you're a hideous thing inside [x]

Wordlessly, he grabs my hand and presses a piece of gum into my palm. His fingers are cold, rough from the dry air, but he gives me what must be meant as a reassuring squeeze. I don't flinch, still trying not to retch.

I can smell the spearmint. The scent is too crisp, too fresh and cold against the copper taste in my mouth. He drops my hand, goes to stroke my hair back from my shoulders. I unwrap the gum, flashing bright green even in what I know must be total darkness for human eyes. I can smell the spearmint as I put it in my mouth, but know I won’t taste it.

I chew slowly, wishing it was enough, as he cups my neck to bring me close and lick a stripe of blood off my cheek, and I try not to shudder.

-------

They knew I was dead, because of how red the snow was. The animal that dragged me into the woods, it must have torn out my throat first, there was somuchblood. No way I could have survived, never mind that there was no body.

I think about that, sometimes, not having a body. It makes sense, because what I have now is more a frame that I'm inhabiting. All of the parts of me that used to sting or itch or bleed, now they knit back together and snap back into place, and I can even watch without vomiting.

He used to rub my back when I got sick, telling me it was his mother's bona fide cure to nausea. I never bothered to comment on how ridiculous it was that he could have a mother, that he could have been a child, that he could have been a person.

When I was a real girl, I had a mother, and my mother had a kitchen with blue floral wallpaper that never peeled, and she was always there cooking when I got home from school. When I was a body and not a vessel, we treated my playground-scraped knuckles with Bactine, and I always winced. She’d cluck and tell me I should’ve been more careful, but she kissed my hand anyway.

Last week, I picked glass out of my shoulder for an hour as he raged on the other side of the door. I had to get rid of it all for my skin to heal, though I couldn't help the seven years of bad luck. The pile of shards collected in the sink, water going pink, as I heard the gouges form in the wood next to my head. Sometimes, he forgets that he loves me.