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August, 2006
Oral Fixation: Fiction
By Elizabeth Valente
I’m your worst fear.
But not the worst that can happen.
I live in your house every night. I’m the silent, living, breathing creature under you. Under your big feather pillows, under your soft mattress, in the top left corner of your bed frame. That’s where I am. So close, I can practically read your dreams. I know he talks in his sleep, and I know you sometimes wake him up with your loud snoring. He falls back into sleep, only to resume the same tapeloopedtape looped dream, the same tapeloopedtape looped mumbling.
I know this because I don’t sleep. At night I stretch my legs. I crawl across your face. I’m the shadow you never see.
Cara said, Crawl inside her mouth; see what happens.”
Cara was my twin in body and soul. She’s gone, and I am left to fulfill her dreams.
My life’s in her hands: wWhat she says I do., wWhen I do, I can die. You think it’s a myth that a spider would crawl into a sleeping person’s mouth. Cara says I should prove you wrong.
One night you saw me crawling across the ceiling. And your husband who you called for, screamed for, didn’t come fast enough, so I escaped to the safety of my web under your bed.
The second time you screamed, your husband came faster, but it wasn’t me he caught, it was Stephan.
Stephan was smaller than me and more delicate. Stephan had lived 50 days, he thought. Getting old. I found him outside one night in the rain, and showed him the way through the window and under your bed. He scares me, he said. Meaning your husband. It scares me, he said. Meaning my plan. Cara’s plan.
Stephan’s not saying anything now, but if you saw his legs, as thin as the hairs on your head, you’d know it was himself he was most scared of.
When you screamed that second time you were paralyzed at the edge of the closet, staring at Stephan on the floor, not noticing me in the corner of the room, under the windowsill that Stephan was trying to get to. Stephan was frozen. I already knew what was going to happen, but I didn’t want to know.
“Move!” I yelled.
You pointed at Stephan, your mouth wide open. The mouth that I will someday crawl inside. Your husband rushed in and dropped his wine glass on the dresser where it tipped back and forth and back and forth and finally spilled. Your husband didn’t stop, afraid of another failure in your eyes, ignoring the purple liquid swirling and rushing into the open dresser drawers.
“Move!” Cara and I yelled together, or maybe it was just me, but I felt Cara urging him too.
You were still frozen, and your husband’s heavy bare feet lunged forward.
I felt my own legs rush forward, but too late. That tough, leathery mass of bones and flesh crashed down on top of Stephan, crushing him, swallowing him whole. I closed my eyes, fighting back bile, but Cara kept watching. She told me your husband balanced upon his one other leg and inspected the bottom of his foot. You looked away, disgusted, yet glad, and he walked into the bathroom to dispose of Stephan’s remains.
You fear me, and you don’t even know how close I stay to your every sleeping breath.
You talk in your sleep too, you know.
And when you think you’re alone in the mornings after he’s gotten up and gone to work, that’s when I will make Cara and Stephan proud and you will wake up to your worst fear.
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