IGMS Issue 49

The chains on the swings were uneven. If we kept swinging, we'd collide, both of us flying higher and higher, closer and closer, until our legs tangled and our monsters touched. Even then they knew each other. My monster and yours.

When I laughed and tasted sunshine in my mouth, my monster reached out its black tongue and tried to touch you. You clamped your hands over your mouth, your elbows locked around the creaking chains of the swing to hold on, but it wasn't enough. The black tendrils of your monster hungered for mine.

I swung too high and touched the sky. Marble clouds tossed me to the ground, a pile of broken girl pride. I skinned my knee. You jumped off your swing and came to my side. Your monster slithered from the corner of your puckered mouth as you considered my red-knitted knee. With shaking fingers, you picked the grass away. Together, we watched dewdrops of blood well up, fat and shiny.

I touched the back of your head, barbershop fresh, and the hairs tickled my palm.

You looked up. I looked down.

Our monsters looked out.

They said hello. I see you. I'm here too.

But you bit down on your monster and it writhed against your lip. You shoved my hand away as if I'd stung you. Your jaw worked as you chewed and chewed, making your monster behave. I crawled away on hands and sore knees. My monster beat against the inside of my eyes, begging me to let it out.

But I couldn't. Not while you kicked up a clod of grass, swallowing the last gulp of your monster, angry and full of boy. I brushed myself off and went inside without a word.

You didn't even try to follow me.

My
monster shivered up my spine, its thousand ant-like feet spiking my nerves like stolen vodka. It recognized your monster's presence, your voice in the hallway. I slammed my locker and shoved my sweaty hair out of my eyes. But you never looked at me anymore.

What control you must've had over your monster, to lock it away, when my own begged me day and night for a glimpse of you, the faint scent your cologne left in a room, the echo of your footsteps.

I turned my back to the direction from which I knew you'd come. My monster pounded my temples. I closed my eyes, but my monster beat harder.

You spoke of homecoming, of calculus assignments and college plans. Your footsteps stopped and my breath stopped.

My monster couldn't bear the nearness of you. It swarmed from my nose, my ears, my eyes - a hungry grasping thing that blinded me. I heard you suck in your breath.

You touched my shoulder. I turned my head, pretending nonchalance, but in reality, I was about to fall.

Yes, I said. Yes. I would meet you after school.

Where was your monster? I looked for it in your eyes, thought I saw it peeking through the black windows of your pupils but I couldn't tell.

Maybe that was just you.

You looking at me. Me looking back.

We met in the auditorium, stage left, behind the dust-filled curtains. My knees shook so I leaned against the prop table full of drama club leftovers - a broken fan, a plastic rat, a chipped teacup.

My monster rippled through my skin. It wanted to dance and cavort but I made it be still. We didn't want to frighten you. The look on your face pinned me to the table.

You looked hungry. Not your monster. You.

And my monster was starved. It didn't even ask me. It gave me to you. It spilled out of my gullet, hoping your mouth on mine would sate its belly-burning fever.

How I ached - the turning inside-out of myself as my monster pulled me into you, searching for its other half. But we couldn't find it. You'd hidden it too deep. There was only emptiness. We shrank back into myself, tiny and sad and miserable.

My lips were swollen and the back of my arms budded with ten small, round bruises that matched your fingertips.

You backed away. I wiped my mouth, tucking inside my monster's loose entrails. In your face was the horror of what we were.

I didn't blame you when you turned and ran.

I didn't even call after you.

Maybe
it was locked-up desire that let your monster loose that night. Or maybe it was the steamy southern night full of screeching cicadas and too-tight clothing.

Maybe it was two not-yet-adults, no-longer-teenagers who stumbled into each other at the local dive bar, each reeking of cheap beer and pheromones.

No matter how it happened, it did. I wish now I'd been less tipsy around the edges. Things might have turned out differently when you hooked the belt loop of my jeans with your finger and tugged me away from the bar. We lost ourselves in the forgotten corner behind the pool table. I don't remember the song playing but I'll never forget the feel of your hands on my hips. I burned. My monster did too.

I tipped my head away into air thick with strangers' breath and unspoken trouble, the world swimming this way and that, but your monster watched me through your eyes. Its tendrils came creeping through your tear ducts, unfurling like black banners.

When your monster reached past my lips, slid over my teeth and tasted my tongue, it left behind the smoke of campfire marshmallows and lickety-split promises. My monster didn't wait. It slipped up my throat. You flinched as your monster poured out faster and stronger.

I gulped it down. For the first time, you saw me. Us. You accepted this darkness we shared.

But instead of pulling, your hands pushed. My monster tried to hold on. Yours did too. They tangled together, trying to fuse into a deep, dark whole that we couldn't break, you and me.