Caribbean Women Writers (Series 2): Romance and Relationships: "Heart String," by Debra Providence

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heart String

 

by

 Debra Providence

 

My lover kisses me, gently, flicking tongue on lips, kisses me. And just like that my chest hurts. Right in the middle it hurts and I feel like I would burst from that pain in the middle of my chest. My lover kisses me, deeply then gently, hurriedly then slowly and with each kiss my chest throbs and it feels as though all of my substance is pressing against that one spot, throbbing and pulling with each tug on my mouth, with each flick of the tongue.

I pull away and look down at myself, and I see it – a tiny patch of red springing between my breasts, a tiny patch of red that is spreading. Slowly, it spreads. I look at my lover and see that he is looking up at the starry night that surrounds us. I see only his throat, the distinct bulge of his Adam’s apple, the tremor of his jugular, the roundness of his shoulders, his long brown arms, the slightly curling hair on his chest. Then I see, in the middle of his abdomen, a spreading red circle with blue and red sinews stretching and forcing their way towards me and my chest, stretching into a thin slimy chord racing towards me. Tiny red and blue vessels burst from my chest and gradually stretch themselves out into a chord to meet his in the middle. His are faster than mine. They reach and trap mine, which have barely left my body. They snugly curl themselves, tendril for tendril, around my loose ends and gradually tighten their grips pulling mine out of me. No longer distinct, sinews from both sides merge into a slender purple chord, floating between my lover and me. The vessels run like tracks to and from each of us along the chord. The pain in my chest gives way to nausea. My lover tears his eyes away from the starry night. He grips the chord slowly. He looks at me and smiles. Then he gently tugs, pulling me into his long brown arms, pressing me into his lean nakedness. He rests his chin in that part of my head where my plaits separate and fall around my face. I feel the chord between us, soft and alive. Pulsing, stretching, and rippling like a very determined worm.

I turn my head for air.  I hear his heart. Its rhythm matches the pulsing of the worm that has now wrapped itself around my thigh. I listen for mine.

*               *                 *                *                *                  *              

My lover sleeps eyes wide. I can tell because his eyes are always on me while I struggle with the worm-like chord that floats between us. His eyes are on me but he does not see. The worm has gotten longer. It circles like a python. Sometimes its lengths pile up like rope coils, forming a wall, a living breathing thing encircling us, cutting us off from the black starry night that surrounds us. Sometimes, the living breathing wall converges on us with purpose, slow and menacing. At those times the air shrinks away from me and something else takes its place. At those times, I labor for breath and feel as though something wills it away from me. At those times, I reach out through the stars and the night to my lover, whose eyes are on me but do not see, and place my fingers on his throat, gently. He wakes and immediately the wall recedes. The coils shudder apart, grudgingly. Air cautiously returns, as though anticipating a second burn from a nameless hostility that has withdrawn for the moment. I sense it still. It watches. It watches while my lover sleeps.

*               *                 *                *                *                  *              

Another chord has sprung from my lover’s abdomen and is reaching off into the dark. I try to follow its pulsing familiarity. It curls and spins its way towards the coils of the worm, disappearing through a space in the wall that seems to be right there waiting for it. I try to follow it and I am jerked back. I press onwards and glimpse this new chord reaching for sinews and tendrils waiting eagerly in the dark. I glimpse this before the space in the wall closes in front of me.

I do not notice, but a section of the wall gathers above my head in a neat little ring and is descending. I try to move, but I am fixed. The ring descends, pulsing and forming itself against my neck, soft at first, then pressing, pressing itself and taking my air. Immobilized, I feel breath leave me and then consciousness.

I wake.

During my tormented sleep my lover has floated over to me and folds me into his chest with his arms. His steady breathing tells me that he is undisturbed by my nightmare. He does not notice that my skin is soaked. I press my hand into his abdomen. There is still only one chord. My dream drains me. Looking up through my lover’s embrace, I see the wall of this giant worm that joins us, floating at a distance, waiting malevolently. Waiting.

*               *                 *                *                *                  *              

 

My lover smiles in his usual way. His smile is simple. His lips curl away from each other. They bare all of his teeth. His teeth are much brighter than mine. I see them when he grabs the worm, which has grown quite long between us, and pulls me in. It hurts when he does this, like having stitches ripped from a still fresh wound. It is a hurt that arrows out from my core, through to every inch of me.

