I feel my heart being constricted as my secret is yelled into the wooded night.
Again, the chimes, and she and Jack, like siblings in the backseat on a long drive are at it again, walking and bickering, and slithering away.
“Another one of ‘em, eh, Sati?”
“How many times have I told you I don’t permit nicknames?”
“Pffft, hard-ass.”
“You're in no position to talk. The only soft thing about you is the small sponge you have left of a brain.”
“Ya know, Sati, no one’s ever used ‘soft’ and ‘small’ to describe me before.”
So much for a nightcap. I must really look like a child now as I run up to them. The pains in my soles and heels aren’t comparable to the one in my chest. I remember thinking earlier that I didn’t pay Jack for more questions, only answers - but what did I know about things like this?
My heartbeat escapes from my mouth with every word. If I was trying to hide my desperation earlier, those attempts are long gone now. “How did you know?” I look directly at her face, searching for answers.
A twirling limb reveals itself from her veil, though it quickly retreats when she speaks. “Call it intuition.”
His smile is wide, like a hyena after the hunt. This time Jack is the one who eyes me up and down, down and up. “So what’ll it be then…”
Like a child easily bribed with candy, I nod my head - quickly. “I’m in. Get rid of it.”
Her arms are folded at her chest, and I can’t shake her semblance to my satisfied mother - everything going according to her plan. “I don’t do any work for free.”
“What’ll it cost? Just tell me.” I mean, how bad could it be?
She shakes her head, then nods in Jack’s direction. “I don’t handle the accounting.”
“Luckily for you, I do.” He points at his face like an asshole, and I start to wish Satira accepted cash.
Jack continues, undeterred by Satira’s rolling eyes. “Not so luckily for you… it’ll cost you your womb.” He points, but it seems more like a jab.
“My what?!” I cover my stomach with my hands - a measly attempt at protection.
Unaffected by my rising voice, he points slightly lower. “The thing the babies come outta.”
I scoff with a jump. “Fuck that!”
But they don’t budge. Instead they eye me down like bullies who know I’ll give up my lunch money.
“You’re fucking kidding, right?”
For the first time tonight Jack seems bored. Like he expected more. A disappointed uncle who thought I could roll a better joint.
“Alright Zoë, here’s the deal, alright? Sati and I have run a few cases like yours over the last few months. Trial and error, simple as that. We take your womb, we end the birth.”
A few cases like mine? He’s piqued my interest, but it isn’t enough. “Don’t make it sound like that’s it. Tell me the rest of it.”
It’s supposed to be a giggle - but from Satira, it’s like the hissing of a snake. “Tell her. She paid you, cheapskate.”
Suddenly the tense atmosphere has shifted, and I’m grateful for it.
Like a haughty substitute teacher, Jack stands a little straighter, running a calloused hand over his oily hair.
“Alright, you’re bein’ targeted by the Yanaloh cult. Islanders who worship women. They use the uterus as a vessel to harness power, magics and what have you. Right now, a few of ‘em are harvesting the wombs of women they deem easy prey.”
He looks at me, with something soft beneath his otherwise impish eyes, but just a flicker and it's gone. “Easy prey. As in no one’s gonna come lookin’ for ya if you’re gone.”
It’s just a history lesson, but it’s a start. “Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. That’s who - but why?”
He doesn’t seem as bored, anymore. “A few years back, their island was purchased by some diptwat billionaire who doesn’t care for preservin’ natural occult affairs. Drove’m all to the mainland. A lot of them are just trying to get by, but some of the loose springs have gone apeshit and they’re using lady parts to raise Hell.” The smoke leaks out of his mouth and nostrils. “Pretty misled rage, if ya ask me.”
Then, Jack flicks his cigarette, using it to point at me. “Needless to say, once you’re ripe and rotten, they’ll turn you into fodder for future harvests.”
Right when I’m beginning to understand, that word hits me like a brick.. “Wait… fodder?”
Even his nod is annoying. “Yeah, they cut you up into little bits and shit.”
