Hands
A person who eats lunch in a church does so out of spite — for eating non-consecrated bread in a place of worship is akin to devouring the flesh of a potential god — or too deeply devoted to realize the blasphemy of their actions.
I hoped it was the latter; then she would be perfect for me.
For the next week I studied her, my mouth watered any time her hands were in view. When she fumbled her keys after grocery shopping. When she presented her office pass — revealing her name: Anne-Marie Gendron. When she drew pictures on her fire escape. When she tucked long bangs behind her ears. She was unkempt in a way that spoke to lack of interest rather than the curated insouciance of those around her.
Hands are so versatile for only twenty-seven bones. They soothe, harm, create.
Her tender fingers. Bones so thin, so easy to snap. Such sweet marrow to suck.
I was getting ahead of myself.
First, I needed to introduce myself. Have my first taste.
• • •
I hadn’t noticed them or the man, too distracted by the moon swollen to bursting with silver light. Something sharp pressed into my back, someone half-growled, half-whispered “Donne-moi tes bijoux.” I reached for my clip-on earrings with trembling fingers, one falling between them and clattering on the pavement. There was a sound behind me, like a whole kit of pigeons taking off, then a thud and a wheezing exhale.
When I turned around, the Angel stood over the fallen man, their black hair blowing in the breeze, their coat as spotless black as the city sky on a moonless night.
Their androgynous beauty stirred awake the long sleeping creature that had huffed and puffed in my belly throughout high school. That hunger I’d smothered with grades, work, and the crushing fear of failure began again as they looked at me, their long lashes creating clawlike shadows across their cheekbones.
“Thank you,” I said, unsure what to offer in payment other than what was about to be taken, until I noticed the blood on their hands. Let me take you to Emerge.”
“I do not attend doctors.” Their accent was thick, but not Quebecois. Maybe Spanish or Italian.
“My place is just around the corner. I have a first aid kit.” I shut my mouth. So concerned with being a good Samaritan that I forgot my safety.
I was searching for an excuse to uninvite them but a windcharm’s song felt like a sign of destiny. I relinquished control of my life to fate, like slipping down an icy sidewalk; nothing I could do but enjoy the ride, hope for the best.
Deep down I felt the ache of fear, of letting them go.
“If you insist.”
The silent walk down the block was filled with electric tension. I was keenly aware of the proximity of our swinging hands. The fact that theirs were coated in blood didn’t stop me from contemplating entwining our pinkies to match our souls.
The magic died a bit when we walked into my building. Mailboxes flapped open; locks broken. Lights jaundiced the walls. The smell of mildew and the threadbare carpet.
The Angel passed no judgement.
We climbed three flights leaving behind a trail of blood to my apartment. A vigilant landlord might scold me for the mess, but I hadn’t seen mine in months.
Mom always said never to open your door in the presence of a stranger, that they could push you inside, do the dreaded rape and rob combo. But the Angel stood aside as I took off my shoes, waiting politely until I beckoned them in.
I was embarrassed by my living space. The furniture from Alley and Dumpster Boutique, my sad attempts to create something like art to display, the old floor boards so gapped they were impossible to clean, the sink filled with dishes. It’s not where I thought I’d be at this age. Having someone in my space reminded me of my fall from the gifted program to intern to contract worker.
The sounds of the city drifted through the window, the white noise of cars, a shouted conversation, a cowbell clanging against a fire escape.
I gestured at my sofa. “Sit.”
The first aid kit hadn’t been opened in years, filled with yellowed gauze. It took revenge for its neglect, slicing the webbing between my thumb and index as I opened the package.
“Shit,” I said, as the red bead grew. The Angel caught my hand and placed it between their lips. Their tongue travelled between my fingers in a way that made me think of how it might feel between my legs.
My voice came out as shaky as my free hand. I was supposed to take care of you.”
They smiled before releasing me.
“Reciprocity.”
