The Corculina

Inspired by E. B. Hudspeth’s ****The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr Spencer Black****, I imagined a creature of my own and wrote a hypothetical page from the doctor’s journal.

I found the creature at an exposition privée. A thoughtful person gave me the contact. Their identity must remain hidden, not only because they asked it of me, but because I sensed the need.

During my studies and travels, among freak shows and collections, more frightening than the creatures and relics were their protectors: keepers who seemed to have known nothing but the deepest pits of terror.

But to return to the matter at hand: I arrived early in the morning. Dawn was licking the leaves when I stepped into the courtyard. An inelegant and certainly ill-kept gravel path led to a massive wooden door, strangely damp. The master of the house handed me a lantern and invited me inside.

“No more than one person at a time.”

“That hardly seems safe.”

“People often say so. Then they remember what they paid for the ticket and swallow their jitters.”

“Have you turned it into a sideshow attraction?”

The master presses his lips together. He plants one foot on the threshold. His figure is thin, yet his outline looks fattened—a silhouette swollen with shadow.

“No. It is an exhibition.”

I do not argue. I take the lantern and push my way in. Our chests swell: a contest between weak men.

As soon as the dark swallows my shoulders, the door closes. The key turns in the lock.

I say nothing. I will not give him the satisfaction. I hold back every reaction, and he is the first to speak.

“Are you still there, Doctor?”

“Yes.”

“I do not want the creature to escape. It has never tried, but I prefer to lock the door. Knock when you are finished and I shall open it for you.”

“Where am I to go?” I ask, my mouth close to the damp wood.

“It is a corridor, Doctor. Use your ingenuity.”

I end the conversation with an irritated huff. I raise the lantern. Its heat brushes my carotid. I descend towards oblivion.

After twenty, perhaps thirty steps, I hear a melody.

A sick music box. Or a corrupted one.

I continue. The darkness opens around me: I have reached the room.

The melody stops abruptly, as though someone had beheaded the singer.

Before me, shy in the light, stands an armchair. Gilded feet decorated with leaves. Faded red velvet, still soft—or so my eye perceives it.

I bring the lantern closer. The light grazes a foot: small, feminine.

I lift my arm and release the figure from the dark.

A girl. Young. Short hair tucked behind one ear, black eyes, a worn dark dress. In her chest, where the heart should be, there is a hole.

The girl smiles. With a movement of her hand, she asks me to move the lantern away.

“Farther away, sir,” she says, pointing at the flame with thin fingers.

I place the only source of light behind me. My eyes have adjusted to the black. I can make out the girl’s outline.

She crosses her legs. She sits on that little throne like a queen.

“I am the Corculina,” she whispers.

Two curious words: cor (heart) and culina (kitchen). The name suggests a transformation connected to the heart. But what kind?

“Has your heart been consumed? Were you born with a malformation? Or did it develop, or…”

A breathy no interrupts the torrent of my thoughts.

“The master gave me the name. And to look at him, he hardly seems a luminary like you. My condition concerns the heart, but it does not act upon it. It acts upon me.”

“Pray explain.”

I kneel at her feet.

The Corculina leans towards my ear and whispers:

“I eat my own heart.”

My eyes open a little wider. My pupils burn.

“And how can you survive?”

“Because it is not my heart that feeds my lungs, drives my blood, moistens my muscles.”

“Then what does?”

“The dark.”

I understand the reason for the lantern.

“Then why eat your heart, if the dark sustains you?”

The silhouette rises from the chair. It sways a little.

“Do you like chocolate, sir?”

I give a faint nod.

“My heart is like chocolate to me.”