Many Waters…Song of Songs
I won’t look. I won’t listen.
Before, I was trying to hear the voices, frightening but so familiar. I didn’t know what to do without them.
But here, alone, in the shower, I don’t have to try. They’re there. The steam around me clouds my vision, and the water pounding on the smooth ceramic echoes in my ears, but it doesn’t matter. Everything seems sharpened, every sense I have. They whisper and mutter and want me to listen.
And in the back of my mind I hear them, but I concentrate on the rhythm of the water hammering on the tiles and ignore them. They aren’t real. They aren’t here. I’m alone.
My hands move over my body, washing away vomit and urine and blood. My arm stings when the hot water streams over the place where I pulled out that tube. Black swirls of water are washing down the drain; I don’t even know what it is that’s making the water so murky. But that’s not what I notice.
It’s like I’ve never touched myself before. It’s like someone else’s hands are washing me, like I’m a child again and someone else is running the washcloth over my stomach and face, cleaning me up, taking care of me.
No. Not like I’m a child.
I don’t know why, but that’s even more frightening.
I lean back against the wall of the shower stall. It’s so glossy and pristine—I’ll bet it hadn’t been used more than a few times before I was assigned to this room, and even with Jubes’ little tirade in the other room and my usual habits it’s immaculate, the maids’ standards of cleanliness around here being what they are. There’s soap, there are fluffy white towels and washcloths, everything I could possibly need.
I duck my head under the water and soak my hair through. When I toss it back, it falls in heavy strands over my shoulders and neck. The water is so hot it doesn’t even feel liquid. It feels like something molten flowing over me. I can feel the water streaming down over my breasts.
I move the washcloth up and run it slowly over that part of me.
For she is dark and yet lovely…
I won’t listen. God, whose voice is that? Not mine.
My hands feel so good there.
It’s been a long time since anything has felt good on this skin. I run my hands over my breasts again and again; I feel my nipples tighten into hard little peaks under my fingers.
So this is what they were warning us against, all those strange lectures they gave the teenagers in Sunday School. They must have known it wouldn’t do any good. This can’t be wrong—or maybe it has to be, because it feels so good. I don’t care which.
I slide my hands lower, gliding over my body, rediscovering the feel of it. In all the time since my mutation manifested, I don’t think I’ve ever let myself do this, never let myself just discover the sensation of my own skin. Or even before. I was scared of its being wrong, being a sin, being evil. I hated my body too much, for all the things it wouldn’t let me do, for all the things it had stolen from me, for all the corrupt and frightening and dangerous things it was and for the way it made other people act.
But it’s mine, and now I want to know it.
My hand slips between my legs, and I feel a thrill go straight through me, starting deep in my belly. I don’t know how I know how to do this, but I press the cloth over myself and begin rubbing softly, in slow circles, and I can feel something rising inside me, something wonderful.
Do not gratify the desire of the flesh.
I gasp, and I want to stop, and I feel sick with remembering that voice. But I can’t stop. I can’t. I won’t look, and I won’t listen, but I can’t stop. I’m the only one here. He can’t hurt me now.
I want to feel. I want to know.
I will not listen. Not to him.
That’s it, darlin’. Let it happen.
I know it’s only me. I know it, but it doesn’t matter. And somehow I’m not scared any more. My breath is coming quick and fast and I feel it building in me, this force that’s part of me but not, and I move my hand faster and the water cascades down over every inch of my oversensitized poison flesh and—
Oh, God.
When I can see again, when I have the ability to think again, I push my streaming hair back from my face and realize the water is mixed with my tears.
I turn off the water and get out of the shower, reach for one of those soft towels. I catch a glimpse of myself in the almost-steamed-over mirror, and then instantly I’m gripped by a wash of emotion so strong it staggers me. It’s so intense I can’t identify half of what it is—I just know it’s not coming from me, because I’ve never felt anything like this. I reach out and grip the cool porcelain of the sink, sending more tactile sensations through my nerves.
Desire. Fear. Loneliness. And surrounding it all, need. Enough need to make my own hollow emptiness fade in comparison.
No. No. Not all that. I can’t.
Church bells.
The memory whips through me, too powerful for me to block. The memory from my painting? That—it meant something to him, something important, I don’t know why. And that seems to break some kind of dam and suddenly I hear him again.
Christ, she’s warm. I’m not moving, it’s his hand I’m sensing, it’s reaching toward—oh, god, toward my own face, chalk-white and smeared with charcoal—
She can’t be gone. She can’t be. It’s pure raw anguish I feel, and I don’t know if it’s mine or his.
I can’t move for a minute; I’m not sure my legs will hold me up if I let go of the sink. But I can’t look into the mirror again. I jerk away and turn, grab one of the towels and try to wrap it around myself, but my hands are shaking too much. I just have to get out of here. I manage to get the door open and stumble out into the other room.
And then there’s a knock at the door.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Reaction redux. Marie takes a step toward--resolution? Anyway, a step forward.