I’m short on rent so I call Daddy. His phone rings five times before it goes to voicemail, but I end it before it beeps to record. I always call him instead of texting because he has a shitty old flip phone that he pecks at with his pointer finger while he squints. I make fun of him for it often, although it’s a sore spot for him and it sometimes gets me in trouble.
He has several times and not-so-jokingly referred to himself as Daddy Warbucks, which I guess is appropriate given our arrangement. He has a head of luxurious brown hair, but insists he’d shave to it full on gleaming bald if he was less self-conscious about the bumpy shape of his head. I find it a little endearing that he’s willing be vulnerable around me, but I’m mostly just glad he’s too insecure to get rid of my handholds for when his cock is plunged into my guts. The weird thing is that he must be at least a little bit delusional, because when I feel the scalp under all that hair it feels like the top half of a gigantic polished marble.
The phone’s ringing, and it’s him. I answer and tilt my voice up like a see-saw.
Hiiiiii Daddy.
Hey, I saw that you called, he says in a voice that’s…moderate I guess? Kind of average and a bit monotone, obviously masculine but not like that deep or anything. Then: Why didn’t you leave a voicemail?
I sigh. Daddy has a thing about voicemails, like there’s some obligation to them, like why would you call if you’re not going to leave one? I don’t do them because I mean who does voicemail anymore, but also because I don’t like my voice, or at least I used to dislike my voice and now I do out of habit. Now I like my voice enough when I’m speaking, but I mean, basically no one likes their voice when they’re recorded right? A few years ago there was another guy who had offered to do a video with me for a bunch of money, even showed me this whole set up of expensive cameras, but then he gave me a script to read over because I had my own lines and when he said it was a dealbreaker I just shook my head and was out of there. I’ve skipped over a lot of lines most girls would swear up and down that they’d never cross, but letting my voice be forever trapped on the internet is my hard limit.
I bite the bottom of my lip a bit while apologizing to get the tone right, and then take my time telling him just how much I miss him since last week and how good he made me feel while in that round about sideways kind of way mentioning that my dumb landlord raised the rent again, that big mean man taking advantage of little ol’ me. It’s not long until he starts to stumble over his words and says he wants to come over.
Of course Daddy, I simper. Why do you think I called?
I wait a while because Daddy lives on the other side of town, one of those areas they call historic because the houses are old and pretty and have rich people in them. I’ve always assumed his house is unreasonably big, like the kind of space you would only ever need in order to keep buying more beautiful, expensive things. I bet he has a big grand piano or something that barely ever gets played, just sitting there to look fancy.
At the end of the call, he said he wanted to do the full weekend together and asked if it’s okay because it’s something that we haven’t done before. I said it sounds lovely, and suggested a picnic where he could discreetly fuck me against a tree or in the field among some fancy cheese and pickle plates, and he didn’t protest. If he wants me for that long he’s likely planning something nice, and I’m more than willing to make it worth his while.
I stand in front of the mirror and pucker my lips. I’ve been told many times over the years that guys prefer girls without makeup, their accidental subtext being that they prefer us to have all of the subtle groundwork to look like a just-woke-up-model while leaving out all distinguishing personality and flair. I reapply my #71 Seashell Rose and smooth the uneven bottom left edge with my pinky nail— turning my head slightly to both sides to admire my curled ink-black lashes, masterwork eyebrows, contoured cheekbones, and glowing fairy skin. Men that think women put on makeup just for them are truly tragic.
The bed has been made, fitted sheet tucked in and pastel pink pillows arranged just so with my extra-large plushy of Appa the Sky Bison propped by the headboard in such a way that he stares into your soul. I light candles that smell like cinnamon, and check in my side table drawer to make sure my switch blade is where it’s supposed to be. My on-again off-again girlfriend slash best friend Ivy gave me both the knife and Sky Bison at once—the blade to protect myself and Appa to watch over me. She had squeezed my hand so hard that it fell asleep, staring me down with those huge green eyes while lecturing me about my supposed death wish, making me promise to be more cautious.
