by Siona Kalil
Content Warning:
Mentions of drug addiction and overdose.
Rolling, cursive hips. Legs splayed akimbo. Her lower back sinks in and out of the mattress. A primal repetition of the poses performed at the studio just over an hour ago. She is feeling herself completely, reembodied after feeling so unsafe, so lost. As she touches her nipples, runs her hand down her stomach to her clit, electric energy pulses within her. She brings out her toy. And ultimately, there is oh oh oh. Relief. Deliverance. Rebirth.
Among the white, gummy, unctuous cum adorning her purple toy, she notices an aberrant black seed. Repulsed, and somehow intrigued, she is able to make a last minute, early morning, emergency appointment with her OBGYN. At the office, her deep-set and tenebrous eyebags reflect her lack of sleep from the night before. Her doctor looks at her worriedly. At her dark circles, at the hands desperately clutching the mason jar that holds her oddity. They tell her that everything is fine, there is nothing wrong, nothing to worry about, and are you on new medication…? She leaves, offended, but she is left with this seed, the lump, spawn, alien entity. Something she had sort of given birth to. Something that is innately hers, she owns. But what is it? What could be the cause of it, and why did it come out?
I release any negativity to make way for healing. The mantra used in their Pisces full moon yoga flow and meditation that night. That’s what it is then. The misshapen lump, the ill-born creature out of her pussy and the moon. It grows and grows into the muddy, knotty, seething thing in front of her. It is like a cocoon of sorts, and it hangs like a sick bat from the bottom of the lid of the jar. It has one eye that winks sleepily at her, each slick eyelid encased in a noticeable but see-through viscous slime.
At night she can hear it moaning and groaning. Whispering lies and gossip to her in her sleep. They actually hate you. You’re worthless. A waste of space. Inconsequential matter, easily disposable. Did you hear them talking about you? About how freaky you are, with your jar on the windowsill, and your nasty obsession? They hate you! I’m the only one who cares.
During the day, she lets her roommates smile at her, and she smiles back. She makes her bed, brushes her hair after showering and changing, goes to work. Does yoga. And ever-present is the coughing, syrupy black bulb that lies corpulent and fiendish, each day growing a little bit larger.
As the days go on, as the summer turns into fall, she notices her friends giving her weird looks when they think she’s unaware, glancing at each other with their eyes rounded and eyebrows raised. By the time she finds the note on the table, her homunculus has grown considerably in size and has been carefully and lovingly transplanted from its previous mason jar to a much larger, recently discarded fish tank that she found at Goodwill. There is no need to clean its tank. Just breast-feed it from time to time in the moonlight, and provide it with a bigger space as it grows and grows, gurgling with hidden and jealous notions.
The note reads: We’re moving out. You think that you can keep all of your horrible thoughts about us secret; but we know. You’ve always taken us for granted and we’re not standing for it anymore. Good luck paying the rent. We took our names off the lease. Also, and this is where she draws in a great gasp, we know that you said last year that Courtney is a druggie loser and you hope she overdoses in rehab.
Fuck! There’s a sharp pain in her chest, the memory a dull and distant haze. But who would’ve known? Who did she tell that could tell them?
And then she hears a muffled thump against the glass of the old fish tank. Her heart starts beating faster. She hears another thump. And she looks at her own polluted, animated discharge driving itself against the glass walls, laughing maniacally.
After spending months feeding this creature and taking care of it, she can see that it wasn’t hers at all. Even when it was inside her, was her, it was other. It is the black gunk that she would cough up after too many cigarettes and cocaine. It’s the all-nighters and strangers in her living room. It’s the clandestine drug deals, the times when random people would walk into her house and she’d call to them excitedly, “Anyone want ketamine?” The people who she can’t remember exactly and never will. Wild knife-fights outside. The men who trapped her and groped her in the bathroom. The ex who got her addicted but never loved her, using her and leaving her like any of their old discarded and dirty needles.
Her homunculus was conceived so many years ago, during the anguish that had once permeated her life like insulation that fills the walls inside a home and that you shouldn’t touch, the pink stuff, because it can make your skin itch and perhaps eventually bleed. In the end something has to pay the price. And there this thing sits groaning and moaning and it is tortured and unwell, and it needs to be put out of its misery. She has already released the negativity, been to rehab, therapy. So why is she still holding on?
She looks at it. This desperate, insidious vermin with its blinking eye and wayward mouth, that guzzles and gulps and has two little baby teeth growing inside its thick, crusty lips. Why is she nurturing it in the moonlight, feeding it with whatever vile liquid is able to come out of her breasts?
Hit with a recoil of disgust and retroactive longing, she lifts the fish tank with both hands. She can hear her homunculus grunting as it sloshes against the sides of the tank. The tank is startlingly heavy, and her legs buckle under its weight. It’s grown too much. Too long has she indulged its dark and isolated nostalgia. And when it falls to the ground, off her fourth-story balcony, she can see it for what it truly is, as its distended body sloshes against the pavement and spreads itself in black waste across the concrete and into the grass.
Siona Kalil (she/her) is a writer in Bellingham, Washington. She enjoys writing feminist speculative fiction, horror, and about the occult. She is inspired by the magical and weird town around her, as well as vintage horror, sci-fi, and fantasy movies. You can find Siona hiking, paddleboarding, or at the bookstore.