Free Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart by Caitlin R. Kiernan Page A

she nods and grins so that anyone would know her smile for a smile.
    The table is cluttered with an array bowls and bottles and jars, a granite mortar and pestle, whisks and basting brushes, colanders, measuring cups and spoons—ceramic and glass and stainless steel to contain everything that is required. There are generous bouquets of herbs, both dried and fresh—basil, cinnamon, nutmeg and mace, bay, cumin, coriander, licorice and anise, tarragon and wild thyme and sage. There are onions and leeks and fat bulbs of garlic, lemons and key limes, the speckled eggs of quails, pomegranates grown in faraway Azerbaijan and rose hips picked that same morning from the dunes near the house. There is extra-virgin, cold-pressed olive oil, vinegars fermented from apples, dates, raisins, and malt, and there is an assortment of wines and liquors. There are neat mounds of salt from Bolivia and Senegal and Spain. No expense has been spared, no detail overlooked , and it is unlikely that any banquet has ever been assembled with more deliberation and exacting care.
    “They have all come to see you , my dear,” the eunuch says, and then he goes back to massaging her bare belly and breasts with the pungent mixture of oil and spice that he has prepared while the others drank and danced, fucked and howled their wordless bacchanal to the New England skies and whatever dark, half-forgotten gods might or might not be listening.
    “To see me,” she whispers, still smiling,and her eyes drift back to the frenzied interplay of light and shadow swarming across the attic’s walls and ceiling rafters.
    “You are such a wondrous sight,” the eunuch says. “A very special thing to behold, and none of us are ungrateful for so precious an opportunity.”
    The pale woman lying naked on the table has violet eves, and her long hair is almost as colorless and fine as corn silk. There is a small scar on her chin, from when she was seven and took a tumble on her bicycle. There is a faint scatter of freckles across both shoulders, but not a single one to be found anywhere else on her body.
    “You are almost, almost perfect,” the eunuch says, rubbing a bit of oil deeper into her left nipple. “You are special , and we might well wait a thousand years before another such as you comes along.” Then he sits back on his heels, wiping his hands clean on a towel, and he admires her glistening, milk-white skin and those eyes like nuggets of hard Christmas candy. “You must not for a moment think us ungrateful, or believe that we are taking your gifts for granted.”
    She nods, but her gaze remains fixed on the ceiling and walls. “I am also grateful,” she replies, and he Listens, expecting something more, desiring something more, revelation or confession. But there are only those six syllables, and then she blinks once, and smiles for him again.
    At sunset, before she was taken from her cell in the basement of the old house, the woman was shaved with a pearl-handled straight razor, and the mound of her sex, the gentle rise of the mons Veneris , is nearly smooth as the day she was born. She has been fully dilated, and her vagina is held open by the metal jaws of an antique speculum of the type first constructed by the French physician Philippe Ricord in 1834. The eunuch glances at her face, relieved to see such complete peace there, certain now that the cocktail of iv-drip opiates and hypnotism has done its job, and whatever the violet-eyed woman feels—whatever caress or wound or violation—can only be interpreted by her brain as pleasurable sensations.
    “We will not live long enough to ever again see anything even half so beautiful as you,” he says, reaching into a large wooden bowl heaped with peeled garlic cloves and whole yellow chanterelles, diced shiitakes, peppercorns, and ripe cranberries. He takes a single handful, and while she watches the shadowplay thrown across rotting boards and peeling wallpaper strips, he begins to stuff her with the