Metamorphosis: August Writing Prompt Responses

This month’s writing prompt was Metamorphosis. Here we showcase all the responses that were submitted.

Metamorphosis prompt: Our bodies peel as we burn under the sun, we shed old skin, we are reptilian. It’s a time of adaptation to hotter weather and an evolving climate. Gills appear in the hollow of your neck and scales glint under your thighs. You’re becoming someone new, a creature of the deep.

Transmutation

I was mute until I was five years old. I was expressive enough, slamming soft-pink palms onto counters for help or food or the bottom-shelf cup I couldn’t reach. Still, my mother was concerned. She sought out doctors, spent fresh-inked pay checks on dead-end diagnoses. The doctors eased down checkboxes and sighed. There was nothing wrong with me. I needed time. I’d come around. My mother understood, She doesn’t want to.

—

My first sentence crashed through my childhood in one fell swoop. Leaning forward onto my knees in reverence of early morning cartoons, I turned to my mother at the kitchen sink. Do you think the signal is messed up? The TV is glitching. The pot she dried clattered back into the soapy sink.

—

Baffling, frustrating, my elective mutism defied the endless mumbling that followed. I trailed behind my mom as she folded clothes and stood at the door while she escaped to the bathroom
and spilled my running monologue. Dish towel in hand months into my new-speech, she cradled my face and said, Sometimes, Cucú, we need to know when to stop. I didn’t know how to explain, But I don’t want to.

—

School was my opportunity to demonstrate obstinance, one my mother accepted begrudgingly. Pencils straight and notebook parallel and eraser dustings swiped off, I felt normal. I felt like one
person in this bustling classroom had to be my friend — that’s how it worked. My shoes squeaked with each excited jerk whenever another kid passed by, another kid who didn’t choose the seat next to me. I eyed the blue plastic wondering if it was bad luck to put bookbags on chairs; it was bad luck to put them on the ground, though. In the midst of childish turmoil, hand hovering over bag, I heard my first friend. Can I sit here? Hauling my bag into my lap, I gestured, I guess.

—

I took to Leo like kids learned to swim. Out of my depth in class, recess, cafeteria, quiet hallways, I latched onto him. Through frantic kicks and mouthfuls of water, I understood how to exist with others. I collected grievances for him. He dissected them. I gave and he gave back. With each new set of uniforms, banter evolved and wit sharpened. The first time my mother met Leo she welcomed him, and in the same breath, cautioned him. Later, she would gawk at the
articulate menace he’d transmuted. She claimed he was magic. He claimed that was me.

—

The last time — penultimate time — I held Leo was before shutting my Civic, him knocking the roof twice, For good luck. I couldn’t swallow the grief fighting its way up my throat, letting it flow, a torrential downpour, a storm of everything unholy in me, everything I understood to be true, every, I love you — every, You’re magic — every, I wish you could go with me — every, I can’t do this without you. He grinned, lazy, all-knowing, out of my depth. He promised no
return.

by Sophia Saco

I won’t try to reach for you if it is your wish

I might not get the chance to give you the last souvenir, so I’ll keep it
Your best wishes are with me, from all of the evil eyes, they will protect me
You’re the best and the perfect person in this universe
I might not get the chance to give the last souvenir, so I’ll keep it
You bring this metamorphosis in me, brighten me up like the Sun
I won’t try to reach for you if it is your wish
I might not get the chance to give the last souvenir so I’ll keep it
Your best wishes are with me, from all of the evil eyes, they will protect me

by Inner Monologue (@inner__monologue__ Insta)

I’m busy thinking of alternatives- imagining another way.
I’m at my parents -in the big room – and I’m painting the walls
and pulling up carpet,
in the small one, for him.
A sense of nothing looming over me- no one to answer to
or think
              Three
                       steps
                            ahead
for.
Cash poor- love and time rich-
The fresh paint smells good.

by GS

Tree

I think I may be bark and wood;
I think I may just be a tree.
Sparse, sparse of leaf I’ve always stood.
—Now: stuffed to the brink with wood.

