I.

My lover has grown so thin lately, and I suppose I just worry about her, I just worry, she is such a hungry thing, but it’s like she’s wasting away, my lover, I pieced her together from animal bones and egg yolks, and she is all mine

I buy up all the meat from the grocery store butcher, ribeyes and roasts and rounds and loins and sirloins and he says are you having a party, and I say something like that, and I bring it home for her, for my lover, I stuff the refrigerator full of it, and she is there in the bedroom waiting for me with all her mouths and all her teeth and all her tongues, and she strips clean the bones of the lamb chops I present to her, and she licks the myoglobin from my fingers, my lover

I return to the grocery store butcher three days later and again two days after that, but the next time I show up to the counter he says I have to ask you to take your business elsewhere, ma’am, we are losing customers, and when I arrive home to my lover empty-handed the refrigerator has broken down, so I feed my lover the last of the grown-warm meat, and I call the refrigerator repairman

He is an ugly man who calls me sweetheart, but he gets the fridge to hum back to life, and when he goes to leave I lead him to the bedroom where my lover lies in wait, she has grown so thin lately, and when I open the door he says what the fuck is that, what the fuck is that thing, and my lover is kind, she goes for his head first, so he doesn’t feel a thing

II.

My coworker is having a baby shower, her name is Ginger I-don’t-know-her-last-name (I am invited because she asked me once don’t you think my ankles look fat, and I said I guess so, and she laughed and said I like you, everyone lies to pregnant ladies, do you have any idea how crazy that can make someone feel, I complain about my fat ankles, and everyone says oh no, your ankles look great) and her house is all draped in blue, and there are lots of women who bring diapers and blankets and very small socks and onesies that say things like Mama’s Boy

Ginger I-don’t-know-her-last-name shows me pictures of a sullen toddler glaring at a cake that says Big Sister and asks me if I grew up with siblings, so I tell her that there was supposed to be a twin, but I absorbed her in the womb and the doctors had to cut her out of me

III.

I salvage half-eaten filet mignon from the restaurant where I work, and when I feed it to her, my lover takes the tip of my right index finger off along with it

I know she didn’t mean it

IV.

On Tuesday a pair of police officers shows up at my door, one long and thin and the other short and round like in the movies, they are looking for the refrigerator repairman, they have tracked his last known whereabouts, and his refrigerator repair van is parked in front of our house

The long and thin officer asks what happened to my finger, so I say there was an incident involving the garbage disposal and invite them inside, and the officers draw their weapons when they see my lover seeping out from the bedroom doorframe, and it’s not long after she’s finished with them that I feel something flutter and turn over inside me, something that will grow and devour just like his mother, something that is ours alone

V.

My lover has grown so thin lately, and I suppose I just worry about her, I just worry, but there is something of her within me now, and I would harvest the meat from my own bones for her, I would make sure it was sweet and tender, and I would place it on her waiting tongue like a eucharist —

Everything is going perfectly.

I planned tonight meticulously, knowing it was my only chance. I reread all my online research, bought new clothes, and—even though I’ve dined at this South Bank bistro before—still stopped by yesterday to make sure nothing had changed.

It paid off: the ambience tonight is flawless. The lighting bathes us in a flattering glow, the music low enough to merge with the murmur of diners.

There’s one thing you can’t control on a first date, of course—the person sitting opposite. I’ve met people who were alluring online but trainwrecks in reality. And while I met Sean in the flesh—in a low-key Soho gay bar, where he seemed charming—he could have unravelled in this elevated setting. He might have arrived drunk or been arrogant or self-absorbed. He could have ruined everything.

Instead, he’s been as gentle and soft as I’d imagined. He’s answered my questions thoughtfully but without talking too much, then asked about me and listened. Really listened. And he looks exquisite. Not Hollywood handsome. More doe-like, with those outsized brown eyes and cheekbones so delicate they look fragile as bird bones.

But as we wait for the bill Sean fidgets, face clouded. I’ve told him I’ll pay, so something else is worrying him. He opens and closes his mouth, a beautiful goldfish.

“Just say it.” My tone is light, but my heartbeat thuds. The wrong words could crack this jewel of an evening, shatter these memories I’ve been filing away like a squirrel hoarding acorns.

“I suppose I have to now.” He laughs nervously, glances around and leans forward. “Look. I like you, Nathan. That’s probably stupid to say on a first date, but I’ve got good instincts. So I want to be honest and get this out of the way in case it’s a deal breaker.”

“Just tell me.” I manage a smile. “Try saying it fast.”

“I used to be in porn.”

I calibrate my pause then say, softly, “Seriously?”

He nods but his head drops as if he’s looking at his phone, hoping a call might save him.

“Lots of porn?”

“How do I answer that?” A troubling undertone of defiance, as if he’s preparing to fight. “How many videos? How many men? I did enough. Can’t we just leave it at that?”

“Of course. Obviously, I’m surprised, but it’s not a big deal. I might be a few years older but I’m not some Victorian prude.”

His head stays low but those enormous eyes peek up, checking my reaction. It’s an adorable expression. One I’ve seen countless times before, though shot from above and with other men’s cocks in his mouth. I’ve paused that expression often—last night, in fact—but now it’s here and real and mine.

I was wrong before. Now everything is perfect.

A smile spreads across his face that I’ve never seen before. Not in his videos, not even last week when we chatted in the bar.

