Scorpion Kiss
Koji A. Dae
I made it to the wash behind my house before I collapsed. So full of rage I couldn't even stand. People think of rage as something bubbling. Giving you energy like a kettle on the fire, the top clattering against the steam. Maybe it's like that for some people. But for me, rage comes in a wave. I clench myself against it, buttoning down like a seaside town in a storm. My jaw aches. My muscles knot against the tsunami. It washes through me, taking every ounce of energy as it recedes. Rage always drains to despair.
Jack didn't even know how mad I was. Not really. He had taken note of the cold flash in my eyes, the tilt of my chin. He knew I was mad. But he never sensed the depth of that emotion carved in me. He continued digging. Needling about my mother's slurred speech.
"You sound just like her sometimes. A complete waste of your looks."
I stood up from the fried portabella and glass of untouched wine and left the room. The adobe house. The property. I walked barefoot away from everything that was his and his family's, not noticing the way my fading callouses ached on the sharp desert stones — still hot even as the sky turned red.
He just didn't get it. What life was like for someone like me. Like my mother. She worked so hard to give me the little I grew up with. Until I met him, I had worked hard, too. Waiting tables. Scrubbing floors. Cleaning houses for women like his mother. Her clear English. No falling back to Spanish for her. No struggling with pronunciation. Later, I would reason with myself. Defend him. He couldn't be expected to understand, never having gone through a childhood like mine. I asked too much from him. I couldn't take a joke. Later, I would apologize for my anger. But at that moment, fury swallowed me. I moved through it, like swimming through gelatin.
In the wash I let the emotion take me. I collapsed to my knees, the rough sand digging in through my billowing skirt. It wasn't enough. I fell to one side, pressed my cheek against the dusty Earth, and breathed.
In. Out.
My eyes were open. Part of me registered the thick bank of mesquite trees, the rocks and stones and pebbles and sand and dust. Crushed smaller and smaller until it was nothing. But I didn't actually see it. Not like it was there. Not like I was there.
I wanted to scream. Or at least moan. Make a noise. Protest this process of dissolving. But my body lay limp, quiet. I may as well have been dead.
I don't know how long I had laid there when I noticed a feather-light tingle on my fingertips. The crimson flares of sunset had faded to pink, cotton candy purple, and finally a deep blue. But the moon hadn't come out yet. The stars were still hidden. I could still make out the curve of my fingers. And standing on my palm, faced off against those fingers as if they were mortal enemies: a scorpion.
Its tail was smaller than my middle finger, but its threatening curve made it more menacing. It held yellowish claws out to the sides, puffing its tiny body up to maximum threat. The body was a few shades darker than the skinny legs and claws, from yellow turning brown, racing up to that shiny, poison-filled black. A bubble of laughter rose in me. I couldn't help it. The beast was squaring off against my fingers, unaware they were attached to a creature hundreds of times its mass. The bubble burst. My finger twitched. The creature took it as a threat and attacked.
Bang, Bang. Bang. Its tail swung like the needle in a sewing machine, too rapid to catch sight of its actual movement even as I felt it pierce me. Fingertip. Webbing. Palm.
Fuck.
I shook my hand, sending the creature skittering into the riverbed. If my rage hadn't hollowed me out so thoroughly, I might have felt the pain. But I was like a pumpkin at Halloween, my rage a perfectionist teenaged girl, slicing my pulp down to my flesh, not leaving a single string of nerves behind.
My heart filled my body with a throbbing. My palm blew up to the size of a balloon, then deflated. Over and over again. My eyes watered as I contemplated how it managed to swell and recede and yet appear the same size. I brought the limb to my face. Stared harder, as if my glare could force its physical shape to reflect the strange expanding and wilting I felt.
In the back of my mind, I went through what I knew about scorpions. Most Arizona scorpions had minimal poison. The bark scorpion could send a person to the hospital. Could kill a toddler. I wasn't a toddler, though. I was a vibrant, twenty-two year old woman. I had a small, tight stature, but surely it was strong enough to fight off this damned pulsing.
Inhale. Exhale.
My whole forearm throbbed with my breath, now. My heartbeat seemed to slow. Was I secretly an infant? Jack had called me infantile. Said my whining was that of a baby. Without reason. Never ceasing. So needy. Would I die because he saw me as a milk-thirsty babe?
