The Haunted Vagina Read Free Page A

at the hardwood floor, crawling out from between her legs.
    Stacy is crying in a panic now. Her face bright red, her mouth drooling wide open, her eyes so squinty wet that she can’t see anything anymore.
    “Do something!” she cries.
    But I don’t know what to do.
    I pick up a turtle-shaped lamp and hit the skeleton with it. The turtle’s head pops off. I hit harder, then harder, until I find the right angle to break its skull.
    I cut my hand on the shattered lamp. Blood spills onto the corpse. It’s still moving.
    Flesh begins to grow on its bones like moss, lightning-fast. The lamp is in little pieces, and my blood is leaking everywhere. Stacy screams in Russian at me, angry profanities that I don’t understand.
    I step away from the corpse. It is growing organs. Blood red balls fill the eye sockets of the skull, and the skeleton looks up at me. It releases a deep moan. I run to the corner of the room and pick up the night stand, knocking clocks, glasses, a jar of coins all over the floor. The skull watches me, cries at me, as I lower the night stand onto its neck. Then I drop all of my weight on top of it.
    A loud crack. It stops moving. It stops moaning. I turn over the night stand. Its spinal cord has been severed. Its head crushed. Blue ink dribbles out of its mouth.
    Stacy whines, shrieking at the corpse still halfway inside her. Her hands twitch inches away from it, wanting it out of her but she doesn’t want to touch it.
    I pull on the corpse, but it pulls Stacy with it. She cries. I pull again. She just moves again.
    “Hold on to the leg of the bed,” I say, in the calmest possible voice.
    She’s hiccupping now, leaning back to hold onto the bed.
    She doesn’t watch as I pull it out of her. With each tug she cries out. I cry as well, with my sliced-open hand rubbing against the thing’s rib cage. Once it slips all the way out, she leaps to her feet and runs out of the room.
    I look down at the body. It seems to be melting. Its flesh turns to blue, red, and orange mucus. Its bones melting into egg whites, crumbling into baking soda. I drape the big fluffy blanket over its body and leave the room.

CHAPTER FOUR

    Stacy is standing in the corner of the living room, behind the couch, covering herself with the curtain. She doesn’t realize that the people walking on the sidewalk outside can see her nude backside.
    “Let’s go for a drink,” I tell her.
    She nods her head and goes for her purse, digging through its contents, not looking for anything in particular. I get us some pants and t-shirts from the hamper in the laundry room.
    “Here,” I say.
    She sniffles and puts her purse down, then gets dressed. Strangely, she’s come out of it unscathed. My hand is still bleeding everywhere. I can’t feel much pain. Must be in shock. But her stomach has flattened back to normal. No stretch marks, no tearing of her vagina, no blood. Some claw marks are on her inner thighs, but they are just white scratches. The claws just barely broke the skin.
    I bandage up my wound and put on the smelly crusty clothes. We go into the garage and slip on some junky old tennis shoes that we were planning to give to Goodwill.
    “Ready?” I ask, wiping away her tears.
    She doesn’t hear me, busy examining a spider web that has recently formed inside the doorway of one of her old doll houses.
    We go out to the Kennedy School across town. It’s an old elementary school that was bought by a brewing company. All of the classrooms have been turned into bars, restaurants, tobacco lounges, and hotel rooms. Stacy’s not a big fan of all the breweries in Portland. She just doesn’t like beer at all. She prefers drinking cocktails in the Pearl District. But I love breweries. And I need a very strong brewery beer right now. I’m also thinking if she’s not in a condition to go back home tonight, we can just stay in one of the school’s guest rooms.
    She doesn’t speak to me for a couple hours. In the Cypress Room at Kennedy