Little Cat

‘There’s the creek out back. Do it there. Wash the dress too.’

I was bleeding and he wouldn’t let me into his house? Gio leaned down inside the car. Above his lip were clear drops of sweat. I thought for a s

econd he was going to kiss me, but instead he gripped me by the arm and lifted me out of the car.

My toes were clenched. I knew I was leaking. I held the beanbag pillow at my crotch.

‘Come on,’ Gio said. He was irritated again.

The ground was made of sharp white stones. Just a little way down from the driveway was a still brown pond in the middle of a creek. It looked like a place where people washed pots, threw stones.

‘Go,’ Gio said as we walked toward the water. ‘Go on, get in there.’

‘Will you come in with me?’ I asked.

Gio’s eyes roamed up and down my legs. He stared, revolted, at the stains on the dress where I held the pillow, where the dress was a clump.

He poked my ass. ‘Clean yourself.’

I walked in tiny steps. I held the beanbag between my legs. I was thinking maybe we could stay here awhile. I’d even hang out with his kids. I didn’t want to be in this freezing, this cold! I wanted to lie between sheets with Gio beside me.

‘Go on! Get in there!’

I was right at the edge where water was lapping. I moved bit by bit down into the pool that had turned black and blue as I got closer. My thighs, then my stomach, then my breasts disappeared. Long weeds were floating on the surface of the water. I scrubbed the dress between my fists and let it flare out as big as a blossom.

So this is my body. Hoc est enim corpus meum.

Red smoke rose from between my thighs and settled like scum on the surface of the pond. I felt like laughing for a second – so this is my blood!

When I looked up, I saw that Gio had walked to the edge of the water. His hands were lifted as high as his heart. Trees waved around his head in a circle. He was watching me, patting the air in downward strokes. I imagined his hands were touching my shoulders, pushing me down to where everything was ice. Go under, it was like he was saying, dunk yourself clean. Breathing fast through my nose, skin turning to scales, I disappeared underneath the freezing cold plane. Gio’s hands pushed me down. Oh fish. Oh god. I thought God was in the ice water with me. Adi, are you down here too?

‘Mirrrrrra!’

I shot up for breath. Gio’s body, chest bare, was coming in toward me. I was dizzy from gasping, dizzy from swallowing, I was walking sideways in short jerky steps. Who was this man who was walking in toward me?

‘Fuck, what did you give me? I feel dizzy. I’m stoned … ’

Gio looked different in the water. His hair was tighter to his skull and his skull seemed thinner than his neck. The bones above his cheeks protruded, temples beating.

‘I had sex the first time with an illusion,’ he said.

Gio looked like Jesus fucking Christ.

I glided toward him. My body felt suddenly good, all sucked in the dress. He had come in for me! I was not an illusion.

‘I stared at a girl in a porn magazine. There was no hair on her vagina.’

‘Was it Adi?’ I asked.

‘You need to repent for your thoughts,’ Gio answered. He put his hand on my forehead. He was going to push me backward and I tried to resist.

Gio had this disdain for me. Adi and Coco and Lani had suffered. They’d been fucked and fucked and fucked in small rooms. I reached through the water for Gio’s tail. He had unzipped his pants and I found his dick, all waxy and limp. My grip kept slipping off its head. I liked it when a cock was soft and I was the one who made it hard. Gio braced himself on my shoulder as I pulled on his cock underneath the pond. His cock was getting a bit harder in my grip. I rubbed faster and faster, looking up at the sky. Then I saw the house up behind him. It was a white painted house with a spire. That house was a church? No, the house was a nunnery! A man with the nuns! I started laughing hysterically. I couldn’t help myself.

‘You live up there with the nuns?’

Gio took my hand off his dick, lifted it out of the water and spread it flatly on his chest. His heart felt like some kind of frog: cold, deliberate, rasping. He lifted my arms and started twirling me around.

‘Lift up your arms, Mira. High, higher. Don’t forget your legs, lift them too! Lift your legs, stand on your head! In happiness, too, there are heavy animals!’