And she’s right—I have had some close calls where all of the worst things could have come to pass, situations that lucky me has come away from only having suffered loud slurs and some violent threats and maybe a push or two. Out of my friends, I’m the one who’s always doing the thing that seems stupid afterward, so maybe there is something fucked up about how I make my decisions. It’s not like I want to die or anything though—I’ve just accepted the reality of being a Girl Like Me in a world like this one.
I pick up the switch blade and flip it open. The handle is a textured honey but the blade is gnarly, like the kind you could just firmly disembowel someone with in a single go. I’ve never been much of a fighter, and deep down I think that if someone really wants to do me in and my only choice is to stab them I’d probably just let them get it over with. That being said, I suppose it’s never bad to have more choices rather than less.
Ever since I was able to give up my other clients for Daddy alone, I’ve been inconsistent about taking precautions because I don’t feel like he’s going to randomly attack me after paying me allowance for months, but Ivy’s been back on me. I slip my knife back into the side table and I text her my plan (he’s coming over tonight and sleeping over, activities until, assumedly, Sunday evening) followed by emojis of a dancing woman, an egg plant, and some thirsty looking raindrops. A few minutes later, she texts back Have fun and BE CAREFUL! followed by a classic big red heart.
Soon afterward, the doorbell buzzes and I run to the door to let Daddy in. He’s dressed a little too business-y for my taste but he still looks handsome, especially because of his five o’ clock shadow that I like in a kind of masochistic way. He’s holding a bouquet of what he says are dahlias, these giant red flaming things that remind me of imploding stars on the Nature channel, and a navy blue overnight bag. I giggle and thank him and say come on in and make yourself comfortable, I’m just going to find a vase for these flowers, which really means I’m going to find my one water pitcher and that’s going to work fine.
When I get back, he’s sitting on a chair in my tiny living room, stiffly perched on the edge like a bird. I hunch down my eyebrows and smile, moving toward him in the same way I would playing with a toddler or a dog. Hey gloomy, what’s got you looking so doomy? I say in sing-song, pushing him backwards into his chair and loosening his tie. Then he’s grabbing my hair with his left hand and pulling me in and up with the other, and I’m being carried, damsel like, into my bedroom.
A few times I’ve called myself a whore in front of him by accident and each time he’d get all quiet and concerned, like I’m about to throw myself off a bridge or something. He’d stroke my cheek, tell me that I’m beautiful, and go on about how I shouldn’t say mean things about myself. Every time I’m tempted roll my eyes and launch into how there’s nothing mean about it or about how we’re out here reclaiming it or just say like You know what words are right? But instead I stop myself and smile and stroke his cheek back and say Thanks Daddy, because in the end that’s part of why I’m here, the role I’ve been brought in to play. He just wants to be the wealthy Daddy who wipes away the smudge of poverty from this poor little orphan girl with his fistfuls of cash, and I let him.
One night I had a dream and he’s standing over me, wailing Out, damned spot! like Lady MacBeth, furiously rubbing his bloodied hands together as crisp hundred dollar bills rain down on my naked body to cleanse my dirty soul. I think I may have cum a little before waking up.
Just for the record, I’m not actually an orphan, or at least not in the sense that my parents are dead, although I’ve internalized the fantasy pretty thoroughly and guess it’s metaphorically true enough for me to not feel too bad about keeping up the ruse. If it means anything, I was never the first to slam the front door after saying You’re dead to me, or to scream Get out of my house after melodramatically opining how Our son is dead.
The thing about being dead to someone but still being alive is that they effectively get to be dead back. That’s what being dead is really about—kind of being preserved in that place that you were when you were first declared dead in everyone’s minds, like a picture that’s just a little bit haunted. You know, the ones whose eyes follow you when you walk by. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that that’s what my parents are: these fixed images that sometimes replay little sound bites of what they said before we were dead to each other. I get nostalgic for it sometimes, even knowing that time fucks up memory faster than a nail in a Coke can. None of the things I miss are all the way real.
