Chapter Text
Lyla’s husband’s arms have always been warm around her. Pushing on her chest and
suffocating her lungs. He scorched her skin and forced her soul to retreat to the cool of her core.
Now the heat was gone.
The cool she savoured surrounded her now. Circling her like wolves, but this didn’t feel like
a threat, more like judgment. Deciding on whether to make her welcome or tear her apart.
The wind picked up around her, howling. She drew her arms to her chest, feeling the fear
grow and attempting to conceal it from the judgmental winds. Gravel crunched under her
bare feet as she stepped backwards. It wasn’t painful like the unpaved roads she ran on as
a child were. The stones were smooth and white, similar to river stones. She couldn’t see
anything around her but the same stones stretching to line the horizon. For all she knew, this might be all that existed here. Fear rose in her chest, and she spun on her heels until she spotted something in the distance. A greyish-white dot slowly growing, drawing closer and taking human shape.
She was young, around 16 years old and was remarkably pale; her eyes were sunken and
looked like thay hadn’t opened in a long time. Her hair was long and dark, tangling and
dancing in the wind. Both her arms were drawn up to her chest as if to clutch the pain of a heart attack.
She wore the same white dress that Lyla saw the girls in choir wear every
Sunday. But she wasn’t smiling like they did. She floated close enough for Lyla to touch
her, but she didn’t dare. Blood was dripping down her forearms and pouring off her elbows.
The blood was layered with years of dried and congealed blood, sometimes growing loose
and coming off in chunks.
Her eyes creaked open and she spoke, “I could always feel the maggots crawling in my
chest, infecting my heart, tearing my bones. I was born with them, yearning to break free
and infect you too, but I couldn’t dare let them.” Her cracking voice echoed in the silence.
Lyla fell back, gasping on the ground. She felt guilt surging from her chest, forcing up her
throat to choke her. The girl looked as if she wanted to reach out and touch Lyla, but she
stepped back and watched Lyla. “I have waited a long time for this, murderer.”
Lyla’s face contorted; she had committed no such sin. The girl watched Lyla’s face without
surprise; it looked practised, and familiarity stuttered in her. “It’s a fact of life; some people
get more time than others.”
The blood kept dripping from her wrists as she pulled one hand away from her chest.
Leaving the one remaining to conceal her. Lyla could see something moving behind her
other hand.
“Did you enjoy your time?”
Lyla didn’t know.
She had let children grow from her, feast on her heart, and leave her hollow. To appease
her father, to appease her husband, the fat little pastor and earn the love of an ever-loving god.
She hadn’t enjoyed her time; she had let others enjoy it.
“This was mine, do you remember?” The girl's words ripped her out of her regret.
The girl reached out and cradled her cheek, bringing a soothing finger down her cheekbone.
Her touch felt like running water, the first drops of rain after a long drought of scorching
heat. She traced the scar that had been etched on Lyla’s face so long she could not
remember a time when she did not have it.
“You allowed me to touch it once, and from then on it was mine.”
She drew away and pressed her fingers to her lips, savouring the blood that Lyla did not
even notice was drawn until it covered the girl's tongue. It stained her lips and brought
colour to an otherwise colourless face. She affected Lyla like the moon did the tides, cajoling
her to follow.
“That was a time when these…” She dropped her hands down and revealed a wound
swarming with maggots. “Had a chance to become butterflies.” The blood was dripping into
Lyla’s mouth, filling it with iron. The taste reminded her of all the times she had bled for
others.
The blood has been dripping for years and will continue for eternity.
Others had liked the heat, basking in its rays until their skin blistered and burnt, their
skin peeling like an overripe peach. Lyla hated it, but she allowed herself to burn anyway.
She thought of the blistered finger and sores that arose on her skin, cracking and
bleeding from being made to write with the right hand. It had always felt
unnatural, but no one else squirmed in discomfort or complained. It was what was done. What right did she have to change?
The maggots in the cavity of the girl's chest swarmed faster. Her cheeks sank further;
rotting filled the air. Lyla’s lungs sucked in its sickly-sweet scent. Before, the girl could have passed for malnourished, but now there was no question. The smell blanketed over the
smell of burning sulfur that was burning into Lyla’s retinas, begging her to close her eyes.
She couldn't tear her eyes away from the hollow of the girl. She could hear the maggots
tearing through the decay.
“We could have had this together.”
She plunged her hand past the maggots and lifted her heart free, wet and seething with
larvae. She offered it.
Lyla didn't know what “this” was, but she knew it was being offered to her now. She didn’t
deserve it, but it was. She had rejected it before.
Lyla took her heart and followed her into the endless cool.