They lifted their shirt, revealing a trail of hair that disappeared into their pants. It took me a moment to refocus on the bleeding gash in their side.
A moment more to catch my breath as I knelt before them.
I smelled their musk like drifting incense. It reminded me of weekends spent at church.
The Angel didn’t complain as I ran an alcohol wipe over the cut. It had stopped bleeding freely, perhaps shallower than it seemed. They watched me work intently.
It was nice to do something with my hands other than sending emails or typing reports or pulling data. Helping someone felt closer to what they were made to do.
“Voilà,” I said, taping down the gauze.
We sat in silence for a moment.
“Thank you for this.”
They stood.
This might be the last time I would see them unless I did something.
“No, thank you. Can I see you again? You don’t have to if you don’t want to, I — ”
They stopped my rambling. “There is no need to repay me.” My stomach sank, my head falling with it. Their long graceful fingers tipped my chin until I was forced to look into eyes so dark I couldn’t tell where the iris ended and the pupil began. “But I would like to see you again. I am free tomorrow evening.”
I nodded so hard it dislodged their hand. I grieved the loss of their touch.
“I will pick you up at ten in the evening.”
Even if that was later than I would have liked, my heart danced more freely than I’d let myself in recent memory.
“And I will clean the blood that fell.” They grabbed the bloody wipes to use on the stairs. I didn’t have the heart to tell them no one would care.
Ears
“You came?” She seemed surprised.
“It was my suggestion, if I recall.”
“Right.”
Our walk took us by her laundromat, her library, her grocery store, her workplace, and the church where I had first seen her two weeks before. She said nothing on this tour of her routine life, looking to me in plea, begging me to end the silence.
I felt the ground shake before I heard the sound. We were close.
“What is that?” Her voice more frightened than curious.
She followed, latching a finger into a belt loop as we stepped over a sawhorse barricade into the churchyard. Boards covered every tall window and door.
The thrum became music when I removed the plywood covering a broken basement window.
“Is this legal?” she asked.
“I stepped into the darkness. It is unlikely.”
She did not question me but insisted I take her hand as she stepped down onto a crate.
We followed the music up the stairs.
The space had been set up as an art gallery. An embroidered stole depicted cherubic angels fornicating with inaccurate anatomies. A lifesize Virgin Mary candle burned slowly next to its wooden twin. A man dressed only in a chasuble danced torturously slowly on the altar, at a rhythm independent of the music. Anne-Marie’s eyes flitted from one thing to the next, unable or unwilling to linger. “I’m… going to get us drinks.”
She found me by a triptych that Bosch would have applauded, placed a gin and tonic in my hand. Hers was nearly done.
“Come to these things often?” she delivered the question as if she had been practicing for the duration of the walk.
“I know the performer.”
As if on cue the music changed. The droning swelled and swelled, separating until it resolved into a chorus. The sound lifted us, and if she had looked down, she would have noticed the space between her feet and the floor. But her eyes closed in bliss, tears swelled on her lashes and glimmered like opals before drifting down her cheeks. Her breath came in shaking sobs.
I could not blame her. Hearing this now, in this space, reminded me of what I had lost. The community, the quiet, but mostly the sense of purpose. Back then, every step I took was right, dictated by divine ordonnance. Now, I was guided only by clumsy sinew.
I took her in my arms, collecting her tears in the fabric of my shirt. Her heart pounded with the beat, low and fast until the song slowed in tempo. We drifted back to the floor.
“That was amazing.” Her smile lit up the space. I wanted to split her open, dive into her skin. I wanted to feel everything she did. She looked at me like she wanted that too.
She turned away and consumed the remainder of her drink.
The music changed again. A long-haired man replaced my sibling, playing the music one would expect to hear at any nightly establishment.
I saw Anne-Marie swaying gently to the beat. She caught me looking and froze.
“Don’t stop.”
