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Shiny, sticky, slippery, pale.
On the grainy image of the old television in her room, a low-quality scene played, clearly fetishistic content: medical images of open bodies, emphasizing their internal and sexual organs. Isn't that a crime?
It didn't matter. Joanne had her hands under her shorts and was moaning quietly, thin fingers teasing her hard, throbbing clitoris. She was in an uncomfortable position, lying down with her head tilted to the side, staring at the succulent bodies in front of her.
It was routine. The first time Joanne found this channel while channel surfing, she was with her brother. Colin. Brother and bandmate.
She felt a slight discomfort down there, feeling tight and sticky. She discreetly squeezed her thighs and felt the seam of her jeans dig into her vaginal lips and burn as she did the same to her anus.
Joanne had always been a violent person internally. She liked watching documentaries. She liked reading the newspaper.
She closed her eyes and didn't even realize she wasn't looking at the images anymore. She was creating, or trying to create, a solid image in her mind. Her mind wandered to other subjects, but it was enough. A face torn from muscle and skin, full of lacerations. From an accident, perhaps? A car accident. The jawbones were visible, nothing covered the teeth. Skin only covered part of the nose and the right side of the face. On the left side, an eyeball stared back at her face. Light eye color. Blond hair.
Her fingers parted the thin inner labia like an open wound, and she inserted a finger into her vagina. Damn, Joanne was going to come. She moaned pleasurably, even though she couldn't get fucked so quickly with the fabric trapping her hand.
It was Thom, yes, Thom. Missing part of his face. Pale and dead. She would sit and rub against his face, feeling his bony nose part her lips, her body returning warmth to her bandmate's cold body as if slowly appropriating her life.
Joanne, as soon as she was born, felt the lights adorn her gray and wet body, removed from its dwelling. Until then, it was all she had. A warm body to take refuge from the local cold. Although she hadn't yet opened her eyes, like a flower bud fleeing anthesis, her eyelids tightened.
The girl barely cried, despite the brutality of being ripped from her mother's womb. She hid in the woman's arms under the surgical blanket that provided synthetic warmth in addition to her mother's warmth. But it wasn't like before.
She discovered the pleasures of life early: a soft breast, full of milk just for her. She was clumsy at sucking, biting her mother's hard and sensitive nipples now and then. She always threw tantrums and cried with jealousy whenever Colin would ask for the breast too.
However, as Joanne grew older, she realized that no one, no one, was going to be there for her. No more milk, no more tummy rubs, no mommy, no breast.
She felt vulnerable, as before. She needed support, control. She felt something bad, intertwined, locked, stitched into her muscle fibers. She felt it was over. It was over, because in a place that shifts its focus to performance and that exclusively, there is no land for her, in the hazy layer of smoke that levels everything.
At home, she stared at her naked body in the mirror. Her ribs that were prominent under her skin, her small, pert breasts. Despite knowing her guts and bones by heart, she felt hollow. She traced her organs under her skin, feeling her heart pounding and hearing her empty stomach. The mouth now parts slightly in a discreet smile, a little shy, a little sad; but the eyeballs, devoid of any expression, give the face an obscene air.
…
Today? Today, she feels exceptionally empty. Exceptionally hungry, like a carnivorous animal in drought.
“You know, Thom, have you ever felt like you don’t belong here?” Joanne asks, bringing the bottle of liquor to her full lips slightly, sucking the saliva of the drunken boy in front of her. She wasn’t drinking: she was just consuming the saliva there.
“All the time,” he replies, groggy. “I think everyone feels that to some degree.”
His eyes were closed, arms under his head, making his shirt ride up slightly and expose the lower part of his stomach.
If she could, Joanne would make a deep incision. She would watch the boy’s heart beat, his bladder full, bursting like a balloon spilling its contents, and his lungs pink. His organs would be a little pale and swollen.
“Everyone gets a little lost.”
“Yeah.”