But perhaps my call a god should hear, 
spare me fire; perhaps from ash I’ll rise—we’ll see.
—But now: I think I’m bark and wood;
I think I may just be a tree.

by Diego Calle (@diegoca11e X)

The thing in the library

“I’m worried about Warren.”
That was the first indication that all was not well in the Kinley household.

Warren and Amanda had been married nearly 20 years and had three children.
A stable, happy marriage. Or so I thought.

I had been friends with Warren since Uni. I had gone abroad to live in France.
I kept in touch and made visits to the house. Warren and Amanda seemed happy.
Warren had found a new hobby, writing. He had started writing some funny stories.

After a couple of years I heard that Warren had published some of his stories.
It was moving from a hobby to a serious pastime.

But in the past year Amanda has told me that Warren looked more and more preoccupied.
Less talkative. She said he was behaving oddly. His sleep is getting irregular.
He is spending more time in the library away from the rest of us.

I spoke to Warren. He had changed. Older. More grim. More weary. He spoke a lot about writing. New material, new ideas for stories. He hardly mentioned Amanda or the children.

As the time passed Warren became more detached from his family and friends. He was spending all his time in the library writing, nothing but writing.

His productivity has increased. He has written dozens of books. But they are no longer humorous. They are much darker in tone.

“Gives me the chills,” said Amanda.

I joke that I have to keep the light on at night after reading one of Warren’s new stories. But it’s not a joke really. I’ve read some of his later books and they make me feel uncomfortable, uneasy.

Amanda tells me that she is frightened. More so because of the change in Warren. He looks dreadful. Like a half-life. So pale and thin. His eyes have sunken into his skull. And communication is now almost non-existent. Amanda says, It’s like I’m living with the shell of
a man.

It’s no longer about money and fame. He’s driven by something else to carry on writing. It’s no longer a hobby. I’ve not seen him smile. I caught sight of him at work. It was so grim and scary. It was like I wasn’t looking at Warren. Not the Warren I knew. I was looking at a
wraith. I had to leave. The image was seared into my brain.

I no longer recognise the man I married.

It’s worse. Warren no longer eats or sleeps. He hasn’t spoken at all in weeks. Something is
driving him mad? I want him to take a break. I fear it may already be too late.

And now the library is locked.

I scream and shout for Warren to let me in.
No reply.
I’m frantic. I get help to break down the door. Something awful has happened. I just know it.

The room is entered. There is no sign of Warren. Just papers everywhere. The pen is still warm. Where is he? There are no windows, no false doors.

And then I read the top paper on the desk with horror. It resembled Warren’s handwriting.

“I have written by a compulsion that drove me on and on. And I poured myself into these pages. My life before you. I found a secret. But it came at a terrible cost. The more I wrote, the more of myself I lost until there came a point where the me that the world knew was no more. That has transferred to all the pages of writing you see before you.”
It went on.
“It is nearly…..

Those were the last words.

I never saw Warren again. Amanda kept all the papers. Never threw them away or sent them away to a publisher. She never lets anyone look upon these papers. But spends hours upon hours alone in the library looking and reading the papers. She has not eaten or spoke to anyone in days. She looks frail and gaunt.

I’m worried about Amanda…

by Simon Collinson (@simon_coll87859 X)

Lithic Grief

I have felt myself becoming stone
darkening at the edges,
a drought-stressed tree
riddled with galls

In my blood, the dark drear-tide
of indelible iron ink,
the tannin-scripted grain
of grief—lithic

I am inkhorn-filled with its stain:
the formation of a gall,
urn-shaped, my insides eggs,
a screaming of exit holes

Imagine death not all tan-brown
but oxalis neon yellow
dark red of madder root
vivid blues from indigo

Immanent as insects emerging,
all waspish, mad acorns
knopper-galled, a dreaming
of eggs laid on leaves

by Paul atten Ash (@NorthSeaNav X, @north_sea_navigator Insta)

Pathway

At last she is there;
I see her at the end of the road.