She smiled with desire and pulled me into the aisle which granted us marginally more space. The rhythm increased and the crush of people threw us together, apart, together again, like bodies caught in a current. Alcohol released her nature; she danced like someone discovering her own body.
She shouted in my ear. “What are you?”
I was unsure what she meant. What lurked in my pants, my ancestry, whether I was more than human. Before I could answer, she shouted again. “What’s your name?”
Before I could respond, she covered my lips with her hand.
“Do you want to know what I call you?”
My tongue sampled her salt and lime tacky skin.
“I call you the Angel. Because you’re my guardian angel.”
She giggled. I sucked at the skin of her palm. She pulled away as if my mouth were a flame.
“Your taste is divine,” I said into her ear. The hairs stood on her neck.
“What?”
Her hearing remained rather mortal. I wondered if her confession was not meant to be heard.
“Did it hurt?” she asked with longing smile. “When you fell from heaven?” She laughed at her own phrase.
It had, it really had. But the lasting pain also contained moments like these, sublime beauty made more perfect for their flaws and impermanence.
We stayed until her sways turned from inebriation to fatigue. I half-carried her past the church, her office, her grocery store, her library, her laundromat. The night air turned cold even for me.
“Do you need help upstairs?” I craved her response but left her an opening.
“I’m not easy,” she told me.
“May I kiss you?”
She closed her eyes, presented her lips. I tasted her mouth. She groaned when I kissed her neck and let out a melting moan as my tongue brushed her beating pulse. Her hands held me in place but I could not have left if I had wanted, the hunger had grasped me. I bit her earlobe and her silky blood coated my mouth. She gasped as she pressed into me. I lost myself in her warmth and memories.
• • •
Two clangs. Breathe in.
Two clangs. Breathe out.
My tension melted like the ice cream in my tote as I waited for the light to change.
A shoulder bumped mine, tipping me into traffic.
“Watch out!” Hands pulled me back onto the sidewalk. Car horns screamed. I turned to thank my rescuer and found myself within the perfumed radius of a beautiful blonde woman with a charming gap-toothed smile. One I recognized from high school.
I had nowhere to flee.
“Anne-Marie?” Karine asked.
Busted.
“Oh! Oh hi Karine.” I wondered if she noticed how forced my smile was.
“Oh my gosh, what a blast from the past! You’re in Montréal now too?”
I nodded, looking down at my grocery bags to signal that I had places to be, feeling the next question coming at me like the traffic I’d barely dodged.
“What are you up to? What did Madame Thibeault say at graduation: ‘You’ll do such great things’?”
“Oh… you know. I’m working in the non-profit world. Giving back to society and… eyeballs.”
Why did I even say that? I wanted to die even more than usual.
“Oh my gosh that’s so… gracious of you. I try to give to charity as much as I can but here you are, giving your life to it. Wow, just wow. Meanwhile, I’m busy managing a PR firm. Running my own business! Can you imagine? We’ve worked with some of the big names, you know the Juste Pour Rire situation? That was me!”
Everyone in Montréal knew about the assault charges against the festival founder. Karine was keeping company with the same sort she had in her school days.
“Do you remember the girls … Michelle, Steph, and Julie?” Karine asked. They’ll love to hear how you’re doing. You should come out for drinks with us one night!”
“Sure, let’s catch up.” I failed to stop myself.
“Take one of my business cards,” she said and I stood awkwardly as she retrieved a metal case from her purse and handed me a glossy forest green card. Her name was printed in gold. The first phone number is the best one to reach me.”
Karine finally saw my hands were full, and pulled open a grocery bag to deposit her card on top of the no-name Oreos.
I planned to throw it out when I got home.
Mouths
“It’s gone,” she said, touching the place on my side where I had been cut.
“I heal quickly.”
I kissed her again before she could ask questions I was not ready to answer—but soon, I could tell it was soon. She led me to the bedroom, removing clothes as we went. It was only once we both lay naked that her reticence returned. Her hands which had pulled and stroked my skin moments ago now lay in fists at her sides.
