HEDY MAG ISSUE 1

Little girl
fiction story by emilio lanzas
The transparent veil appears, always covering
bodies. It appears in her eyes, the bodies
long gone, but she can still see them, lying there,
establishing a kind of secret order. The forest is
covered in filth and hope, it’s been a while since
someone’s looked among the branches. Her bedroom
floor is blanketed by her feather collection,
as if by gathering together all the feathers
in the world, she’d some day be able to fly, an
inner Icarus—she’s desperate, of course. She buried
her mother’s corpse, smothered it with kisses
and threw it deep into the centre of the earth.
She’d now be a woman with long white hair,
which would be the only thing still clinging to
her skeletal body. That’s how she envisages her,
emerging from the blackness of her room, fear
in her eyes and then a transparent, dark, oceanic
kindness. Walking from one room to another,
she reminisces and chews, her body grows smaller
and she curls up into herself so as not to keel
over under the ceremoniousness of the ceilings.
She’s grown too big, they never thought she’d be
so tall, their little monster. She then imagines her
mother making something to eat in the kitchen,
and she helps her reach the highest cabinets, she
catches the heavy pots mid-flight before they
fall on her white head, crushed and deformed
from all the soil upon it. No child should ever
grow taller than their mother, she thinks, and
with that a new wave of flying thoughts that lash
out at her and make her crouch down. She wishes
she was no taller than a dog and could see
things from its perspective. 5’6” and above and
her head enters a new atmosphere, her skull cannot
take the pressure and it tries to seek more
benign latitudes. I bind your body to mine so that
the current does not drag you away. I bind your
body to mine so that we can float together, the tide
rises and there are no sharks or sirens that can pull
us into the sea, my daughter-woman. Rivers of
saltwater and iridescent insects, a new discovery
through different eyes, it was always like this,
now that you remember, now that you’ve seized
the burning memory with your hands, just tell
me if it burns enough. Can you make it? Can you
sustain your own life and feed another inside of
you? Can you be as brave as she was? The eternal
walk between rooms, from one to another, always
doors, always the fear of finding her huddled in a
corner, waiting for her, bright, gleaming in silver
and perhaps wounded, broken. To get up and set
foot on a new path, she doesn’t know what it is
that enlivens fear. To find her? To lose her? To
know her always veiled within those walls? Are
there other doors to go through, away from that
house? She rubs her middle and calls it, prays
that nobody comes tonight and pounds on the
door. There are no knuckles strong enough to
make her hear the call. Am I not pretty enough?
Is there no love in me? Can’t I unfold and lose
my flesh? What can we do with what we can do.
Grab it and shake it until it spits its last drops
out, before it disappears along with everything
else. Inside that room she feels a gentle, warm
loneliness. She sits down in the middle and closes
her eyes. Her placenta’s been chosen, where
it can only come to be through silent gurgling,
red sea wave breaks, as if it was in a boundless
inner ocean, and everything else was wonderful
by virtue of being unknown.
52
HEDY