Dinner with the Myrtle

Issue 18

"​Tell me. Which one of you cunts plucked the first petal?"
Outside, a sword hilt struck a shield. Myrtle lifted her wine and rolled it around the glass.
"I'm asking because I'd like to thank her. It must have taken real courage to destroy something so small."
A fork scratched across porcelain.
"Matilda." Myrtle set her wine down. "You haven't touched your food."
"I'm not hungry."
"No. I wouldn't imagine so."
"We didn't mean—" Matilda stopped herself.
"Finish that sentence," said Myrtle. "I'd like to hear how it ends."
She carved a chunk from the meat. Around the table, seven women developed an interest in their plates and sleeves.
Nobody touched their food.
Myrtle swallowed. "You should have made sure I was dead. With every resource between you, and not one of you stayed to check.”
She set her knife down. "I will, though."
"Did you know there was more of me under your nails than left in the pot?"
The prince set his fork down with the precision of a man who had realised he was in the wrong place.
"You moved like one creature that night. You drowned each other's doubt. And you’ve all suffered enough from the world to know exactly what you were doing and did it anyway."
Myrtle pushed her plate aside and looked at Pride.
"How many times did you gaze at my husband tonight?"
Pride's chin lifted. "I don't know what you—"
"Four," said Myrtle. "I counted.”
She reached across and drew a loose thread from Pride's sleeve and let it fall.
"You contorted yourself into every shape a man might want. You made yourself softer, smaller, more palatable—and still, you were invisible."
She pressed two fingers under Pride's chin and lifted it for her.
"You decided if nobody were capable of loving you, nothing worth wanting would survive you."
Pride looked at the prince. Myrtle watched.
"How's that working out for you?"
The tendons in Pride's throat pulled. Her eyes found Myrtle.
"I was twelve the first time I changed for him. By twenty, I knew he'd never want to fuck a ghost."
Myrtle smiled.
"You spent your life on your back. But tonight you get to be a princess."
The door opened.
Two guards entered and took up positions on either side of Pride without instruction. A crown sat on a wooden board, wreath-shaped, iron glowing bright orange. It was lifted with gloves and placed atop her head.
Pride's hands came up, and her wrists were caught before she reached it. The crown was pressed through her scalp and into the bone. Myrtle tilted her head toward the sound.
Threads of smoke rose from where the points had gone deepest. The scent of scorched hair and burning flesh sat on the back of every tongue in the room.
A sizzle of hot blood found the prince.
Pride’s legs gave. Her last breath left her open-mouthed as the guards took her weight and held her upright.
She had been facing the prince.
He was facing his plate.
Matilda's chair scraped an inch.
"Stay," said Myrtle as she stopped in front of Envy.
"It wasn't fair. That's what you said that night. Say it again in front of everyone."
Envy's mouth opened. Nothing came out.
"First time in your life it's been true," said Myrtle. "And now you can't say it?"
A wire emerged from the guard's breast pocket. Red-brown and stiff where the rust had thickened into ridges.
When Envy saw the needle, a warm yellow pool gathered at her feet. Two guards caught her before she hit the floor and held her there. A thumb and forefinger took her left eyelid as the needle went through, rust dragging against the skin at every pass.
Then the right.
They were left open and would stay that way.
Myrtle rose and crossed without hurry, her shoes squelching through the bright yellow fat and cooling blood.
Wrath sat motionless, her spine flush against the wood, and her palms resting flat as she watched Myrtle approach.
"You're not afraid of me," said Myrtle.
"No," said Wrath.
"Good. You'll give them something to remember."
Wrath's elbow pistoned backward, and the guard's face went in. Three more swarmed, clamping armour over her thrashing limbs.
Cuisses, breastplate, then gorget.
Her fingernails splintered against the clasps as the faceplate snapped down. She drove her skull into the man behind her, and he went down in a spray of teeth. The guards piled coals around the boots and lit them. The iron darkened, then went cherry-red.
Inside it, Wrath made no sound.
The suit's shoulder seam ruptured, throwing a scalding jet of steam across the chamber. Deep inside the glowing shell, Wrath was still moving.
The prince stood and walked out.
Myrtle watched the oak doors swing shut.
"Men love to build the slaughterhouse, yet lack the stomach for the blood."
The hem of her silk skirt dragged through the blood and darkened. She turned to the far end of the table.
"Greed. You came to me before dinner with a number in your head. What you decided I was worth."
Greed's knuckles grazed the silver centerpiece, dragging it a fraction closer.
