Lustful Amnesia

Mary Celeste is faster than me.

Or, at least she was.

A cold shower though couldn't dilute the strange sensations I was feeling in the pit of my stomach. My legs trembled the entire shower.

Afterward, when I was drying off, it was harder to dry some parts than others.

It seemed like the water had saturated me fully from the shower. If I had known then what I know now, I am certain I would have reacted differently.

Inexperienced children do not understand those kinds of desires.

Mary Celeste was right though about many things that would come. At the time, before I

understood

, I just assumed that the cold water had managed its way in well, and I just had to pee it out.

Man, oh man. Was I mistaken.

O O O

Amnesia dried off in her bedroom while Cordelia waited for her to finish. She already felt a little more comfortable, and a much more confident to be seen in the buff by her friend.

"You cut yourself." Cordelia said, pointing just above Amnesia's pubic mound.

"You said it should never see hair." Amnesia shut her door and flicked the light switch. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust as she made her way into bed and covered.

"Don't you sleep in pajamas?"

"Sometimes." The awkward silences had gotten less frequent, but they were thick when they came.

"Won't your mom check in on you?" Cordelia asked in a hush.

"No. My Auntie used to sleep in the down stairs bedroom, and mummy had to sleep in the guest room across from her. She never moved up stairs. She won't come up here unless we're loud."

Cordelia was silent, her breath just slightly labored.

"Outside you were going to tell me something."

"It isn't something I can tell you." Mary Celeste said softly, her voice shaky. "I mean I could tell you, but for you to really get it, I have to

show

you."

"I won't stop you."

"You should." Mary Celeste said scooting closer to Amnesia, under the cover of their blanket. Amnesia lay on her side, face to face with Mary Celeste.

Amnesia could taste Mary Celeste's breath. She felt Mary's hand rise up, beneath the blanket, and its warmth as it settled on her bare shoulder.

"

This part is not about you and I.

I'm sorry

."

In the dark of the room, pale moonlight from outside reflected off of Mary's skin, putting her eyes in shadow so that there was only a glimmer of reflection.

"What is it about?"

"This part is the part where I got hurt."

"Who hurt you?" Amnesia asked.

"Shhh." Mary Celeste hushed, reflecting the sound in such a way, it sounded as though it were someone else—as though someone else had made such a sound to her. "Please, Amnesia... forgive me."

O O O

There is very little to be said about this moment, and yet the entire world made sense to me suddenly.

I had bitten into that apple that God forbade Adam, and Eve.

I had become a sin.

I had become a blasphemy.

I suffered as Mary Celeste suffered, because in the moment that I understood nothing, I suddenly understood everything. My world went from a place of Adam and Eve, to Lilith and Nod.

I would wander the land in search of something I could never find, and so I died ther, and I was reborn, baptized in Cordelia Anne Martin, and anointed in the trickle of my own blood.

The pain was excruciating, by the way, but it wasn't the physical aspect of what happened. It was her tears shed as she did it to me; as she did to me what had been done to her. The horror wasn't even in what had happened, it was in the repetition.

She did exactly what she said she would do. She burned into me, and she scarred me.

The fear I had for her, of her, was gone. In a single, dysfunctional moment, I loved her and I hated her forever.

We became equals, and she helped me understand.

O O O

"What are you doing...?"

Mary hushed her again. "You have to be quiet, or you'll draw your mother's attention."

"Okay, sorry."

(It didn't scare me.)

(But it should have.)

Amnesia felt Cordelia on her, and with her, a rush of Adrenaline filled her instantly, as though she were about to go into a battle.

"

Cordelia Martin

." Amnesia sighed.

"Hm?"

"No... I just want your name to be the last name I say."

"I'm not going to

kill

you." She whispered, touching Amnesia beneath the blankets. She was ready for it before it started.

Amnesia watched the blankets moved, and fought the urge to close her eyes, even as the welled up.

"You just did." Amnesia said, as she arched herself into her killer's hand.

"I'm sorry."

Amnesia could hear her weep silently, as Cordelia consumed her soul. A tear spilled down her cheek. Cordelia kissed it.

"I'm so sorry."

Ignorance faded into clarity.

Colored pencils became wood, and cheap wax.

Watercolors became finger-paints.

The pond became dirty green water.

The grass became weeds, and the stars, merely useless pinpoints in the sky.

The innocence that existed that noon had died, and the scars that Mary Celeste had promised had formed.

"I—I..." Amnesia swallowed, unable to speak, not even to whisper.

