The Waning

by Christina Bergling

  You had finished. What was coming next?

  I heard You stripping off Your gloves as You walked out the door. I was left trying to find myself again.

  I could not bear to look down and see the piece absent from my side, the hole now in me. I fought the curiosity of my eyes, but I could not keep them from the instrument tray.

  And the dripping strip of my flesh draped over it. It was thicker than I would have imagined, warbled with the fresh blood. There were no words for what it looked like separated from my body. Something about the very sight brought my stomach into my throat. I choked back a heave and forced my eyes away.

  I began wailing from my core, the sound shaking my entire ribcage and the teeth in my gums. I could not contain it. I wanted my skin back. I wanted out this place. I wanted You dead. Hopelessness swallowed me like the sea, my inarticulate laments raged like the crashing tide.

  How could I live through this?

  You returned, calmly unaffected by my cries. You removed the instrument tray, and the piece of me, from the room. With fresh gloves, You brought in a new tray of gauze, alcohol, medical tape. Then You unrolled a thick mat onto the floor and unfolded surgical pads over it.

  You were infuriatingly placid, maddeningly scrupulous. I wanted to know what the fuck You were going to do with MY skin. I wanted to kick You in Your smug, stoic face and carve out one of Your eyeballs for You to see. Yet I only hung there, depleted and whimpering, watching You prepare my recovery suite on the floor.

  I half expected You to chuck me bleeding back into my cage. I half wanted You to, if I could bleed out from sectional skin removal.

  Instead, carefully stepping around the edge of Your perfect padding, You gently released the chain and lowered it, clinking link by link, until my arms draped heavily back along my torso. You abandoned the chain still dangling through the loop on the ceiling and slowly unbound my wrists, cradling my knotted hands in one gloved palm as the other hand skillfully liberated the cord.

  My hands had given up and gone numb long before, when my legs, and my resolve, began to fail me. As I concentrated and turned them over each other, needles assaulted my skin in rising waves. Even with the gaping hole in my side still bleeding, I grimaced at this discomfort.

  You took my hand in Your glove. I was so startled by the mild gesture that I nearly recoiled. You placed Your other hand on my back and guided me toward the mat. I simply followed, complacent and bewildered, internally flinching.

  I felt my shoulders slump and my body subtly coil protectively inward. I felt my eyes shifting nervously from side to side. I felt myself cringing away from Your soothing touch. You ignored my foolish twitching and led me onto the center of the pads.

  My mind was seized with confusion. I was questioning all of this, but I was not forming thoughts. It was just a fog of blurred emotions shifting across my consciousness. I felt my primal fear and let that speak to me. I let my resolve to just do as I was told guide me.

  You tapped the top of my shoulders to instruct me; I collapsed at Your feet. You squatted in front of me and softly pushed me; I tumbled onto my unwounded side, still softly sobbing, still with wide, untrusting eyes.

  Surely, You weren’t kind enough to just kill me now. Suddenly, surviving long enough to escape didn’t seem so necessary.

  After several seconds ticked by void of violence, I released my clenched muscles. I wrapped my arms around my chest. I tucked my legs in closer. I closed my eyes and cried silently. If I could have curled into a shell, I would have happily lost myself there. I only felt the throbbing chasm of agony vibrating on my side, the nerves pulsating all the way up into my brain.

  The pain was fluid, flowing and pouring between my skin and my brain, captivating my entire biological attention. Physical injury infected my emotions, and I felt the bottom drop out of my chest. I felt that hopelessness rise out of the darkness below. I let the flame of my light flicker low.

  I heard the cap of a bottle unscrew, the swirl of swishing liquid. Then the stinging on my side ignited. The world went red behind my eyelids. My limbs shot out, and I howled wildly. You placed a hand on my shoulder to hold me, to calm me.

  Your hand was soft and heavy on my nerves. It stirred a strange and now foreign emotion below all the turmoil. It was comforting; it did calm me. It felt familiar, forgotten, missed. Then You made a sound.