So long she has sat in shadows,
Waiting for me to find her.

My old skin made me heavy;
Kept me in places I didn’t belong. 

I had been unable to move toward her,
She was so very distant from me.

Now I step forward with ease;
A smile for my future self. 

by By Lucy O’Neill (@turningthepage08 Insta)

Cocoon

Tired and helpless, awaiting my doom,
Into a tight little ball, I have curled.
Nesting and resting inside my cocoon;
Want to emerge into some better world.

Blanket surroundings; so heavy, so safe,
Guard me and hide me from all that is strange.
Warm and inviting; no need to escape.
Moving is hard, there is no need to change.

Guiding hands come and they open a crack,
Hold out my water and give me a snack,
Help me stay up as I try to shrink back;
“Time to evolve now, I’ll help you unpack”.

by Emma Jane Grey (@emma_jane_reads Insta)

Lifecycle of Our Adoration

Remember when we uploaded albums of photographs on
Facebook? I had one called ‘2015: the year when dreams
are going to become reality.’ It was a year of graduation,
European travel, and realising our love was a golden egg.

I wish I could have convinced the hopeless romantic in me
to stop romanticising the well-meaning people who hurt me.
Maybe we were young and stupid, but we knew it deep within
our souls, held onto our little piece of peace, and let it grow.

They all said long-distance wouldn’t last but we were so
smitten; lucky to have found each other on the other side
of this maddening planet. I cleansed sharp wounds and
shattered illusions with gentle dew drops from your lips.

I wish I could have convinced the bullied tween in me
that every gash carved when they said I would be so pretty
if only… [insert deepest insecurity here], would be healed
slowly, each time you endearingly caressed my stretch marks.

Two years ago, we proved all the hissing nay-sayers wrong
when I took a leap of faith across oceans — migrated to find
your safe hands with matching wedding bands. We shed all
their expectations in our safe cocoon; morphing into pupae.

I wish I could have convinced the anxiously attached girl
in me that I didn’t need their validation; always unrequited.
I was blinded by false fairytales and fake façades, but your
caramel brown eyes had x-ray soul vision into my compassion.

This morning, I opened my eyes to your sleeping silhouette
and bliss swept through my bones, warmed by cozy comfort.
When your drowsy eyes met mine, you said: “your face is a shining
moon with a pleasant smile,” and pulled me in closer to the glow.

Now we have our wedding photo albums in a cupboard
under the TV in our bedroom. Endless supply of security, two
wall brown butterflies blooming on our shared axis of adoration;
flourishing together and grateful we dared to dream 11 years ago.

by Nitika Balaram (@nitika.balaram Insta)

Eve of Womanhood

You prayed ad nauseum for this deliverance
To sing the song of womanhood
To feel the heavy weight of it
Fragilely rest your tired fingers upon the freedom of it
The poem of the soul

Caught in a current
Of the great bardo of girlhood, sweating though your dress
In the mess of graceless flesh, you waited with baited breath
I heard you, and so

Ended the embryonic journey
Bestowed to you these ultraviolet desires
The inevitable death
The truth of this
Transmutation, you become

Doe eyed and blood-stained and
Milk-toothed at twenty-four and
Weeping for your mother on the kitchen floor
A call, a wish to revert to that sweet state of inertia
Burning love-looks nulled, pull the curtains
Of the socialised play, you are weary, you plead
For salvation, to disengage—

Objectify, sanctify
Pray and pray and pray
To find that

God seems to stop listening
Past a particular age

by Dervla McDonnell (@dervlamcdonnell Insta)

Song of the Siren

When the ocean crashes into the cliffs lining the beach, there is a millisecond of silence that occurs as the wave retreats and the next one takes its place – this is, on occasion, when my sister said it can be heard. Sometimes, it can be even quieter than this, caught between the whispering of foam as it dissolves along the shoreline, or the gentle skittering of crustacean legs across the ocean floor, miles upon miles below the sand in which we sit.