…
“Fuck. I’m gonna cum.”
The whispered words echoed in her room, bouncing back and forth off the walls and furniture.
Her toes curled, her eyes tightly closed, and her chest heaving. The slender fingers of her right hand played with her nipples with poor coordination, which, despite not being sensitive, always aroused her. Probably because she always saw it in the porn she watched.
Her left hand held a thin stiletto, lightly and delicately running the blunt side around her vulva and occasionally giving attention to her clitoris.
Joanne couldn't contain the violent thoughts, because it was what made her wet her panties. She needed to see blood, especially Thom's.
Thom. Ah, Thomas. So beautiful. So boyish.
She would spend hours kissing those wet lips, all over his soft face, his drooping eyelid, every little mark. Drugging him and watching him wake up, his wrists bruised on the thick sisal rope as he tried to free himself. Running that stiletto across his succulent flesh and watching his red blood spill like a woman's breast milk.
Like her mother. Like the times when she only nursed without worrying about life, about politics, about sex, about money, about boys. Her mind sometimes drifted back to those memories while she masturbated.
Oh, don't cry over spilled milk, my love.
Joanne bit her lower lip so hard it bled, one hand now wielding the stiletto to make several sloppy cuts as she reached her climax. Her head was empty at that moment, all thoughts fleeing far, far away.
Damn, she needs an opening. She needs to steal Thom's integrity. It's perfect.
She really doesn't care that much about life afterward. How great would the consequences of killing someone be? None of that matters. The constitution, the family, ethics. They're useless.
Joanne, of course, didn't sleep. She stayed awake, flipping through VHS porn tapes and listening to her jazz records. Digging her nails into her skin and pacing aimlessly in her room, writing down the ideas that flooded her mind on a random piece of paper. The liner notes of the record she picked up were crumbling from age, and to be honest, she didn't even know the artist. She bought it at a thrift store for a pound or less.
…
“Want to go out with me today, Thom? Have a drink, I don’t know.” Joanne murmurs, pretending to be focused on her book and that it’s not that serious.
“Drink. Are you trying to kill me?” He says, looking expressionlessly at the girl who is now looking back at him.
She parts her lips, searching for words and looking away slightly uncomfortable. Before she can answer, he tries to soften the blow.
“Of course I want to. I was just kidding.” Thom chuckles and Joanne reciprocates after a few seconds.
“You silly thing.”
“I know a bar, nearby actually. I can get ready quickly, put on a dress or anything.” She suggests, arching her back slightly as she gets up, not waiting for his answer.
“Okay.” He replies.
Thom watched her disappear down the hallway and, when the sound of the bedroom door closed, he let out a short sigh and resumed breathing, the kind no one notices.
He didn’t even know exactly why he was nervous. It wasn't a date, right? At least he thought not. He shook his head, laughing to himself at how he was overthinking, as he always did.
A few minutes later, she appeared at the door again, still adjusting the strap of her dress.
“Ready,” she said, as if she’d gotten ready in two seconds.
Thom raised an eyebrow.
“That was quick, wasn’t it?”
“You wanted me to take longer?” she laughed breathlessly, grabbing a small bag.
“No, no,” Thom hurried to reply, grabbing his coat. “It was just… a comment.”
They left together, descending the stairs side by side like lovers. The night air was cool, and Joanne hugged her own arms as they walked.
“Is it just around the corner?” he asked.
“Yeah. Nothing special, but it’s quiet,” she said. “And the music isn’t loud.”
“Great, I hate shouting to talk.”
Joanne agreed.
“Me too.”
They walked in silence for a few steps, but it was that comfortable silence, the kind that doesn’t weigh you down. Joanne kicked a pebble on the way; Thom dodged a dog tied to a gate.
The bar was quiet, with half a dozen tables occupied. Thom held the door open for her to enter. Joanne thanked him softly, smiling foolishly.
They sat near the window.
Thom picked up the menu, rested his elbow on the table and asked:
“What would you like?”
