SEVER (A SHORT STORY)

Slipping out from beneath the silky white sheets, Allison lays her feet on the wooden floor of her bedroom as the sheer white curtain blows in the gentle breeze from her open window. She stretches her arms above her head toward the ceiling. Her black hair tickles the middle of her naked hourglass back as she stands there swaying, teasing the lacy edges of her ivory panties. Through the cracks of her hair, deep, bulging, and thick scars form patterns of three every few inches. Some of them are red, bruising, and fleshy-colored. A set of stitches looks fresh but leaves the tips open to infection due to poorly placed stitches.

At the window, she pushes the curtains open. The sun illuminates her room. Blood encircles her waist like a pair of pants, hugging every inch of her body. As she closes her eyes, she sways and brings her arm to her chest, covering her breast. Sighing, she tilts her head over her shoulder.

“I had a nice time last night,” Allison says in a Southern Louisianian accent.

Silence engulfs the room apart from the clicks from the box fan sitting on an off-balance end table circulating. She laughs as she turns back to the window, and her hair hovers over her nipples and frames her oval-shaped face. “I like the strong silent types. Did I ever tell you that my daddy never spoke to me? He never uttered one word since the day I became a woman.”

The fan clicks, playing a song only she can hear. Humming, she begins to dance in place. Twirling and swirling, Allison pivots, points her toes, and bows toward her bed.

“Do you like my dancing? Momma said if I became a famous ballerina, my daddy might talk to me again. He loved dancing. He was the best dancer in town. He won first place every time he stepped on the dance floor.”

Lifting her head, she peers through the slits of her hair towards the bed. A man lays strapped to the headboard, muffled with a white scarf, and feet wrapped together with a rope tied to the end of the bed frame. He stares at the ceiling with a dark, grim stare, not moving. “Don’t be this way. I told you I like things my way.”

Frustrated, she jerks up, places her hands on her hips, and scoffs. “I thought we had an understanding. I mean if daddy finds out you’re here. He’ll kill us both. Well, he will you.”

With a childish giggle and a sly smirk, she runs into place and then leaps onto the bed. Bouncing, Hank settles back down where the ties around his wrist grow tighter. Allison stops, out of breath and still laughing. She looks at him as he does nothing.

“Don’t be a party pooper. Let’s do something.”

Allison climbs on top of him. Straddling him, she scratches her fingernails down his chest to his stomach. Breathing heavily, she takes his hand and places it on her breast.

“How does that feel?”

She rocks back and forth, flipping her hair back. Moans of pleasure are soft and long. Faster. Faster. She rocks and sticks her chest out. She put her fingers to her mouth. She licks them and slides them down her chest with every roll of her hips, and a steady. She screams and shakes her head in a circle, reaching a climax.

She collapses on top of him, smiling, and gently kisses his cheek, “I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did?”

Silence. She blankly tilts her head and asks.

“Well, aren’t you gonna say something? Anything? Like, thank you. Or I’m having a nice. You’re the best piece of pie I have ever had?”

Laying her head, her hand grips his penis and looks at him with her dough eyes, and smiles. “Well, someone did like it, It’s still hard.”

She jumps up and puts on a white button-up shirt, her breasts firm and subtle as they peek through as she pulls up her holy jeans and walks to a rickety wooden chair in the corner. She begins to put on muddy boots without looking at him.

“You know. I have been wanting to tell you all night. I, I…”

With force, she drops her boot making a loud thud as the steel in the tow hits the floor.

“I’m sorry. I thought it was going to be different this go around. I lied. I’m not a virgin like I told you at the bar. I just didn’t want you to look at me and think I’m loose or a jezebel. Because I’m not, OK.”

She falls to her knees and crawls over to the edge of her bed. Elbows propped up, she takes his hand and looks at him.

“I really like you. I have for a long time. I want to be the girl of your dreams. I want to be the girl you never forget about. You mean so much more to me than the others. I swear you do.”

Gently and lightly, she plays with the curls of his hair. She sighs. The presses her lips together. Her eyes dart from his, down his body, and land on the white sheet above his hips.

“I’m not a bad person. Just a person with a problem. The silent treatment – I get it. I wouldn’t talk to me either. I owe you an explanation.”

Rising, she paces and runs her fingers through her hair as the sun’s rays catch a glimpse of anxiety and frustration. Bending over, she rubs her stomach. Sweat sparkles on her forehead and she fans herself.

 “I thought I could fuck it out of me. I didn’t know I had until I was twelve. Daddy says it’s a gift but it’s more like a curse. Of course, I didn’t believe him. That is until I found out. Stan was a good friend. Two people just playing around. Now, he’s great at holding the fan.”

Hank follows her gaze to the rickety end table. One leg rises off the floor. Bumpy, dark shots strew the forest, and lighter parts, like red hair, are embedded in the grooves like long lashes.

 “He told me Allison no matter what you are not allowed to date or be with a man. See if affects girls in the family more than boys. Well, differently that is. Look at me, I’m here and my daddy has it. Momma – poor momma. She’s here but not. Well, she makes a great coat rack. And she never drops anything. Daddy just couldn’t help himself. He had her every night until he had me. She got pregnant easily too. One after another she popped us out. Six brothers later, my daddy cried seeing my face.”

