2. When One Forgets the G-spot
WHEN ONE FORGETS THE G-SPOT
FRANCESCA
Present
S ilk, I realise, clings uncomfortably when you’re sweating at midnight in a graveyard.
Should’ve read the care instructions better because I’m literally sweating everywhere—under my breasts, between my thighs and down my back.
Champagne fabric clings indecently as though in protest each time I manage to stain it with dirt.
The lace gloves are also ruined, ripped down the centre by the shovel’s rough wooden handle.
I would’ve taken them off ages ago, but there’s some grim satisfaction in touching death with something soft still on me.
If the press were to snap a picture of me right now, I’d be the cover image for their next issue of Debutante turned Undertaker .
And if Victoria from the ‘Sheffolk Renewal Society’ were to see me…
Oof. She’d probably livestream it and claim it as proof that my family deals in the sacrilegious.
Should probably stop proving her and her cronies right. Not now, but maybe later.
Right now, I could do with less of the panting, though; I can hear my lungs wheezing their last. Shovel. Dirt. Pant. Shovel. The routine repeats in that same brutal rhythm that has me questioning who decided on six feet. Grave robbing apparently requires core strength I simply don’t have.
From behind me, Percy’s amused voice breaks my train of thought. “With every shovel swing, that dress flosses your ass. The ghosts watching are probably jerking off.”
“The only ghost I care about is Cillian, and if a show helps him exhume himself, then so be it.” Clunk . The shovel hits wood before Percy can respond with something even filthier. “Help me with this.”
She’s already beside me, on her knees in that ridiculous emerald gown her mother shoved her into. Her smirk makes me snort, as if she’s already excited about how Aunt Edith will react to the state of her beloved outfit.
“You’re the only psycho I know who’d end the night by digging up a medieval bastard,” she speaks through gritted teeth.
We feather what’s left of the dirt with rushed hands, working beneath nothing but a solitary lantern and a full moon. Crows caw in the distance, and I flinch. Even years later, the auguring of Godwyn’s murder still haunts me.
Clearing it entirely and dragging the coffin to the surface takes twenty minutes.
Percy complains about her glass spine as if I haven’t been shovelling for half an hour.
Can’t even be pissed about it, honestly.
She’s going to need her strength if Cillian’s memories are particularly violent.
Whilst my cousin picks a splinter from her hand, I stare in vague annoyance down at the worm-rotted oak still bound in iron.
The hinges have rusted to orange, and the lid is half collapsed.
The stench that emerges when we swing it open is unfathomable.
It’s not rot, not really. No living thing remains to decay, not after five centuries have gone by.
What lay inside is only the faint suggestion of what once was a man.
A well-respected man, if the page from Nanna’s journal is to be believed.
Not much thread is left wrapped around him, and his skull has fallen in.
Whatever rich cloth he’d been buried in had fucked off.
His teeth shine in the darkness like individual stars, and a worm peeks out of one eye socket.
Percy catches what’s grabbed my attention and groans. “Please tell me you’re not taking his teeth.”
“I’m not taking his teeth,” I assure her. “Just what they remember.”
“I’ll be here if it turns ugly—if he sends you something violent and fucked,” she promises, moving to stand on the other end of the coffin. Then she flicks her fingers at me. “And hey, I’ll syphon the worst of it. Don’t fight me.”
“I won’t.”
She glares at me for the lie. I peel my right glove off with my teeth and spit it into the dirt.
Bone is delicate, yes, but what’s buried within it is even worse.
Nanna’s lessons rise to the surface. Touch too soft and the memory won’t form; too hard and you shatter it completely.
Percy makes a dying cat noise when I kneel beside the body and press bare skin to his mandible.
My thumb swipes over his teeth. They’re cold, smooth, and some are loose under my touch.
“Cillian Sallow II,” I murmur. “You saw Lord Hildebrand to bed the night he stained himself with my duchess’s blood. Show me where his shadow fell. Show me his words when he lied. Show me the fear he swallowed and the words he made you keep.”
The vision unfurls like a thunderclap behind my lids, and the first thing I’m thinking is that the night is too bright for murder.
Godwyn’s boots strike the stone floor in a hurry, and I’m following after him with legs that aren’t mine.
They’re too muscular and long, bedecked in what looks like linen breeches.
