A Woman Built By Man by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Cemetery Gates Media
Published: 2022-02-17T00:00:00+00:00

The first time I tasted my father’s flesh, all I got was a stomachache. My brothers wouldn’t allow me near the remaining wing after I’d thrown those pieces of our father in the fire, but I stole a piece months later, after the flesh had dried to leather and it somehow seemed less repulsive, just a bit of magical jerky, as the Victorians must have thought of those mummies they consumed. Crouched under the basement stairs, I ground the strip of flesh between my teeth and marveled at how it didn’t taste like the chicken I’d imagined at best, or the pork fat I’d expected at worst. I swallowed, kept it down, and waited for wings to erupt from my own shoulder blades. Though I never fully believed I would become an angel—I ate that piece of flesh because it was a satisfying farewell to a man who would’ve burned his Bible at the thought of a woman ascending into God’s graces—I took pleasure in imagining how I would make my brothers wash my wings before I crushed them and took my place in paradise, leaving them to cry and plead in my shadow. The promise died that night with a dose of Pepso-Ginger, as quietly and inauspiciously as my father had expired in his bed.

My brothers intended to wait until they deemed an adequate period of mourning had passed, but the temptation to taste the wing broke them before their black suits were tucked back into the closet. Theodore, the oldest, tasted first, not noticing I’d torn a piece from the tattered edge of where the wing had been bound to our father’s body. I watched from the kitchen window as the boys formed a circle in the backyard, Thomas and Harold’s faces stretched in awe and reverence as they waited for Theodore to bathe them in his heavenly birthright. When Theodore doubled over in pain, the other boys dropped to their knees, palms raised to the sky. Theodore died five days later in our father’s bed, tears in his eyes as he told me how the body should have been his.

Despite what they’d witnessed, my two remaining brothers repeated the ritual a month after Theodore’s death, this time prefacing their communion with hours of feverish prayer in the basement before consuming their pieces. Thomas died within hours. Harold, experiencing neither illness nor glory, went back and ate a full quarter of the wing. Salvation or suicide, I wasn’t sure.

To my surprise, Harold survived. I thought he’d become ill like I had, but the only ache he experienced was from his shoulder blades stretching into the armature of wings. Once the pain of rapidly expanding bone and skin subsided, he took on a wild-eyed glow and talked of his impending fame and fortune. We would go on the road, he said, and I would receive the honor of attending to his needs while he was feted in churches and adored in Hollywood. “Finally, a purpose for you, Hilda,” he crowed, hovering to assure I cooked a meal worthy of his new magnificence.

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