Cursed Bread

by Sophie Mackintosh

Violet smiled. She watched the strangers so closely that she did not notice her own husband. She did not see her own life at all. Because the baker had a secret too. There was a baby planted like an apple pip in the stomach of another woman, his true love. And he planned to leave with her, to seek a life of happiness far away from the woman with enormous eyes and an empty heart. And in time the strangers will leave too, they will travel onward, but the woman who watched from the shadows will stay here forever.

saw the blue-veined breasts of the grocer’s wife at the lavoir,

Three blows to remind her who she is, that underneath she is nothing, not a great duchess in her castle or a secret agent or a damsel waiting to be rescued, nothing of the sort. Nobody knows what will become of her, and nobody cares. Nobody cares about the stranger either, the wife in the house alone, envied and despised by the town, but happier than any of them. Nobody cares about her, but she doesn’t care about any of them either. Violet dropped her voice to a whisper. She cares least of all about you.

outwitted by everybody who was supposed to love

me.

Body of Christ.

when reality is peeled back like the skin of an orange.

When I kicked off my shoes I saw my feet transform into hooves and I was ecstatic. In my new body I could outrun anything. I could outrun the disappointments, the grief, outrun past and present both, cast off these things with hot, unspooling energy. I could run towards beauty itself, become beauty itself, better late than never.

She was never married to the ambassador, after all. The wedding she described was an elaborate fantasy

None of the stories ever mentioned me.

The American. The man who lived with Violet. The less kind one raised his eyebrows fractionally. Yes, the ambassador. Several of your neighbours mentioned him too. But there is no record of an American man of his description living in the town last year. He glanced at his colleague as if for support. We’ll leave you to your rest now, madame.

imagine him telling the ambassador about his problem, the bread that is always the same, the wife made of salt, another man’s wife at his door.

leading him to that moment between a before and an after.

Eat of it and be filled.

Eat of it and be transformed.

There will always be someone to make an account of your tragedy, even if it is just yourself in the end, recording, noting, the crimes against your person, th...