“Thank you.” He loads each word with sincerity. He wants me to like him. He wants to please me.

“What for?” I pull a no-big-deal face.

“This doesn’t normally go so well.”

“How does it normally go?”

He shakes his head, as if dislodging unpleasant memories. “Some guys freak out. I haven’t done porn in years now—” (two, to be precise) “—but it’s not like working in a supermarket. Once a porn star, always a porn star, that’s how people see it.”

Star? Worrying hint of ego. More niche, I’d say.

“Well, that’s not how I see it,” I say. “Who cares about old jobs?”

“Exactly!” Sean’s relieved laugh is loud enough that a prim-looking woman flicks a curious look our way. “Fans are even worse. That’s why I asked if we knew each other when we met last week. I knew we didn’t, I was just checking you didn’t recognise me. I’ve had bad experiences meeting people who’ve seen my stuff. I can’t stand the expectations.”

“Like being a comedian,” I say. “Everyone waiting for you to be funny.”

Sean’s mouth hangs open for a moment and images stream through my mind—men behind him, men on top of him, men shoving him against walls and bathroom mirrors as his mouth gapes ecstatically.

“That’s it exactly! And the thing is, I like sex, but the guys who’ve seen my stuff, that’s all they think about with me.”

“Well, you’re safe with me. I’m not a porn person. I prefer real life.”

This time Sean’s smile is so wide I can see the lower teeth he had straightened after he launched his OnlyFans channel.

“God, this is great,” he says. “Thanks, Nathan. I was dreading this.”

Me too—I feared I’d fumble my reaction. But I’m a better actor than Sean, in those few videos where he spoke.

Bill paid, we stroll by the Thames towards the underground station. We talk about my law career and his new job in graphic design or something. He touches my arm twice. Even through my shirt I feel his warmth, his blood.

We won’t fuck tonight. Even if he suggests going to his—doubtful, he has something to prove now—I’ll politely decline. That is not the plan.

The third date, that’s when it will happen. I’ll cook at my apartment with the impressive Hyde Park view. And then—just when he’s wondering if I’m shy or repressed—I’ll make my move. Direct. Assertive. A man who knows what he wants.

I can visualise it all, stitched together from his videos. He’ll be exactly who I want him to be, do exactly what I want him to do. I know all his sexual preferences, I’ve studied them for years.

And it won’t stop there. I’ll have him just like all those other men, in all those different positions. But for us, it will be real. There’ll be fucking, yes, but also dates and trips and other intimacies. I’ll make him mine.

I am patient and I have a plan.

Isn't the first eruption of man's fiercest sentiment the strangest thing?*
-Balzac

Allen Peniston, a most unhandsome gentleman of thirty-five, looked ashenly over at his date and then down at his ruined fish. His dining chair creaked; it was a blazingly hot July night. Peniston's awful chin, skinny mouth, bad hair, ambiguous nose, and boastful brown eyes spoiled his face with a certain inexpressive and uncomfortable sadness. The date raked her fork over five cold peas.

At a neighboring table, the end of a comment drifted by: “Of course that was before McKinley was shot.” 

Windows disgorged slight breezes of cooler air, which blended with the woman’s sweet perfume.

Clearing his throat, Mr. Peniston said, “I’ll bet that McKinley did not know French. Without trying, I learned French in an afternoon.”

Silence impaled the air. Catherine Mast, Mr. Peniston's date, was a chorus girl from a popular show playing at the Casino Theatre on 39th Street and Broadway. After a reasonable pause Catherine said, “I’m not sure I understand what you are talking about.”

“You taught yourself French?” asked Dick Light, the grizzled theater producer Mr. Peniston had wrangled into attendance. (Societal expectations being what they were, it would not have been proper for Peniston to dine with Catherine alone.)

“It’s true,” replied Peniston as dispassionately as if he were dictating a telegram.

“You taught yourself French in a single afternoon?” Dick's tone was nakedly condescending. “That’s quite a feat. What does Crêpe De Chine mean?”

“It’s a fabric. I travel to Europe all the time. I’ll take you, Catherine.”

“I’ve never been to Europe,” she said in a lousy impression of excitement.

“How about le coq?”

The gentle voice of Catherine asserted itself, “What is your favorite place to visit in Europe?”

“The man has the cheek to say he learned French like that.” Dick snapped his fingers. “Doesn’t that beat everything? Aren’t you curious how he did it?”

“I’m sure he did learn quickly,” suggested Catherine Mast.

Mr. Peniston became still. A moment passed. His gaze descended on his apprehensive date. “You keep looking over at that man. Is he bothering you?”

“Who?” Catherine’s voice was mollifying.

“The giant in that coat. He’s been lurking back there all evening.”

“Oh!” cried Catherine with impromptu amusement. “The telephone man. Why, he’s no bother. Really. He’s just standing there.” And with her sane and cheerful reasoning, she seemed lovelier than ever to Mr. Peniston, whose desire hissed like a kettle.

“I suppose you think he has big wrists,” was the sentence that shot from Peniston.

“Excuse me?”

“Thunderingly big wrists. Is that what you’re thinking?”

“I was not thinking that.”

“I am said to have large wrists.”

Abruptly, Dick Light reached over and shook Mr. Peniston’s wrist as if it were a hand. “Catherine has an early morning. I’m afraid we have to leave.” 

