An Unkindness of Ghosts

by Rivers Solomon

Tarlander bodies did not always present as clearly male and female as the Guard supposed they ought. This explained Aster’s hairiness and muscular build despite being born without the external organs that produced testosterone.)

Aster carried that knowledge inside her. These men had the means and opportunity to destroy evidence, to protect their legacy, but not one of them thought earnest discussion of reanimating a person’s limbs for the purpose of manual labor warranted deletion from their official record. Forget the horrifying cruelty—the incompetent science of it all. *

So they said. So they told themselves. So their stories went. This far from the past, no one could truly know their history.

The whole point of occupying a position of power was that you got to do what you wanted with impunity. It seemed a waste of time to bother with rationalizations.

Signs, however, didn’t rely on the existence of the supernatural. History wanted to be remembered. Evidence hated having to live in dark, hidden places and devoted itself to resurfacing. Truth was messy. The natural order of an entropic universe was to tend toward it. That’s what ghosts really are, Aint Melusine had said, the past refusing to be forgot.

Memories could not be unmemoried, only shuffled so as not to be in the forefront of things. Surrounded by men, they all resurfaced at once.

What a small thing she had asked for, to be left alone, to be allowed the solace of her own atoms. The only cocks she wanted inside her were the ones she requested, the only hands on her body the ones she begged to have touching her, the only knife in her gut the one she lodged there herself.