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And the prognosis? More of the same, perhaps, no cure and no preventative. He finds himself almost insane with curiosity: Is this scenario being repeated in other homes, other bedrooms? The lonely and the battle-scarred, awakening to find their night’s lover gone stiff beside them. The callous, rising to morning pain and finding surrender more attractive than fighting joints in protest. This city of men and women, one by one and two by two, sculpting unwilling new bodies of bone.

He wonders. It’s a theory, at least.

But if Stefan is anything, he is adaptable. He has adjusted to this new life, new flesh. A part of him now feels entirely divorced from that carnal Stefan of the past, he of curly dark hair and thrice-weekly health club workouts. He now knows the harsh ascetic rapture of the penniless holy man, the vow of silence and the wisdom that comes from motionless meditation. There is much to understand once the barrier of self is broken.

It’s not so bad, really.

Except those infrequent nights when he hears Connie readying to go out, smells the perfume, the hair mist, the very scent and essence of her need. Stefan, lying awake for hours, recognizing the key in the latch when she returns, and he swears even the lock sounds different when she’s not alone.

For hours, he listens. For hours, he prays.

These nights he hates most of all. Because he knows she’ll be coming to him in the morning.

To finish the task of satisfaction.

Connie fears, above all, the same solitude he so desperately craves.

iv. contagion

She has always hated autumn. Autumn brings sad change and a cyclical melancholy. Rains and chills, the false beauty of trees that will soon enough show their true colors, stark dead etchings against gray skies. Connie has always taken for granted that she will die in the fall.

Never has she considered it might be her time to nurture within the bud of new life.

Of sorts.

The cessation of her period four months ago did not seem undo cause for alarm. This has happened before, unintentional metabolic tampering through extremes of diet and exercise and stress, and the menstrual flow is dammed. That she never missed a single morning pill was more weight to her belief that this was simply another one of those episodes.

But tests, run and rerun, don’t lie. Nor does the blatant concern on the face of her gynecologist. But what, she’s not entitled to a mistake now and then? She’s human.

Unlike the thing in her womb.

He’s told her that it’s rare, but it does happen. It’s a documented alternative to successful pregnancy; one of the many biological missteps that can occur early on, through no fault of her own; one that did not happen to spontaneously abort. Just one of those things.

If he only knew.

Her gynecologist, of course, has never seen the father.

“Embryos can ossify, Connie. But it’s nothing you could have foreseen, nothing you could’ve prevented.”

Sure. Tell me some more fairy tales.

Connie drives home on autopilot, hands and feet independent of thought. Having left the doctor’s office before he can get her to agree to another appointment, chip this calcified lump of child off her uterine wall. No, she’s told him, she’ll have to think about this, the doctor dogging her footsteps, insisting it will not, repeat, will not take care of itself —

She would’ve liked nothing better in that moment than to have whirled upon him, let him know just what a shitty deal their six-year patient/doctor association has been from her point of view. Connie’s own thousand points of spite: you think you know me, think you know how i feel? i can hang my feet in those stirrups and open wide and you can poke and probe and name every part in English and in Latin, but you have no idea what it’s like inside my heart and my soul, no idea how hard it can be for some people to fall in love, so don’t you try to heal what you don’t even understand.

Of course she did not say this aloud. Public spectacle is public embarrassment. And later demands public apology.

Connie arrives home with the past twenty minutes of transit in blackout, forgotten or never registered. Her quiet street of century-old oaks and two-story homes, dignified, shutters and curtains aplenty behind which to hide their iniquities and secret shames. She keys off the ignition and sits behind the wheel in her driveway. Hands gently resting across her stomach.

Look into the rear view mirror and what does she see? The dark mascara runoff, so-blue eyes filled to overflowing with too many fears, too many questions, and a lower lip left ragged by nervous teeth. Hello young mother.

Hasn’t she known all along that something has been growing inside her? Something white and chalky and hard, this child of her own isolation, its skull a smooth dome of rock. She knows it never had a chance — it was never right and proper to begin with, and as such, what about its gestation period? How long will it take to come to term? And when its moment of delivery arrives, will it be like trying to squeeze a boulder from her body, and tear her in half with a rush of blood and chalky limewater flood?

There are no self-help books for this, are there?

Connie steps from the car with a deep breath, and at last prepares to live life according to her deepest instincts.

v. anastomosis

Standing in the doorway of Stefan’s room, she now sees him with new perception. Connie sags against the doorjamb, suddenly tired, exhaustion having found a home in her muscles, her bones, her soul. The climb up the stairs was an expedition.

She slips her suede jacket from her shoulders, lets it fall to the floor.

“I quit bleeding four months ago,” she tells him.

Stefan, of course, does not answer. Cannot even turn his head to acknowledge her in the doorway. Flatbacking, eyes toward the ceiling, without so much as the motion of perceptible breath.

“But that’s okay. I’ve bled enough.”

Silence. Closed up for late autumn, the house is as quiet as a mausoleum. An occasional creak, the settling of the house’s wood and iron bones. The occasional rattle of wind at windows. She has always felt safe here. There’s so much she makes sure remains outside.

Although, any more, she has to wonder if she belongs out there too. No longer to taint this house, its ageless serenity.

And, loudly, eternally, Connie screams.

At neither herself nor Stefan, yet at the same time both, at her home, at the world. She screams in potent raw distillation of feeling, without words. There are no words for this, the dawning revelation that betrayal has been in the works for a long, long time, and she has never chosen to believe it. Until now. “There’s someone for everyone,” her mother used to tell her, and she believed. And it’s true, but the truth is too spiteful to accept.

Someone for everyone — there he is. They deserve each other.

She blames Stefan for everything and nothing, knowing that half the fault falls squarely on her own head. Had she never let him get so close, he could never have infected her soul with whatever virulence had taken root in his own. Had she not continued to drape her own tender skin across his hard shell, he would never have violated the sanctity of her womb. It had never been made to grow anything like this.

Her scream is forever, it permeates walls and floor and ceiling, and after it drains her of breath, Connie steps into the room. With small, quavering grunts, she spins Stefan’s rigid form a quarter-turn on the bed, so that his legs hang over the floor. Then she maneuvers him up, onto his feet, and while his eyes are the only part of him that can move, can respond, she will pay them no heed. With her hands steadying his shoulders, he is balanced upright.