"I've been thinking about it all evening. What it says about a woman who can put a price on something she helped destroy."
She nudged her knife parallel.
"Nothing. I'll take nothing."
Myrtle looked down at Greed's scraped-clean plate. Then back up.
"You were the only one who ate tonight."
Greed understood a heartbeat before her anatomy did. The whites of her eyes flooded crimson. Fluid streamed from her nostrils. Her palms went to her throat first. Then her stomach. Her body could not decide which was worse.
But what came up had nowhere to go. Her fist closed around the silver centerpiece as the guards moved forward. Myrtle raised a single digit, and they stopped. She watched until the body slumped against the cloth.
"Now," said Myrtle. "Rip it from her hands."
Heavy gauntlets descended, pinning the lifeless wrist. They forced her first finger rearward at the joint. The second at the base. The third sheared clean through the skin.
The mangled fist released.
She'd never said the number out loud. Now she never would.
Myrtle dragged the empty chair out beside Gluttony and sat close enough that their shoulders touched.
"They know your name," Myrtle murmured. "And absolutely nothing else. You could die at this table, and not one of them could tell me a single truth about who you are."
Gluttony's head turned.
No one looked her way.
Myrtle leaned closer. "You helped butcher me," she said, "for women who won't waste a second wondering if you're alive."
She lifted the pitcher, poured, and set the glass in front of her.
"Drink. A final indulgence. Yours alone."
Gluttony drank.
The crystal was at her lips when her brow furrowed.
One swallow. Then another.
She dropped the cup, seized the collar of her dress, and tore it open at the seam. It made no difference. Nails dragged down in bloody ribbons. Her heels left the floor last.
Not one of the remaining sisters moved.
"Anticlimactic," Myrtle said. "I thought she'd put up more of a fight given her size."
She walked toward Lust.
"You went furthest that night. The way you threw yourself into it, harder and louder than the rest. You weren't angry. You weren't even afraid."
Lust met her gaze.
"You were auditioning," said Myrtle. "And there is no one left to watch."
The guards moved.
Lust stood before they reached her. She rolled her shoulders and let her hands fall open at her sides.
Every head stayed down.
Twin hooks punched up through the hollows of her collarbones. Pulleys shrieked, yanking her skyward, clavicles snapping under her own weight as she was hoisted into the dark rafters.
Matilda stayed fixed on the floor.
The fire had gone to embers. The left buckle of Lust's shoe held the last of it.
"Matilda."
She was the only one Myrtle called by name.
"Your kin," said Myrtle.
Matilda could not find the breath to respond.
"You watched and did nothing while your sisters tore me apart. That is your sin. Not hatred. Not hunger. Not want. Sloth.”
Matilda had not blinked.
"You came back alone. On your knees in the dark, pressing what was left of me into the soil. When you realised the world had gone mad, it was too late."
"I tried to—"
"I know what you tried. Doing nothing is nonetheless a decision, Matilda. You just made yours too late. I have weighed those tears against your silence, and I’m afraid you fall short."
She straightened her cuffs and leaned in.
"I entered this world knowing nothing of cruelty. Your sisters taught me everything I needed to know.”
She trailed one finger through the blood pooled on the cloth and wiped it clean on Matilda's sleeve without looking at her.
“The women in this room died as their sins. You live as yourself. Do not mistake this for mercy. To leave you alive is the cruelest thing I could conceive."
Myrtle pressed her palm to her forehead. Just for a moment.
"Look at the monster the world grew from me."
The doors shut behind her.
Matilda sat with six women who would never want anything again.
Pride upright, the crown married to her skull.
Envy's eyes pinned open, dried to glass.
Wrath pressed into the shape of her own rage inside the iron.
Greed face down, the broken fist closed.
Gluttony flat on the stone, one arm reaching.
Lust above them all, turning slowly in the dark.
Matilda took the napkin from her lap and laid it over Greed's hand.
It was the only thing left in the room she could undo.

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Ashley Mangtani is a UK writer whose work explores ecological and social collapse, and the roles people inhabit in moments of crisis. Drawing on an M.Sc. in Environmental Science and a background as a civil servant in digital media policy, he crafts stories shaped by inevitability and loss. Blending literary realism with slipstream elements, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Litro, Washington Square Review, Literary Garage, Half Day Moon Press, CommuterLit, Mercurius Magazine, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Expat Press, Empyrean Magazine, and Neither Fish Nor Foul.

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