PIHM: Lymphatic Pearls by Justin Moritz, Part II
As Peter rambled on about fractions and percentages, I kept myself entertained only by the sheer will of my imagination. When he asked me how much would be left if he removed a quarter of a pie, I imagined a fourth of his waxy hair falling from his scalp in bloody clumps. “Three-fourths.”
“That’s…right.” He seemed surprised.
The day mulled on. From mathematics to grammar, from grammar to writing. At one point, he surprised me, instructing me to read a popular short story about a woman who sees a female figure in the wallpaper of the room her husband confines her in. After I finished the story, he pondered, “I am curious what you took away from the story.”
“I believe the woman’s condition is the fault of her husband. He gave her no choice but to go mad.”
“What a frightful misinterpretation of the story! If you had read closer, you would see that if the woman had simply trusted her husband, a doctor no less, she could have recovered,” Peter tutted. “After all, a man always knows best.”
We had hit an impasse. He would look at me with disdain, a girl much too smart for her own good. I looked at him and didn’t see the man who he wanted to be, but rather who he was: a sniveling rat of a man.
Peter collected the books. “I would like to speak to your father.”
I stifled a groan as I led him down the long hallways and down the stairs. Father’s office was just past the kitchen, but Peter froze as we passed by the dining room. A girl sat at the table, her chocolaty brown hair curled tight, her gloved fingers delicately holding a cup of tea.
“Elizabeth, I hope that tea was offered to you,” Peter said.
Her movements were refined, practiced to be distinctly feminine as she lowered the teacup, but her expressions lacked the same sort of sophistication and poise. Her face moved in a way that failed to conceal her emotions, her eyes snapping irritated while her tongue curled back to sling venom in Peter’s direction. “Of course I didn’t impose. I do not occupy space I am not welcome in… unlike you, dear brother.”
Peter replied, but I didn’t listen. I was transfixed by the way every flick of her stunning blue eyes seemed to be the crack of a whip in her brother’s direction. It defied explanation that the blood that flowed through Peter’s veins and had resulted in a mediocre man, created such a magnificent woman. I wanted to be like her. No, I wanted to be her. No, I wanted to be simply seen by her, if only—
“I like your dress,” Elizabeth praised, outstretching her hand to take mine. “I’m Elizabeth.”
I shook her hand, but for a long moment, our fingers lingered against each other. I felt the air freeze in the back of my throat, a tremble sliding up the length of my neck. “I’m Anna-May…please excuse me.”
I ran to the bathroom, slammed the door shut, and slid down to the floor.
I could feel all the muscles in my body tighten, the tremors pushing another pearl up my throat. But this time it felt different. I couldn’t compose myself. I coughed and I choked, but even as I tried to ease into the familiar motion, I couldn’t relax because I was thinking of her. I lifted my tongue, slid my index finger into the slit of flesh that offered the opalescent bounties. I moaned, both in excruciating pain and overwhelming pleasure, as I pulled from my mouth half a dozen pearls strung together in mucus and blood. As I sat there gasping, I imagined how beautiful Elizabeth would be wearing this filthy necklace around her throat.
***
Peter became an excuse to see her. Each day she would sit in our dining room, her eyes flitting over the words of poems as she waited for Peter to escort her to their home on the other side of the city. In those short encounters, I found myself staring, but Elizabeth would only glance at me. She pulled her eyes away almost too quickly, causing me to beg the question: did she find herself drawn to me in the same way I was drawn to her?
But one day, Peter disappeared in my father’s office for longer than usual. We chatted as my gaze drifted down to her hands, the words catching in my throat as I gazed upon the pale flesh she usually hid beneath gloves. She brought a cucumber sandwich up to her mouth, then upon seeing me staring, said, “Would you like a bite?”
“I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“I’m full, but we mustn’t let it go to waste.” She brought the sandwich towards my mouth, the perfect crescent moons of her teeth stamped into the bread and cucumber slices.
I hesitated, then took a small bite. It was the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted. Just cucumber and salt and mayonnaise on bread. Simple, but it was the thought of her taking a bite before I did, just a tinge of her saliva left behind, that overwhelmed my tastebuds. I tried to thank her, but her hand bridged the space between us. She cupped her bare hand as if to catch the crumbs that fell from my mouth as she pulled the sandwich away.
