Writing Snippet #2
SUET AND TALLOW HAVE PSEUDO-INCESTUOUS SEX ON THE FLOOR OF AN ABATTOIR.
She had grown undeniably beautiful.
Her svelte musculature encaged by her bruise-colored flesh seemed to dance between all the hanging pink, reducing it into value. Slicing it down into its most valuable parts. The word 'Carnelian' takes its namesake from flesh. If flesh was a jewel, Tallow was a jeweler, cutting it into facets and presenting it in its most appetizing manner.
The difference between a carcass and prime rib was Tallow's reappraising touch, and for the first time in her life, Suet desired it: dress me, take out these ugly conflicted feelings, trim away my imperfections, leave only the things good enough for swallowing.
Tallow's taciturn face paused and seemed to notice, with a sort of wounded curiosity, her sibling's lingering eyes.
"Sister?"
Suet blinked and the world came back into focus. The lightless, cold meatlocker with its blood and ice and stink.
"Yes?"
"You just seemed..." Tallow turned her words over in her head, as she often did. "Very far away, I suppose."
"I was distracted."
The strands of Tallow's hair curtained her face as she split ribs into perfect parentheses of bone and fat.
thok-thok-thok-thok—
She didn't look up
"Distracted by what?"
thok-thok-thok-thok—
"Distracted by you."
thok—... thok.
The cleaver slowed to a hesitant pause.
Her shadow seemed to triple in size in the silence.
How was she distracting?
Was her violence showing? Was her destructive tendency manifest in the bloodshed of her work? Was she cold and indifferent, working as Suet spoke? Had she interrupted Suet's thoughts? Had—
The gentle touch silhouette of a hand against her apron dispelled the infinite possibilities.
"You looked very beautiful in this instant."
"Pardon?"
Flanked by corpses, arms deep in cut-proof mittens and watery blood, the words fell-out like so much offal and vanished onto the floor.
"I said you look very beautiful right now."
"Right now—"
Tallow seemed incredulous, eyes re-evaluating the parts of herself that they could see.
"Yes. Bring your face down here."
She did.
The purple flush of red blood beneath her blue flesh. The puffs of breath, hanging in the cold air. The bunches of her hair, wreathed around her ears. Her peeking fangs—
Suet kissed like a street urchin.
Suet kissed like an older sister, wise to all the secrets of the world.
Walking closer as she did, doubling Tallow's folded body so that it collapsed in on itself, and she fell hard to her rear around the tile and packing-ice.
"Suet, I am unclean—"
"Then take your mitts off."
"No, sister, I—" her ears burned and hung slack from her face like a beaten dog. "I am dirty."
"We're unclean. We're two girls on a slaughterhouse floor."
"Sister—"
That word was doing more for her than she had expected.
"Sister—"
"Sister—"
Suet fit perfectly into the gap between Tallow's lap and chin. Her hands were the precise diameter of the loose ends of her bunched hair.
This is what sisterhood was.
Perfect understanding of the nuance.
Tallow's hips ached from being pushed, and complained from being exposed to the cold, but now, stagefright and shame had paralyzed her. Her pulse shot through her exposed body. Taut prey musculature.
A shift of her hips was all it took to make Suet dizzy. All her blood had shot to her face, heart pounding in her ears like so many cleaver-strokes:
thok-thok-thok-thok—
She pushed her chest and face into her sister's body. She smelled sweet in contrast to the stale iron of slaughterhouse air.
She walked her heels forward, straddling her sister's hips.
"Suet—"
The wetness of her underclothes stuck to Tallow's spasming hips like wax paper to meat.
The evidence was there. Palpable. Warm.
The only warm thing in this room.
The desire for something closer.
The air bit Suet's legs. She held the hem of her dress between her teeth. Reclining languidly with Tallow's bangs in her hands, tentative little rolls of her back, like easing into a too-hot bath.
"Am I your first?"
"No—"
"Well, I am the one that counts."
She wrenches Tallow's head down into a kiss again. Those claws, free from their mittens, wrap around her possessively.
She washes away the abuse.
Conjures beauty.
Dispels all the filth and scars by acknowledging them as mutual.
"Haah—... Sister."
Tallow's senses are concussed. Ears ringing as her field of view wobbles under the rise and fall of Suet's body. Her doll-clothes are so much more affordable and beautiful than regular clothes. She feels like paper next to parchment, wearing her sisal dress and apron.
Suet looks like a fairy.
Suet looks bisque porcelain perfect.
Suet tastes like evening tea.
And feels just as warm, warm, warm—
"Aah—"
It's to be expected with first-timers, after all. Suet grounds herself. Collapses into her sister's quivering legs. Sex pools out from her and puddles onto the floor, steaming.
More— More— Just a little more.
Her sister's overstimulated claws grasp mindlessly for her. Cut the ribbon and lace of her one-ply chiffon and velvet to tatters with their carelessness. That reappraising touch — make me more than I could ever be alone, Sister.
That dazed, soft expression.
The needling welts beneath ruined fabric.
Every "Sister—" mewled past her lips.
Suet's face pales, her cheeks burning. She realizes her proximity to oblivion. Hanging from the precipice by Tallow's bunched hair. She just has to fall. She just has to let go. She just has to let go.
She lets go.
The coarse silk of Tallow's hair tumbles from her hands, and she falls backward upon her sister, unsupported. The ruinous pleasure radiates off her.
Tallow, for the first time, initiates a kiss of her own. Amateurly clinking her teeth off Suet's, her poking tusks pressing into her cheekbones. Scenting her perfumed hair, drowning out the world. The air is heavy with the dry cold and sour with sweat and release, but every breath in Tallow's lungs is meadowsweet shampoo.
The room begs for words:
'I love you,' 'stay with me,' 'don't leave.'
But the perfect understanding of nuance doesn't permit any.
Everything is as silent and still as the hung bodies of the slaughterhouse.
Peaceful as death.