moved. Not a heart. Something alive, smacking back and forth against the bones like a trapped animal. She bent down. Pulled something else up around the rotting frame-work. A new skin, only it went up and over the bones like fabric, like a blanket, a quilt.
And when she turned around, it was no longer Angela.
It was Eugenia.
She tucked the edges of the fabric-skin under her brunette wig and stepped out of view.
Pearce threw up in the snow and ran.
He sat on the edge of his bed rocking back and forth, rubbing at his forehead with the heel of his palm. It felt like something had crawled up his esophagus, some fidgety creature clawing at his tonsils.
What had he seen? What had he just seen?
Eugenia’s words from all those months ago when he first went to her house came back to him.
Now it took on a whole new meaning. What was she? What else could she do?
What do I want?
His head filled with a patchwork of thoughts, a sewing machine buzz in his ears, and he rubbed his forehead again. Rocked back and forth, thinking.
Thinking…
He wanted — he wanted—
He wanted…
He banged the side of his fist hard against the old woman’s door. (Old woman? Could he think of her as a woman any more?) He waited, tried to listen over the sound of his own heavy breathing, over his heart pounding hollowly in his chest, for the sound of her footsteps padding toward the door.
“I know what I want,” he called out to the solid, stubborn door. “Let me in. I know what I want.” Three more hard, stinging raps with his fist. It was a sting he wanted to feel.
The door opened. Eugenia looked so small, so inconsequential, and the blood raced through Pearce with such force, that all he could do was let out a guttural laugh.
Her body ragged, her clothes off-kilter, her painted eyebrows too pointed, one of them higher than the other.
He pulled a picture from his pocket. “Her,” he said. “I want her.”
Understanding worked its way across Eugenia’s features. She studied the photo with her obsidian eyes. “Your wife.”
“I’ve seen what you are. I know what you can do,” Pearce said.
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
He felt the rest of his heart dying, the fibrous tissue crumpling in on itself.
She bowed her head and Pearce heard the bobbin-rattle of her breath. “Throw away everything. All your thread. All your needles. All your fabric. We use the real stuff now.”
And this time, instead of writing out a list for him, she whispered into his ear.
He paced distractedly through his house, glancing at the pile he’d gathered on the dining room table. The blinds were shut, the curtains pulled. He broke the seal on a bottle of rum that had sat in the cupboard for the past year, stared at it, then took a quick swig. He grimaced and screwed the cap back on.
He lit two dirt-brown candles the old woman had given him and turned off the lights. Thick green smoke belched off the burning wicks, carrying the musky odor of decaying leaves. He coughed. Picked up the strange needle Eugenia had given him — a feather, the black and white bristles slick along the quill with an oily substance she’d spit from her mouth.
He wrapped it with the thread she’d given him, a thread glistening with drops of his own blood. He inserted the needle into one of the dresses that Mary used to wear. Even over the scent of the candles, he smelled a trace of her perfume. He began to sew.
The needle was thick. It took some time getting used to the way it punctured the material, took some getting used to the slickness of the thread, of remembering to dip it in the dish full of blood that continued to drip from a small slit under his right nipple.
He didn’t sleep, didn’t eat, only got up reluctantly — joints groaning, muscles stiff — to use the bathroom. Days went by. He found himself shaking, sweating, his skin itching. He forced himself to eat. The floor around him piled up with garbage, scraps of fabric and thread. He ignored the growing stink of rotting food that filled the air.
Finally, he had to rest. Shaking, trembling, tears brimming in his eyes, he lay on the couch in the living room, not caring about getting its surface coated with the filth that covered him. He stared open-mouthed at the flat white ceiling until he fell asleep.
He dreamed of Mary, of her quilted form rising up from his worktable, bits of untrimmed thread and fabric poking out from her ragged seams. She came to him. Straddled him. Unblinking. Un-emotive. A dumb thing constructed of rags, poorly stitched, bits of batting peaking out through jagged holes in her body. But then her mouth opened, her eyes blinked, and she looked at him, really looked at him, into his eyes, and whispered, as if waking from a long, deep sleep, “Pearce? Honey? Is that you?”
The materials he used; moss, grass, dirt, tree bark, mud, feathers, cotton, wool, satin, silk…
A week passed. His fingers moved nimbly, as if they were separate entities. His work spread like a fever over his lap.
It slowly took shape.
Her shape.
He began to recognize her in it, in the form, the design. This recognition propelled him, his fingers moving faster, while the rest of his body seemed to melt into the heavy, hot atmosphere around him.
Large black circles formed under around his eyes. He was constantly thirsty, constantly hungry. But he mistook this for longing, for the anticipation of that which was nearly complete.
He put down the needle Eugenia had coughed up from her very own lungs, that feather, now worn to a nub. He took a deep breath. His skin burned with sweat and patches of rash.
There was one more step.
He gathered up all of the pictures of Mary he could find. Wedding pictures. Vacation pictures. The annual Christmas pictures they mailed to their relatives and friends. He tossed them all in a metal trash can. Doused them with lighter fluid. This was hard — the last vestiges of Mary, the last images, but Eugenia had said this was the most important step.
He flicked a wooden match against his thumbnail and felt it pop into flame. He hesitated, standing in the garage bare-chested, in underwear that hadn’t been changed for a week, the light of the match spreading deep pools of shadow throughout the garage’s interior. The photographs in the can winked back the yellow light. Mary’s smile was the last thing he saw before letting the match drop. The burst of fire was brief and hot. The pictures caught, burned, the stink of melting Polaroids making Pearce’s eyes water. Soon, the contents of the trash can merely smoldered. It was the ash he needed. The ash of her image.
His work was done. He sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the thing (no, not a thing — it’s Mary, damn it, it’s Mary!) he’d created. She lay on the bed as if sleeping, a rag-doll cadaver with obsidian eyes aimed blankly at the ceiling. Even though she was made of cloth and moss and ash and so many other bits and pieces, she looked life- like. He waited. Waited for her to sit up and take him in her arms. He had to believe she could. Without that belief,