I shook my head. Ridiculous. He couldn't turn me into a helpless, mewling creature with his words, however sharp they might have been.
I squinted. True dusk had fallen. The dazzling fireworks show of sunset had finally drawn to an end, and down the wash, I could make out a figure standing tall between the banks. Mirroring me, another crazy woman wandering the washes at sunset.
"Hello," I called.
Crickets chirped. Somewhere in the distance was the low whoop of an owl. The woman took a step towards me, then another. Her clothes draped over her full figure, streaming off of her like a milky creek in the silver moonlight. Her skin, dark as the desert shadow, was hard to make out, but the shape of her cream sleeves, the way her tunic clung to her belly, and her meaty thighs beneath her skirt let me guess where she ended and night began.
The distance between me and her seemed to pulse with the same slow intensity of my arm. As the pain — for it was pain now — receded, she faded further away. As it grew, she came closer. Right up to me. So close I could make out the curve of her flattened nose. The curl of her full lips. The blankness in her eyes.
I held my breath, swallowing the swirling to keep her in front of me. Her eyes were light brown, almost cream, like the sandstone on a bright day. Or no. They were just brown, but they reflected the moonlight so purely they gave the impression of diving into deep pools, sliding off the red rocks into green water. Getting lost in the depths.
"Hello," I said again.
She stayed this time.
"Hello." Her voice was breathy, with a lilt of easy amusement. If I was holding onto any anger, it faded at that sound.
We stood there. The temperature had dropped, and a breeze blew down the wash, catching both of our skirts. It tugged them as if we were stuck in a current. She reached out and took my hand. It was numb, but I could still make out the iciness of her fingers.
"You're cold," I said.
"You're hot." That curl of the lips again, like she was swallowing down a secret. "Angry."
I shook my head. "No. I let go of that."
The words caught on the breeze and floated away from us.
She snapped her fingers, and the wind reversed, shoving my words back into my gaping mouth. I sputtered, then clamped my mouth shut and swallowed.
"You're angry." She nodded. Her eyes, so calm a moment ago, flashed as if she was composed completely of fire.
I shivered. Nodded. My lips regurgitated the excuses I had been mashing. "It's not his fault. He's a good guy."
She raised a finger. Pressed it, cold, against my lips. "Shhhh."
I hushed.
"Put your hands on my skin."
I frowned. She nodded, and I raised my hands to her hips. Her skirt was smooth, the fabric worn. I slid my fingers up until I found the silkiness of her flesh: ample and soft. She was so cold her skin almost burned mine. But once I grew used to it, I realized her chill soothed my stings. My arm no longer pulsed.
She stepped closer to me, her breasts touching mine. "Is he really a good guy?"
I thought about the way he smiled at me from across the living room. How he had come to my rescue when I was crying and desperate, as my lease expired on my last apartment. How he had boxed my belongings and moved me in with him. No questions asked, nothing to give in return.
"Yes," I whispered. The word froze between us. I examined its crystalline form. White. Pure as the snow from that ski trip he had taken me on.
She breathed on the word.
It fogged, and as the condensation fell away, a million hairline cracks became visible. My yes shattered and fell, cutting my exposed cleavage like little shards of glass.
"Is he really a good guy?" she repeated.
Her eyes clouded. In them I saw my mother's effort. Her pain when I said we wouldn't come to family dinners. We didn't have time. Really, Jack was uncomfortable at our doublewide, crowded with cousins who knew too much about each other for his tastes. I saw the way he threw a hundred dollar bill on the table and rolled his eyes over my body. "Get yourself cleaned up. Your trash is starting to show."
He said it like a joke. Always a joke. Couldn't I take a joke?
"No."
She nodded. Pressed in closer. My pain was completely gone, replaced by a tingling from her proximity. She closed her lips over mine and slowly, carefully, massaged my mouth open with her own.
The kiss was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. Not just the slow sensuality. Not just the softness of her feminine lips. There was a sour liquid that spilled from her mouth to my own. It started as a bitterness in her spit. But as the kiss deepened, it flowed, hot and sour and corrosive. She poured herself into me, and I swallowed.