“We need not continue.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just… ” Her face and chest blushed a sun-kissed pink.
“Let me teach you.”
She kissed me eagerly, dragging my lower lip into her mouth. A fast learner.
My tongue moved along her body until I dipped below her navel. She spread her legs for me and I kissed her center.
“Oh God,” she said.
He had nothing to do with this.
• • •
I’d confessed all but the last during the first communion workshop. Under Father Paul’s orders, I’d done three rosaries, brought the necklace to the lost and found, and helped mom with the dishes for three weeks.
Of my own volition, I avoided looking at Karine and completed an extra dozen Hail Marys.
Penance lightened the weight on my shoulders.
As if God was testing me, Karine sat right in front of me during Mass, her vanilla spritz making me dizzier than any test ever could.
I glanced at my family, seated with my great aunt, Sister Luce, who’d come down special for the event.
The service was slower than usual, especially without paper to doodle on. But eventually we were called up, and proceeded one at a time to receive our first Eucharist.
“When I say this is the body of Christ, I mean it.” There’d been oohs and jeers from some of the boys when Father Paul said this during the workshop, the usual sound students made whenever someone said something vaguely sexual we didn’t quite understand yet. “Through the power of Transubstantiation, this bread is turned into the body of Christ, feeding our spiritual soul, which needs sustenance just as much as our physical bodies.”
Karine arrived at the front, genuflected. The lights made her strawberry blond hair shine.
When it was my turn, I stuck my hands out, couldn’t make out the Father’s words but managed to flub my one line, saying “Thanks” rather than “Amen.” He frowned but I was mercifully uncorrected.
The body of God stuck drily to my tongue and tasted like unsweetened ice cream cone.
I was stuck on this on the ride home, sitting next to Sister Luce who smelled like she’d rolled around on the church carpets to pick up the scent.
I’d always wanted to be a nun. It sounded so peaceful; nothing but charity work and gardening and reading and, most importantly, no boys. Just women.
And God.
I couldn’t imagine a better life. But as I smelled my aunt, looking at her rheumy eyes and rough hands, I wondered if maybe my idea of being a nun was a bit idealized.
Mom beelined to the kitchen as soon as we’d arrived to grab snacks, leaving me and my aunt alone in the living room.“ I have a gift for you, to celebrate your first communion,” she said, handing me a velvet jewelry box.
Inside was a rosary, with a woman holding a sword on the Hail Mary bead.
“That’s a special one. It’s got Joan of Arc on it. She was a martyr, she gave her life to God.”
“Like you do?”
“No, it’s different. I live for God, she sacrificed herself for Him. There is no greater display of love. No greater purpose in life.”
“What are you telling my kid?” my mother asked with an awkward laugh as she walked into the room.
“Just providing her a spiritual education.”
Later I looked up Joan of Arc in the encyclopedia. She led armies to retake France from the English before being captured, tortured, and killed. Seemed to me a strange kind of hero.
But what struck me was the image of a girl wearing a suit of armor, hair cut short. I dreamt of her that night; it was not an executioner but my kisses setting her aflame.
• • •
“It is that pleasurable?”
She laughed into her elbow then looked down at me. I grinned between her legs with a bloodied face.
“Oh shit,” she said. I didn’t know I’d started.”
“It is acceptable.” I reached up and turned her blushing face toward me. I enjoy it very much.”
Legs
Anne-Marie snored softly beside me. She had learned quickly to navigate my mixed plumbing, licked my fingers covered in her juices and blood, given me moments of pleasure.
Anne-Marie shuffled into the living room as I opened the containers. Her shoulders relaxed when she saw me. She’d thought I left.
“I am very hungry,” I said. She wrinkled her nose at the cold takeout. It could not harm me, nor would it truly help.
“I can make you toast,” she offered.
I shrugged, consumed another mouthful. The noodles quivered in my hand.
“You okay?”