  You hushed me.

  Like a parent to a frantic child. Like my mother into my hair on that street.

  I breathed, breathed, strove to rein myself in. I breathed the tension out of my muscles slowly, by degrees. I brought my limbs cautiously back into my body. I relaxed my face and rested my head on my folded arm. The sting of the cleaning cloth shook the bones in my pelvis, bled across my skin through to the other side. The air licked fire onto my open wound.

  You did not stop. Your glove remained on my shoulder until the tension in my limbs faded. You dabbed and swiped the cloth slowly, methodically, softly until the hemorrhaging slowed and the surrounding skin was clean. The concentration of the hurt dissipated slightly with each swipe as my nerves became accustomed to it, as the alarm faded from my system. I had to strain less and less to fight off the tension. You tilted Your head to observe Your work again, gauging the speed at which the blood droplets welled. Then You took gauze and tape and carefully dressed my wound.

  With Your hand under my shoulder, You sat me up on the mat. Your arm reached around me with Your palm turned upward. Several pills were cradled in the center. I did not hesitate. I gathered them in my fingertips and tossed them into my mouth. You handed me another plastic water bottle to chug them down. The large pills clung to my throat, but I pushed them down hard.

  I didn’t even stop to question what they were.

  You stood me, properly bandaged, back up on wobbly legs. Concealed from the air, the injury’s shrieking had been muffled to a steady, heavy ache. I was feeling unsteady and lightheaded. Utterly drained. The way I felt after torturing myself at the gym until I saw spots or after crying myself into dehydration. Maybe this was a bit of both.

  My head was starting to swim. Somewhere between the adrenaline hangover and whatever was gradually seeping into my bloodstream. I was falling back away from my nerves, away from my body, retreating exhausted. I barely felt You exchange my bloody clothes for fresh ones. I scarcely noticed being tucked back into my cage. I only found myself curled up in the dark with my own hand resting protectively on my bandage.

  I did not accept it then, but that night, I became Yours.

  “Not yours,” I still whispered to myself as a heavy sleep crept in through the bars.

  14

  The only thing that existed when I peeled open my puffed eyelids was the pain in a diamond shape on my hip. There were no walls, no bars, no drip. Nothing but that missing patch of skin, nothing but the nerves and capillaries calling out from the flesh carved away. My hand was still on top of the bandage, wet now with the warm blood seeping through.

  My head felt empty, and my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth. My nerves were unmedicated again; I felt again.

  I didn’t want to.

  I told myself it was morning because I had just woken up, but it was only dark. I told myself it was morning because it would feel normal to wake up into a morning. Who knew how long or short or skewed my “days” had become in this box? At some point, it became the least of my worries.

  So I just told myself it was morning as I cradled my wound.

  This morning, You appeared at the regular interval. Under the swinging bulb, You again assembled my recovery suite. You unrolled the mat onto the floor again, then unfolded surgical pads over it. You placed a tray of gauze, alcohol, medical tape beside it. It was identical to the night before. Every time would be identical.

  Instead of the plate and the bucket, we began this day with wound care. You took the edge of my bandage between Your gloved fingers and slowly peeled it back, exposing my injury, taking the top layer with it. The air bit hard at the
tender flesh, if it could even be called flesh in this state. I managed to keep my limbs clenched in at that first bite of the alcohol. I could hear my strained breaths fighting to exert control over my body.

  Your untasked hand again found my shoulder; You again hushed me softly. And I again found some measure of comfort in it, something to get me through the sensations pulsating through me.

  I was not bleeding this time, so I required less cleaning. You tilted Your head and squinted Your eyes as You swiped that alcohol repeatedly over the budding scab. We would begin a long string of days with wound care, until my body began to patch and stitch itself back together with sloppy, shiny new skin.

  I was relieved to stretch out from the cage and spread myself onto the padded mat. I could appreciate laying out, truly laying out. The blood throbbed down into my limbs, pumping freely and expanding seemingly collapsed pathways. My muscles uncoiled stiff and depleted, inflating with the free-flowing blood and awash with endorphins. After however long of being folded up against those bars, my bones almost forgot the bliss of being extended.

