Goddess in a Baritone
He said “Goddess” in a baritone, like the word was a syrup, thick and viscous, submerging his tongue and coating his teeth, seeping into the gaps in between and lapping at the mucosal tissue of his gums. The hard lines of the double ds were softened, rounded, and the e ran into both s’s subsequently, tampering with the sibilance and producing a low hum.
The bass string through his letters pulls up, up, up, through his throat, and, though it’s the sounds he is speaking, you can hear the vibrations in the centre of his chest, hollowed out like a crater you might put your foot through. Ankle deep and unshoed, wriggling your toes into indentations, squishy and malleable, like playdough squelching.
The very centre of his chest is an apple core, browning and craggy, with the stalk still attached. You imagine twisting it between your index finger and your thumb, wrapping your other hand around the core and squeezing moisture and pips and softening flesh into the middle of your palm. Discerning the letters of the alphabet as you twist and hoping that you’ll land on a consonant of his, or that your vowel could be the cause of the snap.
Releasing your grip from the stem, with the nails of that hand you latch on to the skin of his chest, digging in and squeezing, perforating the surface with five perfect little crescent shapes, each one swelling with blood as you tighten your hold.
In your other hand the flesh of the core peeks through between the bruising. You look at it for a non-specific amount of time, watching it rise and fall between baritone breaths, as if it were mounted on an axis rather than suspended by bloody strings of mucus inside the cave of his being. You would long to take a bite, if his chest wasn’t already riddled with cavities and tooth marks. Chewed up and apocryphal.
You bend down to peer closer and don’t realise until afterwards that you hadn’t recoiled at the sight of the worms wriggling through the layers of his skin. Making a home by nestling in, burrowing through blood and bone and the blistering of bodily functions.
After taking a deep breath of his you take another, of your own, before leaning in so that your nose is level with his ribcage. You want to run your tongue along each of the lines of bone, tracing the cracks and the dints, tasting the sites of all the broken places now fused back together. And then, to slip in your fingers and break them apart, or else to ease them open like leavers on hinges.
His bones open for you slowly, like a picking claw on one of those arcade games. Once open they stretch like elastic, extending far enough for you to tie them round your own ribs, like ribbon, or like reigns. You feed them through your cage of marrow and wrap them twice, three times around your own organs, fastening them into knots or tying them into bows until you are locked. Whatever it takes, you tell yourself, to secure your bodies in close proximity.
When he is wrapped around you like this, the two of you fastened together by knots he cannot undo, your body inside of his as much as he is inside of yours, it ought to feel invasive to probe. Ought to feel strange to feel his blood seeping into your veins, his lungs suffocating your own under the pressure of their blackened weight. Even as you feel the worms, their heads like little stumps like baby teeth, pressing dents into your skin and squirming through your pores into the sebaceous glands beneath, you allow him to keep your body exactly where it is.
With your hands, now freed from the core of his chest and the rungs of his ribs, you reach through to his pelvis, trying to carve gashes into your forearms with the sharp ridges of his hipbones. You don’t wince at the first nick, nor when you feel the tissue slicing open. As the blood begins to trickle you too feel your body like a liquid, fluid or soluble, beginning to fall down, down, down.
A moment passes. Then another.
With gaze settled on the space behind you, he raises one arm to the space above. He doesn’t clutch at your wrists to stop you from falling, or caress your hair with his free hand. Instead he fingers the wounds that disunite you from him.
With his index finger he is dabbing at the incision, deep now, almost completely through to the other side of your limb. His eyes pierce yours as he brings his hand to his mouth, his index finger to his tongue, and tastes you.
You open your own mouth, eager to receive him, to please him, to taste the syrup dripping slowly from his tongue to yours. But after some time, your mouth remains empty, like the vacant stare of the man you knew, who now stands smiling peacefully above you. Serene. Satiated.
“Mmm”, he smiles, closing his eyes. “Like syrup”.
As he speaks you know, rather than feel, that your insides are beginning to liquidise. Your organs turn to bubbles, iridescent and glistening, fragile enough to float, while your skin is thin like paper. He could burst you or tear you or maybe you’ll collapse at any moment. You are drenched, submerged, and thawing.
He offers you nothing to relieve the sensation.
Eventually, when there is nothing left, you close your eyes to match his. With your mouth still agape, your lips cracked and bleeding, you descend. The last thing you see is his smile as he tilts his head back and transports his gaze upwards, away from the sight of you on your knees before him.
At last, the deity is done. Upon his body you have crucified yourself.
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