Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart Read Online Free PDF

lover will at last be fulfilled. But the cannibal, she does not desire the death of her inamorata, despite her desperate need to consume. So, I am writing a story about how long these two women can conspire to prolong death, how much can be cut away and yet the object of the cannibal’s affection remain alive and conscious.” You stop licking your hand and look up at me. “So it is an autobiography,” you say again.
    I sigh and shut my eyes, because sometimes it hurts too much to see you. “Maybe it’s a metaphor,” I reply. “Anyway, whatever it is, I am writing it.”
    “And how much of the cannibal’s lover is left:” you want to know, and I keep my eyes closed, not so naïve and knowing too well the way yours seem to glint when you pose a question like that.
    “I have been doing research,” I say, “because I want it to be plausible. The cannibal is a skilled surgeon.”
    “How convenient.”
    “The cannibal’s lover—whose name is not particularly important—has already given up her legs, her arms, her breasts and buttocks, her right eye, a kidney—”
    “You are a depraved little bastard,” you smile again and lean back into the nest of pillows. “How did I ever manage to find such a depraved little bastard.”
    “Oh, I’m sure I was not yet this way when you found me,” I lie, finally looking at you again, because I know it’s a lie, and I would rather lie to your face. “I was a babe in the woods. You were the crucible of my perversion. You were my moral undoing.”
    “Always,” you say and glance towards the ceiling or some mythic heaven you are perpetually trying to forget. “Do they still fuck, your cannibal lesbian and her vivisected inamorata?”
    “It’s getting quite difficult, as you can well imagine—but yes, they still fuck. That’s part of the challenge, you see, that they remain lovers as long as is possible.”
    You spread your legs a little, showing me that undecided sex, that mutable orchid growing wet and the slightest bit erect. I want to cup it in my hands and feel your sharp nails against my scalp while I lick away your excitement. But I do not move, because I have not yet been precisely invited.
    “Does she share?” you ask, and for a second I’m not certain what you mean, and so you have to ask again. “The cannibal,” you sigh. “Does she share these delicacies with her lover? Does the one who is being so slowly devoured at least know the taste of her own sacrifices?”
    “Yes,” I say. “The cannibal insists. Otherwise, she says it would be selfish. The act would be incomplete, if she did not share this largesse with her benefactor. And the cannibal is not a selfish woman.”
    You nod and then glance down at your smooth, flat chest, at the place where your nipples would be, if you were merely a human male or female. “Still, it can’t possibly last very much longer, can it?”
    “I don’t imagine so. The cannibal is about to take her lover’s left lung, I think. She will stew it with crushed garlic and parsley. Then, perhaps, she will begin on the large muscles of the abdomen—the pectoralis major and the trapezius and so forth—the remaining obliques, as it were.”
    “And what of the bones,” you ask, and now, to my surprise, I hear a note of inquisitiveness that is more than perfunctory, something more than going through the motions.
    “Well, it would be a pity to waste the bones,” I reply, and when you speak, the candles flicker once more. “The cannibal is a conscientious woman, after all. She splits and broils the long bones for their marrow, of course, and she is fashioning a sort of shrine with the rest.”
    “A reliquary,” you whisper. “That’s a nice touch.”
    “Thank you,” I say quietly, almost blushing, always too easily flattered and very much more so when the compliments come from you. For you are not the sort given to casual praise, but rather the sort to holdback even the most heartfelt of commendations, lest the