Pudica

by E.C. Salo

Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:

It’s warm year-round here, but I wanted to wait ’til summertime was in full swing to come to you. When everything around’s been bursting with life since spring, birds and cicadas crying by day and crickets singing by night. I’ve been waiting for a chance to get away to the place past the knee-high grass out back where you’ve been waiting for me. 

Today’s the day, hot sunlight coming through the dirty window, me already sweating in my nest. I have to wait ’til he’s gone. After he rides off, I’ll be left to the same couple of rooms, too far from any neighbors, no phone, and the shackle on the end of my long, long chain. I talked my way up from staying stuck by the pipe downstairs. I’m proud of that. Closest I’d get to a wedding ring, he told me, half-smiling. Locking it on my ankle and kissing my dirty foot. It was one of two things he ever gave me after all he took. Other thing I got was you.

Before he goes today, off to earn our daily bread, he bends next to the living room corner where I sleep, piled-up blankets and his clothes. He pets my head, sticks his fingers through the tangles he won’t get me a damn comb for. I look down at a spider picking its way across the hardwood. When he says something and I don’t listen, he takes the chain in his big fists and yanks me hard. Calls me cunt,and out he goes. Won’t even pick me up from where I landed.

His truck rumbles away, and I shuffle to my feet, aching, kicking the chain aside with a clatter. It’s long enough to snake all over this little place, catching the light and winking at me. I wait in case he comes stomping back in. He will if he’s forgot something, and he forgets all the time. There’s nothing to do but look at the cracks in the plaster. Sun-lit, the peeling paint casts tiny shadows, makes them look deeper than they are. Not even thinking, I wind the chain around my hand and let it pour back to the floor.

If I wanted, I could get a yard or two outside, and that’s if I really stretch myself. But my key’s in the kitchen. A fork cheap enough to bend the teeth just right, to stick into the lock he won’t check anyway. Why would he? I only got out the one other time. For you.

It takes a while, prying and thinking something’s gonna break, but I get the cuff off and peel it off my skin. There’s a sticky red ring where it was. Hurts like hell. I ignore it.

When I slip out the back door, I don’t know how long he’s been gone, how long I waited, how long I have left. I never was any good at keeping time, and out here the years never seemed to pass in a way that meant anything, if it’s even beenyears at all. A whole lot of it hasn’t felt real. Half the time I don’t feel real myself. You were the one who made the time count. ’Cause of you I tracked the weeks gone by.

The whole time, you stayed small enough to hide, like you knew that’d be a good idea. He never noticed. I figured it out and for a while I wanted to reach in and rip you out of me. It was all I thought about, no matter what he did. Couldn’t believe it hadn’t happened sooner, couldn’t believe it was happening at all. It was a dirty trick nature was playing on both of us. I wanted to smash my head up against the wall until it all went black so he’d find me spread out with my skull half-empty and brains all on the floorboards. 

But I got used to you. Once I did, I wasn’t gonna let you be his. Whatever happened, I thought, you wouldn’t be anything but mine. It was nice not being alone when he left, not feeling alone when he was here. Kept a nest for you—I liked to picture it, too. Slimy and dark and still probably nicer than where he put me. A veil of red veins, the pump of hot blood and warm water. Maybe some light got through my skin. I’d fold up my arms and legs trying to sleep, acting like we were holding on to each other.

I know I lost count. Know one day I woke up feeling like I was dying, thinking, might as well die now. It’s pretty out. He just thought I was running a fever when he left. I waited, holding myself together, ’til he was gone. Then I ran out as far as the chain would let me. Damn near snapped my ankle.

You came that morning in thick, dark blood. It was dry that day, dusty in the patch of bare dirt out back. We turned it into mud. You got covered in it. Looking closer to raw meat than anything else—but you were moving. I saw. I swear. That day, I taught myself how to get the lock picked, took you still attached by a black-caked cord and ran. We only got so far.