I looked terrible. Being underfed gouged bruise-dark circles under my eyes, left my perfect skin quite clammy and splotchy. I hoped to survive for another week without a meal but my small taste last night only reminded my stomach how empty it was.
“I am very hungry.” My stomach rumbled. The takeout tasted like ash. A life not freely given was no sustenance for me.
“I’d offer to get croissants but… well, work isn’t going to extend me. So I’m going to have to go back to job searching and — ” she smacked her lips shut, you’re don’t need to hear me complain.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You’re not my… partner? Are we even friends?”
“I have nowhere else to be, so tell me what bothers you.”
We spent the rest of the day talking, kissing, copulating. We ruined her sheets and then resumed awkwardly in the claw foot tub. We could not separate more than three feet without our hunger drawing us back together.
She bit my neck in what seemed a parody of my need. Possessed by my hunger, I flipped her onto her back and bit at her thigh. She moaned, but as my teeth pierced her skin — gently, so gently; I could not scare her off or get too carried away — the moans became cries of pain until I soothed her with my tongue.
She thrust desperately into the air, begging for friction.
I ignored my own hunger, let myself be distracted by this vision, this new kind of angel.
It was an escape to her, this refuge we made with our bodies. She would be unemployed in two weeks, as she had said. While she learned to explore pleasure, uncertainty and failure remained places she did not know how to navigate.
Sunday arrived. The church bells sounded. My ears filled with the sound of rain and my eyes filled with fire.
• • •
The sky lit up to the rhythm of their trembling, a celestial echo.
A kind of proof.
I held them, unsure what else to do. Slowly their shaking stopped, and the apartment became still again.
It was a while before they opened their eyes, dark and iris-less.
“I was right, wasn’t I? About the angel thing?” I asked.
“In a way. It is more complicated.”
“Can you explain or — ”
They tried to pull themselves up but fell trembling back to the sheets.
“I am very hungry.”
“I can make you something to eat.”
“That will not work — it is not what I need.”
“What do you need?”
They were silent for a minute. But their stomach yelled again.
Just as you need nourishment from the body of Christ, I need nourishment from the bodies of mortals.”
“Like a vampire? Was that what you were talking about Friday… with my period?” I whispered, ashamed.
“Blood is one part of it, yes, but so too is the flesh.”
“So, you eat people?”
Seemed about karmically right to have finally given in to my urges, only to learn I’d had sex with a cannibal. Sorry, with an Angel who eats people. Their look of discomfort stopped me from laughing.
I should have told them to leave. I should have put up a fight.
But they fit so well in my arms, had shown me a kind of heaven on Earth. Even if it was finite, bookended by Friday and Monday.
“What happens if you don’t?” I asked.
“I imagine I will die. But I have never met another like me who had gone so far.”
“There are others?”
They told me about their sibling who’d been the DJ at that church gallery. Had that only been Thursday?
“They took a songwriter who could not complete a composition, one that had haunted them for years. They fit well together, now the song is complete.”
I moved away, the real danger of the situation apparent.
“So, you’re — what? A patron of the arts? Make us into hamburgers and you’ll make our dreams come true — even if it’s post-mortem?”
“Anne-Marie,” they pleaded, reaching out to me. My name sounded so sweet on their lips. How I wanted them to whisper in my ear even as I wanted to flee. We cannot take what is not freely offered. That provides no sustenance, it is why we cannot eat the food that you consume. It is no better than eating a cotton ball.” Did they know about that habit from my teens? “Feeding us is one kind of martyrdom.”
It clicked; this pull towards them, just like the pull towards the church, to Joan of Arc, the pull I’d felt that first night I’d met them. There really was a grand plan.
I wouldn’t have to struggle with my desires anymore, or with my inability to find work, or worry about achieving the things I’d always wanted. It was okay because none of that mattered. This was my destiny.
I nodded.
“I need you to say it.”
“Yes, always yes.”
