Corculina

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

I found the creature at a private exhibition. The contact was given to me by a thoughtful person. Their identity must remain hidden, not only because they asked it of me, but because I sensed it.

During my studies and travels, among freak shows and collections, what frightened me more than the creatures and the relics were their protectors. Guardians who seemed to have known only the deepest wells of terror.

But back to the matter at hand.

I arrived early in the morning. Dawn brushed the leaves as I stepped into the courtyard. A narrow gravel path, inelegant and certainly poorly maintained, led to a heavy wooden door, strangely damp to the touch. The host handed me a lantern and invited me to enter.

“Not more than one person at a time.”

“That does not sound safe.”

“They often say that. Then they remember how much they paid for the ticket and swallow their trembling.”

“Have you turned it into a sideshow curiosity?”

The host pressed his lips together. He planted one foot across the threshold. The figure was thin, yet the outline seemed swollen. A silhouette thick with shadow.

“No. It is an exhibition.”

I did not argue. I took the lantern and pushed the door open. Our chests swelled, a challenge between weak men.

The moment the darkness swallowed my shoulders, the door closed behind me. The key turned in the lock.

I said nothing. I did not want to give him the satisfaction. I held back every reaction, and he was the first to speak.

“Is it still there, doctor?”

“Yes.”

“I do not want the creature to escape. It has never tried, but I prefer to lock the door. When you are finished, knock and I will open it.”

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

“It is a corridor, doctor. Use your wits.”

I ended the conversation with a breath of irritation. I raised the lantern. The heat brushed my carotid artery. I descended, toward oblivion.

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

A music box. Sick. Or corrupted.

I moved forward. The darkness opened around me: I had reached the room.

The melody stopped abruptly, as if someone had decapitated the singer.

Before me, timid in the lantern light, stood an armchair. Golden feet carved into leaves. Faded red velvet, but still soft, at least to my eye.

I moved the lantern closer. The light brushed a foot. Small. Feminine.

I raised my arm and freed the figure from the dark.

A girl. Young. Short hair tucked behind the ear, black eyes, a worn dark dress. On her chest, in the region of the heart, there was a hole.

The girl smiled. With a small gesture of her hand she asked me to move the lantern away.

“Away, sir,” she said, pointing at the flame with thin fingers.

I placed the only source of light behind me. My eyes had adapted to the dark. I could make out the silhouette of the young woman.

She crossed her legs. She sat on that small throne like a queen.

“I am the Corculina,” she whispered.

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

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

A soft, inhaled no interrupted the grinding of my thoughts.

“The name was given to me by the host. And looking at him, he does not appear to be a scholar like you. My condition has something to do with the heart, but it does not act upon it. It acts upon me.”

“Please explain.”

I knelt at her feet.

Corculina leaned toward my ear and whispered:

“I eat my heart.”

My eyes opened a little wider. My pupils burned.

“And how do you survive?”

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

“Then what does?”

“The darkness.”

I understood the lantern.

“But then why eat your heart, if it is darkness that sustains you?”

The silhouette rose from the chair. It swayed slightly.

“Do you like chocolate, sir?”

I gave a faint nod.

“My heart is like chocolate to me.”