When she pulled away, I felt as if I might float up to the stars. Maybe I was already among them, slowly spinning. She gave me a weak smile. Kissed my cheek and brushed away the wetness of the kiss with the pad of her thumb.
"Your body will remember this."
I sighed, and she was gone. She took all her support, and I stumbled, falling to my knees, cutting open my skin.
I pulsed again, but not from the earlier sting. This was a more thorough vibration that filled my entire body. It rushed through me. Slowed. Sloshed. Rushed again. I laughed at the yellow moon. Whoever she was, she was delicious.
I made my way back to the house. The porch light was on for me. Sweet of him, I suppose. His plate was nearly empty, and he leaned against the kitchen counter, drinking what might have been his third or fourth glass of wine. There was a second bottle open near his elbow.
His bright green eyes flashed like a monsoon storm. "Decided to come back?"
I nodded.
"About time," he snorted. "You should clean up dinner." He waved at the table. His crystal wine glasses. His china. His silver. "Pull your own weight around here sometimes, you know."
Anger bubbled in me. This time it tasted bitter and sour. Familiar. I nodded, and he thought the motion was for him. Accepting his belittling yet again.
He sighed and waved me towards him with his glass. "Come here, babe."
I approached him. He looked different. His charm was flat. His attractiveness faded. It was still there, but it was like it no longer mattered. As if he was just an animal.
He wrapped his arms around me. "I hate fighting."
He lowered his wine-stained lips to mine and kissed me.
I kissed back. Hot and wet, but not passionate. There was no room for passion. Not anymore.
My hand reached around and found the skin at the back of his neck. My fingers ran up and down, pumping with poison. When I thought my hand would burst, I dug my nails into his flesh.
He groaned against me. Tried to pull away. But I kept my lips against his, muffling all those words he'd ground into me. The poison seeped from beneath my nails into his neck, pulsing until he slumped against me.
His weight was too much to bear, and I let him fall to the floor.
I ran a finger over my lips and looked out the window at the desert moon.
Koji is a queer American writer from the Arizona desert living in Bulgaria with her husband and two children. She writes weird and surreal fiction and has work published with Daily Science Fiction, Bards & Sages Quarterly, and several other publications. When she's not writing, she dances the blues and cycles around town looking for second-hand deals. She recently published her first full-length poetry collection "Scars that Never Bled: An Exploration of Frankenstein Through Poetry". You can find out more about her on her website, kojiadae.ink.
Jack didn't even know how mad I was. Not really. He had taken note of the cold flash in my eyes, the tilt of my chin. He knew I was mad. But he never sensed the depth of that emotion carved in me. He continued digging. Needling about my mother's slurred speech.
"You sound just like her sometimes. A complete waste of your looks."
I stood up from the fried portabella and glass of untouched wine and left the room. The adobe house. The property. I walked barefoot away from everything that was his and his family's, not noticing the way my fading callouses ached on the sharp desert stones — still hot even as the sky turned red.
He just didn't get it. What life was like for someone like me. Like my mother. She worked so hard to give me the little I grew up with. Until I met him, I had worked hard, too. Waiting tables. Scrubbing floors. Cleaning houses for women like his mother. Her clear English. No falling back to Spanish for her. No struggling with pronunciation. Later, I would reason with myself. Defend him. He couldn't be expected to understand, never having gone through a childhood like mine. I asked too much from him. I couldn't take a joke. Later, I would apologize for my anger. But at that moment, fury swallowed me. I moved through it, like swimming through gelatin.
In the wash I let the emotion take me. I collapsed to my knees, the rough sand digging in through my billowing skirt. It wasn't enough. I fell to one side, pressed my cheek against the dusty Earth, and breathed.
In. Out.
My eyes were open. Part of me registered the thick bank of mesquite trees, the rocks and stones and pebbles and sand and dust. Crushed smaller and smaller until it was nothing. But I didn't actually see it. Not like it was there. Not like I was there.
I wanted to scream. Or at least moan. Make a noise. Protest this process of dissolving. But my body lay limp, quiet. I may as well have been dead.
I don't know how long I had laid there when I noticed a feather-light tingle on my fingertips. The crimson flares of sunset had faded to pink, cotton candy purple, and finally a deep blue. But the moon hadn't come out yet. The stars were still hidden. I could still make out the curve of my fingers. And standing on my palm, faced off against those fingers as if they were mortal enemies: a scorpion.
