At first Antonia thought of a shipwreck. The boy and the girl peeled off their clothes, but they were on their knees in the middle of a bed with the bedclothes hiked around their thighs, and the sheets were red so she thought of a sea of blood and had to focus on the pale flesh of their bodies–his concave chest and half-erect penis bobbing like a mole from its burrow of dark hair, her low breasts and a raised, flesh-colored birthmark at the verge of her hip. They began to make love, him thrusting his tongue, him gripping her wrists. They turned toward Antonia, and as the black fringe of the girl’s hair shuddered Antonia imagined her tongue heavy like a whale in the girl’s mouth. They stood before her, the girl’s skin glazed and tiny beads of sweat standing out on her nose, and she grasped the back of Antonia’s chair, one hand over each of Antonia’s shoulders. The girl’s face swung close, her mouth like a sucker, her tongue like a dove, and Antonia watched all the ugly things rush from those lips, the ghouls and headless children and her impenetrable faith in her husband, and she slid her thumb into that crevice, enveloping her nail and knuckle, and felt a vacuum as the girl pursed her cheeks. In this way Antonia, full of spume, stopped the flood of bugaboos and sent it back into the night.
Jenny Pritchett is the editor of Fourteen Hills. This is her second appearance in Fiction Attic.
Image by Ira Joel Haber, featured artist. View more of his work here.