If you didn’t know, cis guys think about the size of their cocks a lot, and before Daddy I sorted my clients, with relative success, into three separate camps with that fact in mind. The first, and probably most common, were always sure to mention that their cock was the biggest and best of the whole lot. I would always make sure to match even their grossest exaggerations with enthusiastic support, because in the end what they fetishize more than anything else is for you to fetishize wanting it. Even when it came to those who could sort of back up their porn-y texts about horse-like proportions didn’t necessarily have any idea what to do with it other than lay on top of me and thrust. I have toys that size that don’t tire themselves out right when things are getting good. Plus, flesh and blood dicks don’t vibrate.
The second camp are usually concerned about their own inadequacy, sending me pics and playing the game of What do you think? with the expectation that I am a kind god offering salvation. And so I tell them Yes, of course baby, because all they want to be told is that their cock is Good with a capital G, just as it was meant to be. Although there are intersections between these two camps, the biggest difference may be that Camp 2 constantly must be reassured that they lasted a long time or that they were really hard enough, whereas Camp 1 merely assumes this as truth.
Being a Girl Like Me adds even more credibility to my testimony in the eyes of both these groups, as they get to look at my genitals for comparison—finding reassurance that they could never imagine purposefully softening and shrinking or doing away with it entirely. In addition, I carefully omit that it’s been primarily people without functioning penises that have given me the best orgasms of my life, for fear of wounded egos and the violence that could evaporate up from them—two phenomena almost as closely linked as steam from a tea kettle.
Camp 3 is still largely phallocentric, but regardless of size it’s about stepping on their sense of self a bit instead of building them up. This can come in many forms—treating me like a goddess and serving me, giving me their money, licking my boots, etcetera etcetera. Of course the pinnacle of all of this is feminization—because what could be more degrading and corrosive to your manhood than being made—or in many of their cases forced—to wear a little bit of makeup and a dress? I suppose that’s one way to put the service I offered: sparing them from the unmanly implications of their own free will.
Some of the sweeter clients want the simplest things once I’ve gotten them femmed up: someone to brush their hair, to cuddle them in bed, or to exchange fluttery butterfly kisses. Times like that I really started to feel more responsibility for them than I actually had—these souls that just want to be held and feel pretty—because who knows how many among them were repressed trans girls or queer boys or people who are neither, that may never find the space to find out. As the Girl Like Me that they sought out, I’d like to think that I gave each of them a brief respite from their wells of loneliness, and maybe even planted the seed that, if they look hard enough, there’s always an escape hatch somewhere.
I only bring all of this to give some context for Daddy and his cock, to point out how unusual it is that’s he so utterly unconcerned with it. That’s not to say that he doesn’t use it, but that he follows none of the patterns of my three camps: no braggadocio, no insecurity, no emasculation. Then I suppose you could say that all of my experiences with cis men have been clients and that they are seeking out sex work specifically because they have a void to fill—that there are plenty of dudes the world over who got over their penis issues in their youth and are now one hundred percent well-adjusted.
In response, I’d say that—beyond my doubts that anyone could ever be well-adjusted—the very idea that Daddy ever went through such a period of masculine adjustment is hard for me to imagine, or, for that matter, even the idea that he ever had a youth at all.
I’ve never been a huge fan of romance novels, but I can’t deny that when we’re in the heat of it Daddy certainly makes me feel like I’m in one. He lets be the girl who comes from nothing without anything special going for her who is mysteriously chosen by a rich, successful, and handsome older man. And I think maybe that’s how he fucks me like he does: like someone with taste who has chosen to taste me, and who has paid a high price for the privilege. It kind of makes me want to gag a little, but the bills get payed and I cum hard every time.
That’s what puts me here, lying on the bed, naked and glistening with sweat, staring up at a whirring ceiling fan in a brain fucked afterglow. I’m not sure where Daddy went but I don’t think I care, content in my stillness, when something drops next to my head. Then he’s suddenly above me.
I have a surprise for you, he says, his smile all straight white teeth.
I blink my eyes and push myself up on an elbow. Hey, what’s this Daddy?
Just open it.
