Chapter 22
Xiaoyu
I’m very aware I’m being followed by him.
I’ve yet to sit down and evaluate, but right now, I need a safe place to stay. As I jog, I pass by a lot of animals three sizes too big. A centipede winds my way, and I see it has something laid on top of its brown platings. It makes me stop and look.
Blinking, I pick up the cloth and see it’s a dress made out of stitched up leather.
It has a pattern that should ring a bell…
but everytime I think too much, it slips away.
It’s not a very nice one, but a dress all the same.
I look down and see that I might as well be naked.
My clothes are torn, covered in god knows what.
There’s obviously no one except that creep with the teeth around so I slip out of my rag and into these new clothes.
“Mmmm, do you like it?”
I jump at the question.
“The hide comes from a man I flayed before eating.” His voice curls with satisfaction. I don’t know how I hear it, but I feel it.
“What the fuck even are you?”
“A voice in your head.” He chuckles. “I am your friend, don’t you remember me?”
My head begins to pound the more I focus. “I don’t remember…” I clutch the tooth to my heart. “I don’t know where to begin.” I admit to him. “I just feel the need to run. To fight.”
“You shouldn’t run from me.”
The ground ripples again and I hold the pointed tip of the teeth at the figure that’s emerging from the black soil. I just know this is the voice in my head. He’s tall. So fucking tall that it took me a few seconds for my eyes to reach his.
He’s looking down at me curiously like I’m a creature, too.
“You hold my gaze very well, my sweet dreamer. Most humans cannot stand seeing my eyes.”
Ugh. The creature has an ego. He thinks he’s a prophecy. Total. Ick.
“Ick? Why am I an ick? What makes me an ick to you?”
Weird how he even understands slang. I move back, shaking the tooth at him. “Are you reading my mind?”
He grins wide, cheekily. “Only if you think loud enough.”
“How the fuck does that even work?!” Nothing is making goddamn sense!
“Nothing should make sense. If you think it should, you’re in the wrong place.”
For a moment, my anger wavers, crumbling to the weight of existential crisis. What’s a worse fear than not knowing who you are?
“There’s a greater fear than that.” He responds, his mouth not moving at all. “The fear of knowing who you are deep down and realizing you do not like that person. Sometimes, you have to succumb to the fear to discover how strong you truly are.”
“Geez, can you get any more philosophical.” I quip uncomfortably.
His eyes turn into slits as he laughs. The trees sway, earth quaking. “You make comments to sweep uncomfortable things under the rug.”
I purposely ignore him and leave. He doesn’t walk, he glides through the ground.
“Tolerating discomfort is a slow death, Xiaoyu.”
“Right. Love that for me.”
“Do you?” Something twists my hair at the back of my head, halting me. He pulls me back until I am embedded in him. He feels warm and soft like a cradle.
Wrapping my arms around myself, I feel our bodies becoming one. I don’t know why I know this, but it’s his form of a hug.
“I don’t know what to think. I’m a blank slate. I don’t have opinions, just reactions.”
“That may be because of me, I apologize. It will return eventually. Right now, let me feed you. Take you somewhere safe.”
I don’t even know where safe is.
“I don’t trust people who put their dick in my mouth while I’m asleep.” It’s embarrassing how easily I choke up. Tears fill my eyes, my lungs deflating.
His hold around me tightens. “Forgive me. I am not above begging you to give me consent to fuck you in the mouth while you sleep.”
The laugh that erupts from me is grateful and tearful. Still…boundaries. I don’t even know him.
“No.”
“I’ll crawl and beg.”
“You’re a desperate, kinky fucker.”
“I do not mind being occasionally humiliated by you, too.” At this point, I think he’s just trying to make me laugh. Lighten my sour mood.
My stomach growls, and he hears this.
“Come with me. Say yes again.”
I don’t say yes, but I let myself melt into him. It’s answer enough for him.
The first thing he does is take his tooth from me. It’s the size of half my palm, and now that everything has calmed, I’m not sure how I would have made that an efficient weapon.