  Maybe this is worth a little flap of flesh. I caught the thought as it levitated up from my happily humming limbs. Could I actually consider selling a piece of my own skin for these oases on the mat? Is that what I had been reduced to? And did I care with how wonderful it felt at this moment? I had not had one ounce of joy since my last footfall in that parking lot. Any measure of it was vastly becoming worth my soul.

  Then the antiseptic bit again.

  You nursed Your work with such care. I could tell You were proud of what You had done to me, how it reflected back in Your eyes even with Your calm and slack features. It was something glimmering in Your eyes that I caught only when I snuck quick glances while You were distracted by the task. An animation, a light around those dark irises.

  I shoved the burning sensation aside and focused on the calm rapture of being out of the cage and being cared for. My body felt whatever measure of free I could conjure in this place, but more Your gentle care bordered on nurturing. A sensation my soul itself was starving for. I didn’t want to like it, but I found that I loved it. It was a vacation from my life in this cell. It was a fucking pleasure cruise from the dehumanization and the beatings. I could almost see You as a human in this light, even though I was sure You were investing in Your creation more than my survival or well-being.

  Details.

  As You took Your sweet time, I closed my eyes and did likewise. Basking in the light of the weak bulb, I imagined I could feel the warmth of the sun. I had almost forgotten what the sun looked or felt like at this point. I doubt my pupils could have taken its intensity, but I could ignite it above me safely in my mind.

  I conjured up the memory of Lei walking down the topless beach in Sint Maarten, hips swaying, breasts bobbing, stomach enticingly flat and tanned. My mouth salivated for her as much as it did for the coladas she held sweating in each hand. The trip we took when I made senior associate, the trip I planned to calm her incessant nagging about when we could buy a house. She had abandoned all her resentment and all her disappointment and looked at me with only love in her eyes for that long weekend.

  Her hair was kinked in dried salt water. Her skin was colored by the long affection of the sun. Her eyes were as bright and her face was as free as when I first met her in the coffee shop in the lobby of my marketing internship. She was perfect in those days, and wallowing in that memory made my heart ache more than my gaping wound.

  I missed her in my soul, which suffered so much more exquisitely than this withering body.

  Maybe my nerves would eventually die out. A girl could dream, spread out on this mat covered in surgical pads like a beach towel.

  You sat me up again. You spared me Your soiled gloves and brought Your naked palm around me, cradling my next dose of medication. I felt myself wanting to lay back into You, wanting that arm to wrap around me comfortingly. You did not permit me to touch You though. Instead of holding Your hand out for me to gather, You waited until I offered mine and dumped the pills into my palm. After You handed me the water bottle, You signaled for me to stand. I followed direction. My heart sank when You next gestured at the bucket.

  That fucking bucket.

  However, You made the command then left the room. Left me alone out of my cage. Left me alone in the light. Left me alone with a shred of privacy and decency.

  Somehow, it almost felt human to evacuate into a bucket when I was alone.

  You returned with the plate and bottle of water, and I climbed back into my cage without a gesture, cautiously feeling more like a possession than an animal. I could endure this other side of You. I could be the pet You cared for; I just didn’t know if I could also be the pet You kicked to earn it.

  “Thank you,” I whispered quietly.

  The words escaped my lips before I could stop them. My voice did not even sound like my own as it escaped my dry mouth. What the fuck was I thanking You for?

  You froze as You shut my cage door. Just for an instant. You looked down, and I saw a smile tug Your limp cheeks. You seemed to drink in the sound of my words for just that second; then, stifling Your reaction, You latched my lock and shut the door behind You.

  I was still stunned at myself. My mind was dangling agape in the dark, hung on the last vile syllable. Thank you? Fucking thank you? To the animal who just sheered a tender and cherished section of my own flesh. What in the sweet fuck?

