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 am only a wife, but I hold more of Henry’s reputation in my hands than he has ever been able to accept.

But the longer I am left, the longer my mind conjures horrors trained perfectly to my own spirit. I must know what truly lies before us and the reason for our stop.

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.

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.

When Lucifer fell from Heaven, was this how he found Hell? A cold, blank world into which no good thing could be born?

Threat and survival. That was all life was.

He does not see why he should be limited, why he should not simply get what he wants. It is a cynical, selfish comment that casts the whole world to be as cynical and selfish as he is.

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.”

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

She wants me to console her, and I would, but I feel spread so thin that there is nothing in me left to give. Who will console me? Who thinks of how I feel?

I have stopped Henry and his poison, but he has sickened me in body and mind. I have nowhere to go, no friends, no money of my own. I am free, and I am doomed. I have nothing.

What is a monster but a creature of agency?

There is not a single soul alive who cares what happens to me, now.

My husband has always been a mystery to me. Husband seems such a warm, familiar word for someone with whom I have occupied similar spaces yet entirely separate lives.

I was alert to threat at every moment, a woman living inside a tiger cage.

I was a tool, not a person.

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.

“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.”

For a moment, I wonder if he is correct. Has this all simply been the effect of my fickle female physiology? Am I simply a predictable woman, undone by the matter of my maddened flesh and blood?

Perhaps I am not the ghost I thought myself. Perhaps I have always had substance.

If, then, I am allowed a story, perhaps I can become the author of it.

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.

I want. It is a new and thrilling revelation. I can want, and it will not destroy me.

There were infinite options before me, but they all led nowhere. The only guarantee was death, perhaps slower, perhaps faster. But nowhere love. Nowhere home. There was no safety waiting, no welcoming arms. There was no one to help me, no one to worry for my absence. No one to see me. There was nothing. The world held nothing for me. I was nothing. Something within me broke. Something small, something vital. All that was left to me was a will to survive.

I am hungry, and here is the man who has starved me for years.