Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  Her belly rumbles softly, and the girl who is beginning to suspect that her name has always been Anastasia, that she is only delusional and forgot somehow, is thinking about going back to the icebox. But then she notices the tall wooden cabinet standing alone in one corner of the studio. It has not been locked against her, and when she opens it and peers inside, she discovers the white-grey pelt of a large wolf, rolled up into a tight bundle. At first, she is too afraid to even touch it. Her hunger forgotten, she sits back down on the floor, though still within easy reach of the pelt, which has been stored on the cabinet’s lowest shelf.

  Ton have allowed yourself to be bedded by a man, the skinwalker told her in the dream, but now she understands that he is something more than a man, and something less, as well. And she also understands why he came to her on the rooftop, when all other men avoid her, and why it is he led her into his cave and took her as a mate. What the green-eyed woman began, this man has finished.

  “Do they know what you are, any of them?” she asks aloud, and her own voice startles her. She glances back towards the entrance to the studio, the open door leading out into the hallway. But there is no one there, no one to have spoken except her, and so she turns again to the tall cabinet. A few minutes later, she finds the courage to reach inside and remove the stolen wolf pelt. She presses it gently to her face, to her nostrils and lips and the tears streaking her cheeks. When she sniffs at the thick fur, she is not surprised that it hardly smells like a wolf, anymore. On the street, there is the wail of an ambulance or fire engine, an awful, hurting wail not so unlike the noise swelling inside her. When the siren has passed, the girl unfolds the pelt and spreads it out across the floor, smoothing it flat. She lies down on it, weeping and wishing that she’d never noticed the cabinet, that she’d never opened it and looked inside. And she rubs herself furiously against the pelt and then pisses on it in a futile effort to drive away the bland, sweet stink of mankind. If she ever was a wolf, she is not one now, and she only succeeds in working the odor of humanity deeper into the hide. She opens her month and despair spills from her like vomit, and she howls as best as any woman may ever expect to howl.

  I hope that you’ll still be hen because I want you to be here, he said. I hope that counts for something with you.

  You have given yourself to him freely, said the demon in the woods.

  When there are no tears left, and her throat is too sore to make even the pathetic sound that is not a howl, she lies still and silent for a time. She listens to her heart and to the dry, hot air sighing from the holes in the floor. She listens to the muffled din drifting up from the street below, to the babble of men and women and their machines. And then she stands and drapes the wolf’s pelt about her shoulders, even though she knows this pelt is not her own. Remembering the demon, she loops the forelegs together around her throat so that the hide won’t slip off and fall in a heap to the floor.

  Were she to stand before a mirror, she would see reflected there the perfect image of the skinwalker who took away her true form. In the placid, unrippling glass, she would encounter again those same moss- and spruce-green eyes staring out at her. Because the magic is complete now, the curse consummated and absolute, and she would gaze into that same inexorable determination that greeted her when she awoke to find herself flayed and gasping beneath the star-haunted mountain sky.

  But there are no mirrors on the way back to the kitchen. She finds a sharp carving knife there, a stain less-steel surrogate for the teeth and claws the demon stripped from her. And then the girl who was born a wolf, but who knows that she will one day die only a human woman, sits down on the man’s sofa, facing the door, and waits to see if he will return.

  The Bed of Appetite

  I say Wolf, for all wolves are not of the same sort; there is owe kind with an amenable disposition-neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, fallowing the young maids in the streets, even into their homes.

  Charles Perrault (1697)

  “Such big teeth,” I say, and your laugh is the quietest sort of which you are ever capable. Only the cobwebs shudder at the sound; only the curtains rustle. That is almost the sound of my heart in the presence of you, the easy brush of velvet against the windowpane. I am writing, and you are sitting naked at the foot of the bed, watching me and listening to the scritch of my pen across paper. I have learned to write while you watch, and I have learned to pause for your questions,and I have learned to explain myself and my ridiculous stories in words that will not make you scowl and brush it all aside with a dismissive wave of your right or left hand. I have learned how to forestall the contemptuous rolling of your grey eyes.

  “And such big eyes,” I say, and this time you do not laugh, but only shrug your thin shoulders and nod.

  “So, then, what is it this timer?” you ask, pointing at my paper, pretending that you are actually interested when I have long since learned to know better But I have also learned not to argue, for you are not the sort who asks questions which are then permitted to go unanswered. Whether you are authentically curious or have even the least bit of enthusiasm is completely immaterial to your desire to have an answer. You despise incomplete equations, you have said.

  “It’s a love story,” I say, and this time when you laugh, it is the splintery sort of laughter that makes the air wince and the candlelight grow very slightly dimmer for a moment or two. “It’s not like I am entirely inexperienced,” I add, expecting more laughter and more flinching night, but this time you only smile and lean towards me and ask,“So it’s autobiographical?”

