Page 26 of The Last Feast
The lights are all automatic, and my mother loves keeping up the name she married into, because an Aigner has to be strong, even down to the shitty, empty house no one uses. It’s why I know everything will be fully stocked despite no one using it. Keeping up the appearance for ghosts is more of a priority than having any semblance of a relationship with her only child. But when we walk through the large foyer and my boots dirty the marble floors, I can’t help but laugh. The huge gold inlay of a cursive A in a ring is pretentious, gaudy, just like the obnoxious Louis dining chairs around an empty marble dinner table, a crystal chandelier hanging above it.
“I’ve really dirtied your name now,” I say to the ghost of my grandfather as Hana slides down my body, staring at all the glittering crystals around each light fixture.
“Who are you talking to?” She looks up at me without any judgment, making me eager to spill all the Aigner family secrets.
“My grandfather. Something happened when I was younger, and I told my family, but he said I was sullying the family name by talking about such things.”
She slowly raises both hands then lifts her middle fingers before turning in a circle. “Fuck you, Jamie’s grandfather.”
More of the paint has been rubbed off her face, only to be replaced by blood splatters. But she has her bloody fuck you fingers in the air and a smile on her face.
I definitely love this woman. I’ve always thought it was an illogical emotion, one that excused shitty behavior and allowed parents to hurt their children when they didn’t return it. However, with this woman I barely know, it suddenly has meaning beyond those things. Maybe it’s always meant to be illogical, and that’s why there are so many different depictions of love in art and media—you can’t love anything the same way.
16
CAKE…BUT SMALL
Auguste watches her move in circles until she sways on her feet. She doesn’t hit the floor, despite tripping over herself, because he swoops in to catch her, adding more conviction to the violent fairytale he’s convinced himself of.
Hana knows better. She knows all fairytales are filled with gore, blood, and deceit. This thing between them can’t be a fairytale because she hasn’t lied to him. It’s a feast of her soul that has made her forget her stomach for the first time in her eighteen years of life.
Auguste hasn’t forgotten as he keeps her against his chest and asks, “When did you last eat?”
She has to think about it, since he interrupted her meal with the deer. Her aunt and uncle stopped allowing her to have food in preparation for her leaving their home. She wasn’t able to earn more money for them, so that removed the perks she was bestowed. But as she thinks about the last morsel that passed her lips, she can’t remember what it was. All she has is the cake of Auguste’s voice as he softly says, “Go shower while I make you something to eat.”
He softly kisses her temple, and her eyes close at the care in his touch. It’s removed too soon as he leans back and guides her up the stairs. Her dirty sneakers sink into the soft cream runner, and she glares at the brass rods keeping it in place—they resemble the fire poker used to brand her back when she would attempt to run away as a child. But she’s not eased when they reach the top of the staircase, where the walls are lined with silk paper, glittering under the large chandeliers at either end of the corridor. Her bedroom at the orphanage was a dorm with fifteen other children that they were responsible for keeping clean. The room she was given at her aunt and uncle’s house was only slightly better. She wasn’t surrounded by bunks, but that wasn’t solitary. This house is. There’s no proof of life, even though it’s clean, shiny, and cared for as Auguste guides her to a large bedroom with white linens covering a bed bigger than any room she’s ever had. Noticing where her gaze is fixed, he kisses her crown. “Shower, eat, and then you’ll lay down so I can bury my tongue in your divine cunt.”
The bathroom is somehow even more luxurious than the bedroom. To the wealthy, it wouldn’t be fit for their tastes, with the outdated sunken tub and ornate carvings in the marble sconces. But to Hana, who has never witnessed opulence, it’s all shiny and new.
They stop in front of the shower, and the brass lever creaks as Auguste turns it to the hottest setting. It takes a while for steam to rise, but he tests the water, adjusting the temperature in increments until it no longer burns his skin, to make sure it’s comfortable for her.
He doesn’t leave the room as the spray splashes against the glass enclosure. Instead, he asks, “Can I take care of you, Hana?”
She doesn’t trust her voice and nods. The unease of being asked first is dampened by the newfound appreciation for her choice holding importance. She can’t do anything other thanwatch Auguste as he reverently lifts the t-shirt from her body. Her hair is his next focus. Making sure not to pull any of the strands, he lifts the sticks that got caught during their tussle on the fear factory floor then unwraps the vines she’d fashioned to tie her hair up. The strands don’t flow down her back due to the blood sticking them together, so he delicately runs his fingers through her hair to separate them.
There’s a smile fixed on his face, as though he’s incapable of looking at her with any other expression. Hana mimics it, both of them smiling at one another when they’d given up hope on humanity as children.
Broken people have a way of being resilient. They continue to survive against all odds—when you have no choice, the route is easy. You keep following it, accepting the things that are happening to you. It’s when there are no horrors or chaos that it’s the most terrifying.
So, they keep smiling with blood on their skin and marks on their body, because they’ve found a way to own the chaos, to make it theirs in such a way that they’ll spend the rest of their lives trying to replicate the moments of this night.
Auguste reverently holds her face with both hands then softly kisses her forehead. Hana stops breathing under the intensity of his care as he takes a deep breath. There’s a pause when they each hold hope for their future—collective and individual: Hana afraid of not wanting to die, Auguste terrified of her leaving him alone, allowing the anxiety and pain back in.
“Break me, bite me, or mend me?” he hesitantly whispers.
Which Hana deflects by reminding him, “It doesn’t matter. You’re here to stay.”
She means it too. There are many sins she’s committed in her short life, but lying was never her vice. It’s why she knows that when tomorrow comes, Auguste will exist. He’ll go on with his life, but she’ll be dead, with him plaguing her final moments.
The death she imagined was cold, without anything left in her wake. Now, she hopes she’ll live on in his memory as the woman she’s become, one who wasn’t afraid and one who was cared for so deeply in her final moments. She prays to a God who refused to listen to her screams and pain as a child to allow her to experience the same care Auguste showed to the deer she killed.
And she closes her eyes, imagining him lowering to his haunches over her cooled body. How he’d gently stroke her face just like he is now. How he’d ask her“Who hurt you, beautiful girl?” like the morning of her birthday after blowing out her candle.
She then imagines how she’ll stand beside him, ready to walk through life as his defender so those pains he feels aren’t expressed in isolation. How she’ll be a shoulder for him to lay his head on when he needs to shed his tears.
More than all of that, she hopes for there to be a way for them to achieve a tomorrow-less world without death, to explore this growing maddening obsession, because if they had a different ending, maybe she could change her mind. Maybe, just maybe, she can experience what growing old is like without pain when she’s always been surprised at achieving another year.
But he leaves before her prayers can be answered. “Shower, baby,” he says as he turns. “I’ll have everything ready by the time you’re done. The kitchen is down the stairs on the left.”
