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.

I have fought for this life, when I could have so easily drowned beneath the waters of my misfortune. No one has loved me for so many a long year, I have done it all from spite. If the world offers me no kindness, then I will take from it armor and sword, create an unassailable fortress for myself, and lock the door.

This is the bargain I have struck: to lose my softness in exchange for survival.

I have survived everything that has befallen me before now. I will survive this. By skill or force of will, I must endure.

A carapace suited me better than soft skin, and I found it powerful to want nothing: for then I could never be disappointed. For then no one could ever see the ways in which I lacked.

There hung in the air a sense of the future rushing to meet us. We had been working to build one path, but another now fell over it. I could not allow it. This could not be. This path was not mine. I had not survived everything I had to end here, with the stupidity of one man. I would wreck on the rocks of his downfall as surely as blood was hot. A sob rose in my throat, and I swallowed it down. No. No tears. No weakness. I killed my heart, the raw beating thing that cried in horror at the monstrousness of what had just occurred. I drove a nail through it and buried it in unhallowed ground. I could master this, too.

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

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.

That is not the world I have lived in. But perhaps I built that world with my silence. Perhaps there is another unfurling, somewhere entirely unknown to me, terrifying and enticing all the same. Who would I be if I was someone who wanted things?

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.

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.