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| Honey is Sweeter than Blood by Salvador Dali |
Like her mother before her, she was born in the summer when the moon was full and she was born with a craving for blood—all she dreamed of was the salt-sweet skin of half-nude sunbathers on a beach and how with one stinging bite she could release the pulsing, flowing, rich red blood and lap it up until it rushed singing through her body, and she never stopped to ponder the evil nature of her blood lust or to question the curse laid on her kind for so many generations because the siren song of the blood drowned out all else—but when she touches my thigh on that early August afternoon, her eyes the same iridescent green that highlights a pigeon’s wing, I quickly kill her with one-well-aimed slap even though once I lost two babies—identical twins—and the blood had poured out of me in waves as I lay flat on my back on the hospital table and, afterwards I saw my doctor standing by the sink, scrubbing and scrubbing at the blood stains on her dress, even though I could easily have endured that tiny, sharp burst of pain and let her live until the next full moon so she could lay her eggs and complete her fleeting, one-month cycle of birth, blood, sex, and death, and after I brush the dead fly onto the sand, I return to watching the Atlantic breakers rippling gently against the soft, white sandy shore.
by Nina Zolotow
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