The Submissive Queen by Samantha Levy

I.
    Listen here. I have something to tell you.
    Once upon a time in a far away land, where everyone smokes cigarettes and drinks charcoal liquor and has sex on public transportation with strangers, and there’s no such thing as AIDS or Animal Planet or morals, I was twelve months old and horny and starting to grow breasts. My brother Sully, who’s always been large for his age, was three months old and six feet tall with bulky hands, hairy knuckles, and a voice as deep as a shepherd’s. After our bath, while our mother was drinking bourbon and our father was diddling the gardener, we’d lay naked on the playroom floor, and Sully would stroke my hair and rub my tits in a counter-clockwise motion.
    His dick would grow hard, press into my ribs, but he was too young to understand why.
    But I knew why, and I knew what to do to make it grow even bigger, to make Sully shake and moan and howl like a werewolf, to make him love me best of all.

II.
    You should know that I am not, nor have I ever been, an alcoholic.
    I’m not schizophrenic or bipolar or anemic. I’m not a girl who wishes on shooting stars or likes the color pink. I’ve never been a drug addict or fitness freak. My idea of dieting is giving head but not swallowing. I don’t balance my checkbook or make the bed or believe in God. I’ve never once told a lie. And above all, I’m not someone to mess with; my veins are immune to your petty attempts at treason.
    This is what I am: a twirler, a temptress, a devil, an incestuous whore, a doggie, a murderer, the prettiest queen who ever reigned. My hair is long and thick and strawberry blonde. It smells like daffodils, however it is they smell. My tits and ass and nose are perfect. I live in stone-washed jean skirts and white tank tops and sandals that strap around the ankle. I am twenty-five years old and dying from uterine cancer. I am more beautiful than Grace Kelly.
    Watch me. You’ll understand how important I am.

III.
    My brother’s phone number is written in red ink on the handicap stall – underneath a drawing of a large phallus and above a note reading Jesus had a big cock – and after three rings, he picks up the phone and says into the receiver, Paper or plastic. I fumble through my bag, find the butcher knife I keep stashed away in case of muggings or screaming babies, and etch out the numbers.
    I say, I’m at The Green Room.
    Are you drinking Long Island Iced Tea?
    No.
    What are you drinking?
    Beer.
    Draft or bottled?
    Draft.
    What’s your name?
    Mary.
    Mary what?
    Contrary.
    Is that so.
    Quite.
    And where, Mary, does your garden grow?
    In a graveyard, I say. One single, thick blade at a time.
    I challenge you to a duel. To the death.
    And I accept.
    Go to the horizon and turn left, Sully says. Bring your own weapon.
    I say, You’re the only person I’d ever want to die with.
    The phone goes dead, only a pulsing static hums in my ear.

IV.
    Sully is my priest and I am his queen.
    I go to him and confess my sins.
    I say, Bless me father for I have sinned.
    I say, Sometimes I fuck other men besides you.
    I say, Sometimes I think it’s wrong to fuck my own brother.
    Then Sully takes an empty vodka bottle and smashes it over my head, shards of clear glass embed into my scalp, and he tells me that Jews don’t go to confession, tells me to get a life.

V.
    I’m about to tell you something. Listen.
    Once upon a time there was a brother and sister who loved each other very much. The sister was more beautiful than Grace Kelly, and the brother was robust and strong like a knight. The brother liked to boss the sister around. He’d tell her to hold her breath underwater for ten minutes or climb to the top of a mountain, jump off, and land on her feet. If she didn’t listen or didn’t complete a task, the brother would spank the sister on her rear with the palm of his hand.
     The sister wanted the brother to love her best of all, so she purposely failed to do things when she was told. She knew that the brother sought to see her skin turn maroon. She knew that he felt a strong sensation between his legs with each firm slap. She knew how to make him think he was in control.
    That’s it. The end.

VI.
    I leave The Green Room and head towards the ocean. I will drive forty minutes east. Once on the beach – in front of the bright casinos and the boardwalk and the lifeguard stands – Sully will hold my head while I suck his cock deep, so deep it’ll tickle my stomach and I’ll want to gag.
    After he comes, Sully and I will walk into the water thick with seaweed. Jellyfish will join hands and line up in a row, try to block us, sting our legs as we move farther from shore. And once I can’t touch the ground anymore, Sully will hold my head again, this time until the salt water seeps through my pores, until it makes my face bloat like the cancer growing in my womb.

VII.
    I am submissive and Sully is not. He likes to whip me in public until my pale skin turns red, until little yellow blisters blossom like marigolds. He bends me over a restaurant table or a dry clean counter or a supermarket conveyer belt and lifts up my skirt, slips two fingers between my thong and ass, pulls the string up, forces me onto my toes. Then he takes a whip – which may be a leather belt or a wooden paddle or a pitchfork the size of my head – and pummels it against me. Hard then harder then harder still.
    The women turn their eyes down; they shudder sympathetically because they are all submissive, too. The men applaud, slap Sully on the back, wink at me.
    Sully wants me to cry out in pain, wants to show off for these other fellows, but I bite the inside of my cheeks instead.


    When I don’t cry, he decides to behead me. He covers my eyes with a black scarf and puts a knife against my throat and tells me to beg for my life.
    I don’t say anything.
    Instead, I touch myself until I can hardly stand up straight, until I can’t feel my thighs, until the knife drops from my neck and I feel it between my legs, tracing my cunt, memorizing its folds, making it barren.

VIII.
    On the beach, Sully is licking me. We lay where the waves lap against the wet sand, our feet entangled and damp. His tongue feels like sandpaper against my nipples, around my belly button, on my thighs.
    When he enters me, he says, I’m home.
    The duel will begin momentarily, but first I want to come.
    And I do.
    Afterward, Sully stays inside me and continues to thump and pump and move. This is when I take the butcher knife I keep stashed away in case of muggings or screaming babies and grip its handle so hard my knuckles turn white, and with all my strength I sling the blade into Sully’s brain. I feel the weight of his body crush me as he dies, watch red blood ooze from his ear. I put my lips to it and drink and drink until my belly grows round and fat and pregnant, and I feel this hunchbacked thing maturing inside me, a gremlin or black pussy cat.

    The moon is full above me. I burn Sully’s body at the stake, watch his flesh turn to ash, and I dance around him until I stick my hand down my throat and give birth to our lovechild: a sad-lipped, ruddy-faced sprite dressed in a golden swimsuit.
    I crouch under the sky, wrap my arms around my knees, wait for Sully’s resurrection. Lightening bolts hit the earth beside me, rain falls and drenches my spine. Days and days pass. The sprite is growing quickly and body surfs along the shoreline; her eyes are brown like mine.

IX.
    I’m telling you something. Listen close.
    Once upon a time I was afraid that Sully would find utensils and salt and pepper, maybe a dash of paprika, and he’d eat me from the inside out, just like the cancer. First my heart then liver then large intestine. He’d finish his meal with my face, nibble the marrow out of each brown eye, gnaw at the cockles of my brain, suck my white teeth like after-dinner mints.
    My uterus would be left untouched, unoccupied. It would be folded in two and stuffed in to a small black box which, in turn, would be placed carefully in a cedar trunk underneath old sweaters and tattered blankets, forgotten about forever.
    My name’s not really Mary. You know that, right?
    Now, a few yards away, I see Sully slithering towards me, silver fork in hand, saying, Come here, my pretty. My love. Come on. That’s a good girl. A little closer. Come.