Golden Hour by J. M. Bédard

The surface of her limbs rippled in waves, skin hugging the cresting and crashing within. Foaming, glowing. Puckered. Stretching and rolling beneath a leering sun. It dripped thick brightness from a swollen tongue, smearing bloated clouds and spackling her back in gilded welts. She squirmed, beaded eyes clustered and shifting. They blinked and reared back and she sighed, exhausted, a sweet chorus through her many mouths.

She began to move. Slowly, deliberately. Long fingers dragging along a silty bank, combing through fine hair and coarse pelt alike. Waxy tendrils too, and broad strands slick with grease. Their musky scent leaked oil in her wake, festive and acrid, while a clutch of rabbits scuttled nearby among the ferns. They panted, pausing to lap her edges. Mouths darting like fish, slivers of pink flashing in her bruised shallows. They paused from time to time to listen, eyes boring sharp tunnels through the golden haze. A rustle of fur and low voices knit them together before rising, as smoke, above their hunching backs. The rabbits moved like the sea, boiling, until they had drunk to their fill. Then, as one, sank silently into the rusted mud. It splashed for a moment and then calmed. Turned back to sucking gently at the leggy reeds, tall bones jutting matte and creamy from the rich murk.

She pushed on. Reached forwards, hands splayed to test the limits of her form, while straining her legs to graze the ground below. The lake bed grinned. A silent smile, the deep purple of old blood and rotting leaves. He began unfurling his lips, humming softly.

Still others watched her from green shadows, melting between rocks. The depth of those spaces tugging gently at her edges, shivering in anticipation. She shimmered. Shot through with that glittering smog. Tiny shards of shrapnel soldered to ash, diamond-crusted. A shining grit. Bright gems primed to tear eagerly at soft flesh. She was clothed in them, yes, but it filled her as well. Thin needles slicing subtly, almost imperceptibly, with every breath and swallow. A warm snowfall that settled within her in drifting dunes.

She had glowed with it at first. A razor halo shaped perfectly to all her curves and divots. Had tasted this new air and smiled at its heady flavour, holding it firmly between her teeth before savouring its crunch. It was always changing too. One day ancient and salted, the next raw and rangy, the tang of young bones still plump with marrow. She had basked in it, sunning herself in the velvet noon. Until she noticed the prickle. Nothing really, to begin with. The whisper of an itch, easy to muffle and ignore. Every day was a late summer afternoon, slow and lingering, sticky and orange. An overripe sunset, syrup-drenched decay. Trees slumped in their bark, dazed, and so was she.

Not long after, the beating began. A steady thrumming of raw knuckles, the hammer blow of a knee or an elbow. The sun dug, famished, into her softness, delighting in the round pain. More blows rained down, soon joined by dust and dirt and twisted bits of charred life, while the sky blistered under heavy jewels. Her thoughts were furred over, quiet and slow. Molting. Melting and molten.

And then, deep in a red night, she had awoken to a new freshness. Baby green and damp, wriggling though the heat. Cool hands on her feet, pulling the skin up and over her aching body. Feeding her arms through, then pushing it over her face. She shivered sliding in, inhaling sharply as it slipped up around her. Bunching a bit at the neck, catching briefly on her chin. Thoughts stilled, but not choked. Strokes slow but gaining in strength. Constellations of eyes peeling open across her body, winking away their burnt crust. Her mouth no longer gummy and fetid, flushed out by the lake. The water coursed through her and she continued to open, expand, unfurling further. Reveling and unraveling. Slipping between stitches and tendons, tasting the other side. Something brushed her cheek, unseen, as old scents drifted between the gaps. Muffled voices, slightly warped, pooling out as well before dissolving in the mottled deep. She caught one once, tucking it into her mouth for safekeeping. It tasted like dawn, tea wreathed in fog, and when it was gone she was ready. Gathered herself up, eased open the stitches, and pulled herself through.  

J. M. Bédard

J. M. Bédard (she/her) spends long runs getting lost in other worlds and writes to find her way out. "Human, Too", her collection of dark, surreal short stories, was published by Dim Shores in April 2021. More recently, her poetry

has appeared in Star*Line and Strange Horizons.