CW: self-harm, pregnancy/birth, body horror

Clinic

We had a dare club, like the kind you’d form in childhood. There was nothing else to do. We’d exhausted the books and the meager selection of old DVDs. We didn’t have internet access. We didn’t know when they’d let us leave. When they’d say we weren’t sick, or weren’t sick anymore, or weren’t interesting test subjects. So we dared what we thought we could get away with. Between the gel and the electrode discs on our chests and backs and foreheads. Between pissing into cups and taking pills.

I dare you to eat that flower. You have to chew it, have to really roll your tongue in pollen. Have to swallow each petal and let it stick to your guts.

I dare you to touch the fence. Fall back arched like a bridge from the shock, fingers jittering, pelvis thrusting into heavy air. Lie to the doctors it was an accident. Tell me exactly how it felt.

I dare you to take off all your clothes and stand in front of the air conditioning unit in your room. Until your skin is a mess of little prickly aches. Put your arms out at either side like you’re pretending to be an albatross. Leave the door open; it’s not a dare if there’s no risk someone else might see. 

I dare you to leave the door open and put your tongue in my body. Really roll it around in the juices there. The blood, too.

I dare you to kiss me with my mouth covered in your fluids. You have to swallow some.

Maybe we were being as slick and sly as we thought we were. Maybe the doctors felt like it was harmless to let us blow off steam this way. Maybe they thought it helped: helped us get better, or helped us be more of what they wanted, or both. All I know is when she kissed me it stayed under my skin longer than the electricity from the fence. I could feel something like her soul or her essence sparkling in my veins. I could feel the ghosts of her teeth and tongue all afternoon. And when they put me in the sensory deprivation tank later she was all around me, her soft skin everywhere, overripe peach of her, salty blood stink, breath in my ears and over my belly, hands on my face, hands on my hips, hands holding on and on. Her voice. I dare you to…

Ghost Rose

He took the job to get away from people and avoid feeling useless. Not because he loves being alone— he doesn’t— or because being a lighthouse keeper offers him any particular satisfaction— it doesn’t— but because at least this way he’s free from the panic that blocks his throat and kicks him in the heart every time he has to do something social. At least this way he’s free from the panic that squeezes his intestines and roars inside his ears every time he thinks about his life slipping pointlessly into oblivion while he drains food and heat and time from others, from the planet itself, sucking and swallowing like a tick. He’s always been terrified he’s a burden. Now, guiding ships to shore with the light, that terror has subsided to a low murmur of unease. There’s no question he’s doing something that matters. Even if the task doesn’t require him, specifically, he is of use here. 

      In spring, flowers and weeds burgeon up around the island, all kinds, from a thousand volunteer seeds brought in on strange winds. He uses some of them to make tea and wine and salads. One flower looks like a tiny greenish-white rose and smells like maple syrup. Its petals are almost translucent; he calls it a ghost-rose, because he cannot find a picture of it or its real name in any book. It’s very, very foolish to steep its petals in water and then drink the water, and then eat the petals. He realizes this. But he does it anyway, because of the smell, and because he’s bored and restless. 

      The flower tastes like nothing. Only, he thinks he can feel tiny ghost hands pressing against the sides of his esophagus as he swallows. The smell of maple syrup fills the lighthouse up to its rafters.

     He forgets about it. On the rocky coast of the island, sea birds swoop to feed newly hatched nestlings among the sticks and stones. He watches them with an emotion he can’t name. He’s been having headaches lately. The sea birds seem to quicken something within him. There’s a pain and a fluttering below his ribs. When he presses his hands to his abdomen, he finds it round and distended. He lifts his sweater and shirt, unbelieving. A small foot kicks him from inside. He’s surprised to find himself happy. 

     When will the child enter the world? How will the child enter the world? He doesn’t think about these things. He admires his stretchmarks. He speaks and sings to his unborn son or daughter as he works. He can feel the baby listening. For the first time in his life, he’s not lonely. He feels he’s found a purpose that suits him. When the baby comes, he’ll teach it everything it needs to know to take over the lighthouse when he’s gone.

    The pregnancy progresses quickly. In five weeks, he can’t bend over anymore. Red flares of pain pulse through him. The baby is trying to get out, but it can’t. He collapses by the cliffs, and an enormous bird sails out of a pale sky to land beside him.

    Man and albatross stare at each other. Then, before he has time to move or cry out, the bird rips his belly open with its beak. Blood pours from the wound, and two tiny red hands thrust themselves out of it, push its sides wide open. A head emerges. Then two folded, wet, feathered things. It’s a perfect little girl, not a baby at all, but a miniature child of eight or nine with proportionally enormous wings on her back. 

     He can’t speak. The pain is extraordinary. Still, he regards the girl with love and wonder. I would have named you Rose, he thinks. Then he rebukes himself. A creature like this has no need of naming. He’s proud, so terribly proud, that she came out of him.

      The girl stands beside the albatross and strokes its neck. Her drying wings twitch in the breeze. He lies back on the rocks and closes his eyes, and ships pass silently on the sea beyond.