Now, today, the grass scratches my bare legs, and I walk alone to what I guess is the edge of our land. His land. Who owns what’s past the property line? I’ve never seen anyone. I don’t know. Could be nobody, but that might be naive. He likes calling me that. Laughing when I ask.

I hear something like a twig snap and whip my head toward the house. Nothing, just the grass and empty windows and the cloudless blue sky. He’s not here. He’s not coming. I wait for a minute anyway, my hair whipping across my face with the hot breeze. I damn near choke on it. Just ahead of me there’s a little copse of tall, tall trees. You can see them from the back window, looking toy-sized from there. One day I asked him what kind they were. He just smiled, asked if I was ever gonna climb ’em.

By the time I got to those trees, on that day, you were already gone. So I found a place to keep you and walked bleeding back to the house. Kicked dirt over the wet spot we left out back. Put myself back on that chain. He didn’t find out, never laid eyes on you and never will.

I had to cover you, so I had to stay. If I ran, I couldn’t’ve taken you with me. Nobody’d let you see the sun. I’m not crazy or stupid. I know what anybody would say because no one, no one on Earth can ever get it. But I’ve been waiting to see you for months since that day, and I will. You’re all I got, and you’re just for me ‘cause I deserve you. I needed you. Hell, I need you now.

Now the heat’s thick and heavy, fighting its way down to my lungs. It was just as hard to breathe the day I lost you. But I think you would’ve liked summer days like these, the light lasting longer and longer. You would’ve liked it. I pick my way along the ground by the place I put you.

There’s a spot where the sun comes down in a column through the green. The mound where I put you is lit up so bright it hurts my eyes, hurts my head. Some of the plants poking out from the ground here, I swear, shy away from my feet when I walk by. The leaves close tight all by themselves, like magic. Wish you could see it, but maybe some part of you could see it through me.

He used to say I was sun-kissed, before, when we met and he saw the tan lines on me. When I had them. My belly soft and white, now I’m like that all over all the time. But the heat mostly bites me now. The sweat comes down in rivers, and I’m sick. I trip and scrape my hand on a stone. Palm burning, I look. Not bleeding. Not much.

My hands dig down, just an inch or two. Feel the loose black soil, cool and damp between my fingers, and scrape it away. And there you are.

A cloud of flies comes away. You’re all kinds of colors, swarming with the yellow-white of their children like clusters of moving rice. I try brushing them off you, and shiny beetles come from under you, running up my arm. Your way of tickling me, I guess. I smile. 

Getting down on all fours is easy since I was already on my knees. While you rolled asleep inside me, I’d sneak away and crawl, like I am now, for the dirt and clay. When the sun baked it just right, I’d scratch and pry it up and eat it by the dry handful. You were made of this land, and you were in a hurry to be part of it again. I don’t know if it was me or him you wanted to get away from, guess that either way I can’t blame you. And it doesn’t matter ’cause I’m ready to go and you’re coming with me.

You’re wet with something, lord only knows what. It’s milky and clear. After I cradle the soft mush of your head, I set you down and suck the wetness off my fingers. Sour, bitter, and I gag. The smell’s worse than gone-off meat, filling my whole head and hitting me harder than the sunlight, and I guess I should’ve expected that. Either way I don’t stop.

I roll you over and get a glimpse of bright bones, tiny and sharp like sewing needles poking from the mess of you. I pick a little more. I want more of you, and it goes down a little easier.

When I try scooping up the rest, you fall apart. But it’s all right. I’ve got you. There’s something that grew on you, like mushroom pieces on the last of your skin, and I don’t think whether they can be poison. I pick them off, pull them away. They taste worse than anything and crawl down my throat, but I swallow to put you back, put you back, put you back if I couldn’t have you then I’ll goddamn have you now—

There’s a crack, louder than the choking sounds I’ve been making, or the moans from the pit of my chest, and it stops me. I turn. It’s him.

He’s puffing and panting like a dog, shotgun in hand. Out here, he looks a lot smaller. For a minute, neither one of us moves. 

I bite on the hand I’ve been eating out of. Shaking, he raises the barrel and aims.