Hungerstone

by Kat Dunn

“Have you never done anything a little perverse, my dear Lenore? Just to know how it feels?”

I feel suddenly so hungry.

Her mouth breaks open in a smile. “Your pain was so loud it was a beacon that called me. I found you so easily.”

“I am a mirror to those who need it. To those who hunger but deny themselves.”

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.

Who will console me? Who thinks of how I feel?

I do not need to contain my appetites. What is a monster but a creature of agency?

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.

“How you women do let your burdens fall upon your spirit so heavily.

My appetite is vast, and I am in agony knowing myself to be unsatisfied.

“I think fucking my husband for jewelery is too much, Cora, don’t you?”

I hated her, and I loved her. I wanted to be her, and I wanted to destroy her.

I want. It is a new and thrilling revelation. I can want, and it will not destroy me. I wonder what else I will want. The world opens before me like some pleasure ground of old, an unending vista of appetite and glory, if only I am brave enough.

I will die like all mortal things. At least let me taste a little life before I go.

Who could look at me and think I have done this to my husband?

I look up to her and see that terrible dark light in her eyes, as I know it now shines in mine.