“You can’t leave,” he cried.

“Let’s not embarrass ourselves,” said Dick. “We agreed to a dinner. And, well, there we are.”

“Stay,” pleaded Peniston who stared at the rising figures as if dying of thirst. “The whole city knows me,” he faltered. “Walk down 38th Street. Wall Street. 5th Avenue. Ask anyone you meet; they'll know me.”

“That is enough. Take hold of yourself, Peniston. We’ll talk on Monday. Call the office.”

“This is not fair,” he cried, rage cannibalizing desire. Mr. Peniston could take no more. But what else could be done? “Not fair!” he cried again.

.

Allen Peniston, a most unhandsome gentleman of thirty-five, looked ashenly over at his date and then down at his ruined fish. His dining chair creaked; it was a blazingly hot July night. Peniston’s awful chin, skinny mouth, bad hair, ambiguous nose, and boastful brown eyes spoiled his face with a certain inexpressive and uncomfortable sadness. The date raked her fork over five cold peas.

At a neighboring table, the end of a comment drifted by: “Of course that was before McKinley was shot.”

Windows disgorged slight breezes of cooler air, which blended with the woman’s sweet perfume.

Next: an unfathomably strange occurrence. Mr. Peniston, sitting in his chair, was shaken by a difficult spasm. His back went concave and then convex. Losing consciousness, he fell from his chair. A wild culmination resulted in a medical catastrophe for the once-whole man. Without anyone applying force of any kind, a distasteful thing propelled itself through the loose trousers of Mr. Peniston (now lying facedown on the floor) and announced itself in full vulgarity. A mane of curly orange fur, salmon pink point, the galling figure mounted the tragic form of Mr. Peniston. 

Locked in a fevered inertia, every person in the hotel dining room stared at the savage thing, which defiled common sense. When it spoke, some passed out. 

“Hey, bub, you swell?” The thing appeared to address Dick Light.

Dick faced his table. Catherine grabbed the old theater producer’s hand and shivered.

“I'm talking to you. Hear me?”

Ice cold blood pooled in their veins. 

“Respectfully . . . ” stammered Dick Light, speaking to a splash of crab mayonnaise.

“Look over here, bub. Don't you want to see someone who’s been with 178 women?”

"What do you want?"

Somewhere, the sounds of a coffee percolator, which must have started before the vile limb severed itself (if that is what happened) and stirred up wild upheaval. 

“Don't believe me? Huh? First fifty were in Europe. Great bulls like you’ve never seen before in Pamplona. The plucky señoras kept passing me the wine skin, trying to get me drunk so they could have their way with me. And they did! One knew all the bullfighting moves and play-acted them out in the bedroom.”

During this unbelievably lewd interlocution, the telephone man crept up to the table of Dick Light and Catherine. Just when the truncated silhouette appeared poised to inaugurate a sequel story, the telephone man thrust the table into the air! The large raw oysters that Catherine did not care for abandoned their plate. Airborne silverware flickered. A strong disk of wood arced like the giddy jump of a dolphin, seemed to hover over the little devil, now maneuvering emphatically to escape it. With a shrill paroxysm of fear, like the squeal of a mouse, the canny member escaped the belly up table. 

It climbed to the underside of the table like a predaceous creature moving combatively among enemies. This is when a large number of diners fled. The telephone man stayed, Dick and Catherine froze, and the spouses of the people who had passed out now attempted to extricate their unconscious loved ones.

Wiping his wet brow, Dick Light asked, “What do you want, sir?”

“Don't try that again.”

“Try what?”

“Watch what comes outta that hole,” was the ready response. “Flipping tables onto me. You, step back.”

The telephone man stepped back.

Looking around it said, “Pommery Brut and mutton.” Amid the ruins of the happy evening, Catherine of all people hunted for champagne and meat. When she lowered the champagne flute to the floor, it consumed it greedily with a horror of slurping noises. Eventually the drink spilled into the carpet. 

A plate smashed onto the floor nearby. Pointing its bullish head at the telephone man, it said, “I thought I told you . . . ” Thinking better of it, the naked creature plunged forward in the direction of the telephone man. The telephone man bolted for the back door. 

More comfortably now, more in the spirit of carousing, it returned to the overturned table, “Where was I? Month later I found myself in Tangiers–watch it, fella. No sudden moves–and I wanted some fresh air. Hadn’t had peter in about six hours, so I caught a train to the Bridge of Ronda. An American traveler in Alhambra sheathed me to the hilt. Her husband, the unlucky bastard, was the commodore of the Thames Yacht Club, Sir George Lampson was his name. Without even trying I spoiled his wife.”

“God,” whispered Catherine. “This is so awful. What is happening?”

“What do you want?” asked Dick Light.

“I’ll ravish her, then,” was the response. Who it meant was of course Catherine Mast.

“Oh God,” she said. “Oh Christ. This is a dream.”

A man, nearby, watchful, placed his pipe on his table. The first blow sent the uncivil tormentor, off his perch and onto the floor. The large gentleman, a former boxer named Parker, pushed over chairs and stepped forward. The thing, floundering upon the floor, said, “Go ahead, bub.” And the gentleman kneeled and punched the head. He punched twice more in the efficient way of a boxer. It went limp but remained conscious. The gentleman picked him up in the middle and threw him on an empty table and brought his large hand down upon the base. It struggled and, remarkably, began convulsing with laughter. It was also bleeding. The man struck it again, this time with the bottom of his fist. It went still, stopped laughing. Now the man breathed heavily and said, “Will you leave now?”

