Hungerstone

by Kat Dunn

I want to be free. I want not to analyze every decision that lies before me. I want to act on whim. I want to follow each passing curiosity. I want to make mistakes. I want to ruin things. I want to lay down the vigilant watch I have kept over myself and my life. So. Start there.

All I have is the hope Carmilla has brought me. And this truth: I cannot master the world and hope to fix everything in its place. This cannot bring fulfillment. 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.

I turn to Carmilla, who has joined me, and pull her mouth to mine. “Ah.” She smiles against my lips. “There you are.” “Make me feel something,” I say. “Tell me I am alive.”

“Do you know what a hunger stone is?” she asks, breath warm against my skin. I shake my head. “In times of drought, there are stones that are only exposed when the river runs so low. People mark them, so that, next time, they will know when they are to starve. Their appetite will go unfilled.” She runs my fingers over a cut in the stone. “It is a death marker.”

We feast upon each other, chasing desire and satisfaction. My body is all animal: I am nothing but want. I will starve myself no longer.

His throat is there before me, a column of white and blue veins. I stretch my jaw and bite. Teeth sinking into the meat of his neck. The crunch of larynx and spurt of arterial blood into my mouth. I tear, rending his flesh, fingers digging beneath his collarbones, ripping and yanking and wrenching until the gurgling of his breath fades and his body’s twitching stills beneath me. I sit back, breathing hard, slick with blood and blazing with triumph.