Fist of the Spider Woman (11 page)

Kate stopped pulling away. Marlene's grip loosened until it was just her fingertips against the sensitive blue veins on the underside of Kate's wrist. She stared into Marlene's too bright blue eyes. Now she needed to know. She
needed
to know.

“She took my breasts,” Marlene said. “She took my lips. She took my face. She took my stomach. She punctured what might have been my uterus in another life. She took my—she sliced into me and took my fallen testes. It doesn't matter what the doctor calls them—that might as well be what they are. It's what I am. Except I'm not that anymore. She took all of me, even the parts I wanted to keep. And I wish she had killed me, but I'm too much of a coward. I'm a monster, but I won't look into a mirror. I spent my life wishing I could cut myself open, but now … I won't let her kill me. I won't.”

The doorknob rattled and turned, and Kate jerked around. She could feel her face turning red. Dr. Langley came through with his nurse Cecilia. He looked up from his clipboard in surprise when he saw Kate there.

“Miss Barrett, I didn't know you were in here.” He looked between the two women. “I'm sorry, did I interrupt anything?”

“I was just keeping her company,” Kate said. Her voice was thin and breathy, but she could not seem to open her throat enough. “Until someone came.”

“I hope you weren't bothering her.” The doctor looked over his glasses at her, ready to be disapproving.

“She wasn't,” Marlene said. “I wanted someone with me.

Someone who would listen.” Marlene pulled her hand away from Kate's wrist and looked down into her lap.

“That's what I'm here for,” Dr. Langley said with false joviality. “Miss Barrett needs to get back to her work. May I have Miss Davidson's file, please?”

Kate handed Dr. Langley the file. She noticed that there was blood on her wrist from Marlene's earnestness. Dr. Langley's face drew tight in disgust, and Kate hid her hand behind her back. She would wash it thoroughly when she left, but she would be unable to wash the blush of swelling that would eventually bruise.

“Please,” Marlene whispered to Kate. “Believe me. Help me.”

“I—”

“Miss Barrett.” Dr. Langley ushered her out of the room and closed the door emphatically behind her.

Kate stared at the apartment door. It was still mostly light out, and the quiet was broken only by the occasional rush and crunch of a passing car. She peered through the blinds but couldn't see much, mostly the reflection of her own eyes. She recoiled, fearful of what Marlene had said about seeing Mary in every reflection.

Her fingers fumbled with her keys, sliding the jagged edge into the lock and turning. The door opened. Gracie came up to her immediately, demanding to be fed, rubbing against Kate's ankles and meowing as though Kate had never fed her in her life. All the tension seemed to flow out. Nothing happened. Gracie was fine. Marlene was wrong, sick, traumatized. Kate was just exhausted. What had happened was some kind of hallucination because of what had happened with Daniel. As she poured dry food into Gracie's bowl, Kate looked at the Blackberry still sitting on the coffee table.

She wants women. But she wants women who will want her
back
.

Kate approached the coffee table and picked up the Blackberry. She had first met Daniel in a bar after she got off work, which would have been the last place that Kate would have thought she'd be picked up. But Daniel was a businessman there for the same reason she was, just to unwind, not to get any action. He was sitting next to her during a karaoke contest. He did not even know her when he elbowed her in her ribs, and with that winning smile, told her to take a chance. Kate would never do it, and although Daniel kept goading her, it turned into a talk about how bad some of the contestants were, then about their preferences in music. When Daniel asked whether she wanted to meet him the next evening for dinner, Kate was surprised enough to say yes.

Going out with him was one of the most exhilarating things she had ever done. He made her feel like more than what she saw in the mirror. Until he left. He made her doubt her disgust. Until he recoiled. Then she could see what she had always seen before, know finally that it was utterly untouchable, that
she
was utterly untouchable. Fingertips ghosted over her thighs, and she could almost taste the wine again, hear the door latch. Fingertips over her wrists, blood seeping and smearing onto her skin. Fingertips through her hair and a hot tongue tasting her. It occurred to her that if Mary had really been there, she'd already seen her, all of her. And she'd kissed her anyway.

