Juniper & Thorn

by Ava Reid

I had always thought of my body as something that needed to be tackled and brawled, pelted and pinned down and bruised into submission, then trussed up like a chicken and laced into a whalebone corset.

My eldest sister was right; I would smile blithely if someone tried to saw off my leg. But no one had ever told me that I was allowed to scream.

My chest ached. Part of me wanted to say no more of Dr. Bakay, ever, until his face rinsed from my mind like dirty water down the drain. But there was another part of me that wanted to scream his name through empty hallways so I could hear the way it echoed. I wanted to whisper it into the ear of every person I ever met; I wanted to burn it onto me like a brand. I wanted, most of all, for someone to steal the wretched, awful burden of it away from me, and to explain precisely how wretched and awful it was. I wanted someone to write it down like a story in Papa’s codex so I could know what lesson there was to be learned.

wanted desperately to believe myself. It was better than the alternative: that the ghost of the girl I was still haunted these halls, and she would possess me whenever my body ached like a wound that would let her slip inside. Perhaps she would never let me go.

Sometimes before I went to sleep at night I imagined myself laid out on this very table, naked, while my clients all cut small, neat bites from me with forks and knives. Sometimes I imagined that Papa plucked out my eyes and ate them.

Was I a woman inside the body of a monster, or was I a monster inside the body of a woman?