The fourth house to take her is small, but the garden is large. It backs onto a Norfolk field, with no boundary between one property and the next. The foster mother here is younger. She has short hair, and three piercings in one ear.
The paperwork is finalised, the obligations reviewed, but Chrissie is guided to a bedroom before she can slip away. Faded red walls. Twin bed. Wardrobe. A vase of dying flowers sits on the bedside table.
“If you need anything,” the foster mother says, “or you just want to talk - day or night - my room’s across the hall.”
Chrissie squints at the woman’s face. Sun-roughed skin, freckles, lines around the mouth. No pity, no disgust. “Thanks,” she says, finally. The foster mother - Janet? Jean? - smiles, and turns to leave. The door drifts shut in her wake.
Her half-empty hold-all drops onto the bed. The mattress sags, the duvet rustles. She drops one hand to feel the fabric - starchy, new, unsoft. The next she knows, her body is jolting awake. Darkness. Quiet sounds of chattering and cooking from downstairs. A single beam of moonlight, cutting through the curtains. When were the curtains drawn?
Still in her clothes, still in her shoes. A dull ache coalescing where her left shoulder meets her neck. Sleep has stretched her out of shape, too tight and yet too loose. The bag crashes to the floor as she sits up. The voices downstairs pause. Chrissie tenses, body still.
The voices resume. She releases all her breath.
By this point, her eyes have adjusted to the dark. The room is undisturbed, save for a glass of water on the bedside table, with a single dead petal floating inside. As Chrissie’s looking, the flowers send another one tumbling down.
A draft sends the curtains drifting. A bird is crying, somewhere in the night. There is a silent, unnameable moment - a shift in the weather, a gathering of the air. Chrissie turns her head to the left - feels her spinal column twist inside her chest. She is facing a wardrobe. Free-standing, tucked into the furthest corner of the room. The moonlight paints a single shard of white onto one door.
She rises, taking care to keep her movement quiet. Fortunately, the fourth house to take her is modern - the floorboards don’t yet creak. Once her body has reached the wardrobe, she leans forward, pressing one ear flat against the crack between the doors. Her eyes slide shut, her lungs take in no breath.
There - a great warm rush of air against her cheek. A smile splits Chrissie’s face. Her hungry hands tug at the door; she crawls into the throat.
The flesh is warm and close. No room to stand, no room to turn around. With every move she makes, it brushes against her shoulders, her back, the uppermost patch of her scalp. The moisture is seeping through her clothes, mixing with her sweat. There is nothing but the pulsing and the heat.
Chrissie scrabbles forwards on all-fours. Tongue lolling, jaw loose. Breathing heavy through her mouth.
Nothing ahead but pink darkness. Part of her hopes she disappears down here, and part of her feels a little sorry about that. Mostly, though, she is thinking of the hand and its softness. She is thinking of uncomplicated touch.
The gullet is tight around her for what feels like a day and a night. It widens so gradually that Chrissie almost doesn’t notice she has been released. She finds her back is stiff, her knees uncertain. She is an animal learning to stand.
When she rests a hand against the walls, she finds them changed. Patches of thick and matting hair, patches of clustering teeth. The molars flat, the canines made for meat. Still, the rushing, crushing, all-enclosing heat. All is slick with sweat or spit or slime.
Dark in all directions. A thousand jagged turns that make no sense. Then - light, behind her, and a soft sound of surprise.
Chrissie pivots, hands curling into fists. Her vision blurs, fills up with light. An incredulous laugh. Hands, gripping her shoulders, nails digging in. Chrissie shoves back against it, still blind. Swings out wildly with her fists. The light goes flying, the stranger stumbles back. There is a glint of teeth, of frightened eyes, of swinging hair.
Chrissie’s right fist is wet with blood. Teeth bared, hands raised, she stills. A gangling heap of teenage girl lies panting at her feet.
“The fuck?!” the stranger barks.
“Don’t touch me,” Chrissie snarls.
The stranger lifts her hands - cautious, conciliatory, blood streaming from her nose. She makes no effort to get up, so they stay like this a while. Staring at each other, panting in the heat.
The stranger, the kindling of a smile on her face: “You’re the hand, right?”
Chrissie’s fists go down. The fallen torch rolls gently back and forth; their shadows dance erratically on the walls.
The stranger lurches to her feet, throws her arms wide like an actor. Then: “I’m Lena. I come down here a lot. I love it. I thought I was the only one. How did you get here? What’s your name?”
Chrissie’s mouth is stuck around her answers. Lena’s cheeks are flushed.
“Christina,” she finally chokes out. Thinks again: “Chrissie. For short.”
Lena’s grin is impish, wide, and stained with blood. “Chrissie,” she says, near-breathless, “d’you wanna go explore?”
She strides off without waiting for an answer. Chrissie makes sure to grab the torch before trotting along in her wake.
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139,975 Literary Works • 672,800 Reviews
Hello there, human! I'm reviewing using the YWS S'more Method today!
Shalt we commence with the gory S’more?
Top Graham Cracker - Chrissie is sent to a new foster home. But while she is alone, she ventures into the throat and gets inside of what seems to be a living body. There, she meets Lena and together, they begin to explore.
Slightly Burnt Marshmallow - I have no recommendations to make as of right now, but if you would like to edit this, you may.
Chocolate Bar - I like that Chrissie is described as going in on all fours, that makes her scrambling in the pink flesh feel all the more like she’s gripping through living meat. I also like that Lena is excited to show her around. She seems funny and like she hasn’t had anybody else to show the body mass to. The very details describing it were delightfully disgusting as well!
