A Gentle Hell by Autumn Christian Read Free Book Online Page B

like something inside of June had fled - all ritual gone.
    In fact, she stopped pacing the floor or waiting by the window like the ghost of the curtains. She even spoke of getting another job.
    “I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” she said. “I think it’s time for me to get out of the house again.”
    “Wait a while,” I said, looking at the ruin of her face, “you still need a lot of time to heal.”
    She consented to staying in the house, though she took to spending all of her time up in the studio that she hadn’t touched in three years. Several times I’d wake up in the middle of the night to find she still hadn’t come to bed. I often rolled over and climbed up the attic ladder to find her at the canvas wearing her bloody sweater, head bent down to the brush, red hair alive,
    “It’s four in the morning,” I said, “you must be tired.”
    “Oh? I didn’t notice.”
    She kept painting, without looking back at me.
    Her subjects turned darker and more abstract. She stored away the flowers and children of three years ago and started to paint mechanical creatures, black spheres, spurts of red color that bubbled out of what appeared to be a crack in the universe. She painted amorphous shapes underneath a red moon. I saw her floating across space, and I was unable to follow.
    A few weeks later when we went back to the hospital to get x-rays, the doctors found her bones completely healed.
    “What god are you praying to?” the doctor with the cat birthmark asked June. “I think I need to switch religions.”
    June, sitting on the edge of the examining table in her paper gown, only smiled her cold smile.
    When we got home that night she followed me into the bedroom. When I started to undress she grasped my hips from behind and blew cool air into my ear. I found myself unable to move for a few moments, caught in her grip as if encased in a wild tree.
    “June?” I asked.
    “I feel so strong,” she said. “Like I could do anything.”
    “What’s happened to you?”
    She guided me to the bed and pulled my shirt up over my head.
    “Do you really want to know?” she asked.
    “Yes,” I said, “I want to know.”
    She straddled me and touched her face which was no longer a ruin, but a mass of pink scars quickly fading. Before she spoke she bent down and uttered a low, soft growl.
    “I don’t need you anymore,” she said.
      One night while drifting off to sleep June woke me by appearing by my side and whispering in my ear.
    “I’m going out,” she said.
    Half-asleep, thinking I was in a dream, I rolled over and kissed her on the cheek.
    “You don’t go out,” I said.
    “The person you used to know wasn’t me.”
    She left. I went to sleep but couldn’t break the cold. I dreamed of her when she was sixteen and nursing the owl that died in her backyard. She scooped it up in her arms and rocked it, whispered hush hush, whispered, “I don’t know how to help you.” She wore her white dress, but it was spattered with blood.
    Several hours later I awoke to a presence standing in the doorway of the bedroom. I sat up in bed and saw a silhouette standing in the gray light, three-quarter moonlight sweeping over the floor and soaking into her skin.
    “June?”
    Without speaking, she crawled into bed beside me and curled up to sleep. I put my arms around her and pressed my face into her hair. She smelled of something musty and thick that I couldn’t quite place.
    “Where have you been?” I asked.
    In response she only stretched out her body and went to sleep in my arms. I stayed awake for a long time after that, overwhelmed by the smell that emanated from her.
    In the morning I found the bed covered in blood and bird feathers. June was gone.
    I gathered up the bed sheets to put in the wash, finding it difficult to breathe or swallow as I did so. I called June’s name, but there was no response. I went into the kitchen, stuffed the sheets into the washer trying not to gag, and turned the