The first time I succumbed to my sister’s nagging and tried my best to concentrate on the silences between sounds, a bolt of ice had shot down my spine. My clumsy child-hands dropped my popsicle into the sand, and my lungs forgot how to reinflate.

It was subtle, sure, but it was there: a painful shrillness. Similar to somebody taking a scratched record and then playing it in reverse, filling the air with unintelligible crackling and screeching. It hollowed my stomach and dropped my heart right into it.

Is this what she was so eager to have me hear? I looked to my sister for confirmation, but she was already gone. Her tiny legs were hurtling towards the ocean.

She had pushed through the waves with unprecedented speed. I sprinted after her, but the sand squeezed its wet, heavy fingers around my ankles – a desperate attempt to keep me stationed on solid ground. I relented, thrashed my legs free, and managed to paddle towards my sister.

I sputtered breathlessly – but not once did my sister look up. Instead, her eyes remained glued to the water. The foam that surrounded us obstructed her view, and with a swiping forearm, she cleared the surface. She spun her body, and twirled her head, as though something was lurking, circling.

That’s when I saw it, too. Darting around our legs were flashes of shiny, black scales. Thick string licked my legs and then dashed away again. Each time the sea creature touched or twirled around me, that same distorted cackle rose from the water.

‘What are they?’ I asked my sister.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but aren’t they beautiful?’

—

I grew more accustomed to the presence of these sea creatures over the years. We still didn’t have a name for them – mostly because we never got the chance to see what they really looked like. We made assumptions, of course – sea manatees, stingrays. Maybe some entirely new species altogether, discovered by two ten-year-olds who were beckoned towards the sea by their shrill calls. I had asked my sister why she never clamped her hands over her ears like I did when these sounds pierced the sky. Teeth crunching glass. Talons against chalkboards. I offered all these comparisons – precise ones, at that – to see which one resonated most – but she simply looked through me. Cocked an eyebrow.

Curious, my child-self had set out to ask people what creatures they thought we were dealing with. I had approached the lifeguards first. As they strolled along the beach, patrolling for stragglers as the sun cast the sky in a warm orange, I ran between their bodies and, with no introduction, bombarded them with questions. But as they looked down at me, ruffled my hair with a laugh, I realized they’d be no help. I had even resorted to asking normal beach-goers, – but, thinking I was trying to entice them into playing some silly beach game, they dismissed every word.

The only time I had been somewhat close to an answer was with Daddy’s friend, the captain. He docked at this beach between long travels, often spending afternoons drinking warm cans of beer
and bantering with Daddy. I had approached him once, momentarily marvelled at how much longer his Santa-like beard had grown since the last time I saw him, and then opened fire.

‘Have you seen them before? They’re like, black, sort-of. And they have glittery scales and they dart around our legs really quickly. Sometimes they call to let us know they’re here and it’s like, the worst screech you’ve ever heard. Like some sort of—’ But the color had drained from the captain’s face before I could finish. A couple minutes passed before either of us spoke again, and when he did, a strained laugh came from his throat. The laughter never ended up meeting his eyes.

—

Quickly, we had evolved from curious children, to eager teenagers who ripped our pasty uniforms from our sticky bodies and dove freely into the water, searching for the serenity we knew the ocean and its’ creatures would inject into our veins like an analgesic. But now, we were young adults, and our trips to the ocean grew increasingly rarer, interrupted by the stresses of unpaid internships and bosses whose coffee breaths assaulted everyone in a five-mile radius.

I could see my sister was struggling. When we did find chances to swim, her interest in our shared secret dwindled. She no longer laughed when they wrapped their slick limbs around her ankles, nor did she care when their frenzied swimming enveloped us in their tiny whirlpools. She simply watched her hands as they pruned beneath the surface, then brought them to her lips to suck the salt from her cuticles.

