I thought it was a dream, when I coughed my teeth into the sink. I’ve had similar dreams before. Even looked them up. Anxiety, according to the search engine on my phone. But after going back to bed bloody-mouthed and beaten black and blue by…I’m not sure what, the teeth are still here, in my sink, this morning.
I pluck them up with thumb and forefinger, then use a pair of tweezers to reclaim the K-9 wedged into the push-button drain stopper. Once all eight are in the palm of my hand, I force myself to lift my gaze.
There she is, the lost girl, staring back at me in the mirror. Only there’s no blood, no bruises, and when I open my mouth, a full set of teeth grinning, then grimacing at me.
I want to call you, to tell you, but—
You are fixed, Amelia, cured, I hear Dr. Panrovia say.
“Fixed.” I assure myself with a close-lipped nod. “Cured.”
I place the teeth in a small ceramic bowl, tuck them into the cupboard above the sink, then ready myself for work.
That night, when I crawl out of bed and stare at my mangled body in the mirror, I don’t spit up teeth, I spit up blood and rounded, slippery chunks. I push the stopper to keep the blood and bits from sliding away—I don’t want to lose them.
The sink is full to the brim by the time I’m done heaving; my insides bob like apples in a pool of my own bright red sap. I can’t identify anything, but when I place my hands over my chest, my stomach, the pit of space cradled by my pelvis, everywhere feels…emptier.
Your name flits through my mind, not like a passing feather on the wind, but like the whole damn bird, trapped, and banging, and beaking at my brain.
“Fixed. Cured,” I hiss, smacking the side of my head with the heel of my hand.
I go back to bed, wake, and the sink is still full.
With a baster and a pair of gloves I typically reserve for cleaning the bathroom, I gather my insides into a bucket and store them in the bathtub, hidden just behind the shower curtain.
Gloves discarded, limp, and sloppy red in the sink, I grab my phone, drag my tongue across my teeth, and scroll to your number. Really, I should be calling a doctor, but your voice, the way it shifts from sunshine and flowers to all business right when I need it to, calms me before I even hear it.
It’s disgusting. Dr. Panrovia reminds me. What you’re doing is wrong, Amelia, it’s a sin.
I snap my phone shut and with it my mind. It’s a sin. A sin!
The bird dies, I am fixed, and you and your wind-swept locks, and your hazel eyes, and your delicate fingers that used to lure me into sin are no longer needed.
I need a doctor.
But by the time I’m on my bus and headed to the office, I’ve convinced myself that I am fine. And I am. I am cured.
My skin. I peel off strips as shiny red as holiday ribbon.
My bones. I dig them out of my left hand with my right.
My hair. It doesn’t fall out, I tear it out, ripping free slabs of my scalp and screaming until there’s nothing left but the violent sting of damaged flesh and the truth.
You are a sinner, Amelia! A sinner!
My heart. I jam the tweezers into my sternum and carve messily upward. I pant and I gasp, cry as strings of saliva slip down my chin and my vision pocks with black specks.
If anything causes you to sin, cut it out.
I’m trying. I’m trying!
I free the tweezers and sink them back in, free them and sink them, free them and sink them, and finally the hole in my chest is large enough to drive the first two fingers of each hand into the slick, frayed gap. I pull, and pull. My ribs begin to shift, stabbing into the muscles of my back. There’s a crack and several pops as the two halves of my chest splay like flayed wings to reveal not a healthy, pumping heart, but a black, wheezing mass.
I lean closer to the mirror.
It’s flesh and tissue, muscle and tubing, but it’s rotten. Greenish-red veins of mold crust the one side and something oily and black leaks from its base, spilling down over my hollowed-out center to the pit of my pelvis.
The black slips through me, coating my sex and staining my inner thighs with rot.
With sin.
I reach into the gaping cavity, grab the soft, almost gelatinous mass and rip it out.
It oozes through my fingers, threatening to disintegrate. Oily drops plunk down, streaking the sides of the sink like my mascara did my cheeks on the day I told you goodbye.
The day I was forced to tell you goodbye. I didn’t want to. I wish—
Stop it! Stop it!
