To The Bone

Chapter 13

The night is yours now. You move through the pitch-dark woods without light or sound. The trail is steep and overgrown, but your steps are sure. Power surges through your veins and pounds inside your skull, burning and brilliant and supreme. You are beyond all limits.

Inside the plastic bag you carry is a warm limp weight.

You come to a deep cleft in the mountainside, a spring that was diverted years ago, to fill the swimming pool for the mansion below. No one comes here anymore. You pull away the rocks and brush that you had piled in the entrance. A strong odor seeps out, but musty, like copper and wet earth. The lime has done its job.

This is where you keep the leftover parts.

You lay her down on top of the others, then remove her silver-and-turquoise bracelet and wind it around your own arm. It burns with her heat, right through your skin.

Your body is tired, but your mind is full of her song, a song of worship, for the beauty you have given her.