‘There is no rhyme or reason,’ she had said to me one night. After another exhausting week, we had brought towels to the beach and lazed in our work clothes. Bright moonlight shone down on us. It made the sweat tangled in my sister’s black hair sparkle.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

She continued staring towards the ocean, thick waves rolling in and out. ‘There are wars and violence and love and hate and we exist everywhere and nowhere all at once.’

As I parted my lips, a familiar shrillness erupted from the waves. It was louder this time, disorienting; my body moved before my mind did, squeezing my head between my thighs to stifle the screams rising from the ocean. But my efforts were useless. The screams penetrated my flesh, bullets through glass, and an overwhelming nausea rocked my body, blackened my vision.

Quickly, the screams were replaced with another noise: a violent assault of tinnitus, striking with an intensity that would send one bolting to the emergency room. It was harsh, but not as harsh as the noise previous; now, I was able to remove my head from my legs, look towards my sister for safety.

But she wasn’t sitting next to me anymore.

She was walking towards the ocean.

She was already halfway towards the tide when she began peeling her clothes from her body. First her blouse, then her skirt. Her movements were clumsy, heavy hands falling to her sides after each failed attempt to dislodge a button. Every limb screamed intoxication, but her head remained sickeningly still, staring straight ahead. She did not look down once, not even when she stumbled over her brassiere which had caught between her feet.

There was something in the water, staring back at her. It was a face. Pale and angular, with two large ovals, glinting darkly beneath the moonlight. Black string poured from the face’s scalp in sheets. The face was accompanied by a single limb, sticking stiffly through the surface, stretched towards my sister who was now waist-deep and completely naked, and paddling forward.

Terror struck my heart. I tried to push myself from the ground, run towards the water, but thick hands of wet sand had cuffed my hands and feet to the shore. They tightened with every thrash. I tried to scream for my sister to turn around and come back, but when I opened my mouth, only a fine dust was expelled from my lungs.

Helplessly, I watched as my sister wrapped her fingers around the creature’s long talons. With one swift movement, it pulled her body forward, and in the next moment, my sister was gone.

—

It had been a month since my sister succumbed to the ocean, stolen by the hands of a creature we had unknowingly spent our whole lives sharing the waters with. I had tried my best to muster the courage to tell our parents the circumstances in which she was taken – some humanoid being, luring their daughter into the ocean, taking her by the hand and dragging her to the deep. But every time I opened my mouth, the dry taste of sand lingered. I knew I would never be believed.

I claimed to our parents, one night, that I was venturing to a friend’s place. She’d help me put the final touches on the missing posters, before we set out sticking them around town the next day.

They didn’t stir when I took their car and drove in the opposite direction, towards the beach. I didn’t bother to take the keys from the engine when I arrived at the beachfront. I figured I’d make it easier for whoever needed to drive it back home to my parents the next morning.

I walked down to the tide, and stood in the white foam, watching it dissolve around my feet. I couldn’t tell you, how long I had watched the tide retreat before it returned once again with more sheets of hissing froth. The sounds of dissolution were all I could hear, and in me it brewed a fiery impatience. I kicked my feet along the shore, shredding my toes against sharp seashells, then screamed until my lungs threatened to collapse. It was only the silence that lingered
between my mustering my next scream that I heard it – a lullaby, soothing and child-like. It swirled gently from the foamy surface of the ocean, then travelled towards me before caressing my cheeks with soft, invisible fingers.

I looked toward the ocean, and in the distance, I saw a slither of a forehead. Pale and shimmering beneath the moonlight. Still against the thrashing waves.

Slowly, I swam towards the shining white. As I approached, it rose further through the surface, thick sheets of dark hair shielding the creature’s features. There was no hesitance as I reached forward, brushing aside the slick, slimy hair. I wanted to see everything my sister saw in her last moments.