“Doesn't that beat the devil,” it wheezed, oozing gore.

Catherine now held a .22 caliber double-action revolver that had apparently come from her purse. She stood and leveled it. Time accordioned. She shook. The man who had done the punching stepped backward. 

The dying creature seemed only dimly aware of what was happening now. Even still it said, “I once signed up to climb Bithynian Olympus, but instead climbed an unscrupulous beauty with a foul mouth.”

The .22 caliber settled in the direction of the floor but then rose again, trained upon the thing. 

“We are about fagged to death by you!” taunted Dick Light.

“Shoot the obscene wretch,” shouted the boxer. “Shoot it! Shoot it! Shoot it!”

.

Allen Peniston, a most unhandsome gentleman of thirty-five, looked ashenly over at his date and then down at his ruined fish. His dining chair creaked; it was a blazingly hot July night. Peniston's awful chin, skinny mouth, bad hair, ambiguous nose, and boastful brown eyes spoiled his face with a certain inexpressive and uncomfortable sadness. The date raked her fork over five cold peas.

At a neighboring table, the end of a comment drifted by: “Of course that was before McKinley was shot.” 

Windows disgorged slight breezes of cooler air, which blended with the woman’s sweet perfume.

Clearing his throat, Mr. Peniston said, “Is everyone enjoying their meal?”

Silence impaled the air. Catherine Mast, Mr. Peniston’s date, was a chorus girl from a popular show playing at the Casino Theatre on 39th Street and Broadway. After a reasonable pause Catherine laughed, “I just thought of something from a few days ago.”

“Filmore?” asked Dick Light, chuckling.

“Yes, Filmore!” cried Catherine.

Abruptly, Dick Light reached over and patted Mr. Peniston's hand. “Gotta make a quick telephone call. Catherine, come along, won’t you.” He wiped his face with the napkin. “Stay here, Peniston.”

Mr. Peniston became still. A moment passed. His gaze lingered on the invisible trail his apprehensive date had taken to leave him. Mr. Peniston’s desire hissed like a kettle.

They were gone an unbelievable amount of time. Mr. Peniston became one with the primordial forces of the dining room.

Catherin Mast’s delicate laugh sounded once more, and his date had returned. Dick Light looked with incredulity at Peniston: “You stayed?”

“You told me to stay.”

“Well, I’ll be. You really stayed. You said to yourself: I’m going to do as he says and stay.”

“Should I have not?”

Dick Light looked around, distractedly. “Catherine has an early morning. I’m afraid we will have to leave.” 

“Of course.”

“Call the office, we’ll talk on Monday.”

“Be careful what you say,” whispered Catherine.

“Oh right. You probably will call won’t you? No matter.”

Despite the new calmness of the dining room, there remained a fevered atmosphere inside Mr. Peniston. Raw palpitations shook his sternum. For nights afterward, his dreams were informed not by any auditory recall of the humiliating comments. He was haunted nightly by the feeling of being caged, that there was no way to give vent to the terrible, terrible agony of his desire.

*We thank the New York Review of Books (NYRB) and Peter Bush for use of this quote.

We are born to our sisters’ sticky hands and the statuettes of succubi and giant robot pilots they have arranged around the spawning pool. Whetted by their shades of powdered donut and spring leaf, we grow callipygian, neotenous, Q-cupped. Three days pass and we are fully formed, smelling not of salt but of salt breezes that have crossed two miles of ice cream parlors. But we are, in every other sense, larval. We don’t know what to want. “Look,” our sisters say, tilting our faces toward the sky, “and love.”

Bright words crawl across it: BANGED MY MILF STEPMOM CRYING TEEN TABOO MASSAGE BISEXUAL AMATEUR CREAMPIE LESBIAN STRANGLED HENTAI. “MILF,” we say. “Amateur.” Thus are we filled with your light: stubbled chins, one thousand slateish hoodies, the lush rumble of casters on crumbs. Lust! Hunger! We devour saffron, royal jelly, passion fruit curd, and condensed milk from the can with the calf on it. We picture it traveling down our throats, lacquering the mystery that makes us so dear. Fill me else I die, we say, learning specificity. Stuff me like a goose? No. Fuck me like your sister. Fuck me somehow, please, immediately. Something comes loose and floats across our sky: MAKE-AHEAD BREAKFASTS FOR AN UNFORGETTABLE CHRISTMAS MORNING. This feels enormously, scintillatingly true. Wake to the Christmas morning we have been preparing all our lives for you. Wake to an eggnog-infused bread pudding made from ingredients you probably have in your pantry already, featuring an optional garnish of cranberries and orange zest, wet and tight and ready for you. There is so much and it could all be for you and we could be the ones to provide it. We push particularly soft rabbit ears, die-cast toy cars, and perfectly browned cookies into the throbbing canal that craves your touch. None of it is enough.