My muscles contracted, the sensation of her fingers still on my skin, hot and heavy and paralyzing. A pearl slipped loose inside me. When she brought the sandwich back to my mouth, her hand more expressive this time, caressing my chin, cradling my jaw, I felt the entirety of me shudder. I knew that now was the time to run away and spit up my secrets in private. I didn’t want her to witness what was about to happen, out of fear that she would see me as simply a sideshow that lived behind gilded, not iron bars.
“I pity you for all the hours you must spend with my brother. In a few more years, perhaps I could teach you instead,” she crooned.
“I…” But I didn’t know how to respond.
“Don’t speak.” She brushed her lips against my ear as she said it, sending full-body shivers down my spine.
I stood paralyzed as she cradled my head in her hands, as she tilted my head towards her own. It was too much for me to contain, regardless how hard I tore into my lip. Though I tried to choke it back down, I spit the pearl directly into her hand.
Elizabeth looked down at the pearl, slicked in viscera and undeniable as it rested heavy in the palm of her hand. But she didn’t recoil nor throw the pearl in disgust. She looked at the pearl with curiosity, then back at me. My jaw hung open as I searched for the words to tear apart the narrative I could see forming behind her eyes. But there was no time as Peter reappeared in the room, announcing, “Elizabeth, we ought to be going.”
Elizabeth performed one last brazen act before Peter was at her side, placing the pearl on her own tongue as she turned away. Just like that, she regained her composure and followed her brother. She paused in the door to look back at me. The pearl held between her pursed lips, licked clean of the gore of my existence.
***
When I was sixteen, Peter announced, “You’re making excellent progress. Soon, I might not have anything else to teach you.
So I stopped excelling. Concepts that had once came easily became impossible for me to comprehend, or so I made it seem. The longer I needed Peter, the more moments I had with Elizabeth. We became remarkable friends in those passing moments together. But we wished for encounters that weren’t threatened by the opening of doors and the arrival of interlopers. The pearls became more frequent, popping out between conversations, sliding out from between my teeth at meals. Father almost never left me alone.
He kept me under lock & key, saying, “What is there in the world that I cannot provide?”
He couldn’t provide a breeze unencumbered from the walls that surrounded our manor. Nor the sensation of waves lapping against my ankles. He couldn’t give me the feeling of her and I alone, amidst a crowd that didn’t care we were so transfixed by each other. I tried to explain that our friendship made me so happy that surely more time with her would increase our bounty of pearls. But this seemed to frighten him, as if being too overjoyed would surely reveal our secret.
Playing dumb proved riskier the older I got. When Peter remarked on my lack of progress, I worried that my father would find my education an unnecessary expense.
So when the maid knocked to tell me my father wanted to speak with me, I rose with a knot in my belly. The tiny valve beneath my tongue that secreted the pearls seemed to pucker, to shiver shut as I opened the door to his study.
I was surprised to see Peter sitting across from him on a Saturday. I curtsied in the doorway, then sat beside Peter.
“We were discussing you.”
I spouted apologies immediately, “I promise that I will try harder. I know that the cost of educating me is far from cheap—”
“You shouldn’t worry about your studies. There are more important things to discuss,” my father said, locking eyes with Peter. “Peter here has come to me with a different proposition.”
Peter suddenly cradled my hand in his, announcing, “We’re to be married.”
“Father, I can hardly manage my studies. How do you expect me to be a wife?”
“Don’t you see? The whole reason we spent so much on your studies was to help you secure a husband with such a noble upbringing, considering our humbler origins,” my father said. “And Peter is a fine man as we both know.”
On cue, Peter pulled from his pocket the very pearl I’d given Elizabeth. “I found this in my sister’s bedroom. When I brought it to a jeweler, he recognized it as a rather fine specimen, one that was only comparative to the ones that your father had sold him in the past.”
I looked to my father, hoping that by a look alone I would know his plan for evading whatever accusation Peter was about to hurl at us. But he evaded my gaze, making my heart sink as I realized that it was too late.