She stops and stares at the man as she places her hands on her hips. “I turn people into the wood. You’re always going to be hard unless I do something.”

The man tries to speak. Allision stares and says, “I’m going to take a guess and say you’re asking about how this happened. My great, great, great, granddaddy was fooling around with this woman in the woods. According to daddy, she got all mad when great-granddaddy got married to – hell one of the women in town. I don’t know who because she’s not my great-grandmama. All I know is that the woman in the woods was a witch and ended up cursing him. She said there wasn’t going to be a woman born in his family that can produce let alone keep a man in her life.”

Her words fade as she snaps her neck, looks at Hank, and  says, “I’m sorry but you gotta go.”

Lying on a large tree stump in the backyard, Hank is on his stomach, unable to move, watching Allison look through her fingers made into a square. Nodding to herself, she mouths, "Perfect."  She takes up her axe and begins hacking away. Wood fragments break off and land on the ground as flesh with hardened veins embedded inside. His muffled cries echo as tears and blood mix and soak the wood around his mouth. A rusty brown truck roars in the distance and stop in the dirt cloud it made. When Allison's father gets out, he stares at her while shielding his eyes from the brightly burning sun.

“Allison?” daddy, shouts.

Allison waves wildly and shouts, “Oh, hi, daddy.”

“Whatcha doing baby girl?”

“Just chopping some wood here for a project.”

“You need any help?”

“No daddy I got it.”

“All right then. Love you. Dinner will be up in an hour. Better come to the table all washed up,” he shouts as he walks onto the porch.

“I love you too, daddy. I will”

Allison slightly bends forward, never taking her eyes off as her daddy walks into the house, and smiles innocently as she possibly can.

“I told you he was overprotective. Never wanting me to do the hard labor around here. You’re lucky! He would have been worse than me. I mean he would torture you and then I would have to ask for forgiveness. Don’t ask,” she whispers.

As she stands, Allision grips the ax handle tightly, her gaze fixed on the large piece of wood he is becoming. Slowly, she raises it so Hank can anticipate and fear it, placing it over her head and staring at the flesh that remains. Right before her eyes, he blinks as if he were begging for his life. The pure joy and excitement in her eyes make her distant and aloof.

“Oh, calm down. It’s not going to be so bad. I mean it is, but…you know what I mean,” Allison says.

Excitingly, she rears back the axe. She strikes the sharp edge of the ax and slices into the wood, which is the left side of his body, between the ribs. As Allison rocks it back and forth, loosening the axe blade, blood flows like slow-emerging sap. Hank's screams are muffled as the wood seals around his mouth and encapsulate his face, turning his eyelids the color of dark bark, and his pupils dilate.

Allison smirks. She loves the torture and feeling of emotional and even sexual satisfaction. With each hack, blood splatters all over her as his screams become slower and slower. Beneath his blood and the wooden body lays the tree stump she placed him on. She can see the redness of his blood decorating the circles inside it telling its age.

“Whoa, you’re a lot older than I thought. Probably the booze.”

She swipes the rings with her fingers, coating them with blood that makes her mouth salivate. She pulls her cheeks in and closes her eyes as if having an orgasm. Like a fermented cherry, the blood is sweet and tart. She smacks her lips together after pulling her finger out.

“Yep. Booze. Good for you I came along when I did. From the taste of you, you had about five years left,” she laughs as she slaps his back now a trunk of wood.

His muffled sounds fade as he watches her continue to hack at his body, which is fusing into one piece of wood. easier to handle for her. In place of tears, blood slides down his cheeks as the heart he once had turns hollow and dense. She yanks and pulls on the axe stuck inside what was his groan with one leg on him.

“This area. Your, your, pecker – is always the hard part. No matter how small it is. No, biggie, right.”

His eyes gloss over. The color they once had are covered with splinters. She stops. Leans back, examines him, and nods.

“They never stay for me to tell them what they are going to be. Shame.”

Three months later, she stands in the window, naked, watching the snow blanket the ground.

“Sure, is getting bad out there. I bet you’re happy to be here.”

She turns to look over her shoulder. A young man is sprawled out on the floor, pulling his body as patches of wood crawl up his leg, transforming it into tree limbs. The ends of his blonde hair turn brittle, dried leaves. They fall off and land around his naked wooden body as he pants like a dog. He grabs the handle on her bedroom door. It’s locked.  He pounds on the door, desperate.

“What are you doing to Hank?”

Standing in the middle of the room, Allision cocks her head in wonderment and disillusion. He braces his back against the door.

“Who, who?”

“Hank, you silly owl,” she chuckles.

He follows the invisible line she’s drawing as she points. Finger stubs are scattered around Hank's small, rigged shapes of teeth and rib bones, designing wings like bubbles in the wood. When Hank was turning, the absorbed blood disfigured the wood. The man slaps his hand on the floor, hoping to gain enough strength to move. However, he is unable to do so.

“Now, I need a present for my daddy. I’m thinking of a bench with my initials engraved along with your skin.”

Allison pulls a hatchet from her behind her back and lunges at the man. But his screams are stopped by the severing of wood that is his throat.