CW:
violence/gore
The sun had nearly dipped below the horizon and the remaining rays glinted off rows of vegetables, imbuing everything with an orange hue as Emilia hurried past. Her cotton skirts bunched in her fists as she bustled through the field, head lower than the corn stalks to her right. Beyond the field, the town was buttoning up for nightfall. Fishermen hauled their daily catches, the Doctor locked up his herbs and medicines, the Carpenter and Smith would soon close, as would all the rest.
Emilia had slipped from her farmhouse, heading away from town. Her boots sank into the dirt, leaving guilt-laden prints behind.
She squinted against the lowering sun, her wild hair riding the wind, and looked ahead for the telltale signs of Leylah. Leylah, with her auburn hair twisted in a thick braid over one shoulder. Leylah, with her linen pants, her collared button-up, a length of oak in one hand and a whittling knife poking from her pocket. Emilia envisioned her, peeking out through the trees, waiting.
She picked up her pace, heart thrumming.
“Do you see?” Leylah asked, squatting down in the soil. She lifted her hands, rough-skinned and calloused, and let tendrils of rotted leaves hang between her fingers.
Leylah was not hidden within the forest, as Emilia had anticipated, but waiting on the edge of the field. Around her stretched a swath of spoiled vegetation, darkened and slimy, crawling with worms and beetles. The scent wafting from the mess was putrid, and for a moment, Emilia stopped breathing. Not for the smell, but for the way her eyes roved across the spoiled crops and felt a tug deep within her core.
“What’s happened?” She placed a shaking hand on her abdomen and released her breath. Her parents would be furious, but how was she to tell them? They would want to know why she was so far out in their fields. How she had come across the mess. Why she didn’t do anything to fix it.
Leylah met her worried gaze with wild eyes. Brushing the muck off her skin, she rose to her feet and closed the distance between them. With her clean hand, Leylah reached out and slipped a lock of Emilia’s hair behind her ear.
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
“You don’t think…”
Leylah’s tawny eyes clouded with darkness. A frown pulled her lips down, bringing Emilia’s attention to them.
“I do not know,” she repeated, though Emilia heard what Leylah had left unsaid. But it is likely.
“Come,” Emilia said. “Before we’re found.”
She tugged Leylah toward the woods, away from the shame of her rotting harvest. Leylah resisted only a moment before relenting, allowing herself to be dragged past the field to the trees. Barely beneath the hulking shadows, Emilia turned to Leylah and pulled her closer. She slipped a hand around her waist and threaded fingers through the twining braid, guiding her until their lips met. Leylah melted into Emilia, the rot momentarily forgotten as their breaths became one, their skin warmed flush despite the absent sun. Emilia kissed her favorite spot, the soft underside of Leylah’s arm.
Leylah stiffened and placed both her palms against Emilia’s shoulders. She leaned away, searching Emilia’s face. The pert nose she often stopped herself from biting, the sun-kissed bridge of freckles above it spanning across both cheeks and smattered up beyond her brows. Leylah sighed and pulled further away, shaking her head, her unraveled braid tickling her face.
“The day is almost upon us.” Leylah’s heart weighed heavy within her chest, threatening to crack her ribcage.
Emilia stomped her foot. “Please, Ley. We’ll find a way out of it, I have promised you.”
“And yet,” Leylah said, lowering her gaze to Emilia’s rumpled skirts. “There are no plans. There is only this, forever and more.” She gestured beyond the trees to the field. “And soon, it will spread.”
Emilia huffed and turned away, crossing her arms over her chest. Tears rimmed her eyes, though from anger or sadness, she couldn’t say.
Leylah was beside her, an arm snaking around Emilia’s back. She leaned in and kissed Emilia’s shoulder, then the crook of her neck, then the divot between her jaw and cheekbone.
“Many apologies,” Leylah breathed against Emilia’s skin. “I believe you wouldn’t break your oath to me.”
Emilia sniffed and turned her cheek further away, though she leaned into Leylah’s touch.
“I must go,” she murmured. “Before they question my absence.”
“Tomorrow?” Leylah asked, backing up, arm outstretched until only their fingertips touched. Emilia nodded once, then followed Leylah out from the trees. Leylah headed toward town, to the small cottage she called home. Emilia watched her fade into the night before turning, dropping to her knees, running her hands over the wilted harvest. She could feel the decay, the death, like needles in her veins. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks, spilling their iridescent sheen across the rot.
Even her tears did nothing to help.
Emilia swept into her family’s farmhouse with the hem of her skirt rolled up, bunched safely against her hips.
