Page 75 of Mortdale

“You’re back,” she quietly said, shutting the door and standing against it for a moment.

I stood. “What’s wrong?”

She’d fainted twice on me since we’d met, and we hadn’t met that damn long ago. My grandmother had whisked together some ridiculous witch ailment that made no sense whatsoever, and my wife wasn’t being that forthcoming either about her quick recovery. Not only was I failing to keep her from diving head first into the most dangerous situation she could find herself in, I was absurdly out of my depth on how to help her feel better.

“Can’t sleep,” she said, dropping on one of the two chairs on the other side of my work desk. She grabbed a cigarette from the box on the table, bringing it to her lips as she patted her hands over the scattered documents for the lighter. “And your Piper keeps hogging the covers. She also insists on sleeping with Thomas between us and I can’t remember when I even gave a bath to that thing.”

Her round, warm attention lifted to me when I reached to light it.

“You smoke now?”

“Nope,” she said, coughing as proof. “But I like how the smoke smells. It smells like you.” She blew a cloud of smoke, fanning it away with her hand. “Why did you meet with Agnes that day?” Resting her feet on my table, she cocked her head in my direction. “I could smell you there, in her study.” Her bottom lip slid between her teeth. “The air smelled like a wet forest and burnt cloves. What did you two talk about?”

Her nightgown had pulled back to her knees, and I reached to grab the end and pull it back down over her legs.

Saints.

“You,” I said, filling her a glass of whiskey.

“Me?”

“I wanted to know about my bride. Make sure she wasn't some psychopathic murderer.”

“I could be.”

“I’d be very impressed.”

“Hey!” she coughed. “I can do anything when I put my mind to it.”

“Why choose occult pathology out of all the things you could do?”

She studied her hand, tracing the length of her fingers. “I have always been a little obsessed with the human body. The complexity. The fragility. The resilience of our anatomy down to the most microscopic level. The first time I held an anatomy book, I was thirteen. Curious to understand what happened to us when we died. My faith only gave me vague answers. Science was concrete. I needed something concrete in my life. Something certain.” Her chest rose faster, eyes staring lost in the distance. “You should have seen me back then.” A small, longing smile played on her lips. “Studying it for years in books like a glutton that could just never fill up. And then I saw an autopsy up-close for the first time—it was an unexplainable high. My scope of the world just expanded from there. It became infinite.”

“So, you’re curious by nature.”

Her attention drifted off in the distance again, and it might have been the furthest she had gone from me since we had met. “It was my nature that made me curious. Why I am the way that I am; I’ve always wanted to understand it. At first because I couldn’t accept it. In truth, I’ve pulled my body apart so many times over the years. I am the slowest-rotting corpse I’ve autopsied.” And like that, her attention returned back into the room, meeting mine. “We all want to know ourselves,” she lightly said, wiping away a tear that had settled on her cheek. “Have you never not wanted to tear your chest apart and hold your heart in your hands just to see how it beats?”

“The less I know about myself, the easier it is to live with myself.” The things I’d done, said, been to become who I was today; they all left a mark inside us. If I opened my stomach up, would I see rot there? Maggots already infesting my heart?

She got up and waltzed to my side. The proximity was suffocating. There was nothing else I saw when she was in my vicinity. It was hard to pay attention to anything else, which made her the most dangerous thing to be around.

The soft smell of jasmine and violet entered my lungs when she pressed her ear to my chest.

“I think I can hear the ocean,” she whispered. “Like harsh waves crashing against rock.” She pulled away, and I mourned the loss of warmth against my chest. “And if I close my eyes,” she said, drawing them shut. “I can smell the forest. I can feel the sun on my fingers, streaks of light peeking through the pine trees.” Her lips pulled in a soft smile as she reached to brush her palm softly against my hair. “At the very end, there’s a meadow and it is summer, and the tall grass is pale and soft.” Leaning in, she pressed her face against my neck. Electricity slipped through every nerve in my body when she inhaled and then exhaled over my skin. “In the middle of it, a warm cabin smelling of dry cloves.” Her lips rested softly against my neck in a gentle kiss. “A burning fireside glowing against my skin. Closer and closer until I can feel my eyelashes burning, my nails aching from the heat.”

Saints.

She pulled back, her long pale hair falling against my chest. The smell of jasmine was heavy; torturous. And the creamy notes of violet that had blended on her skin were warm; so warm.

Bracing a hand on my chair, she ran a finger down my chest, stopping over my heart. Her head tilted to the side, her eyes widening just a little as she smiled to herself.

“Thinking about cutting me open?”

Her eyes rose to mine, and her smile fell immediately. “Only if you were dead. Which you aren’t.”

I had to bite down on my tongue not to laugh. “I hate how often I disappoint you.”

“It’s alright. I’ll spend some of your money to make myself feel better.”