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.

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

I draw the blind and try to think of anything but the crunch of my parents’ carriage as it was crushed, the splinter of bone and sinew. I can still feel the thick slick of blood matting my hair, gluing my lashes together, coating my tongue and lips. I remember every physical sensation, but the emotion must be so great it lies beyond memory, beyond feeling. I thought myself unmarred by the memory, but perhaps I only run from it, and in a moment like this, the lies I tell myself become all too clear.

the longer I am left, the longer my mind conjures horrors trained perfectly to my own spirit.

I learned: learned, then, that mastery is the gift that befalls the isolated and unhappy. There was no help forthcoming, so I learned to take complete and total control myself.

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

It is as though she is a pencil drawing, so faint that the bright light all but washes her away.

It is as though reality has been put together badly, and the rules by which I know the world to operate are losing their power.

Carmilla alone holds a flame, a candle, its pale glow gilding the jaw, cheekbone, and eye socket of one side of her face. Her chestnut hair falls free about her shoulders, and the white nightdress she wears is thin enough that I can see the dark circles of her nipples.

How frightening it would be to die, but how great a relief to sleep forever.

There is grave discomfort in my transgression, but it seems infinitesimally small against the pain of denying my own soul.

I was starving and thought myself at a banquet.

All we can hope for in life is to know one’s own desires in order to be able to act on them. To want is to surrender to uncertainty. To step into the unknown. To expose ourselves to all possible outcomes and trust we will not be destroyed by disappointment.