Fiction: Matter

By Arshi Mortuza

 

The morning after our wedding, I noticed blood trickling down my bride’s legs. My mother caught me staring and softly said, “It is to be expected,” and went on to grind her spices. Later, I found that my wife had mutilated herself. She had gotten rid of the part of her that she realized she would never need: pleasure. I did not complain.

 

One day, my wife got into a fight with my little brother. It was my sibling who initiated it, but the blame fell onto my wife. My mother feared that the new bride was under the influence of the devil. What else would provoke her to raise her voice at her precious son? Distraught, my wife cut off her tongue and handed it to my mother, who placed it in a pickle jar in our kitchen. “This will be better for your marriage,” my mother consoled me.

 

My mute wife was still beautiful. Perhaps even more so than before. Devoid of speech, she expressed herself with her eyes, which had attracted the attention of the men of our village. In a fit of jealousy, I shoved her inside our room and locked her in. After cooling down, I went to her. She was staring at the mirror with a blank look in her eyes. She was plucking something from them, an eyelash one by one. I paid no heed to this and dozed off to sleep. 

 

I woke up the next day to a ghostly sight: two hollows in place of where her eyeballs used to be. I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “What have you done?! What have you done?!” I felt her shoulders crumble beneath my hands, and my mute, blind wife, of course, could not respond. My screams brought in my mother from the next room. She gasped and clasped her chest in horror. Once the pacing of her heart had slowed down, she turned to me and said, “In a way, this is good. The less she sees of the world, the better.”

 

Days had passed, and my wife started living like a ghost. She stayed in the shadows, never leaving our room. Without a voice and without her sight, the rest of her body felt useless too. Her arms went next, followed by her legs. “Well, she does not need mobility,” my mother explained. “It’s not like she needs to leave the house.”

 

One by one, my wife’s organs and limbs were disappearing, and I was helpless to stop it. She tore out her brain when my mother explained that women are better thoughtless, and she ripped out her heart when she sensed that her feelings were invalid. She ripped off her skin, scalp, and hair because a married woman need not hold onto her beauty. She crushed her bones, that no longer had any flesh to support. Very soon, all that was left of her was her scarlet-red womb. It birthed a girl that year and another girl the next. The daughters possessed their mother’s former beauty and had very healthy pairs of lungs. Their cries were loud, and so were their laughs. “Not for long,” my mother smirked as she coddled her granddaughters in her arms. Finally, the womb delivered the only thing we ever wanted from it. What I had married my wife for in the first place: a baby boy.

 

My wife was taught to get rid of anything that was obsolete. But for that matter, so was I. After the birth of my heir, I sliced up the last piece of my wife and fed it to some stray dogs. It is inhumane to let animals starve, after all.

 

 

 

 

 

Arshi Mortuza is a writer of poetry and prose, exploring themes of mental health and the lived experiences of women, particularly in intimate or domestic settings. She is the author of One Minute Past Midnight (2022) and is currently working on her second collection of poetry, Pressed Flower. Arshi holds an MA in English Literature from Queen's University and teaches English as a Second Language (ESL) in Toronto.