“Beer.”
“You didn’t drink,” he laughed. “Have you changed now?”
Joanne smiled, sticking her tongue out a little and making herself look smaller, as if she'd been caught red-handed. "Yeah. I fell for the advertisement."
He gave a short nod to the waiter, ordered two drinks, and fiddled with the napkin holder while they waited. Her eyes lingered on the small cuts on his fingers and his bitten nails and torn cuticles.
When the drinks arrived, Thom opened her bottle first, pushing the cap off with his thumb and passing the glass to Joanne without thinking.
"Thanks," she said, trying not to seem shy.
"Sure," he replied, taking a sip of his.
They started talking about simple things: work, a silly news report she'd seen earlier, music, the band. The conversation just flows, especially with a drink.
Joanne swirled her glass by the base, watching the foam subside. The conversation had fallen silent for a few seconds, the whole bar muffled in the background.
Then she said, completely out of the blue:
“Did you know that, in an autopsy, the stomach sometimes smells like, kind of herbs? Depending on what the person ate before they died.”
Thom blinked, taking half a second to process.
“Huh?” he laughed. “What?”
“Seriously. There’s even a technical name for opening the stomach, but I forgot.” She took another sip of her beer. “Oh, and the liver looks like a wet sponge when they cut it open.”
“Well, you better not become a doctor.” Thom joked. “I’d faint easily.”
“You? Faint?” Joanne raised an eyebrow. “No way.”
“Of course. Blood is okay. Now, that mass of organs, the smell, no way.” He made an exaggerated face and leaned back in his chair.
Joanne let out a short giggle.
“Organs are just organs.”
“I’ll pass on that,” Thom said, raising his glass.
“Relax,” she replied, giving a half-smile. “You don’t need to think about it.”
Thom nodded, still laughing, and took another sip. The bar was full now, but in a cozy way, with that yellow light that softened people’s faces. Joanne rested her chin on her hand, watching him snap his fingers, admiring him.
The conversations in the bar, the clinking of glasses, the warm air from the lighting. Thom drummed his fingers on the table, glancing distractedly at an advertisement stuck to the wall.
“I don’t remember you being so morbid.”
He spoke in a light tone.
“I’m not. Only when I’m comfortable. If that makes sense to you.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Comfortable.”
“Well,” she rested her elbow on the table, looking directly at him. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Thom looked away too quickly to be natural.
He grabbed the label from the bottle and began to peel it off with his fingernail in an automatic, nervous gesture. Joanne saw it, and for some reason it stirred a strange warmth in her chest.
“You seem tense,”
“Me? Tense?”
“A little.”
She laughed, hiding her mouth behind her glass.
“But it’s good.”
“Good?!”
“Uh-huh.”
He didn’t know what to answer. He stared at her, half disoriented, half trying to understand where he was stepping.
Joanne rested her hand on the table, the tips of her fingers almost touching his.
“Relax,” she said, now in a way that sounded different from the previous one. “I like talking to you.”
And then, the waiter passed by and she ordered another round.
…
The two were already in another world. They staggered home, and Joanne had to act like the man in the relationship, holding Thom against her taller body. She felt pleasure seeing him like that, drugged. Not just with alcohol. Joanne wasn't stupid enough to leave openings for him to get away with it.
She felt wetter as time passed, holding the body of a dead man. A dead man, with excellent cardiovascular health and strong heart muscles that never tired of working. A dead man, with violin-like vocal cords. A dead man, with lungs that now worked more slowly. A pink, pale lung.
"Thom," Joanne cried, as if she had been mourning when they arrived. "I'm sure you'll be a good man. A good husband."
Thom murmured something, closing his eyes and suddenly appearing in the room. Joanne was taking off her shoes and began to crawl over his body, pressing herself against Thom and kissing his lips. His mouth tasted sour, like food that had been sitting there for too long without toothpaste.