When I saw the creature’s eyes, I recoiled. They were gaping and oval-like, like last time. But now they held startlingly blue irises, pupils – unnaturally stretched, but human-like, nonetheless. I continued pushing aside the hair, letting it fall into the ocean. The creature had no nose – instead, gills beneath the jaw, flushing seawater in and out, in and out. But the mouth was there – a wide gash, unmistakably curled into a crescent moon.

I was not staring into the eyes of the creature who had taken my sister – but the eyes of my sister herself.

The sweetly-hummed lullaby grew louder, but not threateningly so. I noticed, just barely, that my sister’s mouth was slightly ajar, moving rhythmically with the melodies that floated through the air. She was singing to me.

As I smiled, a stiff limb rose from the water. It was porcelain-pale, and five times larger than my own hand, with thick webbing between the dark talons. She was holding her hand out to me, asking me to join her.

I reached my hand out to her own. Behind her, a long, black tail splashed through the water. Scales glinted in the light.

I wrapped my fingers around her talons, thick and slimy with algae. I could’ve sworn, when she bared her fangs toward me, she was smiling too. With one swift movement, she pulled me towards her body, sliding her arms around my torso in a gentle embrace.

When the creature pierced its talons into my flesh, she made sure to continue singing over the sounds of my own screaming. Her lullaby, soft and sweet, soothed me to sleep as she dragged my body towards the ocean floor.

by Pixie Wray (@pyxeigh Insta)

St. Roch

I don’t think Gregor Samsa ever turned into a cockroach. Kafka just wanted us to think this man had undergone an overnight metamorphosis—from man to insect. Sometimes, it doesn’t seem like that far of a leap. Madagascar’s hissing cockroaches give live birth after all, like us mammals. But, what I’m trying to say here is that Samsa never actually became a roach. He was just dealing with a crisis of self. He had entered such a deep well of depression, become so drained of self-worth, that he manifested this image of himself as the lowliest bug in the universe. It was a total psychotic break—a mania that spread like a disease to his entire family. It warped their idea of him until yes, they said, you are a cockroach. That kind of crazy has long, clawed fingers and fangs so sharp they’d make a shark blush. It can swallow minds with startling efficiency.

         I knew of a man once who believed his wife was a werewolf. He’d been diagnosed with schizophrenia and remained institutionalized in Mexico City to this day. He always referred to her as “mujer lobo” and often told the staff not to let her visit him—especially at night, when there was a risk she might show her “true form.” His wife, Ana, was a friend of mine and I watched his madness destroy her in ways both physical and mental. For a time, she started to think there was something wrong with her body. She became suspicious of sudden urges for raw meat, questioned her past history of sleepwalking, and was disturbed by mood swings that seemed to grow in frequency as the moon gained weight.

         Lycanthropy is one hell of a drug, what can I say. She finally went to grief counseling and started sleeping again. She no longer shudders at the mention of wolves, and the raw meat obsession turned out to be merely a severe iron deficiency.

         Yet, her mind went there—to that place where her ex-husband’s delusions seemed plausible. And I guess I want to see what lives in that unlit passage, with its uneven floors and splintered walls and doors that leak whispers from keyholes. I wanted to touch that strange hollow in the brain where a man looks down and sees the thorax of a roach. That place where Ana wept for her husband at the San Hipólito Hospital, and it became howling.

         A place I found in the heart of New Orleans, in St. Roch’s Campo Santo.  

* * *

         It was still overcast when I arrived at the cemetery and rainwater pooling on the cracked concrete reflected a marble display of the crucifixion. I needed the escape from Jean, from our little three bedroom on Burdette Street. She complained of the dogs barking while we ate red beans and rice.

         “John, tell them to stop,” she kept saying.

         Her voice had all the significance of a gnat’s wing grazing the ear at this stage in our relationship. Married twenty-eight years and in all that time we hadn’t exactly uncovered that “to love and to cherish” bit the priest mentioned. We just were, and it was all we would ever be, and I knew Sam saw it too. Him and the grandkids were the only saving grace in this scenario of can-we-get-to-death-and-part-already lifestyle we’d fostered.