I don’t even get a second to process this before Satira asks, “Have your questions been answered?” Her eyes are bent into a smirk somehow, and I hate it.
Just fifteen minutes ago, I was a tragic runaway with a supernatural problem, but I never thought I’d die because of it. If I had known it’d end up like this, would I have left home?
Jack taps his boots against the sleeping earth, filling the air with impatience. All the cards are in my shaky hands, but I’ve got nothing. “This is fucking crazy.” I say it with defeat at the end of my breath.
There’s Jack’s childish look again - like there isn’t anything hard, or difficult, or weird in the world. “You handled the crawlies pretty well. What’s so crazy about this?” Jack points to his mouth area with loose hands, suggesting tentacles.
“Don’t call them crawlies.” Satira sneers at him, and Jack laughs, sticking his chalky tongue out at her.
And for a short, short second they look so human.
I wonder if they take themselves seriously, because I sure as hell do. (Even if I don’t know what they are, or what any of this is). “What the hell are you people?”
“That’s a whole ‘nother topic entirely. I’d worry less about us and more about the people” - he makes air quotations - “who did this to you.” Whenever Jack slicks his hair back, I imagine dry leather passing over wet scales. “Goes without saying, you’ve got a nasty neighbor or two.”
“Well... a few weird guys moved into my complex earlier this month. But everyone is weird on the bad side of town, so I didn’t really think about it.”
“Well, ya should be thinkin’ about it. You live on the bad side of town…frankly, people on the good side of town should be thinkin’ about it, too.” Shocking that this awful reptile of a man, with stained hair and tobacco for fingers, can say something so honest, and be almost endearing at the same time.
Satira hasn’t spoken for a while, so I look over at her right as she moves her dark hair behind her ears. That’s when I notice her hands are tattooed in every way - even her palms - crossed and crissed with ink darker than her hair.
I feel the air tighten because there doesn’t seem to be much else to talk about. They’ve gotten past the lecture and now they’re going down a list of punishments: grounding for six weeks, getting your phone taken away, a tight curfew...
Except - obviously - this is much, much worse.
“Is giving you my uterus really that simple?” My sentence comes after a wary exhale.
“Eh, more or less.” Jack seems to take a step back to give Satira room. I don’t like the way Satira is eyeing me down, but I like her steps towards me even less.
As the roller-coaster climbs, you hear the clicking of the wheels and somehow your heart is already at the bottom of the drop. But you’re just a measly human on top of a giant machine and there’s nothing you can do about it now.
My breaths are short and broken. “How do I give it to you?”
“You don’t.” As she throws me for a loop, I can’t help but think she is every beautiful, dangerous thing.
A scorpion in the sand. A snake in the shed. A shark in the shallows.
When she speaks, it sounds like a snarl. “I take it.”
In the second that she walks through me, I only feel a sharp stillness. By then, I am already floating in the seat of the coaster, and the only thing grounding me is its belt.
But Satira is the belt pulling through me and ripping out my deepest, bloodiest secret.
I feel myself getting sick.
The force of her pull is the roller-coaster coming to a stop. You buckle forward in your seat a little as you come back down and try to catch your breath.
Like an apple being pulled from a tree: first I feel her uncertain grip, followed by a firm, sure pluck.
I feel my uterus leaving me through my spine and my knees buckle with a roaring ache.
As I choke and fall to the ground, Jack catches me by the arm. Like a practiced nurse or a seasoned veteran with a stiff upper lip (still holding a smoke), he gently lays me onto the forest floor.
She feels like a settling whirlwind. “The child won't return… but it'll hurt for a while.” Her voice is unable to contain the excitement of a predator catching its kill.
I see the twinkles in her eyes and suddenly, I am filled with anger and irritation.
I can only think to say one thing through gritted teeth. “Goddamn you.”
If they were twinkles before, they’re fireworks now, and I swear I can feel her grinning with fanged teeth.
