Genre: Horror
CW: Knife, (implied) murder and harm
Published in The Sirens Call Halloween 2023, Issue 63
I have a hunger that cannot be satisfied by mankind. I am a monster, or that’s what they call me. I understand the meaning of the word, but it means nothing to me. I came into existence this way. Why assign worldly labels to Creation under the eyes of the Creator? It’s like forcing a hardened clay pot into the mould of a cup, reducing it to a cracked fragment of the artist’s work and saying, “look, this is what was below the surface all along.”
I’m not a religious man, not in the way this world portrays faith. I believe in a purpose greater than my own. The Universe calls out to every organism. It warns to reject the Garden of Earthly Delights—to rebel against the lure of self-destruction mankind calls upon itself. I receive messages through things easy to miss by those who don’t listen. I find messages in the echoes of heeled boots on concrete, in brush lines of oil paintings on oak panels, cross-stitched patterns in woollen fabric.
I first saw her at the flower shop in town on a windy day in March, carrying a bouquet of white lilies to the till. I noticed the swing of her long braid as she reached for the coins in the pocket of her long-sleeved jet-black dress. Her necklace was tight, red and layered, like long fingers wrapped around her neck. When she shook her slender hand and counted the coins in it, the metallic ring brought a hymn to me.
I could then no longer shake her imprint from my mind. She appeared to me in the cream-coloured mannequins behind shop windows, in magazine photographs of slender figures with smooth, bare legs crossed, in visions during my sleep of her calling me. The soft lilt of her voice echoed back to me in the twitter of the robins in the park repeating the five words I had overheard her say,
“thank you, have a nice day.”
“thank you, have a nice day.”
“thank you, have a nice day.”
I wanted to preserve her virtuousness, her untainted nature; a picture beautifully unspoiled. To send her off in the midst of her purest state of being. I observed her every move and learned everything about her there was to learn, then went to take her on a cloudy November night. But when I arrived, she had no fear in her eyes. When I had my weight pressed down on her legs and hips, my hands clasped around both of her wrists, she smiled and said,
“i’ve read all about you in the papers, i was hoping you would come—no, you don’t scare me, you’re just misunderstood—yes, that hurts but you can do whatever you like—you chose me—you chose me because i’m special, right?”
She made it sound like she understood. She was eager and thirsted for my touch. She surrendered everything willingly that night: Her farmhouse, inherited from her father who she says bears a resemblance to me with his thick black hair and slender build and callused hands. Her husband, who had marked her body with stains like ink long before I laid eyes on her. Her youngest, a girl with thin straw locks of hair, and her eldest, a boy still with half a set of baby teeth between the gaps. She still whispers their names under her breath when I let her down on the floor, the sofa, the bed, and the grass under which parts of them lie buried in the earth.
She lets me sink my knife into her skin, sharpening the edge on the curve of her thighs, marking a trail on the pale, unmarked parts of her, so deep that her lifeforce erupts from her like a conclave of cardinal birds flying up out of the snow. She is a map that now only I know how to read. Only I know the hidden pathways and dead ends. When she welcomes me, the silver of her eyes shivers under the light of the dimmed lamp in her narrow hallway, where sun-bleached teal wallpaper peels from the dusty corners.
She looks me in the eye and asks for more. She says it makes her feel alive. She tells me it makes her feel seen. She whispers in my ear. She won’t have me let go. She convinces me to cut deeper. She screams out in ecstasy. She laughs until she cries. She grabs onto the hem of my sleeve when the sun starts to rise. She looks at me through hooded lids and says,
“i am so happy you chose me, so happy they’re gone and you’re here—oh, can’t you see how happy i am? You’ll come back won’t you?”
She knows I’ll come back because I’ve indulged and can’t resist her call. She calls it fate. She calls it destiny. She calls it virtue. She calls it heaven. She calls it salvation. She calls it love—She calls me in the depth of the night. She tells me she’s done it again. She calls it a tribute. She brings me live, warm bodies from distant towns in the trunk of her car. She buries them cold in the woods. She thinks it’s what I want and it drives me insane—it drives me insane! It makes my skin crawl, my head hurt, my hands tremble. I don’t have the words.
She has given me every inch of her body. Every cry. Every scream. Every broken and whole part of her. But no matter how frequently she calls me, my hunger returns.
She is spoiled.
I am depraved.
She knows she has the one thing I can’t have. She knows I can’t leave. She is the destruction of me.
She is my Hell on Earth. I chased after the Devil’s lure and trapped myself in the depths of her shadow. She was never mine to save—from self-destruction and ruin. She can’t give me what I long for—that purity would only come into existence when I myself am not there to witness it. And I can’t bear the thought another would come and steal it off her face—to enjoy her so exposed and vulnerable. That another would see the one thing that she fears in this rotten world. For the only thing she now still fears is the absence of me.
Joy Florentine 