“So back I went to Elizabeth to discover why she would have such a thing. I thought she had stolen it, but she refused to admit it. My sister is a tender bird, A few smacks to the side of the head and she cried out that she didn’t steal, but rather, you willed it from your body as a gift to her,” Peter continued.
“So marriage by blackmail, it is?” I mumbled beneath my breath.
In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to reach for the letter opener on my father’s desk and slice Peter’s throat, if not for Elizabeth, then for the joy of watching his lifeblood soak the fine carpet beneath his feet. But my father grabbed hold of my fists, willing me with a simple shake of his head to sit there and listen. “We cannot risk exposure, Anna-May. What will the world think of us if our rise in society was due to freakish means?”
Peter uncurled his fingers to reveal the pearl set in an engagement ring, which he forced onto my finger before I could pull away.
“I know that you do not see it now, dear beloved, but this marriage will knit our families together into a great dynasty.”
“But what of Elizabeth?” I sputtered, “Where will she live if you are to move in with us?”
“I think it is time that Elizabeth find a suitor of her own. For a woman as beautiful as she, there is no reason for her not to be married. But while we wait for a husband, she will be sent to live with my aunt in Chicago.”
I sobbed and shouted, “How could you send my only friend away?”
My father shook his head, saying, “You aren’t losing a friend, Anna-May. You’re gaining something better. A sister-in-law.”
***
There was no need to wait for us to be married. One night I went to bed a girl, the next I was a wife suddenly encroached upon by a man I hated. While Peter crafted custom vows, I repeated after the minister without so much as an excited tremble in my voice. I sharpened my disdain into a blade that I drove between Peter’s ribs.
But as unfortunate as the predicament was, Peter had some decency. While he might flit his fingers along my waist as he passed, Peter hadn’t rushed to consummate the marriage, saying, “It will be sweeter if we are in the throes of passion, rather than some scheduled tryst.”
I suspected this was only part of the reason. I wondered if it was perhaps my father, a figure that took no care to knock and frequently visited our rooms, that struct fear into Peter. By just shaking his callused hand, Peter knew he hadn’t always been a socialite. Any unkindness upon me would come back tenfold on Peter.
But something else bothered Peter more than our lack of intimacy. “You haven’t produced a pearl since we married.”
“It comes and goes.”
“But your father said that when you were happy, the pearls were plentiful…” His voice trailed off. “Our family relies on your gift. Does providing for us not make you happy?”
“This supposed gift of mine is far from pleasant. Every moment of joy in my life is cut short by a lump in my throat,” I spat at him. “When I bring my father a pearl, he is overjoyed, but his smile only lasts for so long. He always demands another.
“I’d do anything to make you happy. Just name it.”
“There is companionship that you cannot offer me, Peter. I seek Elizabeth’s friendship…”
“She will leave for Chicago before the end of the week.”
“Then allow us a chance to say goodbye, to walk through the park and enjoy the breeze as I find the words to send her on her way.”
“I cannot make any promises. I must talk to your father.”
And even though there was no promises, a pearl broke loose from inside me. As if a bribe, I spit into Peter’s hand, and with that I knew he would do whatever I said.
***
My father wasn’t happy when Elizabeth arrived, her shoulders draped in a wool shawl, a hat tied onto her head, her cheeks worn red by the wind. As soon as he saw her, he said, “It’s awfully cold. Wouldn’t you rather stay indoors? You can play cards and have a pot of tea.”
But we both shook our heads.
“Take care of my beloved, dear sister,” Peter said as he walked us out the door. He watched as we moved down the block, and as if to thank him, I kissed my fingers and waved back goodbye to him.
When we were out of his view, Elizabeth’s demeanor changed. Her arms crossed, lips pursed as if she was going to sling venom at me. I tried small talk, but Elizabeth’s responses were little more than a few, hastily strung-together words.
Once we were in the park, I could no longer handle her coldness. “Did I offend you?”
Elizabeth scoffed, hardly ceasing her pace. “Just a few months ago, we were mocking Peter, but today you blow him a kiss goodbye.”
