Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Casper
“ K eep trying,” she encourages as I attempt to pinch and lift a pencil from the desk in front of me. My fingers feel too thick, and bringing them together is near impossible. Her voice is patient, her body relaxed. She smiles when I look up at her. My fingers leave the pencil and go to my own mouth, covered in thick, rough thread. Even making a smile is out of my ability. I’ve been sewn too tightly.
“Let’s try again later. I need to take your vitals anyway,” she says, pulling her long chestnut hair away from her neck and pilling it atop her head. She moves around the table, and my body turns towards hers, like it does every time she moves. I lean forward, like everytime she comes close. I inhale, like everytime I catch the faint whiff of her scent.
Her fingers slide beneath my elbow, and she pulls, letting me know she wants me up. I stand and stand and stand until I’m my own towering lighthouse above her. She feels so small—frail and fast.
Her hands guide me to her instruments, her warmth burning where they touch my clothes.
I know what’s coming next, but I hold my excitement inside quietly. I have no way to express it anyway—no mouth to talk or smile with, just a sewn line. I touch it again.
“Stop fussing with that,” she admonishes, and I look down at her, my finger moving from my mouth to hers. I trace her lips, press my thumb between them, feel how they break apart. Be gentle, I tell myself. My thumb presses against her teeth, and the barest flicker of warmth and wetness tickles my skin. Slowly, she pulls her face away, wrapping her hand around my wrist. Her face is red, her lips wet.
“You don’t understand that people have personal space since I’m touching you all the time,” she says quietly. She’s always talking to herself, never really to me. I’ve heard her talk to the stray cats on the island the same way—careless rambling with no responses expected.
She believes I understand her as much as a cat, but I understand so much more. However, I doubt myself sometimes. There’s so little for me to compare to. Just her and I…and the needy stray cats that watch me fail to lift a pencil and lick their chins after drinking rainwater. Apathetic, listless creatures, but I’m thankful for their company. It’s only them and the birds.
And her.
Her fingers grab the bottom of my shirt, and I reach for it right after, pulling it above my head. We do this twice a day, so I know the motions. My shirt drops to the floor, her eyes darting from my chest to the shirt on the floor as I reach for my pants, removing them as well.
She stares at me then, right below my hips, where there is only stitching and nothing else. Her hand flattens above the stitched line and traces the incision. The muscles in my face twitch. It’s sensitive in a way the other seams aren’t, but I don’t know why. Her face is conflicted a moment before she lets it go. Her hand finishes brushing the stitched line beneath my hips, and I immediately find myself missing her touch there in particular.
“Sit down,” she says, and I do. She tips her head, looking at me in question. I followed her words, not her actions.
“Do you understand me?” she asks. How am I to tell her that? How am I to open my mouth and spill that every word from her lips is a memory I’m making? That if only these threads on my mouth were cut, how I would work to form one difficult sound after the next until I could whisper her name to myself forever.
Samantha. Samantha. Samantha.
She shakes her head when I do nothing and begins her examination. It’s never long enough. Her fingers trail over my skin as she takes her measurements, and I think of nothing but the feel of her teasing me further and further alive. Electricity drove me up from the depths of a void into living madness, but I saw her, and it quieted the pain of existence.
Samantha touches me all the time. She’s unaffected, cold, mysterious, whereas I’m anything but. I wish for her hand to find the line beneath my hips again, the smooth skin disturbed only by the thick, tight stitching. She acts strange about it sometimes, and the sensitive pleasure of her curiosity drives me nearly mad. I’ve touched the place myself but feel nothing. I don’t understand it, I don’t understand anything, and it's disorienting and frustrating.
I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know who or what I am. I just know Samantha is my entire world and that every part of me aches when she touches me, talks to me, smiles at me.
Her fingers tease my seams, following the lines on my stitched body. When a finger comes away wet from my scalp, she brings it to her nose and sniffs. But she’s still confused, so she leans in, her breasts pressing against my throat as she smells my forehead.
She’s soft and warm. My breathing grows loud and deep.
“It’s okay,” she says calmly, relying on tone for me to understand. “It’s just…” She trails off, and I feel her breath over my hairline, disturbing the black hairs that hang down loose. She must open her mouth, split it open like I did on my thumb, because I feel her tongue press against me, darting out to taste whatever she’s concerned about.
“Well, I think this is just water,” she says. She pulls back slightly, her hands using my shoulders for balance, her legs open above my thigh. Does she have a seam between her legs as well? My fingers twitch, not under my control. I want to touch her seam as well, see if she likes the gentle curiosity the same as I do. She looks up to the top of the lighthouse.
“I’ll have to check for a leak. Where else would you get water on you from?” she sighs.
Her words surprise me. She has expected me to stay inside.
That’s when I realize I've done something she didn't ask and didn't want. Something only I wanted.
And that is when I know I have autonomy. Something flips, subtle at first, but it’s growing by the second—the concept I can do whatever I want.
My hand goes to my mouth, and I touch the threading. I imagine breaking them open, imagine opening my mouth, imagine leaning forward and tasting Samantha like she tastes me. I dream of smiling, frowning, talking, biting, licking—all the many things I’ve watched her mouth do that mine cannot.
I am just as much a creature as she is. With my own arms and legs and brain. With my own wants.
With my own desires.