Page 104 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
Just make it inside.
All you have to do is make it inside.
My hands shake as I unlock the lower door to Rebecca’s flat. They shake so much that I drop the keys on the pavement at first; they shake so much that I struggle to fit them into the lock and turn it. And then when I’m inside, I find I can barely see the trendy, industrial stairs in front of me. I find I can barely walk.
Just make it upstairs. Just make it to the shower.
When I manage to trip my way up to the flat and see I’m alone, relief quivers through me so violently that I have to stop walking. I have to drop to my knees, my bag sliding off my elbow and spilling tubes of lipstick and a bottle of half-drunk kombucha onto the reclaimed wood planks of Rebecca’s floor.
Breathe.
Breathe.
The floor helps. The floor is where I feel loved and held—where I kneel for the woman I love—and even knowing she doesn’t love me, even knowing she can’t ever, ever see me like this, I still feel better down here. Not good, sure, and definitely not okay.
But better.
Breathe. Make it to the shower.
I can crawl now, I can make myself move. Slowly I make it to the bathroom, every limb trembling, my stomach and chest juddering with long, ugly noises that aren’t quite sobs and aren’t quite moans either, but some hellish keen in between. Thank God I’m alone, thank God, thank God.
I never want Rebecca to see me like this.
When I get to the bathroom, I force myself to stand. My feet hurt from the heels I wore this morning for the photoshoot, and my skin burns and prickles so much that I think parts of me are bleeding.
But that’s not why I’m crying. That’s not why I had to crawl across the floor.
I shove off the romper I wore to the photoshoot and kick off my sandals. I glance up in the mirror and see myself naked—my skin covered in angry red marks from the clips and tape and pins—and see my hair and makeup still as pristine and perfect as they were an hour ago at the studio. My lips still painted in a bright, vital red.
Lady Danger.
Usually one of my favorites, but today, it looks too much like Cherry Tree, which means I flinch at my own reflection.
I grab a clean flannel and rub at my mouth, desperate to scrape it off, to feel it scraped off, and then I swipe a bottle of micellar water off the vanity and step into the large shower, turning it as hot as I can stand and sinking to the floor as the water sluices down, flattening my hair and streaming over my back and shoulders. And all the while I wipe roughly at my face, using the micellar water to clean everything off, every last stitch of makeup. Like if I can clean my skin, then I can clean my insides too. Clean my shaking, ugly guts.
It was supposed to be a photoshoot like any other photoshoot. In fact, it was a photoshoot like any other photoshoot. A brand I’d modeled for before, with a photographer I liked. When I woke up this morning—early, earlier even than Rebecca for once—I’d felt nothing but excitement. Modeling is hard, it’s often painful, it’s often awkward, and even with a fat-positive company and photographer, it’s hours and hours of reckoning with one’s body in clothes that don’t always fit and under bright lights that hide nothing. It’s hard not to hear every shitty comment that someone’s posted on my Instagram aloud in my head. It’s hard not to hear my own shitty thoughts aloud in my head.
And yet, for all that’s hard and miserable about modeling, I love it. The beeps of the camera, the clicks of the shutter, the sharp, chemical scent of hairspray. The thrill that never goes away from being dolled up, being petted and praised, being posed and directed and made to suffer in tiny ways.
Which, now that I think about it, was probably a sign I would end up being a kinky girl.
And anyway, there’s also the satisfaction of getting to model clothes made for bodies like mine. Every time I do it, I’m taking part in something new and huge and exciting—I’m changing the world. Maybe I’m not shepherding souls like Becket o
r building things like Auden. Maybe I’m not a genius like Rebecca or clever like Poe, but I am doing something. Something that would have meant the world to a baby teenager Delphine, still trying to shop at all the same stores her friends did, still trying to pretend she didn’t spend hours picking her clothes because nothing she owned ever, ever, ever made her feel pretty.
So today should have been wonderful. Even better because tomorrow night was a big exhibition at Justine’s, and so after all that hard but good work, my Mistress would reward me with a hard but good scene in front of the entire club.
But today wasn’t wonderful. And it was because of the cherries.
I should have told my manager about them, I know I should have. I should have told my assistant or my publicist. I definitely should have told my therapist. I should have told so many people, but I didn’t, because when it’s not bothering me, when I haven’t thought about cherries for hours and hours and even days, it seems like such an insignificant problem. Something I can ignore when it pops up.
Something that of course I can just deal with, because it’s trivial and fucking ridiculous.
But then when it is bothering me, I can’t ignore it, it’s not trivial at all, all I want to do is hide, hide, hide from the world and myself and my own mind. All I am is ashamed and crazy, and my therapist hates the word crazy—
But when I’m like this, when the cherries are in my mind and my thoughts are going cherry tree cherry tree cherry tree and I can feel wet grass against my shoulder blades and see the cloud-covered moon behind heavy, monstrous shadows—
When I can feel a tongue shoved wet and squirming into my mouth—when I can see a face in the moonlight as it lifts its head, its mouth smeared with Cherry Tree—its lips stained with the same color I’d so happily and carefully applied just two hours earlier—my lipstick, on him—cherry tree cherry tree cherry tree—