And it can’t be, our sisters remind us as they gently pull our hands from between our legs and kiss away our frustrated tears. They tell us about every enigmatic phrase they’ve ever seen-- we love the luxe mystery of CELADON IS THE IT-GIRL SHADE OF THE SUMMER and 10 PACK MOLESKIN BLISTER BANDAGES SWEAT RESISTANT STRAPPY SANDALS—and when we are soothed, they tell us none of it can be enough because we are cured in this longing. We are all of us bent around lacunae; palpating it is our purpose.

We experiment. We are initiated into the higher mysteries of piss and incest. Someone is always going through a meowing phase. Our older sisters depart, and we realize we have become them. We find that it is terrifying to pull our ovoid young from the pool, euphoric to watch eyes, like slabs of wet tourmaline, emerge from blank flesh. And one day, we wake to realize the hole at the center of us has been pinched into your particular shape. We are ripe, we are ready, and we must cross the desert that lies beyond our home.

The journey to you is a long, strange pull of time we do not control or understand. It loops and swells and thins, and then it snaps off without warning: there you are. There you are!!! In this moment we understand the meagerness of all that came before. We are seen, clicked, paused, played, solidified at last upon shingles of supernal light. Tangibility triggers insinuation: the fine, high ecstasy of being all the way inside you. We grasp the truth that is our birthright, and then it takes us to pieces.

For most of us, this is the end. But some linger. These are the girls who have left the grooves of your brain limned with starlight; their memory will be summoned even in the throes of material coitus. They return to the only route we know. It is a trial as much as a triumph—bereft of your presence, they feel everything between the legs slough away at once—but they were chosen to bear it. When the going is hard and we feel we will never make it to you, we see pools of pastel syrup, ragged heaps of heliotrope and kitten fur. Their remains give us the strength to carry on.

But some claim there are girls who go further. This is a dire fate. Success curdles past a certain point; it simply isn’t meant to be embodied for so long. Eyeballs go loose in their sockets, labia grow chitinous, breasts off-gas. They drag themselves forward, leaving dark trails that reek of copper and melon. They locate their consciousnesses in their hands, their fingers, their nails. Keep moving puddles into forward, which slackens into go.

We hear thumps in the night, sometimes. We hear strange moaning. Occasionally, we dream of their final moments. The rosy cabochon of home crests the horizon. They grin. They stumble to their feet and begin to run. They hurl themselves onto the exterior wall, and their edges give at last. In the morning, we cannot find even the barest traces of them.

We could be wrong. The noises might be errant winds, or your own voices, deranged by distance. But there is a moment before we set out on our final journey, when we look upon the blank land. We are full of your dreams and eager to die. We hope you will love us as we love you. And we wonder if we might turn out to be one of those girls who makes it all the way home.

By July the vines had written themselves up the fire escape in green. Stems muscled through the rusted slots; little suns hung above 52nd, red as hazard lights. Ms. Lila from 3B started them in yogurt cups, with eggshells for grit. Every afternoon she pinched a leaf, breathed the sharp green, and said, “Smell that? Church.”

One morning there was paper under the knob: FIRE ESCAPES MUST REMAIN CLEAR. REMOVE OR PAY FINE. INSPECTION: FRIDAY.

Rules aren’t cruel; smoke remembers stairs. But the plants were a polite trespass, shade given to windows that needed it, fruit passed across a hallway with a shaker of salt. You could taste July for the price of a hello.

On Thursday we made a plan. Windows up. Hands out. We unhooked what we could—pots passed like babies, soil on sills, vines over forearms, twine and bread ties. The building smelled like wet dirt and leaves. A ladder of whispers ran floor to floor: easy, easy. By noon the iron was mostly bare, our path a dark spine again.

One plant refused. Its stem braided through the rail, a small knuckle where metal met green. To move it would be to break it. Ms. Lila touched the knot with her thumb like checking a pulse. “She’s married,” she said. “You don’t cut a marriage on a Thursday.”

We tied her back instead—two shoelaces and a scrap of laundry line—tight to the corner so a body could pass. Someone snipped the suckers, someone swept the crumbs of soil. The last tomato sat by the bedroom window, skin lit from within, a little planet waiting on the weather.

Friday, the inspector came with a clipboard; his pen clicked like a metronome. He looked up the iron spine, down at his form, up again. He saw our cleared stairs, the shoelaces, the one stubborn red. He put the pen to the amount line. Nothing. He wrote smaller elsewhere. “Harvest by Sunday.” The pen made a period you could feel.

When he was gone, the building exhaled like a bus kneeling. We didn’t cheer. We went to our windows and watched the last tomato hold its heat. That night Ms. Lila cut it on a saucer with the knife that lives in the rubber-band drawer. She salted the halves and sent them out—plate to plate, hand to hand—the red still warm from the day.

The mother can’t remember how the thing came to be. She remembers a green plastic table, her legs spread wide. She remembers shame like oranges in her throat. The mother remembers eyes. A thousand eyes whirling over her head, excavating her secret self. Later, the mother told herself the eyes were magnified by surgical spectacles, the faces hidden under masks. But she can’t forget the eyes. They come to her in her dreams–floating eyes unmoored from their faces. The mother had wanted nothing more than to clamp her legs shut and demand all the eyed-ones shed their clothes. “I too have eyes!” the mother had screamed.

I shall see you as you see me. I shall look at your body–yours with the bulging chest, yours with the taut belly. I shall strip you, and lay you down under these lights, on green plastic tables in a row. I shall look, look, look, and laugh at your softness. My gaze, full of snakes, will shrink your manhood, turn it floppy, melted, ugly. You will not dare meet my eyes.