The sun is up, but we’re shaded under the leaves. My brain’s automatic reaction is to explain everything, but I can’t understand why a goddamn rainforest is in a drought.
He sits me in a weird lounge that snaps open. It’s not a seat. It’s a fucking plant with sharp rows of teeth. Its cushion is the cup of its lower mouth.
“I think you call them venus flytraps.” His voice is a whisper on my skin. He is a ghost right now, swirling in the middle of the air like solid tendrils of smoke.
It rings a bell.
“It won’t eat me, right?”
“The only thing eating you here is me.”
I got the distinct feeling I’ve heard the exact thing before. “Do I know you?”
“You call me Datu. We’re best friends.” It’s weird when I see smoke try to avoid my gaze.
That is a lie. “Best friends don’t do what you did to me earlier.”
He busies himself, obviously ignoring what I’d just said. With his strange hands, he picks up a water bottle. Is that mine?
“Here, drink while I get you something to eat.”
Taking it, I thank him and read the print on the bottle. Moriarty Organics with a tree as its symbol. I know I’ve seen this before. There’s an itch at the back of my head as I think harder.
“When do you think my memories will come back?”
“No clue. It will come back. Everything buried eventually does.”
“That does not sound comforting.” What an odd way to put it. “So you think my memories are just buried?”
He floats down the platform and—from beyond the forest—emerges a black panther the size of a car. My muscles tense, ready to run, but it looks tamed. Submissive. It’s carrying a fresh carcass, dropping it by the altar’s steps.
Patting the panther’s head, he thanks it, “I accept. My thanks. You may go.”
And just like that, the panther turns and prowls away. I blink repeatedly. “Why do the animals obey you?”
“If they don’t, they know I’ll eat them.”
Bruh. “One hell of a bargaining chip.” I say dryly.
His mouth spreads wide again, the smile a morbid sight. “It’s not so bad inside my mouth.”
Crossing my arms over my chest, I deliberately shift my gaze away from him. “There’s no way you’re convincing me to come inside your mouth where it’s warm and safe.”
“My, my, you already know what it feels like!” He rips the carcass to little shreds as something lights up. There’s a firepit on the edge of the treeline. Curiously, I stand and stroll closer to him.
He’s skewering the meat but given that he has no fingers, it’s hard. I jump off the platform and take the skewer and meat from him.
“Let me do it,” I grumble.
“My natural form is not so agile.” He says apologetically. He sounds almost ashamed.
“What is this natural form?”
“A void. I am nothing.”
“Why do you say that? Obviously you are something. Just not something you like.”
His violet eyes dim, and I see his form slump. “I am a god. I can take the form of other things, but I can never become it.”
“For a god, you sure do think very low of yourself. I thought they all had inflated egos?”
“Aaah, what makes you think that now? I am not human. I have no need for this thing you call ego.”
I roll my eyes at him and a term pops into my head. Where it comes from, I don’t know. It makes me giddy, though. I’m starting to remember.
“What—you’re gonna be a one-dimensional manic pixie dream girl and help me feel better about myself?” I sound scathing, so I tone it down. “You’re a god, you said so yourself. You should have depth there somewhere. You just don’t like people to know.”
“I feel attacked right now.”
“Well, I am. You deserve to be attacked after what you did to me.”
He sighs, looking away. I…actually feel terrible after he quiets down. I sit next to his smoky form, rethinking my words.
“Listen, I’m just swinging axes right now because I feel unsafe. I’m sorry if what I said was out of line.”
“You were never this rude. You were soft-spoken and polite.”
Now I feel attacked. “Okay?”
“It’s not an attack.” He explains, his gaze meeting mine.
Black smoke curls over my lap. “It’s a sobering thought, though.
The conscious self cocoons itself to feel safe.
You cut, shave your edges—harm yourself or others—to be acceptable.
It makes you invisible to the others who will actually like the real you. ”
I feel his touch on my thigh. “Are we talking about you or me?”
