Vagina Dentatae

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Having discovered her husband of 25 years in their marriage bed with a blonde, leggy teenager only just old enough to be out of full time education, and having realized with shocked resignation that those bouts of sudden heat and mood swings were early symptoms of that blissful disease known as “The Change”, Maria Cordova joined a “Women’s Circle”.

The closely-knit group consisted of roughly a dozen women, most of whom had found their hearts broken by men, or – if they were the unlucky ones – lost their hearts completely and were now in search of them once more. And they were led (though she insisted that in this circle there was no concept of leadership, the very idea stemming directly from the patriarchy they were trying to escape) by an imposingly nice, sickeningly sweet woman named (apparently) Amethyst MoonSong. Amethyst MoonSong was a woman (sorry – a wombyn) who believed in the power of archetypes to empower the soul, crystals to heal the body, and a dash of vaginal self-exploration and primal scream therapy to heal a wounded sexuality.

Maria had expected knitting and lessons on perfect jam-making, and she was extremely aware of this one day when Ms. MoonSong was leading (- facilitating -) the group in a “Wild Woman Within” meditation – which, for some reason unknown to Maria – explicitly stated that all vaginas had teeth, and that patriarchy kicked them out right at the very beginning. So as Maria visualized what she was instructed, (“Your vagina, your beautiful and exotic flower, has thorns like the reddest rose. Within its centre lie rows of the sharpest teeth. Feel the power they give you, Wild Woman Within! Feel them gnashing at Man as he approaches, naked and disgustingly erect, his member hot and ready to rape… As he enters you he screams, blood gushing forth and you laugh in triumph as you eat his phallus whole inside you and he falls lifeless to the ground…”) she couldn’t help feel a little… misled.

It didn’t stop there. After that they found their Wild Woman Voices and howled at each other like alpha female wolves, before grunting and finally screaming a Warrior Woman chant across the circle.

Maria wasn’t sure why she kept going back every week.

And then the cramping pains started. Reassured by a G.P. that they were just another symptom of menopause, Maria went back to her life as normal, including the Women’s Circle. But the pains got worse, and they began to spread throughout her body. Amethyst and the Women’s Circle held a healing session for Maria, calling upon her Inner Wild Woman to help her fight the wracking, cramping, clinging, searing pains. But they got worse. And finally one morning there was blood, pints of it on the bed sheets and between her thighs, and Maria Cordova screamed…

No-one was sure what had happened to Maria, and police were unable to explain how the only piece of evidence at the scene of the crime (it had to some sort of sick murder, hadn’t it? How could it possibly be anything else…?) was a bloodied and bitten womb with shrivelled ovaries, and, attached to it in a grim unison of gynaecology and dentistry, several sets of sharp, animal-like teeth.

Kim Huggens enjoys writing short and weird fiction when trying to find reasons not to write her dissertation. She doesn’t care to attempt an explanation of the old mythical motif known as “Vagina Dentatae”, save that it means “vagina with teeth”, but she does think that this story came about through a desire to state what she thinks happens when women get too pre-occupied with the so-called patriarchal oppression of their (our) sexuality – they get eaten up from the inside by the very thing they try to reclaim, and it takes over their lives. She apologizes to anybody who is actually named Amethyst MoonSong, and would like to point out to radical feminists that it is ALWAYS spelled W-O-M-A-N.