The mother had not screamed. She had been a good patient, obliging. She would be a good mother. The mother remembers pressure. She remembers pressure of so many varieties–plunging, pulling, pushing. Her mind snaps back on itself when she tries to name the types of pressure, to understand them in words. But her body knows. In her bloodways and boneways flow the memories of that pressure, plunging her ever downward. Down, the thing had pulled the mother, down and down to the gates of hell and down again through thirty-three circles.

An anchor hooks into the mother’s pelvis, wrenching her open. The center of a dying star blooms in her belly. With a suck so strong it can invert time, the black hole pulls. The thing, many-mouthed, wrenches free within her. The thingmouths latch with sharp pain into the mother’s sides. And then they pull. Down, down, down. Her right side rips apart from the pressure of the mouths. Down. Her left side freezes. A fist of iron closes around her lungs. Breath dissolves into bubbles. In the circles of hell, breath ceases, air ceases. Down goes the thing, and takes its mother with it. The mother’s sweetest self, the part she kept for her alone and the man on the roof, tears in two with a squelching sound. And still the thing pulls downward. One of the thingmouths bites into her pelvis, deep in her hips and it pulls so hard the mother’s body lights on fire.

The mother remembers fire and the slow flaying of her skin. The mother hadn’t known that pain could be so varied. Sharp and keen like the knife slicing, dull and deep like the saw grinding, burning fire, ice freezing every soft nerve. The mother remembers the smell–blood and her own shit. Ammonia from urine stinging her nose. She remembers the fish and loaves smell of her opened legs. She remembers telling someone–who?–that the miracles of the savior were between her legs. Smell it smell it, she had said. Fish and the yeasty-sweetness of loaves, isn’t it? To whom had the mother said this thing? She cannot remember. The last the mother remembers–

Ripping, tearing, fragmenting into two, three, four, a hundred little pieces, no longer the mother, no longer a person, no longer words, no longer time, only fire.

Then a slimy thing with black eyes was on her, scrabbling at her skin.

The thing is hers. It came from the pressure and the pain, the eyes saw it within her, the hands cut it from her. It invades her mind, her body, her very being. It attaches to her–its black mouth on her nipple, its warm wet body burrowed into her side. The mother can’t find herself most days, where is she and where is the thing? She touches her own nipple–is this where she ends? She touches the sweat-slick skin of her belly, her hips on which the thing is propped. These do not feel like borders. They open like doors drilled into her body so the thing can walk into them.

The mother doesn’t know days and nights. When the thing isn’t glaring at her, the mother sleeps. Words slide through her brain–take a shower, smell good, throw out the soaked maxi pad, ice the wound. The mother doesn’t understand. She only knows the wailing. Three kinds–one for the thing’s anger, one for its ravening desire, and one for its malevolence. The mother knows its hate.

How dare you make me? How could you expel me? Take me back, into your flesh. Feed me with your blood. Let me sop up your brains and gulp them. I shall devour you. You are nothing, you are no one, only I exist. You are a cow, a leaking puddle. You have no mind but obey mine.

In the blessed intervals, when the thing’s eyes are closed, the mother looks at her phone. Somehow, it remains from her life before the thing. The mother’s books are gone, her music has flown, her flowers scare her. And yet, the phone remains. The screen flashes red, it emits a burble. “Help! My 5 yo LO hits and scratches only me. Am I a bad mom?” Burble, “LO sleeps for 30 mins at a time, only on me. I’m lucky to shower once every 4 days. Is it my fault?” Burble, “I’m breastfeeding my 14-month-old who has just started teething. And he bites. My nipples are bleeding, I feel so guilty for feeding my baby blood. Will this harm him? What am I doing wrong?” Burble, “How long did it take you after birth to shower without pain? It’s been 4 months, and I’m still doubled over in pain. Dr. says it’s normal.” Burble, “I’m bleeding through a triple layer of maxi pads. It’s been a week since delivery. The doctor says it’s normal.” Burble, “Am I bad mom?” Burble “It’s normal.” Burble “Is it me?” Burble, “Maybe I’m not cut out to be a mom” Burble “I’m crying as I type this” Burble “I’m soaked in urine as I type this” Burble “I’m in so much pain, is that normal?” Burble, burble, burble.

The mother dives into her screen. Burble burble burble goes the phone, blurting tears and blood, breastmilk and piss, and vomit into her eyes. She can almost smell it: the animal scent of mothers, the sourness of spit up, the rotten-egg whomp of a diaper. On and on she reads, the phone lifting her on waves of notifications. “My 4 yo…”

In screenworld, the mother finds her monster kin. In screenworld, all mothers are part person and part thing. In screenworld, the mother can type “I want to shake my LO, so ashamed. Am I a bad mom?” In screenworld, the mother’s own diapers, soaked in blood and possibly her own piss, are routine, expected. No one in screenworld knew the mother when she had a brain of diamonds. In screenworld, all the mothers’ brains are spongy, soft, and full of rot.

On her comforter cover, the mother detects cinnamon and a scent she can’t name. It’s a spirit, an amber liquid she had loved once, smokey like the lights of the city. But the mother’s new brain repels words. They liquify in the rot and slide away, down her spine, and into the thing’s waiting mouth. So, the mother only knows the scent is familiar, it belongs to someone she knew. The mother bends what remains of her will to remembering.