  Yet I had felt it when I said it. I was thankful for the clean bandages, for the time alone and out of my cage, for the meager meal. I did not know how I could be thankful for such shit, yet the sensation poisoned my chest just the same. It felt uncomfortable and foreign, like a blade.

  I wriggled against the feeling, disgusted by it. Yet there it sat, sunken into my center like a cancer.

  The crisp bandage almost felt like a new life. The simplest of changes to my circumstances were earth-shattering now. I never knew I could savor clean clothes or dressing so much. I had to find anything that was less than misery where I could, and today, I found it in a kind touch and a clean swatch of gauze.

  I curled up on my side, again placing my hand gently on top of my wound. It felt safer to cradle it, though the pressure on the sensitive and raw nerves encouraged the constant ache. I let the pain spread over me like a sheet on top of my inappropriate comfort, and I let it lull me to awkward sleep.

  How could I sleep at a time like this? How could I ever sleep in a place like this?

  Yet I tumbled out from the bottom of my cage and back onto the warm sand of that beach, back to being transfixed by the way her body moved in the sunlight bouncing off the waves. I felt my own body peak just looking at her, the way she was smiling at me behind her ridiculously large sunglasses.

  “Isn’t it nice to actually be on an island this time?” she laughed as she flopped herself down on the chair beside me. I shamelessly watched her breasts bounce as she landed.

  “Well, naturally, this is better than being in the hospital,” I replied.

  “You should have just told them what was happening.”

  “I didn’t need them knowing, didn’t need those other vultures using it against me.”

  “Just like you don’t need them knowing you have a girlfriend at home. It was just a hysterectomy. How could they hold that against you?”

  “You’d be surprised. No one asks questions about a vacation to the Caribbean,” I said, taking her hand. “Let’s not talk about that now. We’re here now. For real. Me and my girlfriend at home.”

  She slipped the slick glass into my free hand as she leaned in and pressed her lips to mine. She opened her mouth, and I would have taken a handful of her skin right there on that beach if I had a free hand.

  My unexpected youthful hysterectomy. Another offensive thing for which to be thankful. After the urine incident, I could not imagine how a monthly pool of blood would have been met.

  As consciousness licked at the edge of my dream, I tried to pu
sh it back, attempted to reject it. I could live forever in the memory of that beach. I wanted to taste the dried salt on her lips. I wanted to smell the sweet Guavaberry colada on her breath. I wanted to search for her eyes behind my reflection in her sunglasses.

  But she faded from me. The sunlight died in my mind as the claustrophobic darkness poured back over me. I opened my eyes into black. Once reality rose to the surface, the dream dissipated as if it had never graced me at all. I could only escape in sleep or in Your gentle aftercare.

  Again, it was the dark and the drip and the solitude.

  My heart felt like an aching hole again in the wake of thoughts of her. She filled my chest then left it horribly deflated, throbbing, and empty. The more I wanted her in every fiber of my body, the more I gradually started wanting to forget her. I couldn’t have her, and by the dark minutes ticking by, it felt more like I would never have her again.

  That realization, and the more true it felt as I rolled it around in my brain, tore me down my center, ripped me apart from the inside. I would have taken another flaying over feeling void of her.

  I had taken her for granted. The realization cut even deeper. Why had she stayed through so many broken promises? Why had she waited and waited for me to make it? Why had she hitched to my career wagon and just followed where and when I chose to lead? She had to want more than just a life settled down with me and McAllister. Where was her drive? Where were her dreams?

  Did I really know her at all?

  I didn’t want to think about it. I wanted to preserve her as perfect in my mind—untouched and untainted by being with me. I didn’t want to think about all those nights she waited on the couch for me, McAllister laying against her legs with his head nuzzled on her hip, and all those nights she would be there now.

  I was relatively sure I was never coming back. They certainly had stopped looking for me. My hair was brushing against my neck now; it had been too long. Maybe she had given up on me, too. Maybe it was like I never existed at all.