viiic’s Reviews > On Sundays She Picked Flowers > Status Update

[SPOILER] “she changed, and more and more, Jude craved the taste of salt and of kaolin, that bitter white clay her mother and aunts used to soothe stomach pains. By day, she overseasoned her food, took spoonful after spoonful of cornstarch. At night, however, Jude walked into the forest and ate her fill of dirt. Mud in her mouth, mud down her throat—she-beast, she-thing, she savored the crunch of beetles, ants.” ???

[TW: Graphic descriptions, blood, animal violence] “The gifts of meat began the morning after, the mauled remains of animals thrown haphazardly onto her porch. Their bellies slit, deer and hare and waterfowl waited at her door, their innards spilled out from them like a cornucopia of meat.” Oh my god ew

[SPOILER] Two winters into her stay in the woods, the beast returned. It came in the night, crept slowly through her door, up the stairs, and into her bedroom. […]
It’s just a dream, she told herself. Just a bad dream, and if I can’t see it, it can’t be real.” Delulu is the solulu

“We can see if someone at Tabernacle knows how to tend a body, if they can fix her face—”
[…] “No, no, we do this ourselves. […] I can’t… Phyllis, I won’t let nobody see her like this.”
“[…] Vivian, please. What we know about cleaning a body?” I would also advise against doing it yourself, I don’t know much about tending to corpses but I don’t think that’s something you can just improvise ;-;

“when he died, all he wanted was to be […] buried on the land where he was born […] As for his daughters, all of them but namely Ernestine, they would be buried alongside him. […] He would not let [Ernestine] go […] unless she agreed.
[…] “We don’t have to bury her there, do we?”
“It’s what Daddy wanted […] And Nessie […] agreed to it.”
“Only ‘cause he made her!” Yeah, it doesn’t seem like she actually wanted that

[TW: Vomit] “Vomit poured awkwardly from her broken mouth, caught itself in the grooves of her lips, and splattered onto her robe, the floor. Reeling, Ma’am backed away from the pot, slipped in the mess of blood and vomit” Oh great, vomit was the only thing that was missing in terms of body fluids

[TW: Very graphic descriptions, blood] “The blade cut through the eyelid, the cornea, split the iris, stuttered across the broad nose and sliced the lips into four distinct sections. Ma’am’s face, Jude’s first mirror, halved on the diagonal; it burst, split.” Oh my god ew

“was it the act itself that schooled her, or was the pain her teacher? Or maybe it was the apathy of her audience, her mother's quilting circle […] glancing briefly at Jude’s crumpled body before returning to their sewing. […] Jude stumbled to her feet. Her face was wet—blood, thank God, rather than humiliating tears—and she knew she could no longer live in her mother’s house” Yeah that sounds like a reasonable guess