Turning to the tub, I whip back the curtain and drop the disgusting thing into the bucket that keeps getting fuller and fuller. It doesn’t bob like the rest of my bits, like the bones and the soft tissue, or hang over the sides like my skin and my hair, it sinks. And when I wake the following morning, it is the only part of myself I can not confirm is still in there.
I can’t take this anymore.
I grab my teeth from the cupboard above the sink and shake them into the nightmare that’s consumed my bathroom. Disgusted and knowing I’ll never use it again, I drop the bowl into the bucket as well. Then snatch the handle, hoist the heavy thing, and…set it down.
I don’t know what to do with it. I could dump it down the drain and toss whatever doesn’t slide down easily into a trash bag, but as soon as I go to tip it, I can’t. I just…I can’t let it go.
I turn to face my reflection.
“You are fixed!” I point at her, then gape, finally seeing the last piece of who I was then that’s still intact. My eyes, they belong to the lost girl, the disgusting wretch who lost her way.
Tonight, I tell myself, tonight I will scoop them from their sockets and I will be free, done with this mess, done with her.
On the bus, I delete your number from my phone. I’ll forget it soon enough, forget you too, forget the dreams, and forget this final purge ever happened.
This is good, I tell myself while filing chart notes. For the best. And by the time I’m waving goodbye to the receptionist, my mind is miles from that bathroom and those damned dreams, they’re only dreams. Right now, I want carbs and red wine. Maybe I’ll make pasta, yes, and watch an old movie.
I get home.
There’s the kitchen. There’s the couch. And at the end of the hall, the bathroom.
Pasta, I remind myself. Movie.
There’s nothing I can do in there anyhow, not until I fall asleep, right?
They’re only dreams.
I spy the knives on the kitchen counter, swallow down the ideas hijacking my thoughts.
I can wait. I will wait…
I grab a knife, a spoon, and walk down the hall.
With shaky hands, I peel my right eyelid away from the glossy orb beneath it. It’s the eye that first saw you, just a woman on the bus who needed a seat. Or so I’d thought. I scooched left, you sat right, and this eye kept sliding in your direction.
I grit my teeth—the back of the spoon is cool against the underside of my lid.
Would you mind opening the window?
Oh, of course…
Your hair flutters and you tip your head back. Summer in the city, you say, fanning yourself.
Brutal. I nod, using the opportunity to let my gaze wander down the smooth arc of your throat, to the swell of your breasts, to the soft fold of belly above the hem of your jeans.
Joyce. You stick out your hand.
Amelia. I shake.
Nice to meet you.
Nicer to touch you, nicer to hold you, nicer to learn you, and to know you—your favorite book, your favorite line, the only one that makes you cry—nicer to breathe in your scent, to dry your tears, nicer to carry your pain and swallow your sin…
“Stop it, stop it, stop it!” I scream, driving the spoon back and down. Blood gushes down my face, my vision swims between then and now, you and this: her, her, thrashing and screaming and catching glimpses of herself in the mirror.
The lost girl drops to the bathroom floor, but I’m not done, I have to finish the job.
If anything causes you to sin, cut it out. Cut it out!
I twist the spoon, hear a pop, feel wetness on my cheek and a burning in my brain, and…
Wake.
Hours later. It’s pitch black outside. Inside, too.
I stand to look at myself in the mirror, but I can’t see. I can’t see anything anymore.
It’s such a relief.
The following morning, I wake slowly, blinking up at the stucco ceiling, and wonder how much of the evening prior was real. I rub my eyes and remember it all in pieces. The spoon, the blood, the blindness.
I spring to my feet and rush to the bathroom. No spoon, no blood. And when I throw back the shower curtain, no bucket, and no bits. Futilely, I drop to my knees and paw at the tub’s white walls and base. I drag a finger along the rim of the drain to check for residue; it comes away clean.
So clean, so perfectly clean. But the entire tub is so very clean. There’s no grit, no grime, not even a single hair threaded through the drain’s pores or climbing up the wall.
The tingling in my folded legs turns to a truly numb sensation as I stand. The numbness spreads as I back away from the tub, as I scan once more for a bucket and a pair of gloves I know I will not find.
The whole bathroom is so perfectly clean.
I turn to face the mirror, and gasp. Nothing. I see nothing. No face, no eyes, no skin, no teeth, no girl. No one. And when I try to speak, I find I’ve lost my voice as well.