He gestures at his overnight bag he dropped by my head. If you say so Daddy. I heft it up and unzip it while looking at him with one finger to my head and wrinkling my forehead like I’m thinking hard. Ooh, I wonder what it could be? I heft it up and flip it over, and its contents come spilling out. I toss the deflated bag to the side while my jaw drops so close the ground that I probably look like a cartoon.
In front of me are roll upon roll of cash, thick and bound, and, holy shit, all hundreds. Like thousands upon thousands, more money than I’ve ever seen or handled, the type of money that can change a life permanently. Immediately my mind flashes to an image of a room in a house, and sitting on a chair inside is Ivy, my head in her lap and a black cat—our cat—sprawled on the top of the couch parallel. She’s stroking my hair.
I snap out of it, and look back up into his wide-eyed stare. Um, Daddy? Is this really for me?
You know, you do call me Daddy Warbucks. He grabs my chin with a cupped hand and kisses me hard on the lips. It is, as long as you agree to do one thing for me. He gets on his knees on the floor so he is eye-level and says, There’s something different about me that I don’t share often, something wonderful, but it is not for everybody. Sometimes people are too scared when they see something new, and will run away. Will you run away?
I find myself judging my reaction time to my bedside table against his, my mind spinning around what’s about to go down, but then I look back at the heaping pile of cash. Why would he bring the money if he was just going to off me, and why now? If he just wants some weird sex thing he wildly overestimated the necessary price needed to get me hooked, but it’s not like I’m complaining.
I take a deep breath and try to make my smile as authentic as possible. Of course not Daddy! Why would I do a silly thing like that?
Okay. Then here’s my secret, he says with complete seriousness. I have a hinge that allows for—for my mouth to get much bigger than usual. And when the hinge swings open, others can come inside me and then—they can see through my eyes, feel what I feel—we can be closer than you could ever imagine. When I open it, I need you to keep your clothes on and step in feet first, until you have slid all of the way in. Then you can leave the rest to me, understand?
My face has been growing more and more disturbed as this this weirdo makes it clear he thinks he can accomplish some IRL vore on me, but then again, maybe this is his strange version of a prank, or, best case, using this as some very roundabout way to ask if he can choke on my foot. So I say Understood, my voice as small and high as a star-struck student having their worldview blown to smithereens.
Good. If you are willing, I’m sure you’ll love it. He raises the hands to the side of his face. Once I have opened the hatch, I will not be able to talk until I have closed you inside me.
Yes, Daddy.
His fingers press into his temples, and then begin to turn like a knob.
What happens is that his mouth just—expands. Like his jaw gets lower and his skin becomes stretchy and elastic—like ghostly pale—getting bigger and bigger until his teeth look comically small on the bottom and top, with that little thing that swings at the back of your throat right behind like a little pinkish raindrop. Past the gateway of his mouth, a meaty abyss has opened up, squirming and throbbing in the dark.
I feel like bolting and throwing up and crying all at once, but as I take short breaths I think about how this is exactly what he told me, that this is what he asked, that he had warned me and I had said yes like an idiot. And you could chalk it up to a broken brain or shock or trash parents or whatever you want, but I edge my feet off the bed like a little kid afraid to go down the water slide, inch by inch until they are dangling into the void. Then, all at once the rest of me follows, slipping straight down as the flesh closes in around me and the lights go out.
It’s hard to tell exactly how long I’m asleep. Or not asleep—not really. Just not fully there, in the pitch black, floating in meat. I can hear the pump of his blood as the body pulses around me. I wonder if this is what it was like to be in the womb. I wonder if I’m dead.
Unexpectedly, I start to see again. I’m in a huge bed with silky ivory-colored sheets, and it smells like clean laundry. I’m pulling the covers off and getting up, when someone yawns behind me, and I turn around to see a middle-aged woman looking at me, blonde hair across her face. Where you going baby? she says, voice rocky from sleep.
I don’t know what to say but I find myself responding: I’m just going to take Zeus for a walk, but I’ll be back soon and I’ll check in on the kids before I head out. I’m slipping on jeans and a t-shirt and call Come on Zeus, and from his dog bed in the corner a pretty husky rises up out of his bed and does a big dog stretch, before following me as I walk through the door.
