Scott Standridge

What You Made Me

I'm sitting naked in bed with my knees clasped tight to my chest when the phone starts to ring. The sheets are twisted around my ankles and the floor between my bed and the telephone is littered with so many dirty plates, newspapers and photo albums that I probably couldn't make it there before the answering machine picked up, even if I wanted to. Instead I focus on the one window in my small apartment, the dirty yellow light filtering through the shade that lets me know it's morning. After the fourth ring the machine clicks and whirrs to life and my own voice fills the room.

"Hi, you've reached Sherry Williams' answering machine. If that's who you called to talk to, go right ahead. But if you want Sherry, she's not in. Leave a message at the beep, and I'll see that she calls you back!"

I feel the bed shift and for an instant the whole world is turned slightly off-kilter, the angles all wrong. The phone might slide off the counter, tumble down its slope and knock the receiver off its hook, deafening my caller with feedback. My own disembodied voice — too loud, too cheerful — hangs in the air like a lost spirit snatched from its corporeal form. Pictures tilt from the walls, cabinet doors swing open on creaking hinges. My temples throb, and the small knot of flesh between my breasts tightens, almost quivers. Then my caller starts to speak and everything snaps back into focus, leaving me panting on the bed, face buried in my knees.

"Sherry, it's Mom." My mother's voice is like her face — rough, weathered, and lined with concern. She takes a deep breath and I can smell cigarette smoke and talcum powder, tinged with drugstore perfume. "This is — God, it must be the fourth time I've called. Are you there, honey? Please, if you are, pick up the phone." She waits and I raise my eyes to stare at the blinking red dot at the answering machine's base. I hold my breath and count its pulse — one, two, three, four, five, six, seven — then exhale as it goes dark before starting over. Three calls from Mom, two from work, one from Linda and then the last one, the first one, the one I cannot bring myself to erase. The light blinks seven more times before my mother speaks again.

"Listen, sweetie. I know you're hurting right now. When you called Monday, I just didn't know what to say to you — it hurt me so much to hear you in pain, to not be able to put my hand on your face or hold you in my arms." Mom pauses again, her voice wet. "I failed you then, Sherry, and I'm sorry. I should have said something to make it better. You were too young when your father left us to remember — but you know, darling, it almost killed me. The only thing that pulled me through was knowing you needed me, knowing that if I let go you couldn't make it on your own. And your father and I had been together six years, not just a few months, for God's sake —" She catches herself, takes a deep breath. It's almost what she said three days ago, just before I screamed at her and told her to go to hell. The knot of flesh on my chest twitches again, presses outward. Mom sighs down the line.

"I'm sorry, Sherry. I'm just so worried about you. Please call, I swear I'll do better this time." She pauses, perhaps waiting for me to reply. Finally she gives up; the phone clicks and goes dead, a microphone hiss swallowed by silence. I lean back against the headboard. The light through the dirty shade makes my skin look jaundiced, and the spoiled food on the floor gives my apartment the smell of a sick room. I stretch my legs out and look down at my body: the stubble of dark hair on my shins and thighs, the small trimmed thatch of pubic hair, thin hips and flat stomach. He told me I was beautiful once, in a way that made me believe him. I start to sob, shaking with pain.

Between my breasts the knot moves again. The swelling is wide at its base but tapers to a point a couple of inches out, pale flesh-color first, then a bruised blue in the middle, then dead gray at its tip. It is bigger now than it was, and when it pushes out I feel the skin tighten, my nipples pulled upward, a heavy pressure on my sternum. Its tip turns first left then right like a worm, then curls upward, as if searching out my eyes. I watch it, fascinated, and in a moment realize I have stopped crying. Finally it retracts and the tightness over my rib cage relaxes.

I pull my legs up and my stomach growls. I'll have to eat again soon, but for now I don't have the energy to move. Instead I stretch out on my back, thinking of Todd and those terrible words on the answering machine, the ones that say he doesn't love me anymore. My chest aches, but under the rib cage now, between my lungs. I close my eyes.

When I open them again the room is dark and I am starving. A dim blue glow bleeds through the window shade and the only other light is the small red dot of the answering machine, one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight, winking at me, mocking. I get up and stumble toward the bathroom. My apartment is a one-room utility, the bed in the far upper corner only yards from the front door, a small futon and coffee table near the window, and along the other wall a tiny kitchenette barely big enough to turn around in. The closet-sized bathroom is the only enclosed space. The living area is cramped but the rent is cheap, which is important on a secretary's salary. I think of the two messages from Katherine, the office manager, and realize that I probably won't have even that small income now. I can't muster enough strength to care.

