Brandi Wells | 9
the bed. She twists her body and her breasts wrap halfway around her torso, nipples grazing her back. The first few times I’m nervous her skin will give or tear, but it never does. After several weeks of this, she slides up the grimy sheets with ease. Each morning we climb out of bed and she makes us breakfast. I eat more than her, but I am growing. I probably need more. Her body is slackening. Her skin droops, as though somehow emptier, not filled up like it was before. I watch the way her body shakes and trembles with each movement. The way her skin hangs. I cannot help but take hold of her throughout the day, just to grip her meat.
She starts venturing out of the house and stays gone for longer and longer periods of time. At first it seems reasonable that she should make several small trips a day. She only needs to pick up a few things at the store so she can make dinner or bake the next cake, one towering with seventeen layers and two different kinds of fruit fillings, which she will then top with a rich chocolate ganache. I understand these trips. They are for me. And even multiple trips a day make sense because my cravings can shift suddenly. I want tacos and then I want deep fried Oreos. It’s not her fault she can’t predict my whims. I’ll allow her that much. But then she begins to leave for reasons that make no sense to me.
Where are you going? I ask.
Oh, I have to check the laundry, she says, trotting out into the forest. She returns with no laundry in hand and prepares dinner, her skin a bit droopier than before. Loose armflesh hangs down and nearly grazes the flame of a gas burner. Her skin reddens and drips sweat, but she smiles and cooks. She is often cheerier after one of these unexplained trips. There’s unexpected color in her lips, her face, even deepening in her neck.
When will you be back? I ask another time.
Oh, I need to pull the bread out of the oven, she says, leaving with no oven mitts, besides which the oven is here in the house and has no bread