“Where, pray tell, have you been?” Her father’s face was red with drink, his eyes swimming in his skull. His words came slurred, yet harbored a coldness that would have set a younger Emilia trembling. But she was learned, and she had prepared.
“Collecting, Father.” She unfurled her skirt and let vegetables roll across the table surface. Potatoes, onions, bright yellow summer squash. Soil clung to them, releasing an earthy scent in the small room. She plucked a rough potato from the spoils and turned toward the water basin. “We’ll have hash tonight.”
“Your matrimony has been hastened,” her father said suddenly, stopping Emilia in her tracks. Fire danced in her eyes, and she was grateful her back was to the man who had raised her for slaughter. She dipped the potato into the water and scrubbed it with her bare hands, trying to tunnel all her swirling rage into action.
When she stood, gathering a knife and trying not to catch her father’s eye, he barked, “You’ve nothing to say?”
“Only that I would like to refuse.” The words tumbled out before she could scoop them back in and swallow them whole. She had pressed the knife tip to the raw potato as she spoke, and when her father slammed his hand on the table and bellowed, Emilia slipped and the blade kissed her skin.
“Now look what you’ve done.” Her father clambered unsteadily to his feet and clutched her wrist in his bearlike hands. A trickle of the liquid within her, shimmering with the fire from the oven, slid down her palm and dripped onto the table. She watched as the puddle of iridescence soaked into the wood, and from it sprouted a stalk the same shining color as her blood. As the stalk shifted to green, Emilia’s father tugged her hand to him. Eyes on the growing plant, Emilia tried to stand still as her father lapped up the trail of her blood, running his tongue along her wrist, across the curve of her palm, until he took her injured finger into his mouth and sucked it clean.
When he released her arm, the red of his nose and cheeks had faded to a healthy pink. He spoke, his words crisp and steady. “Be careful, girl. Don’t squander your gift in error.”
Emilia returned to the potato. As she lowered the blade, the sprouting stalk reached for her. Quickly, it wrapped around her wrist, tightening; a reminder that her blood was not a gift. It was imprisonment.
The Mayor paced his parlor, chest tight, head throbbing.
“Where is she?” he snarled to the serving girl, tea tray lofted in her hands.
“I—I don’t know,” she stammered before setting the tray down and upturning the kettle into a teacup. Before it filled to spilling, she set the kettle down and uncorked the vial beside it. With a practiced hand, the girl spilled exactly three drops into the tea. Its amber hue swirled with pearl-like luster as she offered it to the Mayor.
“Sir?” A knock cut the Mayor’s first gulp off and he spluttered, coughing onto the back of his hand.
“Yes, yes, in with you,” he said, setting his tea down. With only a sip, his headache subsided and his chest loosened. But then he thought again of the rotten fish the Fisherman had shown him earlier this eve, the parasite darting from an eye socket, the rippling beneath its scales. When he requested the Fisherman gut it, then and there, fetid, oily liquid pooled out in place of its shine. The Mayor had blanched. The headache crept from the base of his skull then, and he sent the Fisherman away, only for the Carpenter to arrive in his wake. He held a piece of timber between his hands, and without words, crushed it to ash. The Mayor watched, tongue held, and remained stoic as he sent the Carpenter away.
Now, as the door to the Mayor’s parlor yawned wide, the Deputy he had sent after the girl stepped through.
“Have you brought—”
A young woman stumbled through the doorway as though on a leash. Her pants were sullied with dirt at the knees, and she fell to them, head bent, refusing to lift her gaze.
The Mayor approached slowly after retrieving his tea. Bending his knees, he lowered to the woman’s level, sipping noisily. A lightness rushed through him, a giddiness. He could feel the shift within him, cells multiplying, skin pulling taught, hair growing longer. When the last dregs slipped down his throat, the Mayor threw the cup against the wall. It shattered, shards tinkling to the floor. The woman before him jolted with shock, whimpering.
The Mayor wrapped her braid in his fist and tugged down her spine, wrenching her neck back. Her hair fell away from her face, revealing tawny eyes flecked with iridescence. He found defiance in her glare and a smirk pulled at his lips.
So it was true.
But it could be rectified.
“Close the door behind you, Deputy,” the Mayor cooed.
The deputy was only a few paces beyond when the screaming began.
Emilia was not as prepared as she had believed herself to be. She thought she had more time, until the full moon, but the night ahead held only a new moon. A bad omen. Her heart pumped steadily, though she willed it to slow. To stop all together. She spoke not to her mother, who wrapped her in silks, binding her loosely so as not to restrict her circulation. Emilia’s hair was gathered at the base of her neck, woven with the flower grown overnight in their kitchen.