“Now for her second problem...” Jack, still crouching down beside me, like a vulture whose head is ironically cocked in pity, takes the pulpy mess from Satira’s hands.
Bringing it close to my face, he speaks slowly, like a nurse administering something strong. “Your neighbors are going to come looking for you. But I’ll let you in on a lil’ secret…” He picks off loose tissue from the uterus, like he’s examining a melon at the market. “If you eat this, you’ll be able to stop them.”
He pauses, then extends his hands to me - offering it. “That is to say, you’ll absorb whatever magic they had brewin’ in here. But if ya do, you won’t be human anymore.”
The knowing way Jack glances at Satira as he utters the word human makes me wonder what they’ve done to become what they are - and for an instant I am filled with disgust and regret.
I take a moment to mourn the children I’ll never have, the home I fled, the tattoos I got for free, the bad side of town, the alcohol and the eager sex. I play back the delicate memories I was sure I’d forgotten, and the regret is an anchor pulling me down to a death I might accept.
I didn't think I'd be so melodramatic at the end.
But as I peer up at them - maybe it’s the endorphins, maybe it’s the adrenaline, maybe it’s just what I needed to see - they look like giants.
Monoliths. Crooked but enduring, crumbling but heavy-handed. Unmistakable, and unwavering in the moonlight.
And then I know. Human isn’t even what I want to be.
I croak out the shortest words I can find. “Will it stop the pain?”
“Nothing can stop the kind of pain you're in.” She isn’t much taller than Jack when he crouches, but with the way she looks down at me, I feel like she’s at the top of an ivory tower, covered in my blood.
Why do I take that as a challenge?
My hands should be holding my stomach in agony, but they’re reaching for Jack’s hands.
As I take my first bite, I feel my body lurch.
Everything tastes like pennies - the oldest, dirtiest pennies in your grandma’s copper tin. My throat crowds as I drown in its thickness. The tissue - rubbery - eludes my teeth, but I madly bite away. A rabid dog on the calf of its old caretaker.
But I am not the only one who needs to eat tonight.
The bugs of the forest floor swarm towards me. I want to swat them away, I want to cry, I want to sleep; but with each gulp, something in me grows hungry.
With every bite I take, I feel one million tiny ones nipping at my arms and my shins. The sounds of puny flapping wings and raw meat being torn apart would make anyone sick. But Satira and Jack don’t notice at all. They aren’t even looking at me - just talking, like old friends over cups of coffee. Like lions who live among the skeletons of their past kills.
My sloppy gorging reminds me of starving pigs feasting from a grimy trough. As though I’m racing the bugs to the end of a miserable game, I bite down harder after every new gulp. My blood is mixing with my tears, and running down my arms and legs, like saliva from a rottweiler’s mouth.
Finally, I collapse into an unrecognizable heap, the shock and fatigue catching up to me.
Satira and Jack begin to fade like a vignette. Their hands drip crimson and he takes a pull from the dimmest cigarette, like he's blowing on a star.
Everything is just a sensation now - noises and smells. I can barely stay awake.
“So, d’you reckon we destroyed a destiny or forged a fate tonight?” Smoke.
“The former. Forging fates cost a lot more than simple wombs.” Bells.
Their voices echo from the end of a shaft that seems very, very long.
I cannot feel anything but the bugs becoming another layer of skin.
I try to ask for help, but no words come out - only the sound of someone drowning.
Like wolves who have learned mercy, they finally look down at my pleading stare.
Of course, it is Jack who speaks first. “Can’t leave ‘er here… the bugs’ll get ’er.”
Her eyes are the eyes of a living tomb, and she is boring holes into me as I beg for a kind answer.
I can hear her amusement. “I know. Not even I’m that awful.”
A hazy laugh. “Coulda fooled me.”
As invisible wires lift me up from the skeleton of a forming hive, I hear her abysmal voice - “Shall we?” - and I am filled with a numbing gratitude.
Then, all I see is dark, dark black, like the rolling sea on a moonless night.
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