Cheating Life

I felt the drift of a tide - out, away, up. But I was trapped.

My breath was stifled in the heavy press of her flesh.

I couldn't exhale.

I just wanted to exhale.

I... There was a tug. Something warm and wet, soft and sharp, ravishingly hungry, had a hold of me. It pulled. My grip slipped, and it took more of me.

I couldn't hold on.

I couldn't exhale.

I was nearly inside of it.

I let go. I didn't have choice.

She swallowed.

*

After

I wrote this for him - his last few days and thoughts. Not online, of course - on paper. Perhaps someday someone will read this, but it wouldn't matter. Queendom come: it won't matter then. It's only a few years now, anyway.

I left his body in the room - Claire and Mickey are flesh-eaters, and I gave them their fill. The staff would come by later to pick up the remains for firing and to clean the room. I made him watch Claire pick over his meat through my eyes for a few minutes, and his reaction was cute. He burrowed deeper into me. It made me horny again, but I'm never in the mood for another job so soon after a kill. It's such hard work to eat someone whole. I feel like a python afterward. I just want to go back to my room to masturbate and digest.

People are like a wonton in a bowl of broth. No, they're like lotus tea, with that one big blossom at the bottom of the cup. Usually you just drink the tea. It has the flavor of the lotus, and it's warm and refreshing, and it's what you're used to. Maybe you play with the petals or nibble away a few of them if you're feeling greedy. But you leave the flower in the cup, and it stays alive and someone puts it into a new cup until the simmering water's soaked up the flavor and you have more tea. No one's upset unless you really mangle the petals and shock the blossom. Everyone's happy, including the flower. Mostly. Because you always want that flower, the quintessence of the flavor. You lust for it. You imagine putting the whole blossom in your mouth, rolling it over your tongue, crushing the petals between your teeth. Swallowing. And sometimes, when no one's watching, you do it.

I am a well of souls - a well to which I add but let none draw. He'll be in me forever, mine to keep even after I am also collapsed into the Queendom. There is no extinction of what is eternal. Eventually, after I've loved him and coddled him and had my way and my fill, he'll be so much a part of me there will be no difference.

What he was will lose his memory and thoughts to me, but I think he'll remember until the end what I told him there, in his last moment. As he begins to see things through my eyes, as he feels other souls settle in beside him - too far, too dark, too self-absorbed to ever contact, but irrefutably there - that truth will be his mantra. I tell them all in the end, if I love them: I'm a liar.

*

Special thanks to Anne, my editor.