Mud Vein(66)

“You know who did this,” he says. “Deep down, you know.”

I shake my head. How can he possibly believe that? I have searched—wracked—my brain for answers.

He backs up, covering his eyes with his palms. His back hits the wall and he bends at the waist with his hands on his knees. It looks like he can’t breathe. I reach a hand out to him, and then drop it to my side. It’s no use. No matter what I say, I took his wife and baby away. I birthed this psycho’s obsession.



Three weeks later, Isaac removes my cast. He uses a kitchen knife to cut it off. It’s the same knife he carried around on our first day here. We are both wide-eyed and short of breath as the fiberglass falls away. What will we see? How much more broken will I be? In the end there is just a hairy, skinny leg that looks a little off. It reminds me of blood in a cup, a sweater in a bathtub, a rock in a mouth. It’s just visually off and I can’t tell why.

I still have to use my crutch, but I like the freedom I feel after all those weeks lying in bed. Isaac still won’t speak to me. But the sun has returned. It rises again. We stop using the lights to save the generator from burning gas. I read all of Knotted, but surprisingly it doesn’t hurt as much as the nameless book my mother wrote. I see Nick a little differently; less glimmer. It’s his best work, but I’m left unimpressed with his love note.





Isaac carries the rest of the supplies up from the well at the bottom of the table. He fills the cupboards and the fridge and the wood closet. So we don’t have to climb down there anymore, he tells me. It takes him all day. Then he puts the table back together. When he goes to his room I come down from the carousel room and creep into the kitchen. I’m still in my robe and my legs are cold. I feel naked without my cast. I press the back of my legs to the lip of the table, and hop up. I scoot back until I’m sitting, my legs hanging over the side. My runner’s legs look spindly and weak. A scar runs like a seam across my shin. I trace it lightly with the tip of my finger. I’m starting to look like a stitched-up Emo doll. All I need are the button eyes. I reach up, slipping my hand into the opening at the top of my robe, running my fingers across the skin on my chest. There are scars there too. Ugly ones. I’m used to being disfigured. It feels like parts of me keep being taken; eaten by disease, hacked off, snapped in two. I wonder when my body will become tired of it and just give up.

I’ll never be able to run like I used to. I walk with a limp. I haven’t told Isaac, but my leg aches constantly. I like it.

It’s dark in the kitchen. I don’t want to put the light on and risk Isaac knowing I was in here. If he is trying to avoid me, I’ll help him. But when I look up he’s standing in the doorway watching me. We stare at each other for the longest time. I feel anxious. It looks like he has something to say. I think he’s come to fight some more, but then I see something else in his eyes.

He takes the steps to reach me. One … two … three … four.

He’s standing in front of my knees. My hair is wild and unruly. I can’t remember the last time I brushed it. It’s grown past where my breasts used to be. Now it’s sort of a shawl across my upper body, so that even when I’m naked I don’t have to see myself. I don’t even bother to hide my white streak behind my ear like I usually do when Isaac is around. It curls in front of my eye, partly obscuring my vision.

Isaac pushes my hair over my shoulder and I flinch involuntarily. Then he puts his hands on my knees. Their warmth stings. He pushes outward, spreading my legs, then he takes a step forward until he’s standing between them. He bends his head until our mouths are almost touching. Almost. The fingers on both of my hands are splayed on the tabletop behind me, balancing myself. I can feel the grooves of my carvings. The carvings Isaac helped me make. He doesn’t kiss me. We have never spoken about the kiss we shared when we thought we were dying. He breathes into my mouth as his hands run up the length of my thighs. His hands feel like warm water running across my skin. I cold shiver. My robe is hiked up to the top of my thighs. When his palms leave my legs, I want to cry out, No! I want more of the warmth, but he reaches up and grabs both lapels of my robe, pulling it open and exposing my chest. I’m frozen. Numb. He touches my scars. My barren womanhood. Frozen … frozen … frozen … and then I break open.



I gasp and grab his hands, pushing them away. “What are you doing?”

He doesn’t answer me. He lifts his hands to my neck. Wherever he touches me there is heat. I roll my head back and his thumbs graze my jaw.

“What I want,” he says.

I roll my head to the left to try to pull away from him, but he pushes his hand into my hair at the back of my head, and kisses the side of my neck until I’m shivering. He has me at a disadvantage; I’m trying to keep myself upright with one hand and push him away with the other. Eventually, my hand slips out from under me and we collapse on the table.

He kisses me. Hard at first—like he’s angry—but when I touch his face he softens. It’s when his lips drag slowly across mine, his tongue darting in and out of my mouth that I relax. My legs lift off of the table and my feet cradle his waist. Heat; heat on the arches of my feet, heat on my mouth, heat pressed between my legs. He reaches down and pulls my robe open all the way. I lift my arms out of the robe and wrap them around him. Then he rolls me until I’m on top of him. I sit up and he lifts me at the waist until I’m hovering above his erection. He’s right there; the tip is touching me. All I have to do is push down and he will be inside of me. And I want him to be. Because I need to touch and be touched.