My mind whirs as I walk down the hall, the walls covered in pictures of people that don’t stay long enough in my vision to see. That voice that had come out of my mouth was manly and monotone—nothing like mine. Is this a dream? I open up a door into a room with dark blue walls and look onto the top bunk of the bunk bed, where a hump rises up and down underneath the covers, before closing the door quietly. Then onto the next room: this one a cheerful pink. I know just where to look here too, a hump on the bed with the purple princess blankets. Zeus follows patiently at my heels.
The house is huge, but I know exactly where to go—down the curled stairs and through the big parlor room and the grand piano, to the front door where Zeus sits and I attach his leash. Then we’re outside, and the weather is in that perfect place that it sometimes is in the mornings on really hot days, where everything is just right with a slight breeze and no one’s out yet and—
Do you want to say something? I say. I said, do you want to say something? I’m still walking and Zeus trots along by my side just like the good boy he is. This is Daddy, I say, And I’m telling you that I’m giving you the chance to speak.
Everything stops, or I stop, or my reality seems to stop, but I am still walking, and it is clear that I am not dreaming. It is not me that is walking, it is Daddy. Daddy with the mouth, the gaping mouth where I am, the place where I’m trapped, on all sides, suffocating. But here I am, seeing the sidewalk in front of me, the sidewalk surrounded by these gorgeous old houses, the smell of trees and morning and crisp air. So I speak: What is happening? and for the first time really hear my voice, Daddy’s voice that is in no way my voice, and a cold wave fills me up, a dread that washes up my spine, suddenly drowning in a tide that I have only felt splashes of for years. What is happening?
And Daddy replies: You’re inside me, like I told you. And now you get to be with me, to see what I see, and feel what I feel.
Daddy please, you have to let me out. I can’t stand this anymore. I can’t stand it, I plead, my desperation sounding unnatural in his voice.
Don’t worry, you’ll find that it gets easier as time passes, it just takes some time to adjust. Pretty soon you won’t even know the difference.
But tomorrow—tomorrow, you said that I would be with you only for the weekend, right? So tomorrow you’ll take me home, because the money right?
Sure, tomorrow. Right. Tomorrow, if that’s what you want.
I let a few moments pass before I begin screaming Help as loud at the top of his lungs, a bellowing cry that lasts for only moments before his mouth snaps shut and I become voiceless.
We have stopped walking, and Zeus sits and looks up at us. The first rule, he says through clenched teeth, Is that you behave. I am the captain and you are only a passenger. Your sight, your voice, your touch—they are privileges that I can and will revoke at any time. I could ground you and put you back in the dark right now, and you should be thankful for every moment that I don’t. Do you understand?
Daddy I—
Are you thankful?
Yes, I—
Say thank you.
Th-thank you Daddy.
Now are you going to behave?
Yes, Daddy.
Good girl.
Neither of us talk again, and we complete the rest of the walk in silence.
I don’t know how to explain it—the feeling of doing things and knowing you did that thing while also somehow knowing you’re not the one pulling the strings. I want to think it’s me going through this day, playing with my kids, kissing my wife, throwing sticks for the dog, reading the newspaper. When I look at his perfectly girly girl and super boy I think about the queer drama kid I was, and how much better off these kids are: how well suited they both are for the world they’re training for—princesses and fucking heroes. And wouldn’t it be so easy to just take my hands off the wheel and go on autopilot—slip into it like some sort of trance and just drift away? That feeling of revulsion as we look in the mirror and shave his beard could stop—I could just…stop. Disassociate just like I used to, but this time just let the part that is me dissipate like some bad trip.
At dinner, my wife has made us all a delicious lasagna, and it’s so good that I take a second big square after the I finish off the first. My daughter looks at me and giggles. Daddy, you eat so much!
That’s…because…I’m…a…MONSTER! I roar, fingers bent into claws, pretending to eat her arm as she laughs hysterically.
