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.

The 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.

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.

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

There was the hint of the north in his vowels, and I found that I liked it. Something that marked him out as different, just as I was marked.

There was no state I could exist in that was not a burden in some manner.

“The people you endeavor to make happy—they are selfish then, to care that you do not anger them but only please them?” “No. That is not—you are twisting my words.” “My darling, your words are twisted. I am but smoothing them out.”

“Who taught you not to dream?” I rest my head on my hand, suddenly too tired to hold myself up. I do not want to resurrect the past. Already, I feel the tightness in my chest, the low, heavy sense of doom in my heart. “Everyone. No one. Life itself, I suppose. A dream is a dangerous thing.” I throw down a card, unthinking.

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

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

I see now why life is so kind to Cora. If it were cruel to her for even a moment, she would not withstand it. She would crumple and break with one blow. How boring.

It is too much to look at suffering directly. We can only survive if we close our eyes; reality is not a thing to be experienced raw.

There is a deep, old anxiety in me that cannot abide uncertainty, that cannot rest without all facts and knowledge within my command. To be so wholly in another’s hands is unbearable. But so what? What would I do with the knowledge if I had it? From what do I believe I am protecting myself?

But Carmilla was right. I was dead. I have been dead for so many years.

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.

The more I understand my own appetite, the more I understand how far I am from satiating it. It is as though it spills out from me in every direction. I want to be desired; I want to travel, to paint or write, to be listened to and respected, needed; I want true family—whether that be children or not—I want, I want, I want. My appetite is vast, and I am in agony knowing myself to be unsatisfied.