This space feels barren with frigid ivory tiles that masks it’s walls. There at the centermost point, a tub; whose talons pierce the floor. Inside there is water like silence spilling over. Kerry sinks. Her breaths wander. Her hair hangs like dark veils, arms binding thighs to breast. Her eyes fixed below the surface, glimpsing his skin graze her own and mirrored atop the water, his pale features. Distant sobs begin to leak through the walls; humming like a fly that circles too close. Anxiety slithers from her memories as her lips fall just beneath the darkness. Chris waits, his shoulders braced by the cold porcelain, legs spread the length of the tub, arms resting on its rim. He too hears these sobs and as they expand, he sees how Kerry’s presence fades away. So he reaches for her, the way that a student daydreams from a window, with a gaze. “Kerry?” he speaks, “Kerry” but his voice tapers into silence. Chris bows his shoulders into the stillness that separates them and stretches his palms forward, gliding his fingers between the seams of her knees, her legs now bound by his hands, he draws her near. Kerry feels his damp palms, flesh with her waist, how his fingers press against the small of her back, dragging her forward until his pressure can be felt beneath. But these sobs, their echos seem endless, like waves with no shore. Her arms to fall to her side and her head fall on his chest. Kerry shifts her eyes towards him, searching for fragments of long lost affection, but his intent has already begun to drift. Amidst these sobs, Kerry tempts him to forget. She lifts her palms from the dark waters, it streams from the tips of her fingers as she begins to caress remnants of worry from his chin, his cheeks; each gentle touch spinning satin webs conceived in greed. Kerry ascends and the waters spill down her auburn breasts. She stares down the barrels of Chris’s eyes as her arms coil around his neck and her lips, suspend the taste of sin. Cradling his face, she thrusts her mouth to his, her movements throbbing in a wicked cadence. She pulls away, baiting him to follow, her gaze never departs his. A reckless smirk spreads across Kerry’s face. She dips her hand into the deep and wraps her fingers around his desire, mounting him, consuming him deeper within her darkness. Her eyes look possessed, she fiercely pounds her hips, the untamed sound of skin clapping against skin against water; sharp gasps for air. Chris surrenders to the haste at which she unravels; he mirrors her performance. He slides his hand up her back. The pressure of his palms on her shoulders relentlessly lift and drag her body down to receive his stroke. Kerry sinks her nails into him, her webs raise welts across his skin and the the water begins to swish back and forth like a pendulum. A splitting pain. It courses up Kerry’s inner thighs and tears through a wound stitched together like tally marks; counting each moment that came after her child’s birth. From it, scarlet suffering begins to seep within the waters, spilling, it slaps against the silence. And the porcelain, stains. The crimson waves settle into a haunting sway, its secrets tremble just below its surface. A whisper sever the quiet,“You did it didn’t you?” Kerry crooks her body forward until they are close enough to share breath. Clasping Chris’s face within her hands, her eyes become wide and eager, “or did I, did I do it?” she whispers. She begins to nod over and over as if her words are certain, her voice follows hushed and absolute, “You did.” it swallows the room, Eerie, like calm winds before a storm. Chris’s voice sinks to the graves of his gut, his body now anchored to the wine stained water. His senses snatched between seduction and chaos. His mind sift the room for hints of clarity instead, his eyes find Kerry as her next words drip from her tongue like venom. “You killed her didn’t you?” Her voice sear like bullets through Chris’s chest, shattering his lustful illusions, replacing them with dread. Chris grabs both of Kerry’s arms, stern, he waits until their eyes connect before slinging his words through clenched teeth, “what are you talking about?!” Kerry rips her arms from his grip and launches towards him her palms shoving his shoulder back to the cold porcelain. Her eyes become vast with madness, she spits her words at Chris like old tobacco, “Don't act like you’ve never thought about it Chris!” He thrusts her body away from his. Her body moves through the water to end of the tub, and the red waters topple over its rim. He sits with his hands clenching the sides of the tub, his body stiff, he remembers the sobs. His eyes begin to study room, its canvas, smeared in red watercolored grief; the sight suffocating. His heart hammers, vibrating the walls of his chest. Chris heaves himself from the tub, his legs stammering over its edges. The water falls from his body and squeals under his feet. His eyes searching for the grey sweats that lay crumpled just inside the door. He snatches them and begins to pry them up, but they cling to his damp skin, each yank becoming more frantic. Worry grows within each moment, and each moment lasts. He swings the door open to leave but wavers, just long enough for one more glance. Kerry sits unmoved inside her tomb of silence, her body sunken into the water, beneath her dark veils, her eyes. Empty. Chris stumbles into a hallway with dark wooden floors and eggshell walls; and before him, a mahogany stairwell. He runs, each loud thump traveling up its structure. At the top, he turns into the first entrance and everything halts. This nursery, nearly hollow, painted pale yellow, a small white drawer decored in nothing, no pictures, no toys, and centered in front of him against the a wall, a small white crib. Inside, a child. Her tiny hands cling to the rail, honey skin, raven feathered hair, her deep brown eyes fall on him like sunlight, a small smile, trailed by innocent sounds of babble. Chris rushes to her side and pulls her from the crib. He wraps her close to his chest, mimicking a soothing sway that came too turbulent as his heart beats frantic and his breaths quickly move about her hair. From the corner of his senses, Chris feels Kerry. She hovers just outside the door, he turns to face her. She enters, just inside, with a ghostly poise. Her arms folded closed, the sound of her footprints lost; as if her feet never touch the floor. Cloaked in a slate bathrobe her hair dangles, dripping wet. Kerry watches with an air of malice as Chris clings to their child. She takes a step forward and he in return, shivers a few steps back and so she leaves her words, her ways, her reasons, unspoken. Kerry leans her weight against the doorframe and lowers her eyes below the shadow of her hair; and there she waits. She watches, unchanged, as Chris slowly begin to cross the room. She watches his eyes fixate on her but reflected fear. How he draws the child closer to his chest as each step shears away the void that separate them. She waits until Chris is at his nearest, until half his body is fleeing and the other half stuck inside door. Her voice hushed, controlled, final. “sometimes, I would take my thumbs and push her eyes in…” she stops, and her last relics of remorse hover in that little space, ”...but never enough to hurt her.” The End. -This space feels barren, inside there is water like silence spilling over- Special Thanks: Editors:
Mary Kitchen-Neal Raegene Riggs Vivicia Outlaw
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