Woman in Cold Water

Deep at the bottom of a poisonous lake lies the remains of what once was a woman. She did not suffer a tragic fate. Listen closely. She hates it when you get the story wrong.

At the bottom of the lake she is nothing but bones. Cold, hard, smooth. Unseeable. Un-digestible. Perfect.

She hardly remembers her body at all. She does not miss it.

-

It starts with the skin. She watches it peel away from her in layers. Thin at first, like the skin of a grape, then thick, like the rind of an orange. One by one the layers go, dissolving into the murky depths. No more acne. No more scars. No more shaving. No more anti-aging cream. Gone, gone, gone. At last.

His skin is the first to go. The drugs she gave him make sure he doesn’t scream as she sinks her knife into him and peels. No more calloused hands on her at night. No more dripping sweat as he hovers and humps. No more crusty lips on tender places.

Next is the fat, floating up around her in clouds. She is glad to see it go. No more weight watchers. No more jiggling. No more making herself puke to fit into that awful dress he always made her wear. No more.

His is yellow, globby, and slippery in her hands as she tears it out. No more bouncing beer belly. No more cooking for his insatiable appetite.

Now, the muscle. It falls off in chunks, like the ones in cans of processed chicken. Denser than the fat, it sinks immediately to the bottom, where eventually it, too, will be consumed by the poison. No more struggling in vain to fight him off. No more feeling the strain and ache for days after. No more aerobics classes. No more running.

His is tough, but her knife persists. No more hands around her neck. No more pinning her down. No more flinching when he raises his arm. She slices through the tendons...

One by one, her organs leave. Bladder, spleen, and stomach swimming off like strange fish. Her ovaries pop like bubbles as her uterus crumples and shrinks. Good riddance. No more bottles of ibuprofen and days in silent pain. Her intestines unravel from her like a snake. No more laxatives.

...Through the rest of his organs. Brain, liver, lungs. No more mind games. No more blowing all their money on liquor. No more feeling his hot rancid breath on her cheek. No more.

Her heart is the last to go. Once all the blood has poured out, its function is merely ornamental. It doesn’t make much difference. Hers had been ornamental for a while. That had been the worst part – the pretending. Acting like she still felt something when it beat, giving in to the delusion of aliveness. It had been dead ever since she was a child, from that very first time in her babysitter’s basement, with whatever piece of innocence was left to rot on that grimy floor. Decomposing ever since. She watches it crumble like a fistful of sand.

The water consoles her. It’s okay, it says. Let go. Become nothing. Become what you were meant to be.

Nothing, she thinks. Beautiful, delicious nothing. True nothing, not the nothing women thought they could be if they managed to squeeze their fat ass into a size zero. Foolish. They cannot see beyond their body to the force that lies beneath. Cold, fluid, dangerous. A power so great it must be primordial. The Greeks once thought everything was made of water. She understands it now.

With his heart, she knows she must do something special. She doesn’t just want to see it torn apart. She wants to see it consumed. The way that she had been. She cups it in her hands and holds it in front of her, like Eve must have held the sacred fruit. She brings it to her mouth.

-

Deep at the bottom of a poisonous lake lies the remains of what once was a woman and what now is something more. She did not suffer a tragic fate. The gentle movement of the icy water tumbles over her bones, and she finds solace in her cold loneliness. She does not regret it. Body. Owned, used, discarded. She did what she had to do. Vengeance was just the beginning.

Once he is finished, the water waits for her. The poison doesn’t take long to activate. She stands on the shore and watches the lake as it churns, pink fish guts swirling into greenish brown, and she understands that undoing is also an act of creation. Body: meat, sex, prison. No more. She takes her last breath and steps in, ready to become.