A Wretched, Craving...Thing

A Wretched, Craving, Desperate, Stretched-Out Thing

a story by Great Twitch

         Some thing slithers through the cracks of my brain. Some bad, dirty, stinking thing. I try to ignore it, but then I feel the sleek, smooth thing dive into another crevice and I shudder. It is a wretched, craving, desperate, stretched-out thing.
         When I try to sleep at night, it squirms under the sheets and encircles my bare legs. I wear a nightgown to bed, and I sleep without underwear, and the thing crawls up and into me. It eats out my insides and swells up that cowhead woman organ until it’s as big as my body. Inside, the thing hisses. This emptiness expands like a balloon in my body, but it’s the heaviest kind of emptiness. It’s so heavy I can’t sleep. You might say I could put on underwear so it can’t get me, but I tried that already. It didn’t help at all. I think that the thing can pass through matter, kind of like how I used to think Santa Claus could pass through a chimney, even though he’s so big and fat. Now, I think that maybe if the chimney had the thing slithering around in it too, Santa Claus could slide down without any magic. I shouldn’t think like that, though. It’s very bad. It’s so bad, I can’t tell anyone about it.
         I think my mother knows. Sometimes I’m sure she can read my thoughts. A week ago, she was basting a turkey and I took the baster. I squeezed the top and pushed it into my drinking glass and let go. The baster sucked up the water in the glass. Then, I squeezed it hard, and the water shot out of the baster and made my water all brown and dirty. My mother looked over at me. She looked at my drinking glass. I grabbed the glass and swallowed the dirty brown water. She looked at me a little more, then turned away again. I ran upstairs and vomited, hoping she couldn’t hear the puke splash into the toilet water. I don’t think she heard; at least, she didn’t say anything about it. But I think she knew, anyway. When I ate dinner, I avoided the glistening ears of corn, just like when I was little five years ago, and I still hated corn.
         But I really love corn, and yesterday I went out on a date with a boy. We’ve talked a long time, but I only just found out that he likes me in a better way than talking. We went out to dinner, and that’s why I had to write this, because of what happened after we went out to dinner. I can’t tell anyone, but I can write it. We went to the Italian restaurant.
         We waited for our hot red food. I leaned forward to grab a napkin. The food wasn’t even there yet. My shirt was low cut; I hadn’t even let my mother see it when I left the house. I wore a jacket over it. When I was still in my room getting ready, I leaned forward toward the mirror and the shadowy line amazed me. So I leaned forward to grab a napkin and looked away from the boy, so he could look at me and the shadowy line. The napkins wouldn’t come out easily; it made them move a bit. When I glanced at the boy, his eyes had tumbled down the front of my shirt. They looked transfixed, almost caught there like two pitiful animals in a trap. Ashamed, I drew back and zippered up my open jacket. The boy stared intently at his water glass. I couldn’t forget, though, how those eyes had moved over my skin like two fingers, and I started gulping my water. An ice cube slipped down my throat. Thank God I didn’t choke. God, oh God. My mother would know about this as soon as I got home. Maybe the boy was my mother in disguise, trying to catch me. No, no, I thought. That is ridiculous.
         The food came. The boy let me try one of his raviolis. The ravioli steamed on the fork as he brought it to my mouth. He said I should blow on it, because it might burn me if I didn’t. I blew until it stopped steaming. Then, he brought it forward, gently navigating between my open lips. As my lips closed around it and he slowly pulled the fork from my mouth, I thought, what is he thinking? what is he thinking? I couldn’t stop that sleek smooth thing in my brain and stared hard at the boy’s expression. He smiled; then he laughed softly and picked up a napkin, because the hot red sauce was dripping down the side of my mouth. I think I blushed, but he didn’t say anything, just wiped my mouth and smiled at me. I think I smiled too. Still, I get a feeling that I just looked at him with my mouth hanging wide, wide open.
         When a man came to grind some pepper on our food, I let him go too long. I don’t even like pepper much. Now, the boy must think I love pepper. The food burned me going down, but I had to eat it all like nothing was wrong with it. The food was so hot that I had to take off my jacket. I’m a messy eater, so I kept reaching over for more napkins, even when the boy offered to get them for me. I thought, what am I doing? what am I doing? A woman at a booth nearby looked so much like my mother. She kept sneering at me. I wanted so badly to walk over there and tell her she is a big hypocrite, because think about what she has to have done for me to be here!