I grabbed her by the arm, explaining, “I had no choice in my marriage, Elizabeth. If things could be different…”
“…but they cannot be different. Tomorrow I’ll get on a train and probably never return.”
Our eyes locked on one another’s. I knew what I wanted. “We could run away.”
“We have no money.”
From deep within me, I willed the answer to rise up inside me. I spit the pearl into the palm of my hand. “A life alone with you…a life free from this place, it would be filled with pearls.”
She looked at me, rolling the pearl between her fingertips. “We have no plan.”
“But we have each other.”
With the air cold enough to drive away the crowds, Elizabeth kissed me. Even if it was a fleeting embrace, we had crossed into forbidden territory. Her hand on the side of my face, her lips against mine, it made something deep within me swell. I thought then that I could never be happier, that my heart was beating much too fast because my dreams had finally manifested into reality, but then I felt that lump in my throat. And as I smiled back at her, I felt another squeeze up beside it. And then another forced the air from my lungs.
Elizabeth pulled a train ticket from her pocket and pushed it into my hand.
“I’ll buy myself another. Then tomorrow we’ll run away,” she instructed.
“Tomorrow. But I must be going. I’m going to be sick,” I said before running home, ticket in hand, trying my hardest to keep the pearls stuffed down my throat.
***
The first few pearls I managed to pry loose in the sanctity of the bathroom. I took each of them and slipped them into a hat box. I knew as I dug my fingers into my own mouth that the pain would be worth it when we were gone.
There was a knock at the door. Peter surely.
“Are you okay, dear? You’ve been in there nearly an hour.”
I tried to croak out a response, but my airway was tangled, crushed by a dozen pearls struggling to make their way to the valve beneath my tongue. I heard the doorknob wiggle, the lock successfully keeping him at bay. I desperately tore at the bottom of my mouth with my finger nails, trying my hardest to hide away a few more pearls before Peter returned with the key.
The thought of catching a train with Elizabeth and disappearing forever together made me so happy that even more pearls were secreted from their mysterious source within me. My vision blurred with pain as I saw the doorknob turn, finally unlocked.
Peter and my father rushed in. They stared down at me in horror, till Peter turned to vomit into the sink, mumbling, “She’s turning blue. Oh God, she’s going to burst. We have to do something.”
“That isn’t an option. If we bring her to a doctor, they’ll prod her like some medical oddity,” my father said.
Peter stared helplessly at me. He looked so much like Elizabeth, and each time I blinked up at him, I hoped I would open my eyes and find myself seated beside her on the train.
My father knelt beside me, began to palpate his fingers against the rapidly growing mass down the length of my neck. “There has to be a hundred pearls in her throat. If we bring her to hospital and she dies, they’ll take them too and we’ll be left with nothing.”
At that moment, I finally realized how my father saw me. I was no longer his daughter, but some prized animal that made him rich. I tried to take the hate I felt for him then and force the pearls back down my throat. No matter how much I thought of him trapping me in this house, or forcing me to marry Peter, or refusing to call for someone that could help me, my ill feelings were overwhelmed by the surge of happiness I felt every time I remembered Elizabeth kissing me, promising me we would leave this all behind.
My mother rushed in, shouting, “I brought you everything you asked for.”
“Hold her,” my father instructed as my mother pulled my hands to the ground and Peter stabilized my ankles.
“Our daughter is dying,” my mother murmured.
“I know,” my father said as he bent over me with a sharpened knife in hand.
My eyes filled with tears as I imagined Elizabeth sitting alone in the train station, wondering if I was just running late. But I was never going to join her on that train because my father pulled the blade across my throat without a moment of hesitation, crying out, “We’re going to be filthy rich.”
END
Justin Moritz (They/He) is a non-binary writer of queer horror, exploring the grotesquely campy and the filthy underside of society. Raised on true crime and horror movies from way too young of an age, their work tends to explore the terror of living as a queer person in modern times with a speculative twist. Their short fiction and poetry have been featured in Tales of Sley House 2022, Death Knell Press’ Nightmare Sky: Stories of Astronomical Horror, and several Scare Street anthologies.
Lymphatic Pearls was originally published in Scare Street's Night Terrors Vol 23 in November 2022.
