Taking a swim.
Content warning: violence
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The timezones of our hearts have skewed apart. That was when I realized I’d lost you completely. The gentleness and desire you still afford me sting more now for the shadow of affection they evoke. I know that there is nothing I have left to offer.
…
Swamp ground squishes disgustingly around my feet. My dress is beyond ruined, trailing and choked with mud and still-wet shit. This is not a place where humans live, which suits me just fine. Great trees like a hive of mother’s legs break up my vision, set my path askew. The air is thick and fetid, vibrant with killing life. Here, the sun is only a memory, a dream of light. Warmth and brightness without vision. It is here that you live, great beast.
The difference between water and land is a mere change of viscosity. Cold arms grip up my legs, shriveling my cock, drawing my stomach taut. Bog body with liquefying bones. I submerge my head under the algae floe, eyes searching blindly, uselessly for you. All I can do is paddle forward. I imagine my sense of touch sharpened, I imagine that I can feel the minute vibrations through the water that will bring me to you. In my mind I see you curled up, basking on the corpse of a tree, calling silently out to me. I shiver. Cold shapes brush against me, catfish trying to work out whether I’m food yet. The clumsy paddling of my limbs dissuades them, but only so much. They’ll have to wait, to see if there are scraps.
I know it is a mistake to hope for salvation in you. I don’t know what I expect to happen. Praying that you’ll take me into your mouth and end my suffering? I used to dream of being reborn a cleaner fish, swimming by your side and plucking away refuse from your perfect features, a little daemon silently devoted, asking nothing but survival in turn. It would never be enough. I know that even this won’t sate me, but reckless hunger would give anything for the slightest morsel.
Your sleeping body is more beautiful than I had even remembered. Living armor, perfect geometrical texture. When I pull myself out of the water to curl against your breast, I feel the firmness of your skin, the rending power of your claws. I wrap my skinny arms around you. With a single thrash you could shatter them, a single movement of your jaws could make them less than useless, a mess of pain. I nearly vomit as I see your dark eye cresting open, looking through me. Although I am terrified, I am overjoyed that you know me. There are no secrets in a book made of wet paper. When you kill me I will reveal everything to you; I am already revealing everything to you; you have already killed me; quod erat demonstrandum.
The bite comes without warning, just as I’d hoped. My leg is all too eager to break; I hope you can hear the supplication in my screaming. You drag me underwater and the bile fills my lungs faster than I can imagine. Instinct takes over, I try to wrestle you away, to bite back at your invulnerable hide. I want to laugh at how slowly my head moves through the water, useless oblong appendage. I scratch desperately at your spines and manage to shatter my fingernails, a little gift from my last reserves of adrenaline.
I don’t understand when you let go of me. The flood of comprehension is more choking than the swamp water. I’m not to your taste, how could I be? There’s no meat left on me, years of lethargic, anorexic devotion drinking it like flesh mosquitoes. In making myself so weak, I have become something unpalatable to you, I see. I watch you swim away through the cloud of upturned dirt, the last whisper of your power. I can’t bring myself to enjoy it. A catfish picks at the ruin of my leg as I sob silently.