Tender, by J. M. Bédard

I nursed you on snowmelt and gutter run-off. Those hallmarks of spring, when dead things blink awake and the hard glint of ice begins to spoil. When long tongues swollen from sleep stretch cautiously below the ground, just grazing the shoreline, and shy heads prod the raw, rank air. The lake wore its rot well. Velvet waves, licked to a rich gleam. They shone beneath old skin, split and greasy, flushing to the surface in eager jolts. A flurry of limbs gasped from the slush. Plush and squirming, thick and groggy with half-forgotten lives.

The lake wept quietly and I felt the ache of it swell against my own gut, coring my chest. That kind of emptiness that feels solid and heavy. I smoothed your lips with bruised liquid and washed my eyes in the stale air.

Damp with cold, packed dense with more rain. You were solid in my arms as well. Not stirring, yet, but lukewarm to the touch. Soft and pliable rather than a block of hard death. Only a few parts were still sharp and tender, and I adjusted the swaddling so they were tucked away. A halo of thin plastic whispering old secrets into your new body. That fabric of tiny mouths, a tight and mewling brightness suckling eagerly against us both. Another skin we shared, if only for a moment. I slicked away a few stray creases, fingers clumsy and numb. But it didn’t matter—we were gleaming, glossy and perfect in the creamy dawn.

It was glistening with rain now, burning droplets gritting the air. I tilted my face up, the better to catch them, and smiled. Smarting beneath the stinging web, skin thirsty to be carved. Eager. I nestled deeper into the beach, ancient concrete ripe with warmth, and sipped my tea. Ate some wet fries from a discarded paper carton. I fed a few of the very softest ones between your gums. You didn’t chew but I think you liked it, maybe it reminded you of before. I held you close and watched the waves. Singed foam smoking gently before streaming over the pocked beach. I licked the vinegar off my hands and the moisture off your face.

The city stirred behind us, curved fingernails just grazing my back. I shivered and felt the edges of its mouth twitch upwards. It laughed through the circling birds, threadbare and delighted, a roiling mass among sick clouds. Clusters of palest pink, soft bruised fruit veined through with gold. Some version of the sky was reflected in your plastic coating, all warped and smeared. Slipping and puddling in your caves and hills. Pooling before leaking away and staining the sand. My face too. For all its shine, your wrapper was no mirror. It stretched and twisted my features, wrenching apart the familiar and rearranging it, glazed and shifting slightly, across your own mass.

If I unfocused my eyes I could almost pretend that it was you moving, that it was your meat and bones shining rosy up at me. I squinted and you lay still. Heavier now though, flush and sodden. I blinked. I was certain of movement that time. The flash of something quick and narrow darting just below your left cheekbone. A reckless surge, quickly sucked away. Wild laughter, swallowed live and writhing. I waited. Stared until I could no longer stand it, eyes full and rubbed raw from the rain. Just an unruly shadow, in the end. I sopped the blood from my cheeks and eyelids. Rested my head against a cement boulder and listened to it thrum. All those feet pounding, just on the other side. The occasional mutter caught somewhere in between. I strained against the rock, willing the rough surface to melt away so that I might slip through. I thought I felt their pull—those helpful, eager hands—but it was only the city, grinning ever wider.

When I opened my eyes the sky had split and so had you. An intricate network of bright gilt cracks, curiously sharp in the sweetening air. Molten and seeping, broken edges weeping. Just a hint of downy mold. My gasp splashed back against my face in the damp, unseen thumbs crushing it deep down my throat. They were rough and I spit out jagged shards of tooth, splinters dusting your face.

Your eyes slid to one side. Centered themselves, then glanced to the other. Slick and gleaming, rent right through the center by a burnished seam. Honeyed light squeezed through the hairline slits, bubbling faintly as it spread. Sticky and viscous. And above us too. Great, heavy drops clinging to the rain and the wind and the clouds, dragging them down. Scalding the birds, who screamed with their own voices now, abandoned by the city squatting stony far behind. The lake lay sweating and ill, glass-smooth and fetid.

Tiny fingers flickered up around the cuts. Peeling them slowly, delicately, further apart. Heaving arms and then chests and then bodies through the gaps. I made to pinch them shut, stop the flow, but found my hands sunk wrist-deep in solid pavement. The beach clenched its jaws as I struggled to slip away and somewhere deep below a curious tongue softly licked my palm. Only the suggestion of teeth.

You had been cradled between my knees and my chest but began to slump as I shook, slipping off to one side before snapping your head hard against the ground. The pain shocked through my own skull too, and I gagged on its hot flare. Lips and eyes gummy in the thickening gold, I saw you shifting in the haze. Turn on one side and then prop up your torso. Face curling slowly in my direction. You smiled. All those new teeth, so difficult to find. They fit you well. You crouched and inched closer. Thick strips of skin trailing festively in your wake. You gleamed. Coated in the rich brightness. It dripped from your fingertips onto my hollow chest as you counted my ribs, one by one.

You stopped for a moment, gently drawing my eyes shut. A hitched breath, a pause. And then you cracked me open.

J. M. Bédard

J. M. Bédard (she/her) spends long runs getting lost in other worlds, and writes to find her way out. "Human, Too", her collection of dark, surreal short stories, was published by Dim Shores in April 2021. More recently, her poetry has appeared in Star*Line and Strange Horizons.

• Instagram: @jacquelinebedard