20

This is a dream.

She lies on her back in bed under the blankets, waiting in a close darkness lit only by a candle. A storm rages outside, echoed by the tight fist of dread in her belly. She is uncertain, a little scared, a little excited. The door opens and closes, and she shivers, eyes wide.

A shadowy form says, “Darling, are you ready?”

“I think so,” she says, barely a whisper.

“Show yourself to me.”

Her fingers play along the edge of the blanket. “I—I’m a bit nervous.”

He looms over her as he sighs in disappointment. “I was told you would understand your wifely duties,” he says in a stern voice, and she loses her grip on the covers as strong hands pull them away.

Time skips, in the way of dreams. Her legs are cold, her chemise pulled up over her back, and she’s on her stomach. Everything is pitch-dark now, and a man breathes heavily in her ear, breath reeking of rot and tobacco and sherry. She can feel him inside her, heedless of her discomfort and pain and fear, but she can’t protest, can’t make a sound. Someone might hear, might ask him awkward questions, and he is most cruel when he is embarrassed. She gasps as something rips inside her, tearing her in half. It feels like she’s falling, like she’s spinning, and then she’s floating on the ceiling looking down as a man covers her, rutting roughly as a dolphin defiling an otter’s corpse.

“This is what you were made for,” he says. “God made you this way, a perfect gift, built to receive and to bear fruit.”

And then she’s in her own body again, in Sarah’s body, and Kyle’s lips are against her ear as he thrusts and mutters, “You won’t even remember this, will you?” in her ear, and the scent of hospital soap chokes her.

The world spins again and she’s on the floor of the hotel room in someone else’s body, the rug rough under her palms, throwing up into the painted bowl, the ewer sitting nearby with a rag beside. There is blood on her chemise, a hot, wet burning in her most secret places.

“Not one for tenderness, your new husband?” says a middle-aged woman, sitting on the ground, dabbing her forehead with a wet cloth. The woman’s belly is hugely swollen with child under her gown, and her face is exhausted and full of pity. “Some men don’t know how to be soft and sweet. They’re simply not made that way. I can bring you one of the doctor’s patent medicines, a salve that will make it easier. Does your husband know you will need time to recover?”

She shakes her head. “I can’t tell him—I couldn’t—”

A tutting sigh. “I’ll tell my Henry to mention it one night in the smoking room,” the older woman says. “Man-to-man.”

“Oh please, do not!” she cries. “He won’t take that well, as a gentleman.”

The woman shifts restlessly around her belly. “Well then. Best just use the salve before you go to bed, just in case. He’ll be kinder when you are with child. He’ll leave you alone.”

She closes her eyes as her gorge rises, and then Kyle is there dabbing her forehead.

“Poor baby,” he says. “What did you eat this time?”

“Nothing strange.” She feels guilty saying it, as if she should know what she did wrong. “Just the usual things.”

“This always happens to you. You’re just so very sensitive, aren’t you? Maybe you—”

She hates it when he talks this way, and she’s glad when the spout of vomit interrupts him as she heaves into the toilet.

There’s a loud crack somewhere, splitting the world in two. Splitting her in two.

She is lying on the floor, cold and wet. She isn’t sure who she is, which body she’s inhabiting.

“Ready to try again?” a man says from somewhere overhead.

She doesn’t know which man it is.

It doesn’t really matter.

It means the same thing.