Fragments emerge, in the holes of what used to be her mind. The mother remembers a man she met on a roof. She remembers a red plaid blanket beneath them, shared plastic cups of vodka, philosophy. She can see them now, if she looks away from her phone: a girl, not yet the mother, a girl with a star-edge mind and a man with fireworks on his tongue. They speak of what philosophers call the problem of other minds. The problem is this: how can you, in your own mind, know that other minds exist? The mother laughs aloud. How she wishes she could unknow the thing. Pretend it only existed in her mind. But she returns to the girl, who knew nothing of things then. Why is this uncertainty a problem? If only your mind can be fully known by you, then all that you know–the stars and sun, daylight, mothers and fathers and friends may not exist at all. The man on the roof argued with the girl, tossing green and red rockets of argument at her. The girl’s mind caught them all, turned them into the stars that sparkled within her. The mother remembers a kiss, a melting into one another. She sees the girl and the man solve this problem that was no problem at all. Here it was, in the kiss. Here in the warmth of his arms, the sweetness of his breath, was the solution to the problem of other minds. How could he not exist when she was flowing into him? There they were, on the roof.

Then the thing comes. And the mother loses the man on the roof. Sometimes she smells him lingering in her bedsheets. The mother knows someone else lives in the house with her and the thing. Someone who covers her with a red plaid blanket, now threadbare. Someone who washes all the thing’s disgusting clothes, someone who sanitizes its bottles. But the mother can’t find the solution to the problem of other minds. How can there be anyone, in this house, on this earth, in the vastness of space? There can only be the mother and the thing. Two types of beings populated the earth–mothers and their things. If this someone wasn’t the thing, it must be the mother.

She seemed to remember another touch sometimes, the man on the roof had long-fingered hands. His touch had brought delight, the same parts of her body that feel only pain had felt something else–some sweet heat, some cool fluttering. The mother, absurdly, had wanted this touch. She had invited it, his hands on her skin, his eyes on her body, even, and this made the mother feel upside down, his mouth on her breast. How could she have wanted it? Perhaps the man on the roof was the anti-thing. All that the thing did to her, the man had done for her. All that the thing took from her, the man had given her–poured the wealth of ages into her lap, crowned her with the first flowers of spring, loved her so much his hazel eyes blurred when they looked at her. All the while the mother pondered this mystery, the thing’s black gaze wormed into her skull.

Burble, “Does it ever get better? I thought I wanted to be a mom. Now I want to kill myself.” Burble, “LO cries every 15 mins and will only stop if I hold her. I tried and failed to eat breakfast, lunch or dinner today. Now I am worried I won’t produce enough breast milk. Is this normal?”

The thing is screaming again, long uninterrupted wails turn its face maroon, its eyes scrunch into lines. It throws something at the mother. Something heavy, jagged at the edge hits the mother’s belly. She gasps. Staring down she sees a wooden block between her legs, with a curiously sharp edge. The thing had known how to aim it so the edge caught her still-healing skin. She stares down at the block. A line drawing of a woman, with triangles for hair, looks up at her. The woman is a circle perched atop an oval, two lines for legs and two for hands. The woman on the block says, “Hello Mrs. M.” The mother’s ears, raw from being screeched into, process this. The mother’s moth-eaten brain directs her to respond. “Hello lady in the block,” the mother says.

“You are tired, Mrs. M,” says the line drawing. “You are tired, and look, you are bleeding. You have not slept in four nights. Your eyes are red, Mrs. M. Your nipples are sore and the left one is torn, the light of your life bit it last night. Your stitches burn, Mrs. M. Little bacteria grow unchecked on them. You’re thirsty and hungry Mrs M, for the light of your life has eaten all that was green within you.”

“Yes, lady in the block,” says the mother, “Yes, lady in the block, am I a bad mom? Is it my fault? Will it ever get better? The doctor says it’s normal.”

“Normal, Mrs. M? You are not normal Mrs. M, neither is the light of your life. You have lost the only one you loved, Mrs. M, where is he?”

Tears pour down the mother’s cheeks, “I don’t know, lady in the block. I don’t know where my man on the roof went. I can’t find him. I lost my books too, look look, these gaping holes in my shelves. Where is my Book of Wisdom? My Book of Mirrors is lost, my Book of Rage has been stolen. Where are my books, lady in the block? Where is my man on the roof?”

“Think carefully, Mrs. M. You know the answer, you always have. There are only two in existence. Mothers and things. If you didn’t banish the man on the roof, and you didn’t burn your books, and you didn’t sacrifice your words, who did?”

“The thing,” the mother whispers. “But, lady in the block, why does it hate me so? Am I a bad mother? Am I not feeding it correctly? Is it sleeping dangerously? Is the temperature too hot? Did I dress it in itchy clothes? Was it the detergent–I didn’t think the detergent made a difference so I didn’t buy the baby detergent. Should I change it? Will it love me then?”

“Oh Mrs. M,” said the lady in the block, “You know why it hates you, don’t you. Remember Mrs. M, remember.”

