The Worm in Every Heart

Your parents met and married late; both are old, comparatively speaking, and she was always older than either. A world traveller. Cosmopolitan. Serene and self-contained.

Self-outed, in fact, for longer than most people ever knew the closet was for more than keeping clothes in. But though she may well have had regrets, she had no visible shame.

Over thirty years ago, she took her inheritance and spoke the Deplorable Word, calling herself what she really was. The rest of your family threw her from them, genteelly erasing her—except for her name, which they deeded to you, instead.

Hoping to start over fresh, no doubt.

Your Aunt Maris, whose lifeblood flows unchecked in your veins, beats unchecked in your heart. And beats unchecked between your legs, hammer-hard, whenever some woman you find attractive passes close enough to steal the breath from your throat.

You thought of Aunt Maris the first time you read Garcia Lorca, the first time you dissected a foetal pig, the first time you had an orgasm with someone other than yourself.

Family reunions had not been barred to her—at least, not explicitly. You saw her there, twice from a distance, once accidentally close; she met your gaze across the proverbial crowded room, and followed you into a guest bathroom when you slipped away to splash some water on your suddenly flushed face. You glanced up from the sink and froze to see her behind you, reflected in the bathroom mirror. She just looked at you, carefully, almost studiously. With those empty eyes.

And you stared back, breathless.

So you thought of her opaque eyes, flat and bleak as some unmapped moral absence. You thought of her knived tongue, her soft white lips. You knit your thighs around the head of a girl you barely liked, whose name you can no longer even recall, and saw the bedroom lamp flare like a star. And you thought you would gladly cut your own heart from vent to vent for the chance to make your Aunt Maris feel the way this moron between your legs (Pamela? Patti?) was making you feel at that very moment.

Absences, especially unexplained ones, attract more than presences; you know that now. They breed infectious dreams which sink marrow-deep and wait there for a touch to reignite them—linger like figures drawn on glass, in condensation, invisible until someone else’s breath brings them to life once more.

* * *

Sufiya and Maris share tea. Sufiya passes her bottle after bottle, smoothly shaped, almost invisible in the faded dusk. A lamp has come on in a nearby house, fierce and guttering, but it casts more shadow than light. Darkness washes over the both of them in waves, stirs in the bottles’ warped depths, sluggish as caught smoke.

Sometimes one may keep oil in them, Sufiya says. Or perfume. She pauses, slyly. Watching to see how Maris will respond.

Or perfumed oil, Maris replies, deadpan.

Sufiya laughs, and drinks some more tea. She no longer bothers to pull her robes around her when she moves. The rest of her body is lush and burnished, faintly decorated everywhere one looks; her mirrored braids chime slightly, softly. Whatever her poison of preference, it leaves little physical trace.

Maris smiles. Carefully, she says: In my country, we have a tale of how a ghost may be caught—in a bottle.

Sufiya’s eyes gleam.

Many things may be caught in bottles.

Spirits? Maris asks. (The pun does not occur to her until the word is already out.)

Sufiya grins. Oh, certainly.

Demons?

Perhaps.

Sufiya yawns and stretches, immodestly. Luxuriously. Everything peeling back at once.

Maris burns her tongue on an incautious swallow of tea, still quite hot. Then bites it.

Have you heard tell of djinni, foreign lady? Sufiya asks.

* * *

You don’t really know how Aunt Maris died, or when—your parents, typically, only told you about it because Maris’ lawyer requested them to. Had there been any chance of reconciliation between you and Diehl, you think, they might actually have found some way to avoid mentioning it at all. But even they could see there would have been no point to such a deception, especially in light of recent events.

It had been a quarter past eleven, and you were in Diehl’s car. Together. Which was strange in itself—but then, you were on your way to a family gathering (your family), and Diehl could hardly have afforded to show up without you, considering how much trouble he’d gone to in order to marry into it in the first place.

Moving out onto Yonge, just past the local Gap, you took a pull from your mutual Starbucks thermos, and saw Diehl shoot you a look.

“Yes?”