Insomniac, under the moon, lays down by the bend of the road in the open wound of a dead deer and lets the blood soak and congeal into her hair, turning it darker, darker. A crow crawls out from the throat of the deer, from the hole that it made there, and brushes its wing against the crown of the girl’s head.

“Insomniac, why can’t you sleep?” the Crow asks.

“Well, I’m just so cold,” the girl says, by which she means, of course, that she’s got no one to hold, to be held by.

“You’ll rot away here…”

“Oh, let me.”

“No,” the Crow says. “I’ll give you what you seek.” The Crow begins to burrow into her side, scraping away at the flesh with its beak and claws. Insomniac cries out in pain and struggles to get away by pressing deeper into the wound which curls like a womb around her.

“You’re trying to tear me open like I’m no more than roadkill!” she accuses.

“Hush, close your eyes,” the Crow commands. “You won’t feel a thing.”

Insomniac hesitates and then relents. She’s so tired, after all. So tired, so cold. She watches the silver face of the moon grow full and then shrink to nothing on the back of her eyelids as the Crow makes a nest of her intestines.

Her eyes are still closed when the Roadkill Collector arrives at the scene. He’s come for the deer, for the dead thing, but Insomniac is there, trembling in the folds of torn skin. He takes her home instead, wrapping her in a tarp and placing her in the back of his truck. Her hands fold over the mound of her belly where the Crow roosts. She feels nothing.

To be a wife is nothing much. The Roadkill Collector has clown feet and seizures, the pretty kind, where he bashes his head on the kitchen counter and blames her, Insomniac, for the mess. The pursed hole in her side where the Crow flew in aches in such a way as to make her salivate, make the blood run thickly, nearly boiling from her cunt and down the inseam of her thigh. On Fridays, she washes the sheets, mends the pillowcases, spreads silk back over the mattress— better to fuck on— and tries to hide underneath with the dust and glowing cat eyes, underneath, that is, beneath the bed.

The Crow’s wings scrape against the muscle of her belly and she lurches forward; they flutter against her spine and she lurches back. The Roadkill Collector will find her— or rather— she’ll come when he calls. The ulcers in his mouth, on the inside of his lips, the underside of his tongue, peeling open in his cheeks where the sharp tooth juts, taste just like maple syrup that in turn coats her mouth with heaviness. She’ll close her eyes and mind the yellow light spreading across her eyelids as he takes her body and rearranges it.

During times Insomniac is alone, she’ll stare at her palm until the flesh peels back petals of a lily flower, muscle and tendon and crisscrossed blood vessels all stripping away from brittle bone which she’ll tear out with her teeth and chew to chalk dust. She doesn’t bleed out and she doesn’t die; her fingers dance in the empty air. She stares at the flower sprouting from her palm, from the hole in her hand, and watches until it withers, turning black.

“Well, I’m so holy,” she tells the Crow. “If it’s holy, it has to hurt, you know.” She closes her eyes and watches the blood pulse along her lashes. The Crow tears away at the peritoneum, making a mess of things, dislodging the gallbladder and splashing bile all over its iridescent feathers. But it doesn’t hurt, you know. She can’t feel anything.

When Insomniac and the Roadkill Collector go to sleep, she’ll gather up his warmth in her arms and chew gently on his shoulder and the split, bleached ends of his hair. Her cunt bubbles and drools and stains the sheets with blood. The Crow sticks its head out the hole in her side and watches them, pleased. Insomniac closes her eyes and minds the purple hue spreading through her retina. It pulses faster as her heart slows. When shapes start to emerge from the color, she shakes her head and the shapes fall away into static. 

“I’d be so cold, you know, without you,” Insomniac whispers against the Roadkill Collector’s back. “I’d be so cold though I’m shaking with fever. You taught me so well that I need you.” She waits for sleep, she waits. In the night, he pushes her away. Her eyes are closed, she smiles serenely. The Crow decides it is not satisfied with its nest. So now every time her eyelids flutter shut, it emerges to tear strips of skin from the back of her arms and pluck out her eyelashes.

Insomniac’s belly swells as the rest of her shrinks. She sets the table for dinner and then sits underneath, eating scraps from the Roadkill Collector’s hand like a dog. His fingers feel cool against her inflamed gums which bleed a sweet, sticky wine that floods her throat like cough syrup, leaving her permanently drunk. She doesn’t eat much, sometimes nothing at all.

“Well, I don’t have to eat, you know,” she tells the Crow. “Since God loves me so.”  She crawls around the house on all fours shivering from sepsis. The Roadkill Collector watches her, watches how her dark hair drags on the floor, coating itself in dust and dead bugs. The shiny pink scars on the back of her arms remind him of fiberglass insulation and so does her touch. Insomniac drags herself over to him and puts her head in his lap. He places his hand on the back of her neck, pinching it as if she were a cat.

“I’m getting tired of you,” the Roadkill Collector announces. Insomniac laughs, her eyes squeezing shut.

“You’re so funny,” she says.

The next morning the Roadkill Collector leaves the house extra early while Insomniac is still in bed, feigning sleep. She spends the day sitting by the window, feeling the Crow move inside her, rearranging things, still not satisfied. There is a fawn prancing in the yard, dashing across the road and back. The air squeezes from Insomniac’s lungs as she waits, she waits for impact. When the Roadkill Collector returns unreasonably late, she confronts him.

“You can’t leave me,” she says.

“Why not?” he replies.

“I’m pregnant.”

“If you are, it’s not mine,” he says, pushing past her.

“Aren’t you my husband?”

“Am I?”

Insomniac closes her eyes. Her heartbeat is unsteady in her ears. And underneath— the dizzying sound of another heartbeat running triple speed. Insomniac begins to cry. Her face is so ugly, so broken open. So pitiful, so pathetic. The Roadkill Collector closes his eyes. So he doesn’t feel it when Insomniac crawls into his arms and tries to dig into his chest. He holds her close, unaware of her presence. 

The Roadkill Collector brings Insomniac back to the bend in the road and deposits her in the open carcass of the decayed dead deer. She lounges against the ground with her face pressed to the pearly-white ribcage, searching in vain for the moon along the velvet swatch of sky. The Roadkill Collector begins to walk away, but she grabs onto him, pulling him down to the ground.

“Where are you going?” she asks.

“Let go,” he says.

“Where are you going?” she repeats, her grip tightening.

“Don’t follow me.”

The Crow is frantically thrashing its wings inside her, willing her to act. Insomniac, teeth bared, leans forward as if to kiss him and he, the Roadkill Collector, slides a blade deep into her belly. The Crow falls from the gash, motionless, its feathers turning darker, darker as the blood spreads and soaks into the ground. She closes her eyes. The black softly sucks on her eyeballs and leaks down the side of her face.

This is not happening.

This is not not happening.