“You, of course.” He chuckles humorlessly. “I am a one-dimensional god. A manic monster dream guy.”
“Self-pity is such a turn-off.” Despite what I say, my heart clenches inside my chest. I’m breathless when he moves his form closer to mine. The part where his eyes are.
“Not self-pity. A shield.”
“Cut from the same cloth, you and I.”
For a second, his eyes swirl, glowing pink.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re in love with me.”
“And?” He challenges me. “What if I am?”
I roll my eyes again, but really, I am harboring butterflies in my stomach.
“Question…” he starts, poking the fire pit he made. “What is the thing you wish for the most in this tabula rasa? This blank slate?”
Seems like a weird question to ask a woman who just had her memories scraped from her. What would I know about wanting things?
“A safe place where it’s all mine, no one can pry it away from my dead hands.” It hurts something inside me, what I just said. There has got to be more to this feeling than just painful longing.
His eyes fade into a blink, then it’s a deep sorrowful blue. “You want a home?”
“Yes. With plants, preferrably.” The concept of a wide, vast garden calms the trigger-happy lady in me. “Somewhere I can nurture life in. Somewhere to belong in.”
The more I tell him of what I wish for, the darker his eyes get.
Slowly, his body ripples, shifting back into the other form with green skin. This breaks my heart. I’ve only just known him for a few hours, but it seems like I’ve known him forever. Like I know him down to the bone. Down to his gutty works.
Datu—whether in this form or the Void—is still him. He says he is beyond having an ego, and yet, he does things that make me think otherwise. The fact he changes as soon as I admit what I want the most speaks volumes of what he thinks of himself.
He’s cutting his edges for me.
Elbowing him, I giggle, albeit sadly. “I much prefer the form you feel more comfortable in.”
I don’t have to tell him twice.
“You will get it. I pinky promise.” He holds up a little thing that may be a pinky. I smile, instinctually twist mine around it and—too fast for me to stop—he bites my knuckles until it leaves a mark.
It’s endearing, making my heart skip a beat.
“You have very morbid oral fixations.” If he had a nose, I would flick it.
“Only for you, my sweet.” The shadow of sadness disappears from his eyes, and now, it’s back to pink again.
I never liked pink, but it looks cute on him. The tension in the air is fumes under my skin. I feel the need to let the pressure go. I see clouds of black, tendrils of him twirling my hair. I know I just basically castrated him earlier, but maybe that had been a silly axe-swing reflex on my end.
A long violet tongue licks his lips.
“Are you going to kiss me now?” I am not afraid at all.
His returning grin is full of mischief. “I’m afraid I don’t call it a kiss.”
Despite what he says, this is a kiss. He presses his cold lips upon mine, slow, probing. His tongue slides over mine like he’s quenching an unending thirst. Black limbs coil around me, and I’m cradled. Cocooned. Safe.
Sometimes, home isn’t a place. The Void is what home should feel like. He’s just not nothing. He is the possibility—that everything can happen if you want it bad enough.
“This better not be your way of luring me into your mouth.” I said against his lips.
His laughter wooshes around us. “This connection is all organic, Xiaoyu.”
Something smells burnt, and I grimace as we pull away from each other.
He takes the meat from the skewer and feeds me himself. There’s a torrent of comfortable silence that it takes me by surprise how easy it is to just…let him take care of me. I eat what he gives. Nothing disagrees with me. I’m just hungry.
“Food is food.” I shrug. “Don’t you eat?”
“Yes, but I eat everything raw.”
I cough, choking at the double meaning.
“I’ve never felt this way. The feeling where I’d rather dote on someone than eat them.”
Releasing a breath, I swipe my hand over his amorphous face. A trail of mist follows my hand to my lap, twisting until I feel fingers curled into mine. It shouldn’t be so holding back a smile, right?
“Tonight, do you want me to leave you to sleep? I will stay in the forest so you feel safe.”
Guiltily, I eye everything around me. There are no walls in his altar, only a circle of thick trees with phosphorescent violet leaves, a hammock, and a throne.
“Stay with me.”