Wilder Girls - Rory Power Page 0,70
part of me says, keep it for yourself, but if I am dying, I won’t do it as anybody but me.
I find a scalpel under the bed by the door. Trace a light line down the inside of my arm. The blade is cool against the heat of my skin, blood beading faintly.
The same line, but I press this time, drag the blade slow. Blood like this is rich and dark. It wells up until it spills over, trails down to my elbow. Again, and again, until a tingling spreads through my wrist, until I know I’ve hit something deep. Pain, gripping and everywhere, and a scream through my body, but I am always hurting and I know what to do.
Put down the scalpel, pry my skin apart with slick fingers. A flash of bone, and the world is swimming around me, vivid and blurred. I slide my thumb and forefinger in, swallow a whimper, and spread the sides of the cut.
I don’t know until I see it, but then it moves. Glistening, thick like a muscle. Twitching softly and radiating heat. A worm.
I try to pinch it between my fingers, but it’s too slippery, so I keep trying, keep wishing somebody had left a clamp lying around. It’s writhing now. It knows what I’m doing. And finally, I get a good grip and yank it out of me.
It’s like ripping out a fishhook. A tear in my flesh, and blood springs up fresh. But it doesn’t matter now. I have it in my hands. It’s dead, or dying, not moving at all, and I can get a good look. The color fading, a milky white showing through underneath. Ridged and segmented down the length of it. And it’s long, could run maybe from the tip of my middle finger to my wrist. A parasite. It was inside me and I didn’t even know.
A violation, but a gift too. It let me find a reason for everything I felt, at Raxter, in Boston, and every day in between. It let me match my body to my mind. I can thank it for that, at least.
I look back at the window to see my reflection, to see if I look different. But I don’t. Same me, same old same old but I think I think maybe something is missing
It doesn’t matter anymore. I tear up my sheet, bandage my arm stain spreading and I get to my feet. I don’t want to be where they put me when it happens.
* * *
—
My clothes are in the cabinet behind my bed, sealed up in a biohazard bag. I rip it open with my teeth and take them out jacket, shirt, jeans, and in their own bag, my torn-up boots.
I clutch them tight against me, breathe in the cold salt smell. This is enough to make me my own again.
By the time I get everything on, my legs are trembling. I find the iris where it fell, hold it tight, and hobble to the door, push it open with my shoulder. There’s a wheelchair just outside. I manage a few last steps over to it, let my body collapse into the seat.
The lock is manual, a catch I have to release and a handle I have to bear down on hard. And then there’s some maneuvering, and I almost throw up because I’m so tired and my stomach is so empty, but I get it moving. Down the hallway. The way the way somebody took me when we went outside.
Something drips down over my upper lip. Slow, like syrup, with a taste almost like blood, but sour. I wipe it off don’t look at where it stains my hand.
My right leg numb, my vision darker and darker. Won’t be long.
* * *
—
It’s just the way I remember it being.
Through the lobby all emptiness and disarray and familiarity think think Byatt don’t you know
and then around around around corners and there to the dented door
To the outside
To winter sweet and cold and just for me
* * *
—
I make it as far as I can
Stick close to the wall I scrunch down at the base and press my back against it wrap my jacket around me tight clutch the iris to my heart
I can see it coming like a wave cresting like the sun rising like a train down the tracks like a bullet like
like home or
won’t it be better this way won’t it be better
* * *
—
Sun rising in the trees
Slanting