At one time I had planned to move in with Todd, take my three boxes of belongings to his two-bedroom townhouse on the other side of the city. But that was before he began picking at me, accusing me of small stupidities and acts of thoughtlessness that made me weep with shame. Rather than getting angry I clung to him more fiercely, determined to prove I could do better. But of course I couldn't, and in the end he pushed me away.

I finally make it to the bathroom and flick on the light, then stand there blinking while my eyes adjust. When I can see again I look into the mirror and freeze, mouth open, eyes wide and cartoonish with shock.

The lump has grown.

This morning it was only a couple of inches tall, the size of a half-dollar at its base, little more than a knob. Now from my collarbones to the bottom of my rib cage is a mass of tumorous gray flesh speckled with red and black spots. Tendrils like scars curl around my breasts, edged with the sick yellow and blue of a deep tissue bruise. The surface is irregular and alive — pockmarks like craters in a lunar landscape shift and bubble fluidly from my right side to my left, and small cone-shaped swellings rise and fall, as if something under the skin were pushing outward, testing the strength of the net that keeps it bound. I take a shuddering breath and the growth on my chest quivers.

It is grotesque and mesmerizing. As I watch the ebb and flow, the whorls and craters and pointed fingers of flesh that wriggle and swell and then disappear, slowly the shock drains away and I am hypnotized by the movement of it, the almost-beauty. For a moment I have stepped outside of myself and can watch my own flesh with the detachment of a scientist noting the motion of primordial sludge in his laboratory. The slow organic movements soothe me somehow, and after another few minutes I begin to feel at peace for the first time in days, reassured by something in the way my flesh moves, grows and breathes. My stomach growls again, and now I feel the mass on my chest moving in response, squeezing my ribcage almost like an embrace. There is an intelligence there, something trying to communicate, to help.

I acquiesce as it pushes me gently out of the bathroom, across my apartment to the collapsible wire wardrobe that serves as my closet. My hands move on their own, sorting through the few outfits I possess, selecting a dark short skirt, a red blouse and heels. There is comfort in the movements, a freedom in giving up my will to the task. The mass of flesh cuddles and strokes me under my skin, makes me feel safe and needed. In another few moments I leave the apartment for the first time in a week, following the pull of that invisible hand, my new friend.

The bar is dark, with only a few shaded bulbs hanging by cords from the ceiling, each glowing red under a conical cover. There are a few tables in the long rectangular room, a dusty video poker machine and a neglected dartboard on the far wall, but mostly it's just a bar fronted by stools and backed by rows of colorful bottles. I've never been here before, didn't even know of its existence until my flesh tugged and prodded me through a maze of back alley streets and finally into the neon glow of the beer sign in the window. I follow unquestioning, soothed by the freedom of giving up control to this force that moves with a purpose I've never felt.

The bartender glances at me dismissively as I come in, and then looks back to the baseball game on the television mounted above his head. A biker and his girlfriend smoke grimly at one end of the bar, not speaking to one another, blood in their eyes. At the other end a man sits alone, staring into his beer glass as if he's lost something in it. I am unsteady in high heels, legs shaking from hunger, but the flesh around my ribs squeezes and reassures me. I walk to the bar and sit down beside the beer-drinking man, who doesn't look up. The bartender raises an eyebrow and I order a gin and tonic. When he brings it I turn the glass between my fingers, waiting for the next impulse, the next pull of my flesh that will tell me what to do. Finally the man speaks, his voice slurred by alcohol.

"Spent my last dollar on this beer," he says. "If you're working, I ain't a good investment of your time."

The laugh comes easily, bubbling over my tongue like champagne despite the flush of shame that colors my cheeks. "What a thing to say," I giggle. "No wonder you're sitting by yourself."

He shakes his head. "Why else?" he moans. "Why would a good-looking woman like you come up and sit next to a loser like me unless you were working?" He sighs into his beer. "I got nothing for you. No money, nothing. I'm a waste of your time."

The man looks up at last. He is ugly — acne scars crater his cheeks and his thick eyebrows meet above a bulbous nose. But his bleary eyes are so deep and so lonely that I am not repulsed. I see something I can't explain in him, something sad and desperate that I recognize too well. The flesh over my heart reaches out, a physical empathy.

"I'm not a whore," I say. "I'm just alone. Like you."

