Sample

from my upcoming collection of short stories, The Book of the Beast and Other Fractured Fairytales

 

You notice it in the shower, which is where we most often notice strange things about our bodies.

It doesn’t trouble you at first. You find it with your finger when soaping up your back—trying to, anyway, wondering as usual why evolution hasn’t elongated human arms over time to finally enable us to wash our backs by ourselves—and you dismiss it as a scab or one of your many little moles. Anastasios appreciates your moles and freckles. He likes to trace their patterns along your arms and shoulder blades, saying they’re like constellations before he kisses them tenderly and tucks you into his arms.

You forget about it by the time you step out of the shower. And, typically, you don’t think about it again—until the next morning, of course, when you find yourself again in the shower, soaping up your back.

This time you pay a little more attention, craning your neck to get a look. You feel it above your tan line. There’s a speck of flesh there that feels different from the rest, no bigger than your pinky’s fingernail. Rough around the edges, smooth at its center. Maybe you nicked your back while swimming between the island’s many inlets.

You’re lucky. No bruising, no blood. Nothing to see here, really.

You go about your day as usual, filling your satchel with books and locking the door (habit, not necessity) of the tiny rental house, stepping out into the clear morning. There’s a sky so blue you could drink it and a sea so pure you could inhale it. The cobblestone path leads you through a labyrinth of whitewashed walls, the blinding concrete punctuated by earthen pots brimming with rosy-red bugambilias and aromatic basil. Occasional breaks between the buildings reveal the postcard-perfect backdrop below and beyond the island’s elevated town: golden grasses, rocky soil, rugged olive groves, a picturesque harbor brimming with colorful boats, and beyond them all the endless blue-green calm of the Ionian.

The school term will be over soon. The island has few permanent inhabitants, even fewer children. The first batch of tourists will arrive and soon the island will be swarming with them. Though you can’t begrudge them— you know the island depends on tourism to survive—a crowded island doesn’t appeal to you. You’ve grown accustomed to the quiet. Land feels less tarnished when trampled by fewer feet.

You go to the little stone-walled school, you introduce your handful of students to a simplified overview of Homer’s poetry, and you head back home, stopping along the way for a coffee with a friend, before returning to Anastasios’s arms, strong and tanned and just possessive enough, and you feel like an islander.

But feeling is not being.

At first, Anastasios is amused. You’ve cultivated an aversion to meat, shaking your head and barely restraining yourself from vomiting when you sample your former favorites—souvlaki, gyro, giouvarelakia. You’ve developed a craving for seafood and greens. You seriously believe you could live off mussels and shrimp for the rest of your life. Lucky you live on an island, lucky your man’s a fisherman, lucky he feels flattered that you all but pounced on the octopus he brought home yesterday.

You sliced and diced it, and, before you tossed it into the pot, you secretly ate a few pieces. Raw. Delicious.

The expected heatwaves of early summer have not arrived, but you’re drowning in your own heat bubble. You drink lots of water and rinse your face every time you go near an indoor sink or outdoor spring. Your period— usually regular as clockwork—is considerably late and you’ve taken three home pregnancy tests purchased from the town pharmacy, swearing the pharmacist to secrecy.
You aren’t pregnant.

You don’t sleep well at night. You’ve begun waking up in the bathtub, vaguely remembering walking through the door and turning on the faucet. The water is always cold, even though the nights can get chilly here, but somehow you don’t mind. It’s so relaxing in the water. Occasionally you skip the bed altogether. It feels good, but you sense it isn’t. Otherwise, why make excuses for your lover not to sleep over?
Perhaps a swim would do you good. You only started swimming again recently, here on the island. Before the ferry brought you here, before you met Anastasios, the sea was a roiling beast, a monster with endless gaping maws that consumed ships and human flesh gluttonously. Anastasios showed you otherwise; the sea took yet also gave, nourishing those who knew how to tame it. It took care of its own, secreting life in both deep and shallow pockets. Unlike men, it slaughtered without mind or malice. The frothing seams of wave crests showed a patterned patchwork of life and death, and the sea did not dictate when those seams ripped open and devoured.

This may explain why you’ve been avoiding the beaches. What if a seam rips and you fall through? What if you cannot emerge? What if you don’t want to?

More recently, when you wake up and get dressed and go brush your hair, the face that looks back at you from the mirror is foreign. Your gleaming eyes are black like the bottom of the sea, your face seems longer and more angular, your teeth are sharper. The hand that holds the brush has claws instead of nails. You brush and brush until the color and whiteness returns to your eyes, your face grows rounder, and the claws recede into your fingers.

The first time you saw your reflection like this, you dropped the hairbrush and nearly fled outdoors before you reconsidered it. You haven’t told anyone. You’ve gotten used to it now—there’s something mesmerizing about this other face of yours—but you sense that other people wouldn’t share your tolerance. This eliminates all sleepovers.

Anastasios is worried now. He wonders if there’s someone else. That’s awkward, because everyone knows everyone on such a little island. He thinks you’re hiding something from him.

Aren’t you?