Kate picked up the Blackberry and opened her cell phone, pressing three to speed dial Daniel. She looked at the television screen—she had not turned it off the night before on her way out, and it was still on the National Geographic Channel, something about the lost city of Atlantis. Kate clicked the television off as she listened to Daniel's landline begin to ring.

Four rings and a click. “Hello?”

“Hi. Daniel?”

There was only the humming of static in her ear.

“You … um …”

“I don't want to talk, Kate,” Daniel said. “There's not … I can't …”

“There's plenty to say,” Kate replied. “You just don't want to say it. Besides, I didn't …”

“You didn't tell me,” Daniel interrupted. “You didn't tell me what was wrong. You should've warned me.”

Kate sighed, sinking onto her sofa. She felt a tension headache building. “And what was I supposed to say, Daniel? What could I have possibly said that wouldn't have led to the same thing?

What part of ‘I have a clit that looks like a small penis' would have been remotely attractive to you if just seeing it was enough to make you run?”

There was another long silence. “I deserved to know.”

“No, you clearly didn't,” Kate snapped. “I have your fucking Blackberry. Do you want to come get it yourself, or do you want me to send it to you?”

“Maybe it's best if you send it to me. I'll mail you a cheque for the shipping charge.”

“Don't bother. I'll send it cheap. You may get it within the next three weeks.” Kate pushed the button that ended the call.

She was shaking again, but only part of it was fear. Another part was anger. It was almost exhilarating. She had never said it out loud to anybody before—only her personal physician, and later the gynecologist, with their comfortably alienating jargon. Her mother always went out of her way to never say exactly what was wrong with her daughter, and Kate took her cue from her mother. And now she'd said it. It was out. Someone knew. And she was okay.

But Marlene wasn't. The thought brought Kate crashing down from the momentary high. Furrows in her face, smooth sewn skin where her lips used to be, skin grafts from her back for the worst places, black threads in her flesh like Frankenstein's monster. Gutted and cut off. Kate just had scratches down her cheek and along the back of her head; Marlene was transformed. Marlene thought that the Surgeon was something as ridiculous and fantastical as Bloody Mary Worth, like a supernatural Jack the Ripper killing freaks instead of whores. Kate did not know what to think. The bathroom mirror drew her damning curiosity, but she did not want to see Mary in the mirror if what happened was real. If what happened was possible. Which it wasn't. But Marlene was in a hospital bed, and she
knew
about Kate. And she looked like Mary.

She wants women who will want her back
.

A crack in the mirror, a line of blood down the glass. Her blood.

I always come when I'm called.

She was at her bathroom door before she knew it. The entire space of time between the living area and the bedroom was lost. Her fingers clenched around the brass door knob, tightening in anticipation of whatever was in the room. She had called Mary, and now Mary was calling her—if any of this was real at all. The door opened of its own accord, twisting Kate's arm until the underside of her wrist was exposed. Fingerprints and bloodstains.

The candle was still flickering deep in its wax, the wick almost burnt through. Invisible hands cupped her face and drew her into sight of the mirror. The door closed behind her. Breath ghosted over mouth until full lips pressed against hers, and Kate could see Mary's head in the mirror covering her face—everything seemed like a surreal dream.

“You met my dear Marlene,” Mary murmured. Kate could feel each word on her mouth; her tongue licked them away as Mary moved behind her. “She mentioned you this evening. Oh, don't worry, I'm not going to kill her. That was my intention, but it's far more satisfying to let her live.” Fingers threaded through

Kate's hair, tracing the tender, healing skin there. “There will be other chances.”

“Like me,” Kate said.

Nails like claws digging into her scalp and tearing the scabs away, slicing at the skin over her sternum and ripping her blouse.

“Yes.”

“No.” Kate tried to move. This time she really tried, her muscles tense in effort. But she could not move from where she stood before the mirror.

“You don't really want to leave,” Mary whispered in her ear.

