"Morbid" by Kali Norris

Morbid

“It won’t be the end of the world.” The nurse told me, cheerful, showing me how to hold the gauze. I supposed it was true.

Inside, the waiting room was luminous and almost empty, but the windows were dark, flat and close, the night outside pressing in like dark water. I wanted to turn on my headlights, just to reassure myself there was something beyond our strange bubble of fluorescent glow. But it was far too great a risk.

The only other patient was a woman, sitting by the door, with her back to the windows. She looked young at first glance, a teenager maybe, with a soft, sweet face and pale, weightless hair. There was something hard in her expression, though, that made me think she must be closer to thirty.

There was a sudden, unearthly cry, rising over the forest and echoing off unseen mountains. I jumped, jabbing my wound and causing blood to run over my hands. She looked up at me, then.

I had the sudden, uneasy realization that what I was looking at wasn’t a person.

“I’ll never get used to that,” I said. I sat down facing the windows, which meant I was also facing her, whatever she was.

“Yes, you will.” Her voice was ordinary, sweet, her lips like the bloom on summer peaches. Her gaze was intense. “Do you want me to tell you when you’re going to die?” She asked, in the same level way, as though she were offering tea.

“Do I?” I asked, licking my dry lips. She looked away, but I thought she might be amused.

“Tisiphone?” The nurse called. My focus had been so close I hadn’t heard her return. The creature in front of me stood, and I saw she was cradling her stomach together. Her blood was the lurid purple of grape jelly. She seemed calm as ever, graceful as a dancer. She smiled at me as she passed, and I would have followed her anywhere. I wondered what dealt such a wound to a creature like that.

“Do you want a ride?” I asked her carefully when she came back out. She had offered me something, after all.

She smiled, knowing. It transformed her face, at once more lovely and more frightening. “So few people have manners anymore.”

The nurse called my name.

When I was done, the creature was gone. Outside, the night was cool and still, the wind making the trees sway softly. The sweet smell of fruit hovered on the air, like ripe blackberries. She had painted an unearthly sigil on the hood of my truck with her own bright blood.

Photo by Kate McGorry