Together, they met Emilia’s father at the door. He stood with his forehead against the grain, mumbling. A bead of sweat dripped down his temple. Emilia watched it splash to the floor, clear and plain, leaving no trace behind but a darkened fleck on the wood.
“I fear it may be too late.” He turned bloodshot eyes on Emilia, his teeth bared. “For what you’ve done.”
Emilia staggered at the ferocity in his words, stumbling into her mother. Soft hands found her back and held her in place as her father ripped the door open and thrust a hand toward their property. Silently, Emilia and her mother padded to the threshold. Emilia’s mouth dropped open. Behind her, her mother sank to the floor with a strangled cry which blew through Emilia like a torch.
Before them, the spoil spread. A quarter of their yield laid ruinous, blackened and emitting a stench not unlike the foulest bog within the woods.
“I ask once more,” her father seethed, breath hot against her ear. “Where have you been?”
In the woods, with Leylah. With Leylah. Leylah.
Emilia ran. Barefooted, she sprinted across the muck, the squelching rot beneath her feet burning with every footfall. Her matrimonial dress billowed about her, sticking to her skin where a sheen of sweat formed. The flower unfurled from her hair and fell, landing among fallen stalks, curling, blackened, into itself. She ran until she reached town, until the Mayor’s mansion loomed ahead. A procession waited outside its doors, dressed for a wedding but surrounded by decay. Wood laden with rot, fish thick with bloat, bottles of drink upended, glugging rancid sludge from jagged necks.
The eyes of the town turned to her.
“Ah, here she is. My bride to be.”
The Mayor stood in the entrance to his quarters. A crown rested above his head, gleaming with opalescent gems. Not gems, Emilia knew, but the blood of her predecessor, encapsulated. The life of the community. The honor it was to bestow it, this magical, incandescent blood.
Emilia had never wanted it.
She scanned the crowd, in search of Leylah, as they closed in around her. Preventing her exit. Knowing what it would mean for them, their spoiled wares crushed beneath their boots, if she were to flee. Panic grew wings in Emilia’s stomach, rose up her gorge.
“Where is she?”
The Mayor only smiled. Beneath his eye, a scratch. A marring. Emilia knew immediately the tool that had left the mark: a whittling knife. The wings of alarm beat heavily, taking flight as the Mayor stepped aside, waving Emilia forward. Into the darkness. Toward her fate.
The crowd behind Emilia ushered her over the threshold and into shadow. She twisted, dug her blistered feet into the floor, cried out, but they pressed and pressed as the Mayor led them onward.
With every breath Emilia took, she exhaled the same question.
“Where is she?”
Led to the dais against her will, too many hands pushing and pulling.
“Where is she?”
The room filled and everyone joined in a grating hum, low and single-toned. The ceremony begun.
“Where is she?”
Emilia refused to cry, would not shed a drop of herself, knowing it would appease him. As her predecessor was rolled before her, propped in a wheelchair between herself and the Mayor, Emilia screamed, “Where is she?”
“You must speak your vows or speak not at all,” the Mayor snapped. He cast a look out into the crowd and found his target, who stepped forward, ready.
“WHERE IS SHE?” Emilia howled. The Fisherman and Carpenter approached, wrapping Emilia against herself, pinning her arms in place. From between them emerged the Seamstress, a thick needle and thread held aloft. Emilia threw her weight against the men but the men held her still, stiff, as the Seamstress went to work. A moan erupted from Emilia’s throat that couldn’t break free as her lips were sewn together. She held her tears at bay as blood pilled and then slid down her chin. The Fisherman and Carpenter leaned forward, licking the trails from her salted skin. Their strength intensified, squeezing the breath from her lungs.
When the Seamstress finished, she pressed a kiss to Emilia’s mouth and came away glistening with Emilia’s blood on her lips. Her tongue darted out, tasting, grinning, before she returned to the crowd. The men stayed in place as the ceremony began in true.
The hollowed husk of the Mayor’s former wife took in a shuddering breath, nothing but bone rattling on bone, knowing it was her last. The Mayor drew his blade across her throat and Emilia’s eyes widened. She would have gasped, were it not for her stitched mouth. Only a thin line glowed in the wake of the knife. Not enough to spill over. The wife was drained, used, marking the time for Emilia to take the crown.
The Mayor had bled her dry, and he would do the same to Emilia. Worse, and with haste, to save the wreckage she had caused in undermining tradition.
Emilia swayed on her feet, but the Fisherman would not allow her to faint. She could barely hear the Mayor’s vows. Sweat dribbled down her neck, slipping between her shoulder blades. The men on either side of her sniffed like hungry hounds, though they would not dare interfere with the ceremony.