They kissed me but the hunger in it was gone, replaced by tenderness. We stayed entwined until I needed to be fed. I ordered takeout — why not spend money at this point?
“I want to thank you,” they said, leading me to the bathroom, sitting me on the toilet. They filled a bucket with sweet flowery water. They took one of my feet, eased it into the warmth. They ran my nicest washcloth, the one I saved for guests, over my feet. Their soft touch massaged aches I’d had so long I stopped noticing them. They kissed along the inside of my thigh. I opened my legs.
“Have an appetizer?” I suggested.
They laughed but not as heartily as me, as if it was too soon for gallows humor.
They carried me back to bed where we kept busy until the food arrived. I, no longer ashamed, pulled on a shirt that barely covered me to open the door.
We kissed, I ate, they sucked on my newly cleaned toes until I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
“I want you to make art for me,” I said as they tucked me into bed.
Eyes
Someone else lives there now. Their plain white curtains are nowhere near her style. But I pretend that I am still following her, still learning about her, still kissing her.
Then I digest a part of her and the memories flood my mind, return me to clarity.
She is gone. She has been dead for months.
Never has anyone sustained me so long, never has anyone filled me so completely.
My love grows as I consume more of her, get to know her better. She danced secretly in her apartment, she obstinately pushed herself to achieve goals, steadfastly aided others even at the cost of her own success. Anne-Marie saw beauty in the everyday things I ignored. I had always focused on the infinite sublime, on the larger cruelties, and in doing so failed to notice smaller miracles.
She would have been a great companion.
But she is not truly gone, not as long as there are parts of her incorporated into own body. I can feel her as my system makes new tissue, new cells. I will be devastated when I can no longer feel her presence.
I am saving her eyes for last, like dessert, so I can understand what it was she found beautiful. When I eat those, that will be true goodbye.
It will not be long now; I am shaking again. I do not want to collapse in the street, risk being dragged to a hospital.
Maybe I could refuse to eat, dispose of the remaining meat, let myself fade away.
No, her sacrifice should not be for nothing.
I return home. The bag of paints slams against my side as I pick up the pace.
• • •
A butterfly landed on the petals of the potted petunia on my fire escape. I’d rescued the plant from the curb in front of an office building, wilted, dying, but now it threatened to overtake the pot.
A rainbow projected on a sidewalk by an unseen prism.
Small moments of common magic. They were everywhere, the beautiful things my eyes saw but my hands never could capture.
My artist friends had more time to practice, or took lessons, or went to art school. I had only evenings and weekends. Soon those faded. I put in the hours at work to make myself invaluable and subsequently needed the time to sleep off the exhaustion of pleading for money from those who already had too much. My hands would never catch up to theirs, but my eyes would always see beauty.
I returned to the bathroom, no use prolonging the inevitable, the tug of fate. My Angel had finished laying plastic bags over the floor and walls. A traitorous part of me wanted to run, to flee, but what else was there for me but more failure and humiliation?
Here I was a gift, prolonging a life infinitely more important than mine.
“Are you ready?”
They sat in the corner, cheeks sunken, skin translucent and dry. Their voice rattled inside them.
“Yes.” I got into the tub.
They kissed my eyelids with sandpaper lips. “Thank you,” they said.
I felt their overwhelming gratitude, their appreciation for my sacrifice, their hunger for life.
“Just paint for me, okay?”
They kissed me again but their tongue was rough in my mouth and their breath was rank like sour milk. I fought down a gag.
“I will.”
The kitchen knife they’d sharpened met my neck. A brief moment of panic — nowait,isn’tthereanotherway — before a searing pain created a second gushing smile on my throat.
I saw them in that moment, my Angel, the blood coating their face, as they truly were: sublime. Their face covered with unblinking opaque eyes; their multitudinous limbs, each one unique. Their chest gaped with hunger, its cavity lined with rows and rows of serrated teeth. I folded myself small, squeezing into their maw.
I’ll never fit anywhere better than here.
