Between Her Lips

THE TOWNSFOLK LEFT JUST ENOUGH of Catherine for Emma to consume.

Emma’s tired, shaking hands hold her swollen belly as the water washes over her. The creek is a balm against the burn blisters scoring the bottoms of her feet. Her body is so heavy, so full with Catherine. She can feel her lover beneath her skin, settled in the grip of her womb.

A cramp rips through Emma’s pelvis, like a fist buried deep in her guts, twisting. Her thighs gape open. She lies back, eyes squeezing shut against the hot, fluid pain flooding her body.

Behind shut eyes, she watches Catherine burn.

Body strung to a cross as the townsfolk drop their torches at her feet. Wide, forest green eyes locked on Emma’s. A refusal to look away as the flames begin to lick up her body.

The taste of Catherine’s charred flesh lay thick on Emma’s tongue.

“Catherine,” Emma gasps as pain permeates her pelvis.

Fingers that should be familiar parting the folds of her vulva are too large and misshapen to evoke a pleasurable memory. Reaching out from between Emma’s legs, finding an uneasy purchase in the wet earth of the bank. It begins to pull and Emma feels her womb go with it. A wail escapes her cracked lips.

They meant to burn Catherine to ash for what the pastor’s son thought he saw her do. Careful palms cradling a crushed bird. Its limp, feathered body breaching the soft, warm pit of a woman’s mouth. The life she breathed back into its flesh with her tongue, her saliva. And when she opened her mouth again, the bird flapped against her torn lips.

It was Emma, not Catherine, whose mouth brought life back to the bird. But the pastor’s son saw a woman, and in Eden, any woman fits on the pyre.

The wet sound of skin ripping as Catherine’s forearm comes into view, fingers stretched toward the town of Eden below. Emma is being torn apart—her body bears down, sweaty palms pressing the top of her swollen belly. She’s beyond the pain, beyond her own ruined flesh as Catherine’s form enters the water. The creek around them is as red as Emma’s mouth.

Catherine’s spine curves towards the water, her eyes a perpetual audience to the night sky above. She breathes in deep, watery gasps through distorted lungs. Forest green eyes register Emma as she bleeds in the creek. Her head swings slowly to Emma like her neck is chain-linked. Disconnected from her shoulders.

A twisted arm reaches out, grasping the discarded placenta abandoned between Emma’s thighs. Her misaligned jaw parting to crush it between her teeth. She chews. Swallows. Her body crashes forward.

Catherine’s wet, rubbery mouth rests against Emma’s, her greasy tongue parting Emma’s lips as she exhales into Emma’s throat. It tastes like ash.

Catherine is whole again.

Catherine is perfect.

The townsfolk left just enough of Catherine for Emma to consume.