  “Such long, long claws,” I reply, and you stop smiling and look down at your hands, checking to see whether they are only paws again. It is November, the nights of the full Hunter’s Moon, and so you are never quite confident of your mercurial anatomy’s disposition.

  “It’s not an autobiography,” I continue. “It is a love story for cannibals, and for someone who loves a cannibal.”

  “So it is an autobiography.”

  “Do you want to hear this or not?” I ask, risking impatience, and you shrug and lick at your palm in the most indifferent manner possible. But I put my pen away, my pen and the notebook, and then roll over onto my right side so that I don’t have to crane my neck and peer over my shoulder in order to watch you.

  “Two women are in love, and one of them is a cannibal,” I begin, and you make no sign that you’re still paying attention or have even heard me. “The other, she wishes to be consumed, that her lover will at last be fulfilled. But the cannibal, she does not desire the death of her inamorata, despite her desperate need to consume. So, I am writing a story about how long these two women can conspire to prolong death, how much can be cut away and yet the object of the cannibal’s affection remain alive and conscious.” You stop licking your hand and look up at me. “So it is an autobiography,” you say again.

  I sigh and shut my eyes, because sometimes it hurts too much to see you. “Maybe it’s a metaphor,” I reply. “Anyway, whatever it is, I am writing it.”

  “And how much of the cannibal’s lover is left:” you want to know, and I keep my eyes closed, not so naïve and knowing too well the way yours seem to glint when you pose a question like that.

  “I have been doing research,” I say, “because I want it to be plausible. The cannibal is a skilled surgeon.”

  “How convenient.”

  “The cannibal’s lover—whose name is not particularly important—has already given up her legs, her arms, her breasts and buttocks, her right eye, a kidney—”

  “You are a depraved little bastard,” you smile again and lean back into the nest of pillows. “How did I ever manage to find such a depraved little bastard.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I was not yet this way when you found me,” I lie, finally looking at you again, because I know it’s a lie, and I would rather lie to your face. “I was a babe in the woods. You were the crucible of my perversion. You were my moral undoing.”

  “
Always,” you say and glance towards the ceiling or some mythic heaven you are perpetually trying to forget. “Do they still fuck, your cannibal lesbian and her vivisected inamorata?”

  “It’s getting quite difficult, as you can well imagine—but yes, they still fuck. That’s part of the challenge, you see, that they remain lovers as long as is possible.”

  You spread your legs a little, showing me that undecided sex, that mutable orchid growing wet and the slightest bit erect. I want to cup it in my hands and feel your sharp nails against my scalp while I lick away your excitement. But I do not move, because I have not yet been precisely invited.

  “Does she share?” you ask, and for a second I’m not certain what you mean, and so you have to ask again. “The cannibal,” you sigh. “Does she share these delicacies with her lover? Does the one who is being so slowly devoured at least know the taste of her own sacrifices?”

  “Yes,” I say. “The cannibal insists. Otherwise, she says it would be selfish. The act would be incomplete, if she did not share this largesse with her benefactor. And the cannibal is not a selfish woman.”

  You nod and then glance down at your smooth, flat chest, at the place where your nipples would be, if you were merely a human male or female. “Still, it can’t possibly last very much longer, can it?”

  “I don’t imagine so. The cannibal is about to take her lover’s left lung, I think. She will stew it with crushed garlic and parsley. Then, perhaps, she will begin on the large muscles of the abdomen—the pectoralis major and the trapezius and so forth—the remaining obliques, as it were.”

  “And what of the bones,” you ask, and now, to my surprise, I hear a note of inquisitiveness that is more than perfunctory, something more than going through the motions.

  “Well, it would be a pity to waste the bones,” I reply, and when you speak, the candles flicker once more. “The cannibal is a conscientious woman, after all. She splits and broils the long bones for their marrow, of course, and she is fashioning a sort of shrine with the rest.”

  “A reliquary,” you whisper. “That’s a nice touch.”

  “Thank you,” I say quietly, almost blushing, always too easily flattered and very much more so when the compliments come from you. For you are not the sort given to casual praise, but rather the sort to holdback even the most heartfelt of commendations, lest the world begin to think you something different than what you are. Or, perhaps, for fear the world might begin to guess anything at all about your nature. Myself, I have so little use for the world, and less use still for the world’s ill-considered opinions, and, compared with the simple fact of you, I am no more than a raindrop set against the sea’s most unfathomable abyss. I cannot even comprehend your apparent concern with appearances.

  “Would you read it to me?” you ask, lazily teasing between thumb and forefinger what might at first glance be mistaken for your penis. “If I asked nicely, would you let me hear your story.”

  “But it isn’t finished,” I say, and in hardly an instant my delight has become anxiety. Because it isn’t finished, and you have never before asked me to read you anything I’ve written, and suddenly it all seems so contrived and trite and superficially grotesque, all the things I’ve committed to those pages. “In truth, it’s barely even properly started, really.”