Later I'm pulling him down the twisting alleys near the bar, stumbling over trash and seeking out shadows. I feel the flesh gliding over my ribs, twitching and quivering with an almost animal excitement. My blouse billows with its movement, but thankfully the man behind me cannot see. He follows obediently, like a sheep. This new force pushes me in the direction of darkness, past blind alleys and around corners with a purpose that overwhelms my thought. Its fingers tickle my stomach and set up tremors in my legs; my brain is flooded with adrenaline, my breath a shallow rasp as we finally arrive at a cul de sac that I sense has been our destination all along.

"Here," I say, "This is the place."

The man looks around at the walls going up four stories on three sides, the dark broken windows gaping like mouths lined with fangs. The walls are greasy with soot and oil, and soggy newspaper and other trash litter the ground. We are so far removed from the main streets that the traffic is only a low thrum, like the buzzing of faraway bees.

"Romantic," he says. "You're one strange lady."

"Shut up," I say, and leap at him.

The feeling is irresistible — before I know what I'm doing I have locked my lips over his, forcing teeth apart with my tongue. I taste beer and foul breath and something like old meat, but I push deeper, drinking like a butterfly at a blossom. He stumbles backward and I pin him against the alley wall, one leg up and entwined with his, my knee scraping on rough brick. He tangles fingers in my hair and cups my ass with his other hand. I reach down and feel him half-hard through the crotch of his jeans.

"Come on," I whisper as he fumbles with the zipper at the back of my skirt. "Come on, come on, come on . . . " He's too slow; the beer has blunted his reflexes. Finally I slap his hand away, reach under the short hem of the skirt and tear off my thin panties. I shove the torn fabric in his face, under his nose. It is soaked with my scent.

"Damn, lady," he mumbles, "just calm down a little. We got all night."

But I am beyond reason. I grind against him, breathing heavily and taking little nips at the flesh of his throat. I see the bruises left by my passion, and this excites me more. My brain is humming with pleasure, every nerve on edge, my thighs shaking and wet. I unzip him and pull him out, tumescent even through the booze. He tugs at the buttons of my blouse as I push up on him, sinking him deep inside me. My body catches fire and I cry out, convulsing with an orgasm like nothing I've ever felt before. He finally gets my shirt open and pushes his hand inside, where my flesh reaches out to meet him.

"What in the hell —?"

I scream again, almost a roar, and gray tendrils explode from my chest, sticking to his body and face, circling his neck. He yells and tries to push me away but I have him, my flesh expanding and entrapping him, running down his arms and pulling him closer, into me. The gray mass spreads up over my shoulders and neck, down my legs and inner thighs, every inch alive and predatory. Below I can feel his sex still wedged inside me and my own flesh grasping him tight, pulling him deeper. His eyes are wide with fear as bone and tendon start to give way, flesh dissolving under flesh. I want to tell him I'm sorry, that I didn't mean for this to happen, but it's too late — blood erupts from his mouth and skin where I'm pulling at him, tearing him apart. In less than a minute he is dead.

I fall to my knees and start to weep, but my flesh is still busy with his carcass, picking muscle from bone and absorbing what's left of his body. I lean forward on my hands and see only gray stumps of tumorous, bubbling meat, fingers curled into claws. As my body continues to work at him the hunger within me subsides, fear dulled by wave after wave of endorphins. Finally he is gone — a skeleton, yellow bone pink with his blood, is all that remains. I stay curled on the ground, still weeping but full now, whole at last and terrified by my wholeness.

* * * * *

When I wake again the alley is bright with moonlight, the pale orb full and staring down upon me like the unblinking eye of a gigantic snake. My first thought is a nightmare, but the hard asphalt beneath me and the bones drying a few feet away give even that small hope the lie. As I rise my body feels heavy and fluid; though I close my eyes tight I can feel the skin sagging from my arms, muscles flowing down my legs to collect in piles around my feet. I turn my head and layers of flesh move around my neck — my scalp is pulled tight with the downward weight of my face, cheeks elongated and swinging under my jaw in the breeze. I open my eyes and look down upon my naked form, clothes long since dissolved, and see only pulsing gray skin pocked with black boils and craters of pooling acid. I want to scream, but my body is alien and will not react with my mind. Instead it lifts one elephantine foot from the street and lurches forward, out of the alley and toward the light.

I walk for what seems like hours. My flesh makes a sick slurping sound as I crawl walls or push over expanses of open pavement, but incredibly I meet no one. The late hour, I think, and the decay of the neighborhood have emptied the streets. The moon and a few flickering streetlights illuminate my path, casting four monstrous shadows out around my feet like the bloom of a compass rose. My mind is almost fully disconnected from my flesh. I am vaguely aware of the hunger returning, and underneath it something darker and more fierce, something angry that pushes my body on — but mostly I observe my surroundings like a bystander, uninvolved, apart.