         That reminded me of babies. My biology class learns about so many different animals, and they all mate. At some crazy season of the year, they find their opposites and attach to them for a little while, so the species can go on. They all do it a little differently, but they all get connected somehow. My class saw footage of them, and they were certainly connected somehow. I kept thinking about the way the male turtle has special claws for gripping onto the female. It looks ridiculous, really, but it was difficult to keep up my end of the conversation with those turtles stuck in my head, not to mention the big blown-up cowhead organ, which throbbed and whined. My species had to go on too, and the cowhead knew that. The little egg factories churned and churned, just because my species had to go on. The cowhead yearned and yearned, for the same reason. It said: get connected. Get connected. Oh, the thoughts were so bad! My God, my God, my Mother, my Mother! The slithering thing dragged its wretched self on, ever on.
         The Italian restaurant is very close to my house. We walked back in the twilight, the boy and I, holding hands. I worried he could feel the blood pulsing so fast through my hand. The sky was red and purple. It looked swollen. It looked like it was about to burst. We passed a row of bushes with pretty little pink flowers. The boy picked one and gave it to me. I rubbed the velvety petals with my thumb; then, I pulled all the petals from the stalk and let them litter the cement before my feet. Sometimes, one fell in such a way that I trod on it with my next step. The boy laughed at me and presented me with a second flower. I did the same thing as before. When he handed me the third blossom, though, my cheeks burned and I tucked the pink flower behind my ear. It was hard to keep it there, though. It kept falling out. The boy kept adjusting it behind my ear, and he would get so close when he did it, that sometimes his hair brushed my face, and his breath floated to my nose. It smelled like ravioli, but not rotten and digested ravioli. It smelled like the ravioli he had let me try in the restaurant. I turned my face away then, because my own breath must have reeked of pepper. The flower fell, and when he replaced it this time, he brushed my cheek with the back of his hand. His hand fell down and held my waist. His face moved closer and closer until his lips touched my lips. I felt like my breath would wrench itself through my teeth and swirl up with his so that we would together exhale a cloud of over-peppered ravioli. Then, the desperate craving thing ate that thought and all the others as they tried to form. I pressed my warm body to his warm body.
         We were so close to my house! Terrified, I jerked away. We continued walking. We walked between two rows of tall, tall trees that strained and strained toward the clouds. I ran my fingers over their furrowed bark; for a moment, the network of ridges reminded me of veins. I was so close to my house; I looked up to the windows and was certain my mother spied from the attic. I jumped away from the tree, and we walked on, ever on.
         When we entered the house, I immediately called out for my mother. She did not answer. I ran up to the attic. I looked under the bed we have up there. I searched the whole house, and she wasn’t there. Neither was my father. I felt all the urgency of a temporary situation. That diving, stinking thing made me feel it. It made me ask the boy if he wanted to see what my bedroom looked like. My mother made me clean it the day before, so I wanted him to see how pretty it was. He looked at me a few seconds before he would answer. When he answered, he just said all right. All right, all right, the cowhead said.
         The kissing came quickly. I sat on my bed, jacket thrown over a nearby chair, and beckoned him to sit, too. What am I doing? what am I doing? I thought. But the hungry thing devoured my thought. Somehow, we didn’t notice the tastes in each other’s mouths, even though our tongues had all the taste buds on them and they kept darting in the other mouth like spelunking. He lay on me and kissed me for a long time before he tried to touch me at all. When he did, the emptiness seemed to get even heavier, though I hadn’t thought that was possible.
         My pulse quickened. My whole body burned. Then he took out his thing, his own dirty, wretched, craving, desperate, stretched-out thing that was just like my own only other people could see it. He took out his thing, and it was a turkey baster and an ear of corn and a ravioli and a pepper-grinder and a tree, and he put the thing in me, and he moved it in and out faster and faster until the big swollen emptiness inside me shrank and shrank until it was small and brimming with pleasure.
         But he didn’t really do that last thing. That bad thing. He didn’t do it. He took my clothes off, all of them, but he kept his on and just looked at me and touched me so my skin tingled and I wanted him to do that bad thing so bad but he didn’t.
         He said I was too young to do that.
         So he left me there, all naked and goosebumpy. I stared at the squares of light on the wall and felt that heavy feeling in me. It felt heavier than breasts and babies. I lay there for a very, very long time, before I could fall asleep.