In this house, we go to sleep early, and a few hours later the lights are off and we’re in bed, eyes closed. I can feel my hands beneath the sheets, the silkiness just barely touching down on them. Then something different happens: I’m gone, or, I guess, Daddy is gone but I’m left behind, and with both hands I grab as much of the sheet as I can in clenched fists as the moment passes and I’m pulled down too.
It is dark here, but it is not the same—this is a bigger darkness. I hear voices like bubbles popping all around me, faint and brief but coming from all directions. I don’t know how to get to them, but I’m also not sure how to move. They’re getting louder, and now I am sure they are women. They are crying but enraged, cowering and begging for their lives but fighting with their claws bared. And don’t know how I know but I know that they are like me, girls like me. But they are disappearing—there is meat all around them and there is no one to hear their voices, and they dissolve, melting into the flesh until their voices grow fainter again. And then there are no voices except mine, screaming Come back, don’t leave me! But I don’t think anyone can hear me. I think maybe I am fading too.
I start to see again. I am already out of bed, outside, Zeus beside us. It is colder this morning, a mist obscuring the street, and the dream starts to come back as I walk. As we walk—no, as he walks. That the part of me that is me, the part encased in this thing I am looking out of—she had a dream, and in it I saw what would happen, or what was already happening. What had happened before, and would happen again.
What a fucked up way to go.
Good morning Daddy, I say, finding that he has allowed me access to his mouth.
I thought I felt you there waking up, he says, more upbeat than I’ve ever heard him. Good morning sleepy head. How did you enjoy your day yesterday?
It was…it was interesting.
Interesting? You got a taste of my life, of the life you can now experience.
But, I thought you were going to take me back home today, I say, already knowing the answer.
I think—I think we have other plans today.
I take a deep breath, and feel his lungs expand. Why do you do this to us?
To us? Who’s us?
To me, to them. To all of the girls you’ve—I heard them. And I know what’s happening, and you need to let me go.
We’re still walking, but faster now, his arms swinging from side to side and Zeus keeping perfect pace. Already you are happier than you were yesterday, more accepting as I let you have the life that you could have had—that you were meant to have but squandered, he says, gritting his teeth. And if you heard the voices of the others—it’s proof, right?
We both stop talking for a moment as he picks up speed, Zeus loping beside us.
To be honest, I say in between breaths, I’m sorry I asked. I’d rather I was tricked into being eaten by a Tiger or something rather than whatever the fuck you are.
You—all of you—are so disrespectful, never taking even a moment to thank me, never recognizing all the things I do for you.
You need to let me out, people will be looking for me.
People will be looking for you? Your own parents have disowned you because you’re a degenerate freak, he laughs. You’re a whore. No one will be looking for you.
You’re wrong—there are people who care about me, and they know about us. I’ve given them all of the information and they’re expecting me back home tonight.
And you’re a fucking liar, he hisses.
I’ll forget everything, and no one will ever know. I’ll go back home and you’ll never hear of me ever again.
He’s silent.
They have your photo.
What? We have stopped as he bends his knees to breathe, back and forehead slick with sweat.
Your photo. I took it on my phone while you were sleeping. They know what you look like. They’ll find that photo when I don’t show up tomorrow, and then they’ll find you. And your perfect little life will be ruined.
No one will believe your little friend whores. There’s nothing you can do to me.
Sure, maybe. But if you let me out, I will go home and I’ll delete it, and you’ll never have to see me again. I pinky promise.
He’s laughing again, but at what I don’t know.
You dumb bitch, he says.
Everything disappears and then suddenly I’m back again. We are in front of a door in a white hallway—my door. Fuck, I’m such an idiot.
Open it, he says. My keypad is flashing red.
Why should I? I ask.
Because if you don’t, I’m going to hang out around here until someone comes, and I’m going to wait until they go inside, follow behind them and slit their throat.
I think about Ivy skipping up here and feel panic shudder through me as I imagine him following behind her, and then—I can’t handle thinking about it. I make decisions that sometimes put me in harm’s way and I think I’m better than most at bearing the results, but only when it’s me taking the punishment.
