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When you are allowed to be awake for only five hours of every day between supper and midnight, things grow quickly strange and dark. You become easily confused and upset. It is hard to concentrate on words and to follow instructions. Your disgust sustains you.
I sit in the bathtub, hugging my bony knees to my chest. Iris fingers my scalp gently, blowing bubbles at me whenever I seem too distant from her and letting warm water from the showerhead run over my back whenever I begin to shiver. I don’t like the way my back looks anymore. I’m very thin, I saw myself in the bathroom mirror last week before Iris covered it. She can make a fist around both of my wrists. Has done it before while sedating me. Won’t do it again. She doesn’t want me getting too upset.
She wants me to eat more so I can gain some weight back, but I’m sedentary. An iridescent bubble lands on my arm. I want to blow it in Iris’ direction, but it pops before I can. Iris notices my plight and blows another one at me. I watch it catch the light and pop mid-air into a thousand tiny rainbows. I’m sedentary and awake for only five hours of the day, so I barely get hungry. Iris hates that, but she hates that it’s her fault even more.
“You’re so far away, Xuemei,” Iris says playfully. “Where are you?”
I ignore her. The conditioner she bought for me smells like gingerbread. It makes the weekly ordeal of washing my hair seem perversely festive.
“Come on,” Iris says. “You can’t even humour me?”
I’m annoyed, so I pretend to be distracted by my reflection in the faucet. I can see hers too, impossibly distorted. I’m lost if I turn around. I can’t handle her eyes. Like a forest where it always rains. That might make you think of green or grey, but my xuejie’s eyes are a bright and piercing blue.
Once Iris is done rinsing my hair, she helps me out of the bathtub. Because she does not want to degrade me any more than she already has, she refuses to look below my throat and ends up staring directly at my throat. I have a vision of a large white bird swooping down and ripping my throat out. I dry myself off in front of the covered mirror while Iris pretends to be busy at the sink.
“Are you angry with me?” Iris asks without turning around.
I am suddenly thankful for the covered mirror because it means that I can go a little longer without seeing her sad eyes. “I don’t want to talk to you when I’m naked,” I answer. I wrap her towel around myself and leave.
Iris waits a few seconds before turning off the bathroom light and following me out the door. It’s a small apartment, she knows where I’ve gone, but I still imagine her carefully following the trail of puddles left by my dripping hair.
I’m sitting on her bed in one of her T-shirts, staring blankly at the wall. I spend more time on this bed than anywhere else. I spend more than twenty hours a day on this bed. Iris slinks around the room for a while, trying not to seem nervous.
Iris is very beautiful, even when she is nervous. I love her and feel sorry for her, and I hate her and wish we were both dead.
Eventually she crawls into bed and tries to talk to me again. She looks distressingly young in her blue-striped pyjamas. Now that I have her eyes in front of me it is hard to keep myself from breaking down.
“Are you hungry?” Iris asks softly. “Do you want anything else to eat?”
I shake my head.
“Do you want to do something? It’s only ten. We can watch a movie. One of those silly ones you like. Anything you want.” Iris grabs my hand. “I’ll get it this time for sure, Xuemei.”
I pull my hand away. I’m not averse to her touch, I would rather be touched than spoken to, but I have to deprive her of mine to convince myself that we are still equals. “You’re a lunatic.”
Iris blinks at me with her terrible blue eyes. “I’m sorry.”
I look away, annoyed again.
“I’m sorry,” Iris repeats.
“You’re a lunatic,” I repeat.
“Sure,” Iris says, clearly unwilling to keep having this conversation. She leans forward and cups my cheek with her cold hand. “Yes. I agree. I’m deranged.” She leans farther, guiding me with her hand until I’m supine. “You can call me whatever you want,” she says earnestly.
I think I should sit up, but I am too weak from overuse of sedatives and she is too beautifully oppressive, hovering over me with one slender, blue-striped leg on either side of me. White bird, swooping down on me. I want to cry, but I don’t have the strength. I look up into her eyes and am utterly sick with how much I miss her. When she didn’t love me. When I was still a person.
Iris’ eyes flick erratically over my face. Happiness warms her cheeks, but everything else about her is cold. “It’s okay. Xuejie’s here. You’re okay.”
“Please shut up,” I beg.
Before she can answer, so that she doesn’t answer, because I hate her and love her, I press my knee into her. Iris gasps, her bright eyes wide open and pupils blown. She looks at me like a dog or a person with no chance of survival. She doesn’t know if she can move without breaking the spell. Exhausted, I grab her face and kiss her.
“I’m sorry,” Iris whispers between kisses.
“You’re ruining it,” I mutter, jamming my knee into her again.
Iris whimpers and bucks against me, whether unconsciously or deliberately I don’t know. Whatever it is, she needs no more encouragement from me. She could do the rest by herself. She sits up and grinds herself against my bare leg, sweat dotting her beautiful face and neck. She is mostly quiet, which makes the rare little moans like jewels. I stare up at her until my heart threatens to burst.
If I ignore the weakness of my body, I can almost imagine that what we're doing is normal. But that kind of thing is hard to ignore.
After a minute or two of watching Iris masturbate on my leg, I lever myself into a sitting position and cradle her sweaty face. She tries valiantly to keep her eyes open.
“I don’t know if I can get off like this,” she pants.
I snort. “Do you expect me to have the strength to fuck you?”
Iris slows down, looking close to tears. “I don’t expect anything.”
With Iris’ angelic, teary-eyed face in my hands, it becomes clear to me that I’m going to die hooked on sedatives. I really don’t want to start crying with her, so I kiss her moist hairline and her forehead. Her nose and philtrum. Her chin and throat, where sweat has pooled like gold. Iris shudders. I suck on the pristine skin there and she groans.
“Sensitive,” I remark, a little surprised.
“Not really,” Iris pants, already speeding up again. “But because it’s you, everything is different.”
I lower my head and continue sucking on her neck. Quiet moans spill from above me and travel down my shoulders and back like water. When I accidentally brush against her hard nipple through her pyjama shirt, she makes a funny, helpless little sound. I sit up. Her eyes are wild and bright. I stare at her for a few seconds, my reaction time extended by the sedatives, before lowering my head again to suck on her nipple through the sweat-soaked cotton. When I bite down, Iris cries out and falls forward, her forehead knocking against my bony shoulder. Warmth blooms around my knee. I keep my face buried in Iris’ chest and start to cry.