mood ring

Fixed fire: unearthly glow, blood red, full moon

‘Mood Ring’ in Burning House Press

Content note: murder, sexual assault, violence. Please take care when reading this piece.

Black to Purple 

The scientist shivers as she opens the drawer. She is becoming used to handling the dead, to recording their deterioration, to measuring and weighing them. 

The dead girl has a tattoo, and her hair is streaked green. Her mood ring changes from black to purple as it clatters, along with her dental braces and her contraceptive diaphragm, into the kidney dish.  

She has scratches all over her forearms: defensive wounds. The rhododendrons throttled her quickly. Just as she’d opened her mouth to scream, the soft blooms had filled her mouth. The scientist knows she will find dark stains on the mulch, bloody residue on the soft tissue of the girl’s throat. 

The girl has an unearthly living glow. Her green-streaked hair looks dirty and on her nails is a scrape of silver polish embedded with ice crystals. The plant hadn’t tried to digest any part of her with enzymes, which it was likely to do if it felt threatened.

She wants to hold the girl’s hand, to stroke her hair, but she gone. 

Blood Red 

The girl gets out of bed and runs a bath. The tattoo she’d stuck on the day before cracks in the water and the pink flower bleeds into the water until only the inky outline remains. 

She and her friend meet their teacher at the private park behind the school. 

Her friend has not shaved her armpits. Her hair there is auburn, a mouthful of ripe fruit.

The water looks almost green in the hot light, and the grass is scorched where the girls usually run cross-country. 

There is an ice bucket and there are four bottles of champagne. There is a metallic taste. 

The friend pulls the girl up to her feet and links her arm, walking her firmly away from their teacher. 

They walk up to the incline, to where the fence is rotten, and the back of the reservoir meets the forest. There are wild strawberries, and nettles, but mostly there are rhododendrons. 

The two girls walk deeper in. It is dark and cool, and they urinate, wiping with flat leaves. 

They walk in a little further. It is so cool and sweet-smelling with ancient moss underfoot and the blood-red of the flowers glinting in near-darkness. 

She blinks, feels earth beneath her. She must have slept. Her friend is lying beside her, hair trailing in the dirt, her face blank and radiant. As they lie there, a breeze shakes the branches above them, and they are covered in petals. She closes her eyes. 

The girl hears shouting and cannot make out what is happening. It is colder now, and she shivers. She is thirsty. 

The girl sits up quickly, turns to rouse her friend, and sees that she is gone. She can’t shout after her or the teacher will hear her. She stands, catching on to a branch, and then she sees a spiral of red hair in the undergrowth. The friend has crept into the hollow of a dead tree, and is curled up, scattered with petals. 

The girl shakes her friend, and the friend opens her eyes, yawns, smiles up at the girl, then looks confused, pulls brush from her hair, and wipes her eyes. The friend tries to climb out of the hollow, but she seems stuck, her arms aren’t working properly. 

The girl can hardly see anything but the glinting red of the rhododendrons. There are so many. So many more than before. Her ring turns bloody in the strange light. 

The friend stands and they walk quickly, darting under the twisted rhododendron branches. There is a low moan, and a sound like the splintering of branches, or bone. 

Lilac 

The scientist focusses on the glacial hum of the refrigerator, the last shiver of dry ice from the drawer, the scents of the girl: a bright rasp of iron, a fungal sourness. 

She think of the outbreak—the rapid spread of vegetation, their pinkish-red blossoms blushing along the coast, and now, even inland. And the second forest that she needs to trace, arterial and venal, in the blossoming lividity of the girl’s hands and feet. 

The scientist prizes open the girl’s mouth. She touches the girl’s jaw gently, as though to soothe her, and scoops out the vegetation, careful not to pierce her gloves on the brambles or thorns. Into the kidney dish she drops two eerily ice-preserved blossoms, bruised and tender, beside the ring which gleams lilac. 

Dark Blue

The girl gets ready in the room he’d booked for her. She paints her nails silver, leaves her face bare. He likes natural beauty. He likes to see her fresh skin.  

He hated that green streak, he’d said, she could be such a pretty girl if she tried.  

Silver silk slip dress, diamanté choker, flower crown. Fake fur coat, cherry wine, two apples and some chocolate, but no cigarettes. 

She heads out into the autumn evening, walking towards the school. He was working late, he said, he would show her something beautiful nearby.

She has arranged to meet him where the boundary between the forest and the churchyard met. She creeps around the edges of the concrete lake. The trees grow thick and twisted and patches of cold light from the full moon break through the trees. 

The sky is dark blue, not quite black. The witchy trees hunker down, and their lower branches skirt the water. The girl puts her shoes in her shoulder bag and lets her feet drag into the water until she feels numb. 

She clambers up from the water and heads to meet him. 

The wind picks up and the girl is freezing. He is always late, always keeps her waiting. 

He arrives at last. 

The girl closes her eyes. She doesn’t move as he lifts her slip. They are wedged against the swollen, half-closed door of a shed. Dead rhododendrons creep all the way round. 

He puts his hands beneath her armpits and lets her rest her head on his chest. He takes her hand and leads her through the broken-down fence behind the shed, into the trees. 

They stop in a small clearing. She sits on a tree stump, pulling her fake fur coat close. 

The last of the warmth has begun to seep from the day and there is a thin inky line settling across the sky. Then he has his hand over her mouth, and he walks her, softly, further into the forest. 

He takes her to the concrete silo, overgrown with rhododendrons. 

He begins to fill the tub. 

She is aching all down the soft curve of her side, a bruise forming below the surface of her skin. She uses the ring to mark his soft flesh, and in the instant before he moves toward her, she sees it has changed to the colour of the sky, dark blue. 

Full Moon White

The mourner walks towards the forest, a lush drowsy feeling coming over her. 

Her head is aching and there is a strange taste in her mouth like the fine bluish fuzz on a rotting lemon, mouldy yet sharp. Her muscles feel tight and tender, as though she’d slept all night on the floor. But she is sure she hasn’t slept at all. 

The scientist gives her a spoonful of honey, helps her stand. “Come with me, little one.” 

“Deeper?” 

“Much deeper.”

The mourner wants to give the girl a forest burial, the proper rites. But she can’t go in further, she can’t take the scent, and she feels nauseous thinking of the girl being digested by the plants. 

She wonders if the scientist is planning to abandon her there. 

She starts to run. 

The scientist is quick, and follows her, grabbing at her, but missing. The mourner runs fast and sloppy, bending low under the canopy of branches, sliding in the velvety mulch. She can hear a low droning, her ears full of oceanic blood, her eyes not adjusted to the darkness, she trips, landing heavily on her side. A bruise begins to bloom. 

The coolness of the petals. 

Chill flowers on her tongue. 

A pool of sweet water. 

She feels arms lifting her up, soft fingers prizing her mouth open, pulling out the blossom. She falls into the scientist’s arms and lets her support her back to the clearing. The two of them sit, leaning against a tree stump, the body of the girl between them. 

The mourner pulls off her vest top and uses her fig knife to cut strips of silk and lace, she takes the ribbon from her hair. 

They cut the sutures free and wind the ribbon and silk around the stretcher. They place the girl’s objects on top of her body: her dental braces, her diaphragm. 

The mourner takes the mood ring and places it on her own finger. As they let the girl go, the gem glows cold and pale; full moon white. 

The mourner starts to cry.