We enter a massive chamber where Godwyn drags his hands through his hair, streaking it red.
He’s handsome because, of course, he is.
Rarely are the villains outwardly grotesque, or else they wouldn’t be able to captivate us so readily.
There’s a maniacal smile on his face, the kind that must’ve lured Adelina closer even as her gut begged her to flee.
His jaw alone is enough to have slit her throat, and the gleam in his eyes would make one beg for him to drink.
He paces in a pool of crimson, polished shoes staining the perfect print of the streaks dragged across the floor.
Long grooves where he’d dragged her body—the body of his wife.
The woman who built him into something greater than he ever deserved.
My duchess. The claim steadies my heart even as her betrayal bleeds across the floor.
Freshly crowned a murderer, Godwyn turns to me with a head shake and a laugh.
“She made me unto holiness—then loathed the work of her own hands.” He tugs his hair again, throwing an arm out towards the arched windows. In the distance, I can see Redford’s courtyard. “ She shall return. Of this I am certain, Cillian. ”
“ My lord, wash and be easy ,” slips from my mouth without command, and the enunciation is too faint. Centuries eat it, and the memory grows thin. “ The dead may yet hearken. ”
Godwyn laughs at that, a shrill, disbelieving noise that goes muffled. “ Hearken? Aye, she doth, Cillian. She is not wholly gone—death could never claim her in full. We’ve little time now, days, if that. Ready thyself for what must be done. ”
I’m speaking again, but this time the words are fragmenting and becoming noises.
Godwyn’s nodding at me, and my teeth grind as I try to force the exchange back into shape.
Fucking hell , my chest caves inwards, vision burning scarlet, and a thousand needles find purchase down my spine.
We’re shaking hands; I can barely feel the touch.
Godwyn’s face tears like parchment, the walls disintegrate, but they’re still conversing.
The vision splits as Percy screams my name, and I feel that axe right down the centre of my skull.
Sweaty silk wraps back around me, and the scent of dirt rushes to fill my nostrils.
I’m forcefully slammed back into my body, doubled and gagging over Cillian’s corpse.
His teeth crumble underneath me. Blood walks warmly from my eyes, casting the last ruin onto my dress.
I grab Cillian’s jaw again, even as Percy protests, but there’s nothing.
Whatever was left of that vision is now in splinters.
“Chess—can you, fuck , can you hear me?” Soft skin wipes at the blood on my face, cupping cheeks so that I’m blinking up at her. She’s hazy within the crimson filter.
“Godwyn wasn’t afraid that night,” I say to the vague shape of her.
“He knew. He bloody knew she’d return, told Cillian so and everything.
Nanna’s journal was right. It’s always the fucking butler, isn’t it?
Percy, I think he—I think he did something with her blood in the room.
It was pulsating, I dunno.” More blood drips when I blink.
“Oh shit, I need to go back in. Need to try and salvage it. Need to see what?—”
Percy grabs me by the front of my dress, nearly exposing my tits for the entire graveyard to see.
“Listen to me, psycho. That memory is over five hundred years old, and you tried to keep it together with your bare hands. It’s not just fragile; it’s dangerous.
Jesus Christ, you’re lucky you’re only bleeding. What if it’d been your mind , huh?”
Her voice splinters on ‘mind’, knocking the air right out of me.
Blue has faded within her eyes, making them nearly translucent.
She’s feeding. Not by choice, nor by hunger.
My panic has become her meal, and with each heaving breath, she sucks it into her lungs.
So I choke it back, pushing all thoughts of Cillian and Godwyn aside.
And it’s the way she’s holding my face that truly does me in, that practically screams she doesn’t even care whether she drowns in emotion bearing my name.
A very prominent fear takes a seat beside us then, laying a hand to each of our throats in warning.
Cillian’s teeth could’ve claimed me. It could’ve swallowed me whole, allowing my personhood to tear alongside the memory.
Could’ve spat me back into reality half-empty like Nanna.
Still alive, still breathing but wandering the land of our ancestors she no longer knows.
Alzheimer’s , we say politely when the press asks.
In Percy’s eyes I see the truth of it, the price of a witch who pushes too far.
“I’m fine,” I rasp, voice raw with the remnants of a fifteenth-century butler.