  “But you just said you don’t imagine it can continue very much longer, this anthrophagous tryst you’ve concocted, so how can you be so terribly far from the end? The poor woman must already be nearing expiration, and here you tell me you’re about to take a lung.”

  “She was a medical student,” I say, hoping that if I offer a few more details you will be satisfied and so forget, or let slide, your request to hear me read. “The cannibal’s lover, I mean. That’s how they met. She frequently attended lectures on human physiology and pathology, and also demonstrations given by the surgeon. The student—who would soon, of course become the lover—had excruciating dreams in which she was the cadaver lying motionless and exposed on the surgeon’s table, flayed raw before the eyes of her classmates. In her dreams, she felt all those eyes oil her, and the scalpel blade, and the dexterous hands of the surgeon. One thing led to another—”

  “As they say,” you sigh, interrupting me. “Dear, you only need answer, ‘No, I don’t wish to read you my story.’ It was not an order. At least, I do not believe I phrased it as an order. Perhaps, in my excitement—” And here you pause and stop teasing yourself long enough to find a more comfortable position in among the pillows. “—maybe, I sounded too eager. I merely thought you might welcome an audience for a change, for the words themselves, in the order you have placed them, rather than squeezing them into summaries and approximations.”

  “I think if I really wanted an audience, I’d probably try to find a publisher.”

  You take a very deep breath and then exhale so slowly that breathing out seems to last almost forever. “Unless, love, you are too afraid, or too intimidated at the thought of criticism or rejection.” Here you smile a third time, and tonight your teeth would put a starving hyena to shame.

  “I’m not afraid,” I say, telling you another lie, though I cannot say for certain if you know this one for what it is. “I do not write for anyone but me. And I only share my stories with you because you ask.”

  “Fair enough,” you say. “I did ask. I asked because you are always so awfully intent, so diligent at your work. Rut I find it admirable, that you do not crave an audience, that you have no need of listeners or of readers or of printed volumes to find satisfaction. That you do this simply because it pleases you to do so.”

  “It keeps me busy,” I reply, “when you’re out. When I am alone.” You watch me silently for a time, your fingers still busy with the elaborate folds and creases and protuberances of your genitalia (though you are engaged in nothing so deliberate or directed towards an end as the act of masturbation). In the candlelight, the shadows conceal so much, and it is difficult to be sure where your long fingers end and those most secret regions of the temple of your body begin. There is the undeniable, wet gleam and the erection to signify your arousal, but I am left to wonder if I will be the instrument of resolution, or if tonight you will seek out some other means of release. And, too, I must wonder if the sight of my own body was sufficient stimulation, or if it was my story, or some union of the two.

  “Does she have regrets?” you ask me. “The cannibal’s lover? Now that it has gone this tar, that she been so diminished and her death is within sight, is she sorry?”

  “No,” I say, and doubtless I respond too quickly. “She is not sorry. She only regrets there is so little time remaining, that she did not have more to offer.”

  “She had what any woman would have had.”

  “Yes. But she fears now it was not enough, and that when it’s done, their courtship, the banquet, when it is finished, she will have been inadequate to the surgeon’s needs.”

  “But not possibly more or less inadequate than any woman willing to acquiesce to the preconditions of such a necessarily transitory relationship.”

  I frown and watch the candles instead of watching you, trying now to ignore my own nagging erection. “You make it sound so dry, so cold.” And you assure me this is not your intent. I can smell you now, that musky sweetness leaking from the cleft below your stunted phallus, the saltiness of your sweat, your breath which always stinks slightly of old blood and carrion. “These women love one another,” I say.

  “So, you insist it is more than need, more than lust or a maniac hunger?”

  “My, Grandmother, what big ears you have.”

  I glance back to your face to see that familiar expression that says maybe this is the night when you have inevitably grown tired of me. Maybe this is the night you will no longer indulge my impertinence, because, after all, I am only a depraved little bastard and there are a thousand more where I came from. The world is lousy with depraved little bastards-or bitches, depending on your mood. The bored, exasperated expression
that reminds me that you will never tell me how much you love me, because you have probably never loved anything, not in that frail, careless way that human beings love one another. There are plenty enough nights when I see that look in your wide eyes the color of polished granite and absolutely know that I would be relieved to find we had come to our conclusion, that I had nothing left in my flensed soul for you to cut away and stew with shallots and baby potatoes and rosemary and a bit of fennel.

  “No,” you say. “Not tonight. If I killed you tonight, how would I ever find out how your love story ends?”

  “Oh, see, I think you know exactly how it will end,” I tell you, and you shrug and go back to lazily playing with yourself.

  “It is enough that I am confident,” you tell me, “that you will find the ending, or that it will somehow find you. That you and the ending will find one another. I do not remember you ever leaving one of your little tales unfinished. That would be indecent, and though you may well be depraved, my sweet, I have always sensed a nasty streak of decency about you.”