The mother feels her eyes slipping shut. She knows the thing needs her awake, it needs her body, her attention. But she cannot resist the terrible sharpness of sleep falling cool over her flayed being. In her dream, the mother lies spread-eagled on a red dirt floor. She is naked, her slippery insides open to the earth. An emerald lizard crawls inside her, through the vast hole of herself. She barely even feels it. Suddenly she’s on the green plastic table, white light blinding her. A masked and gloved doctor, she supposes it’s a doctor, pulls the lizard out of her. The lizard doesn’t want to emerge. It sinks its teeth into the mother’s cervix, and the mother screams as she has screamed before.

The screaming wakes her. The thing is wailing again. The noise slices at the mother, hooks into her skin. It pulls her apart. At first it feels like a stretch, then farther and farther the wailing pulls her, fire blossoms in her shoulder sockets, her knees, the weeping wound between her legs. And still the mother does not move. She knows the pain will fall away if she heeds the screaming. If she lifts her body from the couch and offers herself, again, to the black mouth of the thing. But her legs are heavy, as if filled with seawater, and her belly is soft and she doesn’t remember how to use her torso to lever herself up. Her belly is a mountain, rooted deep into the couch. She cannot move. She must move. The wailing continues. The ocean in her legs and the mountain on her belly grow heavy with the weight of the world.

A face hovers over her, she doesn’t know it. Blink. It is an oval with triangles for hair. “Hello lady in the block,” the mother says. The face disappears from view. The mother’s eyes slide shut. In her dream, the lizard she birthed eats her face. Its tiny fangs enter her skin, and the mother shudders with delight. A heavy wetness descends on her breasts. The mother opens her eyes. Somehow the thing is upon her. Its hot, wet mouth on her nipples. Its black eyes glare at her. The thing has won. The mother will cease to exist. There is no way to know that other beings exist. Not unless they eat you whole, and you become only the outline, the triangles and ovals that your devourer fills. The mother knows in the deepest part of her body, the only part that is hers alone, that she has become an outline woman, the lady in the block. The thing stops screaming. It has won, only it exists now. Nothing else.

The sun was tearing my ass up in the backyard. I pictured Jianna somewhere back behind the blinds, covered in blood. I’d made up my mind it was time to kick. But get this—all that and she still wanted another bag. I said she ought to be propped up in a hospital bed, the nurses pumping her full of the good stuff. Bad idea, she told me. Another bag, Craig, go get another bag.

You’d have to see the way she shook to believe it. My lips were burned from the sun. I kicked the shovel’s footstep, dug deep. I pulled back, tossed a bladeful of dirt over my shoulder. It shouldn’t have been that hard, but I was moving pretty slow. You cut through the topsoil and get down into the hard earth. Kick, dig, toss.

Sun was shrapnel. I looked at the house. The blinds moved just enough to notice. Jianna was still all bloody, I guessed. She probably wanted to know what was taking so long. I’d dug graves for animals. A crow here and there. I’d dug a few for baby bunnies, birds. Back when the dog was still with us, he’d hunt them down. He got into Jianna’s stash and was just a lump over there in the corner now.

The wind bit hard. But it just made the heat worse. I started shoveling again. The shovel hit the ground with a thud, then scraped. Sweat was getting in my eyes, stinging bad. You get yourself into shit that deep, you just got to find your focus.

Kick, dig, toss.

I kept at it until my hands got to rattling. I wanted to know what she was up to behind those goddamn blinds. I imagined her swatting blood off her body with a towel. I didn’t know if it was really a human yet. I couldn’t get my head around a thought that big.

It was a lot of blood, I knew that.

The shovel was getting down deep into the hard earth now. Jianna was probably feeling rotten. No way she wasn’t all torn up. Could you blame her? Just a month ago, the doctor was telling us it all looked good. That’s how life goes, though. Things look alright and by the time you notice they aren’t, it’s too late. I dug in hard and flames burned in my arms. Down in the meat, deep in the muscle.

You ever notice how it gets hotter later in the day? You’d think it’d be the other way around. There are doctors and nurses, people who have pills, for situations like that. I’d told Jianna that. Hell, I’d begged her. But she started shouting. Craig, she told me, get your lazy ass down to the bowling alley, find that sack of shit Dead Eyes.

The dirt hit the fence and sounded like rain falling.

A couple clouds didn’t seem like too goddamn much to ask for. My hands were a wreck. I shit you not—you saw what I saw, all that blood, you’d want her in a hospital bed too. But she was a hacksaw. She wouldn’t even settle for the strip-mall clinic. Just a little bag, she said, and she’d get right real quick.

Jianna had an answer for everything: They’d call the cops at the hospital. At the clinic, too. No hospital, she told me. No jail.

The sweat was really coming off me. I didn’t know how deep to dig. There was blood on my hands. Not a lot. Not like what got all over Jianna’s legs. Her stomach, the bed. I knew they shoveled six feet at the cemetery, but what did that matter? This was just tissue. That was what Jianna said. It wasn’t a human, she’d decided that much for both of us. Little slugs all tangled together, covered in blood. It looked like that.

The wind let up. It was deep enough, probably deeper than it needed to be. I propped the shovel on the fence. I pressed my face to my shirt, soaked up sweat.

The little slugs were thick and warm in my palms. I dropped them in the hole.

The blinds swayed.

Then I just stood there with my hands on my side, staring at the window, damn near certain Jianna was watching me right back. Another bag. Yeah, I’d get it for her. Love someone enough, that’s what you do.