“Where is it? I’m going to sleep.” Thom whispered random, incoherent phrases, as if he had just been born.
Joanne began to take off her clothes, not caring if she tore any fabric or not. The only fabric she would tear on purpose now was the man’s in front of her. “Sleep, my baby.”
Her heart pounded. She felt more alive than before. Her breathing was louder than Thom’s.
Joanne reached out and touched Thom’s cheek. So rosy. He looked at her, probably feeling unwell. “I’m going to end this thing. Stay calm.” She said without context.
It didn’t take long for her to undress Thom, who was limp. Very limp. Ribs were visible under his skin. Hip bones too. His penis was small. Joanne didn’t feel any attraction to that little thing, to tell the truth. Her pussy drooled as she began to tie up Thom, who weakly struggled and tried to argue. Shush.
I'm going to eat you to the bone.
Joanne bit her lower lip, her hand enveloping that reddish cock and feeling its texture. Spongy, hard, hot. Thom stared at her breasts, pressed together as her arms were outstretched.
"Do you like it?" she moaned.
Silence.
Oh. Her eyes closed as she sucked the boy's cock, the slight taste of sweat and urine. It wasn't very difficult to swallow his whole cock, so her movements were basically the same except for a few sucks on the glans.
At that moment, Thom had already closed his eyes. He certainly didn't expect to die. But he didn't care about reality anymore, his head too fucked up with drugs.
The night hadn't completely unwrapped Thom's body, just enough to leave him defenseless, his pale, vulnerable flesh on the sweat-soaked, drug-soaked sheet. The sisal rope had already done its work, marking his wrists and ankles with reddish grooves that looked like primitive bracelets. He was there, breathing, but he wasn't anymore.
Joanne knelt beside the bed, not like a lover, but like a craftswoman before her raw material. His breath was a damp, uneven puff, his chest rising and falling in a rhythm that seemed disconnected from the rest of the world. She looked at the blade resting on a clean cloth beside the bed. A boning knife, with a thin, curved blade at the tip, made of rough steel that absorbed the dim light of the bedside lamp. It had been sharpened that very day. The edge was so thin it seemed to disappear.
"Let's start with what's in the way," she murmured, more to herself than to him.
Her fingers, cold and dry, explored the joint of Thom's right shoulder. The collarbone was a hard branch beneath the skin.
She pressed with the pads of her fingers, feeling the depression where the ball of the humerus fit into there. The exact spot. The tip of the knife found the skin first, a cautious pressure.
Thom's skin, still warm and elastic, resisted for a fraction of a second before yielding with a silent spongy soundy, more felt than heard. The thin blade disappeared into the flesh, guided by an intimate knowledge of anatomy stolen from screens.
Joanne worked with the patience of a goldsmith. The blade glided, following the contours of the body, separating what nature had joined. It found tendons: bright white cords that snapped with a dry sound of broken elastic. The sound was crisp in the silence of the room.
Blood, a thick, dark red, that flowed slowly and spurted out in two distinct ways. It came slowly, filling the channel the blade had opened, overflowing in thick streams that ran down the arm and dripped onto the sheet with a rhythmic plop, plop.
Thom's body arched, a violent spasm that made the bed groan. A rustling breath escaped his lungs. His eyes, which until then had been closed in drowsy agony, suddenly opened. They were blue, and now overflowed with a pristine understanding of what was happening. He tried to speak, but only a wet gurgle came out. Pain, after all, is a more powerful alarm clock than anything else.
She paused for a moment, fascinated.
She watched the muscles in his chest contract like chains, the veins in his neck bulging. She saw sweat instantly break out on his face, mingling with the tears that began to roll down without crying. His life was concentrated there, in that look of absolute terror, pulsing through the wound she had made.
"Shhh," Joanne whispered, and her own voice sounded strange, hoarse with contained excitement. "I'm almost there."
With one hand firmly planted on Thom's chest to contain his spasms, she used the other to work the blade deeper.
