Hungerstone

by Kat Dunn

I furl myself in the quilt like an oyster in its shell with no pearl to show for the grit that works through it. Pain and blood, grief and hunger. To be a woman is a horror I can little comprehend.

blood that came each month after. At first, a disappointment, then a fear, then a grief, then an inevitability. I was good for nothing but blood.

My body is my enemy, and I will use every weapon in my arsenal against it.

There are perhaps some graces to being unmothered. My body is as unused as a dress not yet worn, and so remains as crisp and fresh as the day it was bought.

“No. You are not some hysterical woman. That is your great strength: you are more like a man emotionally.”

I thought marriage freedom when I sought it; I thought it safety. But sometimes, when my control slips, I think there is only safety and certainty in death.

He was good to me, once. I hold on to that, like a prayer, like a plea. Let this life of mine be about more than pain.

he shifts beneath her gaze like a butterfly evading the pin.

Carmilla weathers his mood like the moor weathers the storms that blow across it: simple, certain, unmoved.

Carmilla holds an allure, like ghosting a finger around the edge of a flame: the temptation, the beauty, and the anticipation of pain.

Carmilla’s smile widens, her incisors slipping over her bottom lip, and she looks upon me so warmly it is as though I am now the fire, for so greatly do I burn with something I cannot name.

You are a song, Lenore, harmony and discord. I am learning to sing it.”

Her smile is delicious and wicked and just for me. “Good. I think we have so much more to do together.”

Sometimes, I think Henry is more beautiful in his cruel moments. His mouth takes a sneer handsomely, the low set of his brow something Byronic.

You think Henry has license to entertain every appetite that wakes in him, and that you do not.”

If the world offers me no kindness, then I will take from it armor and sword, create an unassailable fortress for myself, and lock the door.

I learned quickly that my wants and needs were unwelcome, too great for any reasonable person to fulfill, and in time I came to agree with her. I was too much, too loud, too emotional, too clumsy, too self-involved. My existence was a burden to all involved with it, and I resolved to never make any demand if I could help it. Then, perhaps, I could be tolerated. Then, perhaps, I could be loved.

It is a better pain. A more familiar one. One I control. In this place I know who I am, and all my suffering is mastered.

“If you take a wife who needs nothing from you, then you will live forever in her debt.”

Are we not all taught that as children? If I have made someone angry, then I have done something wrong. We should endeavor to bring happiness into the lives of those around us.” Carmilla yawns. “That is quite boring. What of bringing happiness to yourself?”

“Disappointment tells us what we truly wanted. And to want is to be alive.”

I am left with Carmilla and Cora, nightshade and roses, two unexpected blooms that have taken seed in my expanse of moorland and are now mine to tend.

Carmilla carries a parasol of white linen with tassels that shiver with each step. I

“It is too easy to disguise cruelty as frankness.”

Her need is not a weakness or a threat to her own survival. It gives her power.

There was nothing to tell, I thought. But perhaps the truth was there had been no one to listen.

I am so tired. I am so tired of struggling, of vigilance, of hopelessness. It would be so easy to believe him, to take the fantasy that he sells me and hide within its pretty walls. So easy. I miss when I thought it all possible. That I could master all my disappointment and vulnerability, and walk steel-plated and invincible through the world.

I had learned upon the death of my parents that to be exposed as vulnerable, as not-knowing, was the greatest danger possible; death, at least, offered certainty; to be vulnerable meant being at the mercy of others, one’s whole selfhood at risk.

I found it powerful to want nothing: for then I could never be disappointed.

I am being murdered, and I am too frightened to do anything about it.

“Wanting is not selfish, Lenore.”

Because to want is to risk disappointment. And life has so bitterly disappointed me.

I know she has no interest in flattery or lies. The hunger in her eyes is the truest compliment I have ever received.

I thought something terrible had been haunting me, but perhaps I have been haunting myself: Carmilla has but given it form.

It is terrible to be alive. But it is worse to be dead to ourselves.”

I sob for every day lost before she found me. I mourn for the shallow grave of my dead life. The poison I have fed myself, years before Henry and his arsenic. I am dying. I am dying. I do not know if Carmilla has come too late.

I can see people watching me, the butter smeared on my fingers, the crumbs down the front of my dress. Let them look. I am a horror.

Who am I becoming? Myself, is the cold whisper that answers.

Perhaps I shall kill him. For a giddy, sick moment, I imagine it. Taking up the knife beside me, plunging it into his eye and ripping his face open. No. His suffering would be too short.

If I am mad, it is only because they have made me so.

tonight I recognize fear and excitement as two names for the same sensation. Something in me is provoked.

How much better to make them all regret knowing me.

There are wounds I carry with me, and there is no way for me to unmake them.

What is a monster but a creature of agency?

I am a drowning woman clinging to a wreckage, but I will sing so loud as I go down.

“I am so much worse. You cannot begin to imagine. You pathetic, aggrieved man. You preferred to unsex me, put me apart from womanhood and deny my emotions in the same breath as insulting all my kind. How dare you lay this blame on me

A fragile little man making demands of me. No. I do not think so.

I hope you know your own hunger, and how to feed it well.