         “John, tell them to stop, for fuck’s sake.”

         “Ang suggestions?” I asked Sam from across the table.

         He just shook his head, and the dogs kept barking for a handout. Jean eventually left the room, and I considered the broken sundial in the yard. I stared at it with the flowers growing around its fractured center until I couldn’t stand the sound of Sam’s fork scraping the plate in silence and the heat rising from under Jean’s bedroom.

         I grabbed my copy of The Arabian Nights and left for the cemetery without telling anyone where I was going. I couldn’t family anymore. The dead seemed to be much more suitable company for my irritable old ass. I’d be joining them soon enough anyway, so it was just as well that we begin to get acquainted.

         I would be sixty-five next spring, and my hair resembled the sky above: bleached white mingling with faded gray. I’d been told for many years that St. Roch’s was where people came to find healing. There was supposedly a chamber here on the grounds littered with casts, crutches, braces, and other medical splendor that kept us from falling apart. The mementos of those healed by St. Roch and his abilities, the proof of his power.

         I tossed the copy of The Arabian Nights on the alter before the crucifixion and looked on with the other marble saints standing before Jesus splayed on the cross. I didn’t even hear her walk up. Michelle. I knew she’d show up—she always did when I found myself alone. And she was younger, probably late twenties, wearing a black plunge tank top and high-waisted denim shorts. Hands in her pockets, she kicked the book with the toe of a Converse sneaker that had faded to a light pink. Her hair, darker red than I remembered and longer, was down.

         “You’re finally getting rid of it,” she said.

         “Seemed time.”

         “Giving it up to Jesus no less.”

         “I couldn’t find the big pile of canes and shit. Figured this was as good a place to leave an offering as any.” I looked her over, noting the tattoo of a rosy horse on her upper thigh. It matched the color her sneakers. “You look different.”

         “So do you.”

         “I got old. You just seem to keep getting younger.”

         “Different planes.”

         “You keep telling me that. You’re a Michelle from a different universe, right?”

         “Or maybe I’m just the way I was supposed to be in this universe. And you just wrote it down wrong.”

         “I wrote it down the way I saw it. We met each other when you were twenty-four and I was twenty-three at Venice Beach. You were a musician, and I was trying to make it as a screenwriter. We were together, we talked about starting a family but it didn’t take, shit stopped working like it used to, and then you left and married another man on the other side of the country.” I walked away from the alter, intent on getting lost in the maze of mausoleums. Maybe then I could lose what wasn’t there to begin with—but no. She followed.

         “That’s the story you created. But it wasn’t the story I fucking lived.” Her fingers drifted across an etching of Joan of Arc, tied to a stake with a wooden cross in her hand, stenciled into the brown tile of a mausoleum. “I made myself something different, John. I kept singing, I went back to school. You became something else, John, and so did I. But only one of us accepted reality.”

         I never knew what was easiest to believe. I swore there was a sonogram in her copy of The Arabian Nights, the one growing bloated with water, but maybe it was only a constellation I’d drawn one night while missing her in the days before Jean. And the days after Jean. Maybe I’d grown to see the roach in the mirror, and that insect had orchestrated a tragic story in its mind that wasn’t actually fact-based. Scylla’s transformation was just the result of Circe’s jealousy.

         This business of rationalization can be so goddamned exhausting with a head like this: so overrun with werewolves, talking cockroaches, and visions of your ex from a parallel universe.

         We walked in silence through the graveyard, and occasionally she took my hand, and it felt real. Returning to the alter, the book remained, and she was gone.

         And the rain started again, hitting my face in heavy drops, and my cell rang. Jean. And maybe this was the coming back to truth, but in puddles gathering in depth at my feet, all I saw was this cockroach—hobbling back to the only home he had left.

by Rian Moneypenny