She goes to the horror film festival in lieu of her sister, who was ill with morning sickness and suddenly felt, despite years of being an aficionado, that watching horror while pregnant was a form of blasphemy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBlasphemy of what,\u201d she asked her sister, who threw up her hands and then threw up in the kitchen sink. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFuck if I know,\u201d her sister said, then heaved again. When it was over she wiped her lips with her forearm, the tomato soup from their earlier lunch smeared on her upper lip. \u201cI can\u2019t behold death while I\u2019m building an eyeball.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She sighed, snatching the ticket from her sister\u2019s fingers. It was hosted at the historical theater on the northwest side of the city, with rotted, velvet seats that flipped down, and the air smelled faint of Chesterfield cigarettes. It was a twenty-four-hour horror movie marathon\u2014not technically a festival, she thought\u2014starting with the oldest movie and working its way forward in time. The first movie was the 1928 French silent film of Poe\u2019s “The Fall of the House of Usher.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What was it about this film, she\u2019d wonder later? Grousing violins, a lamenting harp, played in the background as characters mouthed \u201cUsher. Usher?\u201d Roderick Usher paints Madeline. Her portrait comes alive as the woman herself wastes away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Madeline looks askance from her portrait in the shadows. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps it was then that her <\/em>soul cracked in two. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She\u2019d had one, and then there were two. Her hands trembled and she rocked back and forth. Part of her was still at lunch with her sister, sucking on soup spoons, asking if she\u2019d heard from the grandmother who raised them. No, no never<\/em>. She could be dead for all they knew. As if the crone would deign to speak to them from here or beyond\u2014one pregnant out of wedlock and the other queer and sworn off marriage. Half her soul was that of the crone herself, claws curling from her fingers, looking askance and smiling devilishly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A soul slice that hurt, and the slice that sought to hurt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the film\u2019s climax, she cried, moaned, wretched, and coughed, until other attendees began to mutter. Rather than leave, she sunk, <\/p>\n\n\n\n sunk, <\/p>\n\n\n\n sunk <\/p>\n\n\n\n to the floor, where a flattened Skittle ravaged her fingertips and popcorn kernels punched her hip. She lay down and rolled forward, springing up again in a new row to sit in an empty seat next to another spectator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou\u2019re not the first,\u201d the person said, and she turned toward the voice, raspy, buttery, and expectant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTo do what?\u201d she asked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCleave,\u201d he said, and she only knew that by the \u201che\/him\u201d pronouns on the nametag they gave each entrant at the booth out front. He\u2019d slapped his on his shoulder, and she\u2019d forgotten where she put her own. No name was written. Only the pronouns, along with an emoji-like face drawn so hard that the paper ripped on the smile. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He angled toward her, and she saw from the screen\u2019s moonlight that he had no nose, merely shrunken skin that writhed where the bone was. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOh, this old thing,\u201d he said, pointing to it. \u201cNecrotic. Started to fall off, so the doctor did the rest. I used to want to skin the rest to fit, but here we are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He smiled, his tongue pinched between the upper and lower teeth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCleave,\u201d she said faintly. He nodded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI reacted similarly when I saw Jacob\u2019s Ladder<\/em> for the first time,\u201d he said. \u201cThat fucking tail<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The silent film ended, and Bride of Frankenstein<\/em> began. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, she was of two souls looking at this stranger. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The first wanted her to flee, letting his face be the last she beheld as she exited the theater. She\u2019d lie to her sister about sitting through it all, bullshitting that she enjoyed Sam Neill in Possession<\/em> best. The other, the crone with curling claws and god-awful hunger, was tempted to lick the void where his nose used to be, her lips becoming cartilage he lacked. She wanted to eat him. With their missing parts together, Plato\u2019s pursuit, they\u2019d become incomprehensible. Two people facing the gash.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, she sobbed <\/p>\n\n\n\n and retched\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n and scratched at her throat so hard the skin burned and puffed. At one point, he snatched her hand within his own, his own nails carefully manicured to points. At the end of another movie\u2014the fourth, or was it the sixth, what was the fucking title, a mother licking birthing blood off an infant<\/em>\u2014he whispered in her ear that he\u2019d like to put his face between her thighs, inhaling her through that thirsted void, how scent was so much more poten<\/em>t now, and he bet she smelled like library musk and a sweat-strewn stage\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n A scream rent the air; a figure stood from a seat in the front row and ripped out their hair. Another moan. A wretch. A howl. The screen as backdrop, they looked like hooded fates. Three more followed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Someone sighed behind her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Voices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHere we go again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis old thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFuck if I know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhere were you<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The screen\u2019s silver light mixed with other, supple colors\u2014from the blue-fluorescent hue of the swinging doors\u2014to the amber overhead lights that brightened and dimmed. Many sat frozen in their seats, their heads shaking in a nonsensical blur, or screamed in tongues at the cleaving. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat do you think?\u201d he asked, grinning at ensuing chaos. She\u2019d forgotten his question. To go back with him? To sink to the floor among the Mike and Ikes, and lick and chew right then and there?<\/p>\n\n\n\n *<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She intuited: it was her grandmother. The crone that spoon-fed her oatmeal when she had the flu a decade before, who lifted a hot spoon to her lips, told her to open wide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Wider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDon\u2019t pick up the phone, darling,\u201d she\u2019d said, though the phone on the wall hadn\u2019t rung yet. \u201cIgnore it, whatever you do. That\u2019s not the ending we want.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n __________<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lyndsie Manusos’s work has been featured in <\/em>LeVar Burton Reads and published in <\/em>Necessary Fiction, <\/em>Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, <\/em>Lightspeed Magazine, and other publications. Her debut novella, FROM THESE DARK ABODES, recently released from Psychopomp in September 2024. She lives in Indianapolis with her family, works as an indie bookseller, and writes for <\/em>Book Riot. You can read more at lyndsiemanusos.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"