Chapter 5: Sleeping Girl
The girl’s breathing had evened out into the soft, regular rhythm of deep sleep. Eden stood over her for a long moment, the silence of the hut now a palpable thing, thick and heavy between the drum of the retreating rain. She could still smell it. Not the girl—the girl smelled of clean water and faint sweat now—but herself. The ghost of her secret ritual clung to her, a phantom stench of piss and shit that seemed to have seeped into her pores. It was a vile perfume, a secret shame that felt all the more glaring with this innocent lying in her bed.
She had to get clean. Properly clean.
She moved to the hearth, feeding a few more slender logs into the embers until flames licked up, hungry and bright. The large cast-iron kettle was heavy as she lifted it from its hook, filling it with water from the clay jug. She hefted it onto the fire, the metal bottom hissing against the hot stone. The wait felt interminable. Her skin crawled with the memory of the filth, and with the newer, more disturbing memory of the girl’s body.
She couldn’t stop seeing it. The pale, freckled skin. The small, perfect breasts with their tight, pink nipples. The soft, reddish fur between her legs, so different from Eden’s own coarse, dark thicket. Her hands, as she scrubbed the floor, had trembled with the aftershock of that touch. The clinical necessity of cleaning her had been a lie she told herself; her fingers had memorized the texture of that youth, the unblemished smoothness of her stomach.
The water began to steam. She dragged the wooden tub into the center of the room, its worn sides familiar and comforting. She poured the hot water in, the steam rising in a cloud that carried the scent of the fire. She added cold water from the jug until the temperature was just shy of scalding. Then, with a furtive glance at the sleeping girl, she began to undress.
Her clothes fell to the floor in a heap. The air touched her naked body, and she felt a hundred years old. Her breasts swung heavily as she bent to test the water, their weight a burden her entire life. The wrinkles on her stomach folded. She saw the grey in the hair on her arms, her legs, the dense thatch at her groin. She was a used thing, a landscape of a hard-lived life. And she was dirty.
She stepped into the tub, the hot water a shocking, welcome pain. She sank down into it, the water sloshing over the sides, and leaned her head back against the rim. For a few minutes, she just sat, letting the heat penetrate her bones, loosen the knots of shame in her shoulders. She took the lump of homemade soap, rough with lye and ash, and began to scrub.
She scrubbed her arms, her neck, her breasts. She scrubbed between her legs, the coarse hair tangling in her fingers. She washed her hair, working the soap into her scalp, trying to erase the memory of the urine that had soaked it. She dunked her head under the water, holding it there until her lungs burned, rinsing away the suds and the lingering phantom smells. When she surfaced, gasping, water streaming down her face, she felt cleaner on the outside. But inside, the filth was just taking a different shape.
She let her hands rest on her thighs, the water lapping at her skin. Her gaze drifted, inevitably, to the bed. To the mound under the furs. The girl’s face was turned towards her, peaceful in sleep, her red hair a vibrant splash against the dark fur. Eden’s breath hitched. Her heart began to pound, a slow, thick rhythm in her chest.
Her hand, of its own volition, slid down from her thigh. Through the water, through the coarse hair, her fingers found the familiar, swollen flesh of her cunt. She was already wet. Not from the bath. A different heat, a slick, aching readiness that had nothing to do with cleanliness.
She let her head fall back again, her eyes closing. But behind her lids, the image was crystal clear. It wasn't a memory of filth. It was a memory of clean, young skin.
She saw herself not as she was, but as a shadow over that perfect body. Her calloused, work-rough hands, not washing, but claiming. She imagined peeling back the fur, not to clean, but to devour. Her fingers traced her own slit, circling her clit, and in her mind, it was the girl’s small, tight body she was touching.
A soft moan escaped her lips, and she bit it back, her eyes flying open to check on the sleeper. Still asleep. Still breathing. Eden’s fingers moved faster, slipping through her own wetness, the water sloshing gently with the rhythm she was setting.
“Fuck,” she breathed, the word a puff of steam in the air.
She imagined spreading those pale legs. Not with clinical detachment, but with raw, possessive hunger. She pictured the thatch of red hair, the delicate lips beneath. In her fantasy, her own thick fingers, smelling of soil and soap, parted them. She imagined the girl stirring, not in fear, but in a dazed, sleepy arousal. She imagined the gasp that would escape those lips as Eden’s finger found her entrance, that tight, virgin hole.
“You’d be so tight,” she whispered to the sleeping form, her voice a husky, broken thing. “So fucking pure.”
Her middle finger pushed inside herself, and she fantasized it was pushing into the girl. She fucked herself with it, imagining the resistance, the hot, clenching tightness of a young, unused cunt. Her thumb rubbed hard, frantic circles on her clit. The pleasure was a dark wave, building from the pit of her stomach, coiling tighter and tighter.
She added a second finger, stretching herself, the burn a pale imitation of the stretch she imagined causing. She thought of leaning over, of putting her mouth on those small, perfect breasts, of sucking a nipple until it was hard and dark. She thought of licking a path down that flat stomach, through the red fur, and burying her face between those legs, tasting her, drinking her clean, young juices.
“My god,” she panted, her hips bucking in the water, making it splash onto the floor. “Your sweet little pussy. I’d make you come. I’d make you scream.”
The image solidified, perfect and depraved. Her, on her knees between the girl’s legs, her tongue lapping at that tiny, swollen clit, her fingers pumping in and out of that tight, wet hole. The girl’s back arching, her hands fisting in the furs, a high, keening cry torn from her throat.
It was that cry, the one in her mind, that pushed Eden over the edge.
Her body seized. A silent, violent convulsion wracked her. Her back arched out of the water, her mouth opened in a soundless scream. Pleasure, white-hot and shameful, electrocuted her, radiating out from her cunt to the very tips of her fingers and toes. She rode it, her fingers still working, milking the last shocking pulses from her body until she collapsed back against the tub, spent and trembling.
The water was cooling. The fire crackled. The girl slept on, unknowing.
Eden pulled her hand from the water, staring at it as if it belonged to a stranger. It was clean. She was clean. But she felt dirtier than ever. The fantasy had been more intoxicating, more real, than any ritual with filth. This was a new kind of hunger, and it terrified her.
She rose from the tub, water streaming from her body, and dried herself with a rough linen cloth. She pulled on a clean, long shirt, the fabric soft against her sensitized skin. She moved to the window, looking out at the dripping, dark forest.
A shadow detached itself from a nearby branch and landed on the sill with a soft thud. Bartholomew. He cocked his head, his black eye reflecting the firelight.
Eden didn’t look at him. She stared into the darkness, her voice a low, defeated murmur.
“What have I brought into my house, Bartholomew?” she asked the night. “Or what has it brought out in me?”