Author: Meg Carey

I’m reaching around in the dark, touching up and down your soft, slimy body as you heave long sighs beside me. You’ve been asleep for a few days now, and I don’t know how long this is supposed to go on for. I press my face into your crocodile skin, I let your wetness coat my nose and cheek. It’s taken a while to get used to it, but I can hardly stand the feeling of being dry anymore. I wish I spoke your language so I could beg for you to envelop me with your long, tentacle arms, to touch me like I’m touching you now. I’d let you fill me with all your goo and even more. The last time I fell asleep with somebody else in this bed it was a human man, one with a scruffy beard like harsh sandpaper against my lips. His words dug deep into my skin, nails forming bloody craters around my wrists. I touch the marks, already scabbed over and healing. You aren’t like him, no, you aren’t. It’s you who has finally healed me. I remember how your mouth (or where I think your mouth should be, there’s a few holes that could be a mouth, and I’ve never seen you eat so I’m not too sure) slid against mine, puzzle pieces slotting together and melding against each other. I hold you tighter, I melt into your touch, I feel the heat radiate from your skin, I watch the slime sizzle and steam. You’re much better for me than he was. I wish I knew how to say ‘thank you’ for everything—for dropping into my life, for fixing it by ridding it of him, my main source of pain, for allowing me to feel a love I haven’t felt in so long— but all I can do lay here and feel you, stroke the wetness and hope you wake up with a fully digested stomach and a hunger for something other than human flesh.