Page 275 of Ripe
Its enormous body folds toward me, branches scraping against one another as it lowers its head until that empty suggestion of a face hangs directly above mine.
I can’t move.
The darkness where its face should be splits open.
And there’s something inside.
Not a mouth.
A field.
Endless fucking corn stretches away beneath a black sky.
Thousands of red ribbons hang between the rows.
No.
Not hang.
They’re tied around wrists.
Women stand buried upright in the soil, packed between the corn as far as I can see. Dirt reaches their waists. Their chests. Their throats.
Every one of them is breathing.
Some stare straight ahead.
Some silently scream.
Some have roots growing through their open mouths.
And standing among them is Mercy.
Human.
Young.
Exactly as she was in 1791.
Her eyes find mine.
Her mouth opens. “It isn’t a child.”
The words slam into me.
Not Mercy speaking now.
Mercy then.
A memory.
A warning carried across two hundred and thirty-five fucking years.
My abdomen moves again.
Every shape inside me shifts at once.
I scream.
