Atgal

Georges Leni


Preacher liked the cold

I inspect the white fabric of my underwear and smile at the pure canvas between my legs. The piece of cotton twists around my limbs like poison ivy, and it tells me to stay seated. My finger follows the hem, and the dryness of my knickers makes me smirk; how arousing drought could be. How is it that lustrous tears flow in parched hearts?

Weeks have passed since the blood stopped flowing from between my legs. I think one desolate night I sewed the hole shut, and now the loose threads sprout like the hair of a child that’s crawling its way out of its mother’s lap, tearing everything down from the inside. Nibbling on her ribs and pinching her heart, a wolf-child feasting on mummy-sheep. But I will have my own baby soon. The headaches, the dizziness and the throwing up now make sense to me. I will proudly get to carry an atom bomb in my fruit basket at the crowded market, and I will be awarded with medals for swallowing down cyanide air. I will bear another mean father, because he is half of me. Two months sober, I’ve become tainted pure for my impure baby.

Desperately, I thrash around with my legs to escape the cotton constraints, and when they’re lying on the dirty floor, I pick them up and greedily place them in my mouth. The soft knickers comfort the rumbling of my now growing stomach, and I can taste the salty sweat and greasy pleas when I bite down on the fabric that separated me from you. How thin thousands of stitches seem when you’re ripping them to shreds with your teeth, and how filling a blank page is when you swallowed down your tongue and there are no words left to say.

I chew on my knickers and count until I reach sixty seconds, after all, this what the magazines whispered in my ears I was eleven. “Chew until the drool drips down your dainty chin and the liquid food burns your throat when you finally swallow. Only then you become less hungry, and only then are you worthy of the food you put into your mouths.” 

I think of the Devil when counting gets boring, and I pretend that we were childhood friends, playing hopscotch on our fathers’ graves. I knew that once I’d reach sixty, I’d be lying in my own.

One, two, three, four –

The putrid smell of blueberries, cucumbers and coffee swims around the basin. My leaking nose cries when I push my head inside the bowl and the tip of my nose brushes against the dark red water. Through my glassy eyes, I see half-digested oranges floating around on the surface, and I think the seedless fruit caused me to never root myself in the earth and grow from the day the woman’s sharp nails clawed themselves into my soft arms.

-Seventeen, nineteen, twenty.

I push my hand between my legs when acid tears burn my sleeves. I have to keep my baby safe, the maternal instinct follows me like my shadow. But this child will be secure. I’d perform a christening in the white bowl, sing lullabies in deaf cradles, and clothe it in hand-me-down dreams that are now only insurmountable for me to guard it from my fate. Motherhood will take me on my final ride, and feast upon my girlhood, but I will serve it to her on a silver platter and cut out pieces of my heart if she asks for more. I’ve dreamt of this, and no sad meal will take this away from me. I know it for the better.

Thirty, forty, fifty.

The heating in the bathroom is turned on, and the warmth spreads through my entire body. Outside my temple, hell is frozen over, and the door is locked. The white glow of the basin smiles at me, and I think it is God, urging me to move closer. The heated floor melts when my knees touch the ground, and I feel my brain liquifying in the boiling bathroom. Preachers like the cold air, it’ll make sinners like me who look for warming fireplaces in TV screens doting believers. This bowl will give me no comfort, but I own the control here. I get to choose here. This is for the better. This is for my baby. I pull out a white thread from my mouth.

When I turn to look at myself in the mirror, I smile at my sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. I open my mouth like a creaky door, and white juice spills from my lips. The cotton knickers have melted under my burning tongue, and now I’m finally ready to swallow. I imagine the demon in my stomach stretching its jaw to allow the liquid to purify its charred interior. I keep feeding the mean father of a little girl who isn’t me, and I look forward to seeing him rip her to shreds. I’m bearing a monster, and I will name it after myself. The warmth of the bathroom hugs me tight, and I feel in control.

My creature-baby does, too. It’s starting to cry, and I feel the tears running down my legs. More and more, my baby starts bawling. I try to comfort it and stick my finger in the sloppily sewed up hole, but my lullabies and stories don’t seem to quiet it down, and the tears won’t stop flowing. Like a good mummy, tears leave my eyes, too, and when I try to wipe away the snot, my painted white face turns red.

Like a bad mummy, I know what this means. I stretch my upper body down in the cramped space, and see the blood gushing from between my legs.

Reader, stop watching me. I pull the curtain of this tragedy down, and rub the blood away with a dry towel. I rip apart the seams and pull my bloody baby out. Leave me.

Eighteen, sixty.

I’m no longer clean. The bleeding is back. I’ve burned down the dirty towel, and I will try again. I push my fingers down my throat. The toilet water is red. In the basin, I see my baby-father smiling at me, and I flush.

 




Pateikta: 15:59 Sun, 24 March 2024 by : Georges Leni age : 18