Its tail was smaller than my middle finger, but its threatening curve made it more menacing. It held yellowish claws out to the sides, puffing its tiny body up to maximum threat. The body was a few shades darker than the skinny legs and claws, from yellow turning brown, racing up to that shiny, poison-filled black. A bubble of laughter rose in me. I couldn't help it. The beast was squaring off against my fingers, unaware they were attached to a creature hundreds of times its mass. The bubble burst. My finger twitched. The creature took it as a threat and attacked.
Bang, Bang. Bang. Its tail swung like the needle in a sewing machine, too rapid to catch sight of its actual movement even as I felt it pierce me. Fingertip. Webbing. Palm.
Fuck.
I shook my hand, sending the creature skittering into the riverbed. If my rage hadn't hollowed me out so thoroughly, I might have felt the pain. But I was like a pumpkin at Halloween, my rage a perfectionist teenaged girl, slicing my pulp down to my flesh, not leaving a single string of nerves behind.
My heart filled my body with a throbbing. My palm blew up to the size of a balloon, then deflated. Over and over again. My eyes watered as I contemplated how it managed to swell and recede and yet appear the same size. I brought the limb to my face. Stared harder, as if my glare could force its physical shape to reflect the strange expanding and wilting I felt.
In the back of my mind, I went through what I knew about scorpions. Most Arizona scorpions had minimal poison. The bark scorpion could send a person to the hospital. Could kill a toddler. I wasn't a toddler, though. I was a vibrant, twenty-two year old woman. I had a small, tight stature, but surely it was strong enough to fight off this damned pulsing.
Inhale. Exhale.
My whole forearm throbbed with my breath, now. My heartbeat seemed to slow. Was I secretly an infant? Jack had called me infantile. Said my whining was that of a baby. Without reason. Never ceasing. So needy. Would I die because he saw me as a milk-thirsty babe?
I shook my head. Ridiculous. He couldn't turn me into a helpless, mewling creature with his words, however sharp they might have been.
I squinted. True dusk had fallen. The dazzling fireworks show of sunset had finally drawn to an end, and down the wash, I could make out a figure standing tall between the banks. Mirroring me, another crazy woman wandering the washes at sunset.
"Hello," I called.
Crickets chirped. Somewhere in the distance was the low whoop of an owl. The woman took a step towards me, then another. Her clothes draped over her full figure, streaming off of her like a milky creek in the silver moonlight. Her skin, dark as the desert shadow, was hard to make out, but the shape of her cream sleeves, the way her tunic clung to her belly, and her meaty thighs beneath her skirt let me guess where she ended and night began.
The distance between me and her seemed to pulse with the same slow intensity of my arm. As the pain — for it was pain now — receded, she faded further away. As it grew, she came closer. Right up to me. So close I could make out the curve of her flattened nose. The curl of her full lips. The blankness in her eyes.
I held my breath, swallowing the swirling to keep her in front of me. Her eyes were light brown, almost cream, like the sandstone on a bright day. Or no. They were just brown, but they reflected the moonlight so purely they gave the impression of diving into deep pools, sliding off the red rocks into green water. Getting lost in the depths.
"Hello," I said again.
She stayed this time.
"Hello." Her voice was breathy, with a lilt of easy amusement. If I was holding onto any anger, it faded at that sound.
We stood there. The temperature had dropped, and a breeze blew down the wash, catching both of our skirts. It tugged them as if we were stuck in a current. She reached out and took my hand. It was numb, but I could still make out the iciness of her fingers.
"You're cold," I said.
"You're hot." That curl of the lips again, like she was swallowing down a secret. "Angry."
I shook my head. "No. I let go of that."
The words caught on the breeze and floated away from us.
She snapped her fingers, and the wind reversed, shoving my words back into my gaping mouth. I sputtered, then clamped my mouth shut and swallowed.
"You're angry." She nodded. Her eyes, so calm a moment ago, flashed as if she was composed completely of fire.
I shivered. Nodded. My lips regurgitated the excuses I had been mashing. "It's not his fault. He's a good guy."
She raised a finger. Pressed it, cold, against my lips. "Shhhh."
I hushed.
"Put your hands on my skin."