My lover smiles his simple, usual smile.

When he reaches me, he wraps his long brown arms around me, molding his fingers into the flesh of my back. He presses his face into my locks and inhales, deeply.

“I can smell your essence,” he whispers and takes another slow, deep breath. When he releases me he lifts my chin so that our eyes meet. But I see only his teeth and his lips which curl away and press together forming oohs and pees and bees. His actual words float away and are swallowed up by the night. Then he releases me and lets me float back to where I was before.

He does this often. I do not tell him of the pain that volts through my being whenever he pulls me in. I do not tell him of how my lungs itch whenever he inhales my essence.

*               *                 *                *                *                  *              

I look at my lover and see that he has grown. His head, neck, chest and arms are much larger than I remember. His legs are longer. He sleeps soundly. He smiles in his sleep. He smiles a lot.

I notice that the area of flesh where the chord springs from his abdomen is also swollen with growth. The root of the chord has spread. I notice all of this. I look at my own legs and see that they are smaller than I remember. They are not all gone, my legs. Only now I can count thin ridges of muscle through my skin. And my skin has changed. It has taken on a greenish cast. I look at these things and a ball solidifies in my stomach. It turns and turns slowly, on its own, in my stomach. I cannot bear it. I stick two fingers into the back of my throat and retch. Acid comes. It burns my throat and nostrils. I feel the ball in my stomach stop turning for a second, then it starts again, much faster than before. I curl over, bringing my knees into my chest. The ball turns and turns and turns. I grab hold of the chord to wake my lover and notice that the chord is the same shade of green as my skin. The vessels leading from me to my lover are blue and red. The vessels that lead from my lover to me have changed.

I stick my fingers into my throat over and over while my lover sleeps. I watch the green contents of my stomach float away over to the wall. I watch while its coils part mockingly and let the green mass out. My eyes sting.  In my stomach, the ball has gotten bigger, filling and distending it.

*               *                 *                *                *                  *              

 

The stars that punctuate our night are glowing much brighter than before. Their brightness hurts my eyes.

I clasp my head and prod patches of exposed scalp where my plaits have come loose. I see them float away from me, long and black like millipedes, curling towards the thick coils of the wall, colliding with them, dissolving into them.

I see all of these things, and my lover. He sleeps perpetually, and it takes all the effort that I am able to muster to grab hold of the chord and wake him. And when he wakes he is sure to lumber through our space to wrap his arms around my frame. His arms are even larger now. I feel my ribs would collapse under the weight of his embrace. My lungs flame when he smells my essence. His bright and even teeth are gleaming. He is always glad to see me.

My lover releases me and falls back into a deep sleep.

While he turns in his sleep, I take the section of the chord closest to me in both hands and bring it to my face. I see how much it has changed. And as my lover snores in his gentle way, my frame trembles at the effort it takes for me to open my mouth and sink my teeth into the chord.

I gnaw through the thick, filmy skin of the chord and taste the saltiness of my blood and mucus. I taste this saltiness mixed with a putridity that burns the tender flesh of my mouth. As I gnaw my way through the thick chord, the worm stirs, shudders, then ripples violently while my blunt teeth remain focused on that section of the chord closest to my chest. My gums bleed as my teeth struggle with the belligerence of the worm. The worm hisses and shrieks in the center of my consciousness. I squeeze my eyes to black out the pain which knifes through my mind each time the worm shrieks. My stomach convulses as some of the mixture of blood and green finds its way down my throat.

Still I gnaw through that thick chord.

A sliver of flesh remains; connecting me to the worm, to my lover who sleeps deeply. I pause and stare at the flesh that remains. I look at the chord and see the gnarled edges, at the mess of red and green oozing out into the starry night. I stare through rivers at my lover who is dead to this night and its flaming lights, and I lift the last thread of flesh to my mouth and rip through it with a violence that shatters my teeth. The section of chord closest to me splutters. Green mess gushes. I feel the ball in my stomach dissolve. I see the greenish tinge recede from my skin. I begin to drift away from the worm, which is twisting, twisting; its death-spring fouling the night.

