August 16, 2006
Fiction
Candles, Flame
I shouldn’t be doing this.
Hot candlewax spits up from the bowl of water, burns my fingers.
God, I swore I wouldn’t do this again.
I drop a long black hair into the water, next to the spot of blood. Colors swirl in the water, resolve.
I’ll be careful. I won’t let it go too far. I just need to taste it, one last time . . ..
Her face forms in the water and draws me in. Hatred ties my chest so tight, it’s almost like the pangs of love.
I let the room around me dissolve.
“Darling,” she whispers to him. “I’m so glad we’re alone. I’ve barely seen you, lately.” She stretches, rubbing the length of her neck against his mouth. “I’ve missed you.”
“It’s been a nightmare,” he mutters against her skin. His mouth moves down. “Unbelievable paperwork. I can’t wait until this project’s over.”
I know the line of flame his lips leave against her skin. I know the goosebumps they leave behind.
“Forget him,” Nana told me, when it first happened. She’d raised me from birth, when my father left and my mother died. Until I met him, I always took her advice. “You’ll find someone else,” she said, and I had to clench my hands to stop myself from hitting her.
His wide, long fingers unbutton her blouse.
The first time we went to a movie, he slipped his hand into the waistband of my jeans and tugged my blouse free. His fingers painted patterns around my waist, circled my belly. The movie turned into a blur in front of me.
The first time I tried to go on a date, after he left, another graduate student from my department took me out to a formal dinner. He was very shy, very sweet. At Nana’s door, he kissed me good-night with cold, closed lips. As soon as his car drove away, I raced inside to throw up in shaking, shivering heaves.
That was the night I searched through Nana’s books until I found out how to do this.
“Mmm,” she sighs, as he slides his hands down her sides. “Oh . . ..” She arcs her back and gasps. His lips settle on her stomach.
It’s not enough. My nails bite into my palm. I need to feel his lips on my stomach, his teeth nipping my flesh. I’ve watched them before, too many times. I’ve followed the line of his fingers with my own. I’ve told myself it was him rubbing his palm across my nipples, then yanking my hair back with one hand while the other curved with hard possession around my hip, opening my thighs. I’ve pushed myself open with hard rocking movements, plunged my own hand inside myself as he pushed first his fingers, then his cock in her. I’ve closed my eyes and listened to his voice. “Yes. Now. Fuck me!”
I need more. I’m ready to make the sacrifice. I don’t care what it costs me anymore. The book’s warnings are vague, meant to scare off weaklings. Desperation has made me stronger than I ever knew I could be, back when I was Nana’s good girl, my professors’ star.
But I have to hurry. He’s already pulling her shirt off, biting gently against her inner arms. I shiver as I hear her moan.
It’s only fair. I need it more than her. He’s mine.
I pick up the knife beside the bowl. I only pricked one finger, before. Now I form a red diamond. Neck, breasts, fingertips, thighs. The tiled floor is cold beneath me. I lean closer. I smear my fingers across the stinging cuts. Only one drop of blood from each. It’s all I need.
I plunge my hands into the bowl. The world spins.
His carpet is rough against my nipples, his silk shirt smooth against my naked back. His heat soaks through the silk and singes my skin. I bite back a scream; the pleasure is so intense in this borrowed body. These larger breasts, these longer legs. All of them arcing tight with need.
“You like that?” he whispers. “You like being underneath me?” He reaches beneath my stomach, unzips her slacks, bites the nape of my neck hard. “Mine.”
“Forever,” I whisper, in her voice. I push back, roll him over, watch his eyes widen with surprise. She’s never been this aggressive before. She doesn’t know him as well as I do. I straddle him and rip the silk, sending buttons flying”Mine.” I say, as I bite my way down his warm, salty flesh, taste his soft, curling brown hair, claim my own.
Somewhere in the back of this borrowed head, I think I hear her screaming. I won’t let it bother me. Haven’t I screamed with rage, with pain, with disbelief?
This is how it felt, I tell her, as I rub my inner flesh against him through the soft cloth of his boxers, strip them off, and tease him with my warm breath. Let her watch. I take him hot and needing in my mouth. I hold him down with his arms still trapped in his long shirt sleeves and suck him until he’s moaning, begging to be let inside. When I’ve tied his hands together with her discarded shirt, when I’m holding his muscled thighs pressed to the floor beneath my hands, I finally raise myself wet and ready above him and he arcs toward me, shouting her name.
“Wrong name,” I say. I plunge down around him, and take his heat inside me, his hardness, his lust. I ride them all until the pleasure rockets through me, as sharp and as bitter as my pain.
“It’s me,” I call, as I feel myself torn free. I cling to her body, but it slips away — first fingers, then calves, thighs, and throbbing center.
“Katya,” I whisper, through her throat, the moment before I lose it all.
I don’t even get to see his expression.
The bowl has cracked. Water spills across the tiled bathroom floor, covering my thin, shivering body. I lie in the cold water, limp, crying and wet.
Finally, I force myself to kneel and start to gather the ceramic pieces. Nana will be awake in a few hours. It doesn’t seem to matter much anymore — nothing else matters, not really, to me — but she would be hurt if I left the bathroom in a state like this.
I lean over the pool of water on the floor, and I freeze.
My long hair touches the floor as I kneel. But it isn’t black anymore.
I look into my reflected face, and I trace my hands around the wrinkles. I touch the sagging skin of my neck. I stare down at the shriveled breasts, the pouched stomach.
A key turns in the locked bathroom door.
Nana stands in the doorway and looks down at me, her face full of compassion.
“Oh, Kati,” she says. “My daughter. It’s happened to you, too.”
• • •
is a Croatian-American author who lives and studies in England. She also writes fantasy under a pen-name.