She slid a hand under the torn fabric of her blouse and traced a line between Kate's breasts down to her navel. Her other hand began to deftly undo the buttons. Kate would be her fifth Chicago killing. Kate saw her own face on the news, some horrible, unremarkable photograph that no one would want to remember.

“If you wanted to leave, you would be able to walk away without trouble. You could leave this room, this house. I only come when I'm called.”

“I never called you,” Kate said. Her voice sounded strange to her ears.

“Perhaps you don't remember. But I remember you. You weren't ready for me then. None of you were.” Mary pulled Kate's sleeves down and dropped the blouse to the floor.

“Why are you … what happened to you?” She took in every cut on Mary's face and hands and every stain on her dress. “Did you do those yourself?”

Her skirt fell around her feet in a breath of fabric. Kate tried to cover herself, but her hands stayed listless at her side.

There was a slight hiss in her ear. “Of course I didn't do these to myself. But you will.”

Mary unfastened her bra, and Kate was left standing in front of the mirror in just her panties.

“And this was what you were when I found you again, when you gave me your first taste,” Mary said, resting her chin on

Kate's shoulder. Kate's hand moved of its own volition, cradling the weight of her stomach. The candlelight forgave some things, but not everything, and Kate was captivated. She saw the cuts all over Mary's face and her own good smooth skin. Mary caressed the length of her arm until her hand covered Kate's. She pushed Kate's hand down until her underwear joined the rest of the clothing on the floor. Mary's other hand grabbed hers and brought it to touch one flat breast.

“What are you doing?” Kate gasped.

“What you were never able to do,” Mary said. “And what
he
certainly never did. Could you ever bring yourself to touch it?”

Kate felt her stomach lurch as Mary brought her hand further down, and there it was beneath her palm, moist, yielding, with its slight weight. Kate shut her eyes tight, and it made her sensation of touch more intense.

“See, that's not so bad,” Mary murmured. “I cannot imagine what you were crying for when I came to you. What any of you cry for. You're what I look for. You're what I want.”

Pressure in circles. And Mary let go of her hands.

With the first unbidden, unwanted surfacing of pleasure came the teeth into her breast, hard and sharp and keen. Had she screamed? Her eyes were open again, and her hand moved in circles, as though she were in a trance, lips parted, mouth glistening. Mary lifted her head and wiped the blood from her mouth with the back of her stained hand. She swallowed the piece of flesh in her mouth and looked into Kate's eyes through the reflection.

“Now,” Mary said, “can you do the same for me?”

Kate reached back with her left hand but felt nothing but the wall.

“No,” Mary said, and her laughter was clear, bright, and happy. Blue eyes glowed in the darkness. The invisible hand took hers again and brought it to the glass. “In the mirror.”

Kate leaned against the counter, quivering and warm, pushed against the mirror where she could see Mary's hand. She felt the skin: dry, substantial. Her head lowered as Mary kissed the back of her neck and brought the cold sharp edge of a blade against Kate's right thigh.
The kitchen knife I brought
, she thought distantly. Tension coiled delightfully, and fear made her intertwine her fingers with Mary's. Mary's face divided as the mirror cracked but merged again as Kate's blood shuddered onto her skin and into her mouth.

“Come into me,” Mary whispered. She yanked the embedded blade up, and Kate thrust forward and shattered the mirror, falling through.

Your Stockholm Syndrome

Esther Mazakian

Zero to hero
, her curves held too much meaning for you and the damage not yet done. Militarily, force-feedings

strip her of her last meal and you, your Sunday palms cool her feet, and she turns to you, the bitch at last in ankle shackles, in love, let's face it. Your bandages and your stubble-sweat, so middle-eastern in a way, though you're from Arkansas.

Perspiring and aspiring the dew on your hands sets her livery saliva rivuletting through her between-breasts. Never had sex and food been so connected.

See her eyes stealing your
one lazy leg like it was open prey; hungry

as you

she says, Get the fuck down.

nascent fashion

Larissa Lai

it is dark and she

it is dark so thirsty and the smell