*               *                 *                *                *                  *              

My lover wakes. He blinks as he surveys all that I have done. His eyes are fixed on the gnawed edges of the chord.

His eyes rest on me.

I grab hold of the stump which now hangs limply from my chest and pull. I pull with all that remains of my strength –even through the pain of knife-wounds in my chest. My lover’s eyes do not leave me. I stare at him as I yank the stump of flesh from my chest.

My chest bursts; shattered bone and blood spray out into a red geranium. Then, slowly at first, the geranium crumples and rushes back into the opening in my chest and shattered bone and blood-spray congeal, covering the wound left by the ripped chord. Blood and bone congeal and then harden into a red crystal cocoon –sharp and glittering.

*               *                 *                *                *                  *              

 

My lover watches as I drift deeper into the black starry night. He watches the chord as it wheezes and spits the last testament of our union. He watches as it shrivels to its roots in his abdomen, and blinks as it snaps and falls away.

My lover sees all of this and looks at me as I float deep into the night. The crystal in my chest glows under his eyes. Then glow explodes into a glaring red light.

My lover howls. I see a white cast slowly crust over his eyes. His bellows worsen. He twists and turns as though pulled by something unseen. I see his long brown arms flay wildly at the void as I float deeper into the night.  

*               *                 *                *                *                  *              

My lover, his screams fade now. They do not reach me where I glide into the depths of a thousand brilliant little flames. END

 

 

Meet the Author...

Debra Providence is a Vincentian teacher, lover of Caribbean literature and Speculative fiction and she sometimes writes about all of those things.

CV: I joked on twitter that you are queen of the macabre (Caribbean queen, for sure), but seriously, how did you arrive at that style for telling what I'll say (for the purposes of this series) is a relationship story? Share, if you please, some of what your thinking process was like as you created the story.

Providence:

First off, I smiled and chuckled a bit at “queen of the macabre.” I had never thought about that, in terms of a pattern, but maybe there is that element in my work. When I set out writing this piece it was a way for me to process a particular experience and the impact of that experience on my psyche. Relationships have a way of leaving their marks for better and for worse. Lorna Goodison speaks of the healing powers of writing and this story started out as a self-addressed healing letter. I wanted to capture as closely as possible the nature of my experience and have the story flow through the stages in my development in that situation. In this case, the nature of the experience dictated the form of the story and the content. I do enjoy a good SF (Science/Speculative Fiction) book and a good graphic novel (Neil Gaiman, Nalo Hopkinson, Octavia Butler, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison among others). I also enjoy Erna Brodber’s works which have at times dredged psychological depths, so I guess those influences are there.

CV: I've been a fan of your poems for some time now. When you finally get around to writing that manuscript, will it be poetry, prose, or both?

Providence: I am working on a poetry manuscript and I have a few ideas for prose--short stories and novels. All of my prose ideas are SF in nature, so you may well soon see more strange and macabre tales. Every now and then I get the prose itch and start building on an idea from my ideas folder and then I get the poetry itch and I grab a pencil and my John Dickenson notebook (old school I know) and I write away. Right now I am doing academic writing, which is a balm for all none-related itching ;-). But I think I would work on developing and sending out a few short stories once I am done with my current project and at the same time work on a novel.

 CV: Who do you envision as your main audience?

Providence: For “Heart String” anyone who has loved hard and deep. Generally, I don’t write with a specific audience in mind. I have written about experiences shared by Caribbean women and to which they can relate and I always appreciate it when someone says that they can relate to a poem or story I have written. But I think that wherever you are received constitutes your audience and with the internet as a forum that audience may be diverse. 

 CV: What are your thoughts about the romance genre? Read any good ones lately?

Providence: You know, I haven’t read a lot of romance novels and I haven’t read any recently. As a teen I read a few Terry McMillan books (Waiting to Exhale and Disappearing Acts) which I enjoyed for their look at African American relationships. It was all new and fascinating to me. My reading interests took a different turn once I stumbled upon the sole (at the time) Terry Pratchett novel in the Kingstown Public library, and I’ve been caught by SF fever since. I respect the romance genre as a form expression, but I am an SF girl.