“And unto our bountiful harvest, I ask you to pray to the life blood! Lift your cups, come forth, and celebrate our holy union. Celebrate the coming abundance, the brilliance, the shine! Drink of my wife!”
Dragged to the front of the dais in a daze, the Fisherman lengthened Emilia’s arm before her. The Carpenter coaxed the sleeve of her dress above her elbow. Emilia watched it happen as though it were someone else’s arm before her. When she lifted her gaze to the crowd, to her community, she saw first her parents. They held each other at the back of the gathering, eyes glistening in the light. Then they, too, surged forward.
Rage flooded Emilia, starting in her cheeks and blossoming beneath her skin, flowing through the very veins the Mayor meant to bleed. Across the room, a figure slumped between the Deputy and his consort. Wearing the same clothes Emilia had tugged free only yesterday, now tattered, in ruins. Her head lolled to the side, and a filter of red slid across Emilia’s vision.
Leylah’s mouth had been stitched closed, her hair missing in patches torn from her skull, and where her eyes—oh, her beautiful eyes—had been sat two open wounds, blackened and weeping thick, rotten sludge. It slid down her face, spattering on her clothes and the floor beneath her.
“No!” Emilia tried to scream, though it came free like the whine of a dog. The Mayor blocked her view of Leylah, moving before her, the same knife that had slit her predecessor’s throat now poised above her exposed forearm. With a grin bisecting his face, the Mayor pressed the tip to Emilia’s soft, yielding skin.
She thought not of the sun on her skin, not of the flecks of iridescence marring tawny-colored eyes, not of ripe, luminous harvest, not of the dirt beneath her fingers or the press of warm lips of the woman she loved against her own.
She thought, instead, of death, decay, decimation. She thought of revenge. Her body filled with it, inch by inch, the lightness with which she existed eradicating, shifting into darkness.
The knifepoint pierced her skin and the smile faded from the Mayor’s face. The Fisherman gasped. Putrid rot reached Emilia’s nose before she lowered her face.
Her arm wept blood thick as mud, the color of midnight. She willed it to erupt, and it grew from a trickle to a fountain, spraying the Mayor in the face. He screamed and staggered back, clutching at his skin, clawing at his own eyes. The crowd shifted away, an awe falling over them. The Fisherman and Carpenter writhed on the ground, on either side of Emilia, and as a smile pulled at Emilia’s lips, the thread snapped, tearing flesh. Rivulets of rot seeped out. When she smiled at her audience, rapt with attention, her teeth were black with the spoilage.
Gathering her dress, Emilia bent and retrieved the opal-hilted knife.
The crowd parted in fear, clutching each other, clearing a path to Leylah. Emilia stepped lightly, unburdened, and crossed the room. In her wake, a steaming trail remained, eating through flesh and floorboard alike.
The Deputy and his companion fled screaming as Emilia approached. Leylah pitched forward, falling into Emilia’s arms. She cradled Leylah, running her thumb through the mess across her cheeks. Emilia put her thumb in her mouth and sucked, tasting divinity.
Cautiously, while the town wailed in fear and anguish around her, Emilia slid the knife against Leylah’s arm.
She turned to the crowd, Leylah slumped against her side, and declared, “Celebrate the coming destruction! The ruins! The plague!”
Cackling, she pressed her slitted arm against Leylah’s and felt the blood transfer between them. Leylah stirred in her arms, released a soft groan. Emilia grinned, reaching up to unbind her hair. It fell in cascades down her back and Leylah’s fingers twitched, tangling in its ends.
“I drink of my wife!”
Emilia lowered her head, lifted Leylah’s arm to her lips, and kissed the soft flesh where it parted, oozing blood. Leylah’s blood slid down her throat, velvet and rich, and when Emilia pulled away, Leylah looked at her with black-hole eyes. Emilia slid the blade across Leylah’s mouth, parting the seams, and the freed lips rose in a smile.
They entered the town square arm in arm. The bricks and boards crumbled and sagged around them as they passed. Leylah squeezed her hand, whispered, “You kept your oath.”
“To you.”
“To me,” Leylah agreed. “Your wife.”
Blood, pooling between their intertwined hands, dripped in a trail like breadcrumbs as they left the town in ruins behind.
K.A. Roy (she/her) is a queer writer haunting the suburbs of Chicago alongside her family and three cats. Her stories have been featured at From Beyond Press, Shotgun Honey, Creepy Podcast, Malarkey Books, and more. Her work has been shortlisted for Brave New Weird through Tenebrous Press. She is an associate editor at Haven Spec. She is represented by Eric Smith at Neighborhood Literary. Find her at kayleighroywrites.com
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