August 2023
In a bathtub murky with blood, Priscilla held the frail, unmoving body of her baby tightly to her chest and wept for what might've been hours, or might have been days. Eventually, she was washed and toweled, dried and put to bed. It might've been by anyone, it might've even been by her own hand. She didn't know, she hadn't been there when it was happening. In her head she was somewhere far, far away. Somewhere better. Somewhere that hurt less.
And in that bed she stayed. Hours. Days. Weeks. One morning she woke in the tiny cabin and there was frost along the windowpane, though the last month she remembered being alive in was July, maybe. Or August. Priscilla rolled to the other side and pulled the covers back over her head and thought: good, let the leaves begin to die and fall. She wanted everything and everyone in the world to be as miserable as she was.
Often and loudly she was reminded, sometimes by her own thoughts, that she had to get up. She had to eat. She had to bathe. She had to pee. She had to get a job, she had to get a job, she had to get a job. Bills. Bills. Money. Money. Bills. Work. Money. Bills. Money.
Money. Like the whispered name of an old lover, to think about it brought her a sense of dread and confusion. How had she ever cared about such a thing at all? How had it been so important? What little funds she had accrued in preparation of leaving the island with her son dried up almost immediately. Nothing ever lasted as long as grief did. Often, she dreamt of Mr. Velari. In every version of the dream, he killed her. It was not a nightmare anymore, but a sweet and dear fantasy that she longed to be true in the first moments after waking.
If she'd had any friends left, she would have turned them away, and the few friends of Hilda's couldn't possibly understand how torn up she was over the loss of a baby they believed she had never planned to keep. Priscilla kept herself company by imagining their remarks, in ways that made cruel caricatures of the people who had only ever been welcoming to her. She's still in bed? It was only a few thousand dollars they were going to give her for the surrogacy. It can't be that hard to get over. Get a grip. Grow up. Move on.
The world continued to spin on and she lay flat and still, stiffening with every day that passed, growing roots that tangled and rotted beneath the bed, letting the days hang over her like a heavy cloud she couldn't push through. There might've been sun on the other side, but she was too lost in the storm to guess which direction it might be in, and too tired to try and find it.
Without warning, one morning in late November, she rose and dressed. With a blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders and head, Priscilla took herself to the porch, where she sat and did not do much of anything at all. But at least it was not the bed. Then, a few days later, she went so far as to walk up the length of the road and back again. She stared at the ground the entire time. But at least it was not the bed. And when she carried all the cups from the bedside table to the sink, though she did not wash them, at least it was not the bed.
November's full moon came, and with it all the usual aches and pains, but none of the dread. For so long she had tried and tried and tried to be perfectly human, shoving down whatever animal instincts howled in her. The fear of losing control and being a hideous, snarling beast had left her now. When the moon came, this time, she did not ask Hilda for the ethereum ring back. Priscilla wanted to lose her humanity. Priscilla wanted to howl. For months she had grown her grief inside of her like a second pregnancy, and it was ready now for the bloody and violent business of being born.