The battle between the heart, the soul, the mind, and the body was won, and lost to Cordelia Martin.

She tried to find the escape in the logic of what was happening, but there was

none

. She desperately clung to lingering, and fleeting threads of reason as she sank into the despair of sensation, and guilt.

Amnesia submitted, and consented to find the truth in Cordelia Anne Martin, and she found it.

Cordelia only wept, her face buried in Amnesia's shoulder. Amnesia, whose mind could no longer comprehend the trauma, closed her eyes to the gifts, and curses of her dearest friend.

There was a momentary sharp sting, and she winced. Burning. Throbbing. Something wet, and warm, like blood. Then a cold trickle down her thigh, and into the black cotton sheet of her bed.

She stifled a whimper.

Cordelia sighed into her ear. "That's what happened to me."

"Who?"

There was thick, painful silence.

Amnesia gathered her thoughts, for it was all she could do to keep from shattering. She had heard the term rape before, but never imagined what it was like.

Or if it had even happened just now since she had not only consented, but demanded it.

Cordelia did as she promised she would, and she

did

hate her for it, and she loved her too, maybe more than she had that evening. Hurt people, hurt people.

She tried to grasp onto her mind, ten minutes prior, but she remembered everything differently now.

The pond was no longer ice cold.

The grass didn't itch the same.

The stars were a child's craft; holes in aluminum foil held up to light.

Amnesia's chin trembled.

Cordelia's skin wasn't just

her

skin.

It was Amnesia's.

Her lungs breathed Amnesia's air.

She tried to remember the itchy grass, but the grass would never itch the same again. Everything had lost its old meaning, and at once, it was all entirely beautiful again.

Amnesia imagined that her old world had been beautiful in the way someone describes a sunrise, but a sunrise she did not experience herself.

She imagined her world, now, not as the description, but the sunrise itself.

She held her breath. She was

very

sore. "Who?" Someone was guilty. Someone, but not Cordelia. "Who!" She hissed.

Silence again. For only a moment.

"It no longer matters." Cordelia whispered. Amnesia could hear relief. Guilt, too... but definite relief. "Just hold me."

O O O

What the hell do you say or do to something like that?

I hadn't been molested or raped by my friend, but instead through an extension of horror, guilt, and misplaced pleasures, raped by whoever raped her,

through

her.

Even if I consented, I still feel dirty to this day. She told me:

...this next part isn't about you, and I...

and she meant it. She would never go on to tell me who had hurt her, and I suspect there was plenty of good reason behind it... but how fucking sick is that?

That "

man

" and his morbid victory over her... and I.

Her silence was no longer a mystery to me, nor her headlong fearlessness to face trouble, for what trouble could she possibly get into that was worse than what she had shown to me?

She was right, too, in a horrible way.

It was twisted, and sickening, even then. She had to show me, for me to understand. Though she said she wouldn't kill me, she had in fact, killed

me

. I died in my final throws, and what was left was the terrible understanding, and adulthood that had been forced on Cordelia.

She wept on me, her hand stained with my blood across my chest and shoulder. In a time that I hadn't even started menstruating, and I had already lost my virginity.

I had no idea that was what would happen.

My pale skinned goddess was a victim, and she had victimized me in her name. Baptized me in her pain. I loved her, more, and more. In my youth, or maybe the last lingering remnants of my naivety, I fell in love with her.

We were equals now, and her silence would never have to go unspoken. The dreadful, monster that lay dormant in whoever hurt her, had been passed

to

her. However long she had tried to fight it, in the end she lost, and then, she won.

The scars were etched into us both, but the monster that she had inherited died there with me that night.

O O O

Early on, I wondered what I would call my memoirs if I were to write them at all. I thought surely, "The Tragedy of Cordelia Anne Martin"... but really?

I'm not good at titles, and besides. What does it matter?

The story is what is important, not the title—it is what it is.

That's why

you

will keep my stories, and all I will have to do, is tell them.

By the way, I

really

like your title.

"Lustful Amnesia"

. What am I, if not an incarnation of lust? Not merely the lust flesh, or the tender delicacy of a woman's dew... but lust for what was lost.

Lust for what was lost in me.

(You can never go back home)

Not for me.

Not for Cordelia.

My one true love; my only love.

Cordelia was my first girl, see. The next day, when I woke up, she was gone. From that day forward, after the initial shock wore off, it was two weeks before we would speak again.

I do not know if it was her guilt that dissuaded her from contacting me, or if she found peace in herself, through me, but for fourteen days I suffered alone as she must have suffered before she met me.