Closing Graham Cracker - Overall, a lovely chapter about finding a possible friend and descending into darkness. I’m excited to read the next chapter and so…
I wish you a fabulous day/night! ^v^
Hello! Heads-up in advance — I have not read Chapter One (and I probably shouldn’t because it’s rated 16+ 😬) but the cover and the title really jumped out to me. Whenever walking around inside Barnes & Nobles, I usually go for the most interesting covers as well.
In spite of the somewhat slow start of the story, the presence of little hints such as dying flowers, the dead flower in water, and Chrissie's constant tension contribute to a sense of impending mystery.
In my opinion, the transition into the throat is the most interesting part of the chapter. Gradually, unusual descriptions of the passage evoke the sense of discomfort and strangeness of the setting, while at the same time Chrissie's reaction to it makes the reader understand that she feels not only fear of the place but something strangely familiar and comforting.
The phrase about "uncomplicated touch" allows understanding of what Chrissie is looking for emotionally.
The appearance of Lena deserves to be mentioned separately. In contrast to the tense and frightening atmosphere, their first encounter is very funny and chaotic, and even more interesting due to the fact that Chrissie's aggressive actions immediately lead to an unusual proposal about exploration. Their dialogue gives a lot of power to the conclusion of the chapter and raises many interesting questions regarding the nature of the place and its characters' peculiarities.
There is one moment that I want to comment on: the sentence "The next she knows, her body is jolting awake." In the context of narrative in the present tense, it sounds a bit clumsy; the use of the phrase "The next thing she knows, her body is jolting awake" will solve this problem.
In addition, I want to note that the usage of the extremely graphic descriptions of the passage is sometimes unnecessary since it might distract from the characters development.
To sum up, the chapter is a strong example of a mystery plot. In addition to the atmosphere of suspense and uncertainty, the final dialogue of the characters adds unexpected playfulness to the end and gives a clear reason for continuation of the reading.
OKAY, COLOUR ME (even more) INTRIGUED. This is so good, and so unique, and I need more right now.
The fleshy throat-mouth thing in Chrissie's wardrobe is written with almost no horror at all. I mean, there is certainly a degree of abjection here for the reader, but for Chrissie, it seems to be only desire. By this point, Chrissie has been passed through four homes, presumably with a mountain of paperwork, fuss, obligations, and probably very little real human attachment or physical touch from anyone. She reads less like a child than a burden being passed around, waiting for someone to decide to keep her. This made me read the throat as a monstrous, engulfing space that Chrissie doesn't experience as a threat, but as the first uncomplicated physical contact she's had in a while. It's raw, intense, vulnerable contact with something almost human- human-like, in biological terms it seems - but it is something that asks nothing of her. There is no paperwork, no social workers. Just something sensory.
It reminded me of gothic horror and specifically the idea of a house that is haunted without needing a real ghost. Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House specifically is what I had in mind. Hill House doesn't haunt Eleanor with spirits so much as it absorbs her. I wrote an essay in Uni where I argued the house in Gothic lit functions as a substitute maternal figure, a space where a young woman (typically motherless, or with a damaged maternal bond (in THOHH, eleanor had to care for her mother her whole life, until she died, and she never got to form her own identity) can explore identity and sexuality away from her actual mother. Now, I don't know why Chrissie is in foster care, but neither foster mother has been a true maternal figure, and we can assume something happened with her real mother. So the wardrobe-throat functions the same way. A house (or body) for Chrissie to explore herself. Not a haunted house in the literal sense, but a space that offers to consume her precisely because presumably everywhere else has only ever managed her.
It makes the fact that this throat has followed her from home to home even more intriguing, because it would suggest that this is a part of him - if it were not for Lena also being there too. Unless Lena is a part of her too????? I have too many theories.
I HOPE THAT RAMBLE MADE SENSE
Thoughts/observations/suggestions:
I like that the opening is the same format as Chapter One. We learn about the house before we learn about anything else. It's small but has a big garden; something kind of eerie about that. You don't need the comma after hair!
Poor Chrissie. We don't know much about her yet, but I can imagine she has been through a lot. I am torn between wanting more description of the room, and thinking its clever like this because she's been through this before and doesn't want to get attached and its nothing special anyway because it'll never truly be her room, just temporary.
Individually, nothing is wrong with these sentences. They're all very well written, and I like the details and especially how she feels the fabric of the bed, like she's testing it. But I did mention this in part one and I don't want to hammer at the same point, but again it is very choppy and I think a few of these being longer sentences or a few new long sentences in could really thread everything nicely together. Parts of it sort of read a bit like a list in my head, one thing right after the next.
OOO okay so this throat/flesh thing comes with her wherever she goes. That's very interesting. How does she know it will be there? Just an instinct. Is it always there? I assumed last chapter was the first time and thought it was odd how she dove right in lol. I would really like to see some of Chrissie interacting with the foster mothers/families - someone who isn't Lena inside this throat - just to get a better sense of her character and why she does this again. Because last time, surely a hand grabbing her would have been scary? But she does it again this time. It's very fascinating.
This is so gross, I love it.
Maybe 'Chrissie snarls in response,' or, 'Chrissie snarls, snatching a hand away,' something like that would break up these two beats a bit nicer
This is so fucking creepy but also endearing because I am, at the moment, assuming she might be someone in a similar position to Chrissie.
MORE PLEASE <3
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Rev this is such a gift of a review 😭 you get it. YOU GET IT. Your read on this chapter is so extremely correct and I'm sososo glad I successfully conveyed that.
And thank you so much for the pointers! I think I am definitely going to bulk up the beginning with more of Chrissie's early experiences in foster care when I get around to revision (right now I must keep forging ahead or I will lose my momentum lol)
yay i am very glad i was right and my ramble made sense! And of course, keep writing, a first draft is a first draft for that reason!! Excited for more