Hungerstone

by Kat Dunn

In this brief moment, I know what I want, and I understand how completely that terrifies me. Because to want is to risk disappointment. And life has so bitterly disappointed me.

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

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. Good fortune and bad came in equal measure, the just were saved and the wicked punished. In real life, there was no limit to misfortune. You could fall and fall, and never reach the bottom. I had thought myself owed some happy twist of fate, some future good luck, but I knew now that it was only a dream. I was owed nothing. The ground beneath my feet was fragile and unstable, it could shift and break at any moment, no matter what I did.

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

All of it, futile. Every year spent, every ounce of effort. I made a bargain in my youth, for safety, for survival, and it has all been for naught. I am not safe. I have never been safe. So why have I tried so hard to create it? All I have made is a prison. But perhaps if I have never been safe, that means fear has no purpose.

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.

I am a woman woken from thirty years slumber, and I would eat the world should it satisfy this empty, keening void where my heart should be. I would cry with grief over my life so unfulfilled, and drink down the salty tears, eat my worthless tongue and impotent fingers, skin this carcass and pick the bones clean.

But it is all as it has ever been: I am alone. There is no one who will mourn my mistakes but me. I am the only one who can right them.

Henry is correct. And he is a fool. Carmilla started this, yes. But I will be the one who ends it.

There are shadows beneath my eyes, and my beauty is lost behind misery. I look like Hell.

How stupid all of this is. All this formality and display—for what? Control. Mastery. Some sop of comfort, the idea that in this cold, loveless world we can overcome reality and impose our will upon it. But we are masters of nothing.

I am not safe. I have not saved myself. I escaped Aunt Daphne and the mausoleum of my youthful grief for a new prison of my own making.

Before, I stood on the banister of the balcony above the dining hall and thought the solution to the burden of myself was to end it all. How foolish that seems now. How futile. I could go, and no one would care. How much better to make them all regret knowing me.

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

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 am a drowning woman clinging to a wreckage, but I will sing so loud as I go down.

Damn control. Damn mastery. I want, I lack, I hunger. I will die like all mortal things. At least let me taste a little life before I go.

I knew then that I could die, and no one would care. There was only me to care about myself. So I would not let my mortal body die; I would keep it alive and propel it forward by the only means possible. Instead, to survive, I must die inside; I must shut down every sense of self, every dream, every weakness. I killed hope, to live. Now I must find a way to live again. Even if it means I must kill.