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A Sharpest Wife © 2008 Ananda comes from a long line of women born solely to procreate and extend the line of the tribe. Genetics have even seen to it, that if Sharpness Wives do not do this duty, they will die. In a cruel twist of fate, though, these women are more and more frequently thwarted by a clan of men who frequently reject their wives and yearn for the world beyond the Film. Genetics has taken care of that as well… For them there is a Sharpest Wife. |
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Episode 1: Clayan’s Escape My Sharpness Wife was unremarkable. In the days leading up to our wedding, she was silent. In the few days after, she was present. Only present. Even as Ananda alerted me softly of death from the sirens and opium and weapons of Babylon , she was unremarkable. Her words were lost on me as was her face and form neither of which I elected to commit to memory. Excitement. A roar not a whisper. Primitive flesh, instead of education, institution, I wanted. I had never thought myself left like the other men of our tribe. I had believed myself to have a heightened level of sensitivity, of awareness. i had never believed myself to be either selfish or cruel. After all, I did take the dim star to wife. I found that I was like the men of my tribe after all. And so I left her, my arranged wife, thirteen days from the night of our wedding. I left her, my Sharpness Wife, ill and chaste. I did not regret it. Remorse was something for the free. I had not been free to choose, and thus felt nothing for her. She had not been free to choose, and so should have been pleased to be free of me, free of this construct. I was—am selfish. Leaving a Sharpness Wife to a cold bed kills her. Unless she is a Sharpest Wife. It is impossible to know which Sharpness Wife will be a Sharpest Wife. Speculation targets beauty and intellect and softness of which Ananda demonstrated none. Her warning whisper had been a hard scratch in my ear, even. Poorly formed thoughts contorting a plain face and sputtering in a fast breath. Invisibility she had in the span of mountains, canyons, and clouds. But for those moments, those rasped moments, when she cautioned me against all that I desired, I was unable to make her out from the walls, the cabinets, the drawers, the tables, the chairs, the floor. A living ghost, my Sharpness Wife. When I closed the door on Ananda, that day thirteen days from when she became my Sharpness Wife, she became a Sharpest Wife. And so began one hundred and sixty-nine days of my Atonement Episode 2: Hunger For near two weeks, Ananda’s family did not seek her.
Ananda was certain that she did not seek herself. Oh she ate, drank, made use of the privacy, but did nothing else. She could not remember any significant thoughts crossing her mind. Save for the one time when she wondered what grief felt like and whether anyone would grieve her. To think seemed to be a waste when she was most assuredly going to wither away and die a silent and pitiful death.
When, finally, her mother and three remaining sisters came, it was with a Sharpness Priest in tow. They brought him there to bless and burn her body. Her sisters came to split up her servants. Her mother came to ensure at least one servant was left for Clayan should he choose to ever return.
“How were we to know you would live, Ananda?” Her mother asked after speaking many words that did not seem to penetrate Ananda’s stolid gaze.
“Yes, how were we to know?” Her sisters, three of four, the third dead of abandonment, followed.
How were they to know?
Ananda did not condemn them. She had been no better. Sitting there, waiting to die like abandoned Sharpness Wives before her, like her sister, Anya, before her. Her favored servant, Mari, had belonged to Anya once. She’d watched the priest bless and burn her sister’s body the same way he would have done her. She was no better than them.
Maybe she was worse. Ananda had waited, ignoring her household duties, ignoring her evening prayers. Doing things that sustained her life, passingly curious as to why. Waiting for her eyes to close and her chest to move no more. Anya had cried out, demanded help, wanted someone at her side to whom she could pass her last breath. Ananda had taken that last breath, but inside she had felt nothing.
In Ananda’s final moments in the house, she sat very still feeling like an abomination. She felt that her body was a casing for something cold and hungry and that if she did not wake up, it was going to consume her heart and mind, take over her body her soul… and…
But then…
Instead…
Her appetite grew, and the house became sticky, and she couldn’t stand the smell of sweet things.
And the fourteenth day, which is when they came with the priest, the change had already happened, but still she sat silent as they postured. Her sister Aisha was the first to say it. And she said it with fear and reverence as she kneeled, dragging her two sisters with her. The priest and Ananda’s mother kneeled clumsily, too.
A frightened beat in every heart, called to Ananda.
“Sharpest.”
Ananda didn’t care to regard them in that moment.
She was, after all, suddenly ravenous. And she did, after all, have a husband to eat.
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A Sharpest Wife |