Okay fine, you win. I say the code.
The keypad makes that happy ding sound and he turns the lock, and I’ve never hated a robot more in my life.
As we walk through the kitchen, the dahlias sitting on the countertop look more like imploding stars than they did before with their aging droop. He throws open the door to my bedroom violently, and it ricochets off the living room wall.
Where is your phone? he demands.
It’s in the beside table.
He pulls it open and grabs my phone.
Code?
Same as the door.
He puts it in and struggles to find the photos app, before he begins to tap through the photos, one by one.
This will take years, can’t I just do it?
He pauses for a moment, and says Fine. But try anything and I swear I will kill your friend when they come.
I understand.
For the second time since that brief moment the night before, I find myself in control of his hands. He is too distracted focusing on the pictures that I’m deftly navigate with his left hand to notice his right drifting back toward the bedside table. I wait until the hand is almost in the drawer before I make my move. With every bit of strength and willpower that I have left, I grab the honeyed handle of my switchblade and flip it upright as I swing it directly for his throat.
As the blade plunges into his Adam’s apple I feel a slight pull of resistance, but it is too little and too late. My phone clatters to the ground as he falls back on the bed, arms desperately flailing at his throat to stem the cascade of blood. The pain is sharp, but worse is the gurgle of drowning when no direction could possibly bring air. Then, like a tide going out, it all begins to recede as vision blurs and limbs slump. Then, the world vanishes.
It’s dark again and I am still enmeshed in flesh, but this time things are different. There is no sound of pumping blood or all of the other little things that a body does. Now, I am truly trapped in meat and meat alone.
It strikes me all at once that it’s been days since I have eaten, or drank water, or anything else that keeps a person living. An all-ravenous hunger overtakes me and I suddenly feel more beast than human, and without thinking about it for a second I open my mouth wide and push my mouth onto whatever is before me, biting down hard. It slides into my mouth, sticky and wet, but I chew vigorously and swallow.
Then again, and again, and again.
I start thinking about The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a book both my parents would read to me night after night. It was the funniest thing I could imagine that he eats all these fruits, these very tasty looking fruits, but then he’s still hungry even after so many and so he eats basically all the things at once. And I remember how delicious all of those foods looked—like the cherry pie, and the chocolate cake. And the pickle! I had forgotten about that, or at least not really thought about it, until now. Because I think I really now get what he meant when he said that he was hungry.
I don’t know how long it has been, but I haven’t stopped eating. The skin of his belly has started to collapse down onto me as I’ve consumed him, a thin rubber blanket conforming to my shape. I can see now from my own eyes, filtered light through the neon red of his flesh like the twilight of some alien sunset. The skin of his belly stretches outwards and grows taught before it breaks: a satisfying ripping, noiseless, as my grasping hands and feet emerge, pushing up his white t-shirt caked in browning blood.
Pushing myself through the gnawed remains of his pried apart ribcage, I sit up. My eyes take time to adjust to the light, and through the blur it becomes clear that I’m still here, on my bed in my apartment, with Appa still staring watchfully but a bit redder than I remember. The money is gone, but I don’t seem to care. A convulsive shiver runs down my spine and I cross my arms across my chest and squeeze. Looking down, I see a flabby layer of fleshy slime coating me, but I also see me: my breasts, my arms, my thighs. I move my hair, and although it feels sticky and wet I smile as it brushes my back. I wiggle my toes and feel a stray bit of Daddy fall off.
Everything is the same, but yet everything is new. I feel tears well up in my eyes as I raise up from the sack of flesh and bone below me, my knees quivering. Then, surprising even myself, with my own voice I begin to sing.
Cosima Bee Concordia is a femme giantess that enjoys scary movies, transgressive religious iconography, and anything else that is kinky and queer. Her writing explores the spaces where the erotic and the horrific meet, attempting to build new mythologies to feed those who exist in the liminal spaces of our world. Cosima works as a bookseller at Powell’s, and lives nearby with her partner and doggo in a basement fortified by books. If you want to follow her work, you can find her instagram @cosimabeeconcordia.