off and peeled out of toe-socks, stretching her legs, arching her feet, flexing her toes, squinting with the sheer physical relief that comes of being uncovered in the heat.
In a flurry of beaded sweat and garden dirt, she pulled off, tore off, flung off her sleeves, the vest, the shirt, the skirt, the cami and scarf and underpants. The violence of her wardrobe was lost amidst greenery and vegetation; in her pink skin, she was merely another berry in the garden.
Carefully, then, she crawled down into the bed, sinking hands and knees, then hips and breasts into leaf and stem and soil, breathing above the canopy one last time, and then exhaling as she laid down against cool, damp earth, stretching limb and finger between stem and bush, leaf and berry, laying herself between the rows, and the breath she took there was thick with the scent of the ground, fertile and welcoming, full of promise.
From below, she reached up and picked the fruits, and ate of them until she no longer felt empty, waiting for him in the last safe place she thought he might come, salting the red flesh with her tears.
In hindsight, he should have made them both stay on the porch while he put it away. Now, with the caution tape everywhere, and his mouth dry from answering the same questions the same way over and over and over again, he wondered how he hadn’t realized it to begin with.
He looked at Ryan, all of sweetly four, and at the shape under the white-turned-red sheet, half fitted into the black plastic zipper bag, and when the little one asked him if Daddy was okay, he kept his mouth tightly shut, but the screams kept falling from his eyes, anyway.
* * *
Chuck Wendig, over at Terrible Minds, gives out writing challenges every Friday. This is one of those — A complete story in 100 words, something that makes you FEEL.
I’m not particularly happy with it. I fussed with it a lot, but it’s not what I wanted. I think I’ll try again.
The sound of punches landing had begun as a series of dry thuds but were turning into a barrage of wet smacks. The woman on the receiving end hung at the end of the assailant’s fist, limp, and laughing, blood running from both her nose and mouth. “Geeb goig,” she needled, when he paused. She lifted her head and looked up at him, blinking those navy eyes, and then turned her head to spit.
“What?” her attacker asked, looking startled.
“D’I sdudder?” she asked, and squirmed briefly to get deerlegs beneath her, huge boots shoved against the earth to give her purchase. She stood, and the man holding her by a fistful of her crazy hair tried to land another punch, and found his hand unable to move.
Panic set in, but it was too late. All of him was unable to move.
She towered over him, all six feet plus, still leaning funny with his fingers clenched in her hair, and smiled her bloody teeth down at him, scrubbing the blood from her nose and mouth with the back of a gloved hand. “Zo,” she began, blinking red out of her eyes. “Y’dud?” She coughed, turning again, and spat something on the ground that looked vital, too red and shining to be of use on the alley floor. She cleared each side of her nose, then gagged, and spat again, the wad of insides-turned-out landing on his shoe. “Sorry ’bout that,” she said, her voice clearer. She sneered, wiping her mouth one more time, then reaching to smear the back of her hand over his shoulder. “But y’didn’t seem t’care ’bout gettin’ my blood on y’anyway, yeah?”
He stood perfectly still, and stared at her; it was all he could do, considering.
Navy eyes bloomed red at the edges of her sclera; she smiled down at him — all she’d been waiting for this whole damn time was one excuse. The born-in ability that devoured her from within, starting with the hollow pain right behind her eyes, tightened around the attacker-turned-victim, held him so tightly his face began to turn red, kept him from breathing. She, on the other hand, was panting, leaning in as she reached up to open his fist and make him let go of her hair so she could straighten all the way up. Her voice was low and easy-going, belying the intent in her eyes. “Now’s my turn, yeah?”