Now it was a matter of leverage. She thrust her fingers into the cut, feeling the warm flesh and damp bone, and pulled. A deep, moist crack echoed, like that of a thick branch being snapped in half. Thom's arm, still attached to his torso by strips of muscle and skin, assumed an obscene angle, loose.
The next work was cleaner, almost surgical. The blade snaked through the armpit, cutting the last points of connection. The blood now flowed more freely, gushing in weak pulses that followed the rhythm of Thom's desperate heart. When the limb finally came loose, with a final tear of skin, its weight surprised Joanne. It was heavy, inert.
She lifted it, holding by the snapped rope like a throphy. Blood trickled down the elbow, dripping onto the wooden floor.
Joanne let the severed arm fall to the side of Thom's torso with a dull thud. The reality of the weight, of that mass of flesh and bone now separated, held the air in her lungs for a second. In ecstasy. A silent and overwhelming ecstasy.
Thom's body still trembled, a deep, involuntary tremor like a pond bottom. His eyes, glazed and unfocused, seemed to search for his own missing limb in the heavy air of the room.
She knelt in the dark, warm puddle that formed on the floor.
With deliberate, almost affectionate movements, she pushed Thom to the side, rolling him so that his back was to her. He offered almost no resistance. Joanne then lay down behind him, pressing her bare belly against his bloodied spine, her chest against his sweaty back. She wrapped one arm around him, pulling him into an intimate embrace, while with the other hand she dragged the amputated arm she had gathered close to her.
The skin on his elbow was still warm. She buried her face in the inner curve of his limb, inhaling the metallic smell of blood and the underlying, salty scent of Thom's skin.
Her free hand began to roam over his torso, inspecting the area. She felt the ribs beneath the tension of the skin, the throbbing cavity where his shoulder had been violated. Her fingers played at the edge of the wound, pressing lightly inward, feeling the sponginess of the torn tissue. Thom let out a hoarse sob.
"Shhh," she repeated, the warm whisper against the skin of the arm she embraced.
"We're together."
Her own arousal was a throbbing pain, a wet emptiness that demanded filling. Joanne pulled Thom's body lower so she could rub her vulva against his thigh in a slow, lascivious motion, mingling her fluids with his blood that flowed with gravity.
Her rhythm as she rubbed against his leg quickened. Thom's amputated arm was now between her legs, the limp fingers inside her.
Joanne picked up the blade, the same one that had made the separation, and with the tip, began to draw shallow lines on his leg. Each small cut released a fresh gush of blood, which trickled and mixed with her own fluids, creating a thick, warm lubrication.
"You're inside me," she moaned in his ear, "Fuck me harder."
Joanne threw the knife aside, which fell onto the mattress. The body beside her was just a backdrop, a piece of furniture made of flesh. The arm between her legs was no longer his; it was just an object, a sex toy of damp flesh and blood. With both hands free, she grasped the severed arm by the upper part, where the flesh ended in a clean cut and the humerus bone was exposed, a white, serrated tip. She used it as a lever, a brutal extension of her own body, rubbing the palm against her clitoris while keeping his fingers inside.
The orgasm hit her like a collapse, her body arched back, a violent spasm that almost made her fall off the bed. A muffled cry escaped her throat. She continued rubbing the bloody stump against herself, even after the peak, in the subsidiary spasms, until the sensitivity became too painful.
Then she stopped. She released the arm. It fell between her legs, a dead, useless weight.
Her breath ragged in the silent room. The smell was overwhelming: iron, sex, sweat, and the sweet beginnings of decomposition. She looked at her body, covered in blood that wasn't hers, at the disassembled lover beside her, and then at her own hands, sticky and red.
A void deeper than hunger swallowed her. The animal, after its drought, had satiated itself, and now only the carcass of its prey remained, along with the realization that hunger would return, always would. Now it was just an echo in a room. He hadn't filled it. Nothing could.