Hungerstone

by Kat Dunn

I recall the footsteps halting, the sound of a bolt being drawn, and then the door began to swing open. And that is where my life ended.

“You fainted. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Carmilla,” I say, tasting the syllables in my mouth. A little harsh, but with long, languorous vowels lingering between the lips.

For a decade, I have carried the burden of his secret, and now he brings another hunting party to our door. How simple it is for him to bury the past. I only pray we do not resurrect it.

Some things have no end. You pour and pour and pour your soul away, and they are always hungry.”

“Terribly. Will you tell me your story?” Slowly at first, then tumbling like water over rocks, I begin to speak. It has been so long since I have told anyone of Aunt Daphne, of losing my parents, of the disappointment of my marriage. I feel quite mad to be speaking of it now, even though I offer only the smallest fragment of the whole, but perhaps a stranger is the one person with whom I can speak without fear of consequence. It is a heady mix of fear and relief to give in to this brief vulnerability.

“It is nothing. Henry always says I am wedded to my own misery. I simply need to make a little more effort to be happy.” It is the wrong thing. “How dull,” says Carmilla. “I am tired. Leave me.”

I do not know why, but her sudden rejection feels as though a cloud has covered the sun. Something in me wants her light back.

I feel a sudden rush of hatred for this place, for the unending burden of wifehood, of fighting entropy. All things fall apart, and I must expend so much energy each day to hold them in place. 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.

watching us with bright intellect. It seems the night becomes her.

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. My stomach rolls, and I hide my face in another glass of wine. No. Henry will not send away my guest. He is wrong. This is my house.

I find Molly knelt beside Carmilla’s bed like a supplicant, her hands tenderly holding a brush of mahogany and boar bristle, from which she is unwinding chestnut strands of hair and putting them greedily in her mouth. Carmilla smiles down at her, lips stretched wide and cheeks flushed with excitement.

She is younger than I ever was at her age, cushioned by her good birth and money, so that the world is still a plaything to her.

Carmilla makes a noise that could be assent or disapproval, and sips a little more wine. “And young women? What of their ambitions?”

“I am sure you well understand what I mean,” I say. “I do, but that does not mean I comprehend it. I think what you truly mean is that it is different for a woman’s appetite.”

“I wonder for what you hunger, and whether you allow yourself to feel it.”

She tilts her head. “Do you think they’re fucking?” I fumble my wineglass, spilling claret across the white tablecloth. “I beg your pardon?” “Your husband and that smug little girl.” “I do not know the customs where you are from, but in England it is not appropriate to discuss such a matter.” I sound as unreal as a marionette, the words falling from my mouth without any genuine emotion or thought.

Carmilla’s face lights up, and she leans forward again, drinking in my discomfort. “You do think it. I wondered if you were alive enough to care.”

At a ball the night after, I danced with every man but him, laying foundations for alternative paths should my first plan fail. I felt him watch me with each turn about the dance floor, and I prayed he felt envy. I underestimated him.

If Cora is an English rose, I am milk thistle: a weed, persistent and desperate. This is the bargain I have struck: to lose my softness in exchange for survival.

You need a persistent hand to come to heel.”

“You berate me for speaking ill of your husband, but you speak ill of him in every look and gesture. I only give voice to what it is you feel.” I blink in surprise. “I do not think ill of Henry.” She laughs again.

“What is right about it? I should do my best not to anger anyone.” “Why?”

“My darling, your words are twisted. I am but smoothing them out.”

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

It is as though the house resists my work to tame it, as though it wants me out.

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

“You all lie to each other, then?” “It is too easy to disguise cruelty as frankness.”

Weakness is for girls like Cora, who know they will be met with care.

Carmilla has been through much already in the short time I have known her, but she does not seem weak for it. She does not wait for help to come: she demands. She has bent my household to her shape, and in some small way, I admire her for it.

I am a mirror for him, and I have learned how to show the desired reflection.

But I am not her. I am soft and bruised where life has landed its blows upon me.

“Your pain was so loud it was a beacon that called me. I found you so easily.” “What for?” I whisper. “I am a mirror to those who need it. To those who hunger but deny themselves.”

It is the only way I know to hurt her, but as I take my leave, her expression does not change: the small bud of a smile, a knowing look that makes me want to slap her.

Everyone about me seems slow and stupid, and if I am not in every place at once, ensuring each decision made is the most rational and logical, none of this will come together.

Aunt Daphne would have called her a whore to loiter alone in public.

It is short: a typewritten letter to which Henry has put his signature, explaining that the death of Alexander Whitmore following injuries sustained in the grinding room of the Ajax Works has been found to be caused by an error on the part of the grinder, and not the machinery, and as such, no compensation is due to his wife.

And simply says, “I was so terribly hungry.”

She cannot bear not to be liked. I see that now. Her weakness.

“You think you must be good company for someone to come to your side?”

“No. I am not the beginning of it.” A cloud passes over her face, her features for a moment stormy and jagged. “I am the end.”

I did not marry happiness. I married the shape of something that could look like it. But I knew its bones: security, certainty, mastery. Whatever the cost.

“Wanting is not selfish, Lenore.”

“The man you take to your bed wants you dead, and you will let him kill you. Only, no—he does not come to your bed anymore, does he? He is done with you. Aren’t you angry?”

“I don’t know.” She mimics me and leaps up. “Poor Lenore Crowther, so terribly sad about the inconvenience of her own murder.” Her mouth pulls into a cruel laugh.

“Oh, little Lenore. It is terrible to be alive. But it is worse to be dead to ourselves.”

I SAT AT AUNT Daphne’s feet at twelve years old and did not grow since.

She is so good and innocent and brave, and all who meet her love her, and her goodness is rewarded. The more I read, the more I sunk into self-loathing. I felt hot with shame, humiliation. How stupid I had been to think myself like this girl—to think that I might have a happy future. How foolish to think myself anything other than unwanted, unimportant.

It was as though the universe had drawn back a curtain and revealed a truth to me: only in fiction was there logic and sense.

There lies the issue. Whatever I do, it is too easy for Henry to deny it. However the truth is exposed, my hand cannot be the one pointing to it. I must plant the seeds in another mind, bring others to this discovery as Carmilla brought me.