After a while the buildings begin to lose their strangeness. Landmarks I recognize pop up here and there — the steeple of an old church on the corner, stabbing heaven like a needle; a neighborhood deli, meat veined with fat hanging in the window; a video store I've patronized before, garish posters surrounded by neon tubes still alight. The purpose in my flesh redoubles, the darkness underneath expands. Finally I turn down another alley and end at a sheer brick wall going up five stories into the night sky. A dim blue glow lights the fourth window up, a view I know well. My flesh pushes me forward.

I hold my hand to the wall and gray tendrils leap out again, flowing into every crevice in the mortar, finding purchase in the most minute cracks. Soon I am scaling the wall like a slug, pulling away chunks of brick as I climb. When I reach the fourth floor window I press against the glass and my flesh spreads out to cover its surface, seeking its edges, dissolving the caulk and metal that holds it in its frame. At last it comes free and falls to the alley floor, shattering into a thousand diamond shards. I surge forward and pour myself through the opening into the large, well-appointed apartment that I had once planned to make my home.

The room is filled with blue light, a flickering fluorescent bulb in the hundred-gallon fish tank that is Todd's pride and joy. Neons and a small school of guppies dart around like silver arrows, and fat Japanese goldfish fan their tails lazily in their sleep. A suckerfish eats algae from the glass, a round gaping mouth above a triangle of flat gray skin. In the past this animal disgusted me, but now I am fascinated: I lean forward and study the rhythmic movement of its mouth as it feeds, the way its gills expand and contract against the transparent surface. Though the room is too dark and the light from above the tank too bright to show me a true reflection, I can just make out a ghostly outline of myself in the glass, my head a mound of pulsing flesh, my shoulders twice as broad as before. Behind me I hear a sharp metallic click, followed quickly by Todd's voice.

"Just don't move," he says. "I called the police when I heard the window break, and they'll be here any minute. I've got a gun."

I remember the gun well — an oiled .357 Magnum Todd bought after watching too many Dirty Harry movies, and which he liked to pose with in front of the mirror, spinning its unloaded chambers. I've no doubt it's loaded now. I stand to full height and turn to face him. The light behind me throws my form in silhouette, and Todd makes a small gulping sound in his throat. Though I cannot see him the air is thick with the smell of his flesh, shampoo and sweat and under that a sickly sweet odor I think is his fear. The hunger within me doubles and so does the rage, its darkness spreading quickly to the edges of my form like dirty oil. Todd's breath comes shaky, and his voice drops to a whisper.

"Stay where you are, I'm warning you —" I hear him fumbling for the switch and the recessed lamps in the ceiling take fire, filling the room with hard, garish light. Todd is naked except for a pair of plaid boxers. He is beautiful, an Adonis: his chest two slabs of muscle over six-pack abs, his legs tight from daily runs, arms cabled with veins. His blonde hair is mussed and a day's growth of beard darkens his cheeks, but his blue eyes are wide and awake as he stares at me, silver gun shaking at the end of his outstretched right arm.

"My God," he whispers. "Holy Jesus, what —"

His body, his scent cry out to my flesh and I cannot resist, nor do I want to. I lurch forward, one heavy step at a time, every sagging muscle alive, every nerve on fire. Todd stumbles backward and claps both hands on the Magnum, his mouth working convulsively, like a fish's.

"Don't . . . stay there . . . ."

I open my mouth to speak, to try to explain, but what emerges is a roar like the tearing of metal, a scream of rage and hunger. Todd pulls the trigger. The bullet craters my chest — I feel in pass halfway through my body before my flesh stops it, flows back into the empty space and starts to dissolve the metal. The pain only adds to my hunger, my fury. The smell of gunpowder now mixes with the heady aroma of Todd's fear and I stumble forward again, flesh quivering, arms wide.

Todd retreats into the bedroom, never taking his eyes off me, and finally trips over the edge of the bed and falls back. I realize he is trying to scream, but can't get enough breath in his lungs. Instead he whispers, "What — what is it — what is it?" His eyes are wide, almost mad.

I try to tell him — I'm what you made me — but my voice is lost in a bellow of rage. Tendrils explode from me, stretching out in all directions as I reach out to embrace the one I once loved. I fall at last onto the bed, enveloping him, taking him, drowning his screams with my own liquid flesh. In a moment I am whole again. We are one.

February 2, 2010