I frowned. She nodded, and I raised my hands to her hips. Her skirt was smooth, the fabric worn. I slid my fingers up until I found the silkiness of her flesh: ample and soft. She was so cold her skin almost burned mine. But once I grew used to it, I realized her chill soothed my stings. My arm no longer pulsed.
She stepped closer to me, her breasts touching mine. "Is he really a good guy?"
I thought about the way he smiled at me from across the living room. How he had come to my rescue when I was crying and desperate, as my lease expired on my last apartment. How he had boxed my belongings and moved me in with him. No questions asked, nothing to give in return.
"Yes," I whispered. The word froze between us. I examined its crystalline form. White. Pure as the snow from that ski trip he had taken me on.
She breathed on the word.
It fogged, and as the condensation fell away, a million hairline cracks became visible. My yes shattered and fell, cutting my exposed cleavage like little shards of glass.
"Is he really a good guy?" she repeated.
Her eyes clouded. In them I saw my mother's effort. Her pain when I said we wouldn't come to family dinners. We didn't have time. Really, Jack was uncomfortable at our doublewide, crowded with cousins who knew too much about each other for his tastes. I saw the way he threw a hundred dollar bill on the table and rolled his eyes over my body. "Get yourself cleaned up. Your trash is starting to show."
He said it like a joke. Always a joke. Couldn't I take a joke?
"No."
She nodded. Pressed in closer. My pain was completely gone, replaced by a tingling from her proximity. She closed her lips over mine and slowly, carefully, massaged my mouth open with her own.
The kiss was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. Not just the slow sensuality. Not just the softness of her feminine lips. There was a sour liquid that spilled from her mouth to my own. It started as a bitterness in her spit. But as the kiss deepened, it flowed, hot and sour and corrosive. She poured herself into me, and I swallowed.
When she pulled away, I felt as if I might float up to the stars. Maybe I was already among them, slowly spinning. She gave me a weak smile. Kissed my cheek and brushed away the wetness of the kiss with the pad of her thumb.
"Your body will remember this."
I sighed, and she was gone. She took all her support, and I stumbled, falling to my knees, cutting open my skin.
I pulsed again, but not from the earlier sting. This was a more thorough vibration that filled my entire body. It rushed through me. Slowed. Sloshed. Rushed again. I laughed at the yellow moon. Whoever she was, she was delicious.
I made my way back to the house. The porch light was on for me. Sweet of him, I suppose. His plate was nearly empty, and he leaned against the kitchen counter, drinking what might have been his third or fourth glass of wine. There was a second bottle open near his elbow.
His bright green eyes flashed like a monsoon storm. "Decided to come back?"
I nodded.
"About time," he snorted. "You should clean up dinner." He waved at the table. His crystal wine glasses. His china. His silver. "Pull your own weight around here sometimes, you know."
Anger bubbled in me. This time it tasted bitter and sour. Familiar. I nodded, and he thought the motion was for him. Accepting his belittling yet again.
He sighed and waved me towards him with his glass. "Come here, babe."
I approached him. He looked different. His charm was flat. His attractiveness faded. It was still there, but it was like it no longer mattered. As if he was just an animal.
He wrapped his arms around me. "I hate fighting."
He lowered his wine-stained lips to mine and kissed me.
I kissed back. Hot and wet, but not passionate. There was no room for passion. Not anymore.
My hand reached around and found the skin at the back of his neck. My fingers ran up and down, pumping with poison. When I thought my hand would burst, I dug my nails into his flesh.
He groaned against me. Tried to pull away. But I kept my lips against his, muffling all those words he'd ground into me. The poison seeped from beneath my nails into his neck, pulsing until he slumped against me.
His weight was too much to bear, and I let him fall to the floor.
I ran a finger over my lips and looked out the window at the desert moon.
Koji is a queer American writer from the Arizona desert living in Bulgaria with her husband and two children. She writes weird and surreal fiction and has work published with Daily Science Fiction, Bards & Sages Quarterly, and several other publications. When she's not writing, she dances the blues and cycles around town looking for second-hand deals. She recently published her first full-length poetry collection "Scars that Never Bled: An Exploration of Frankenstein Through Poetry". You can find out more about her on her website, kojiadae.ink.
Proudly powered by Weebly