How to Love a Monster

by Lyssa Dering

  I know why they call this drug Love. This is what love feels like. Pleasure, enlightenment, clarity, and confusion with a heavy side of ache. I’m doing my damnedest to tear this man in my arms to pieces as we rut and rub, but it isn’t enough.

  “Fuck me.” I pull on his dick, trying to show him where I’m empty. My voice is raw, words tumbling out that I can’t pretend I don’t understand. “Pound me. Kill me, kill me.”

  He backhands me. “Stop it.” His eyes are ruthless coals as he shoves my hands out of the way.

  I don’t mind the rough treatment. I need it. The sting blooming over my face is just another way to the temper my fire.

  I bend my legs up. The man positions his cock. His tip nudges my hole, and I know this is going to hurt, but I don’t care. He shoves. His cock is too big, and it burns a little. But it’s going in, slowly but surely—that’s all that matters. I need to be filled and fucked. I need him to ruin me.

  Time goes nonlinear. I’m here, being fucked with a hot, blunt object as my body drowns in sensations, my stomach rolling—nervous, happy, sick. But I’m also in Wish’s hideout a few years ago, the windows covered with threadbare blankets, my stomach empty. He’s kissing me. His tongue is the softest, gentlest thing that’s touched me since I left home, and he’s so careful with my clothes because he knows I don’t have much that fits anymore. He’s so careful with me.

  Tears well in my eyes—not there, here—and one drips down my temple into my ear. The huge pink flower petals on the ceiling imprint themselves on my retinas as the man drives into me over and over with punishing hips. Wish twines our fingers together and worships me with his mouth, kissing down my neck, collar bones, and chest, sucking on my nipples until they’re red and tender. This is all new to me. This is incredible. Everybody says you’re supposed to hate your first time, but mine was better than every time after, and I’m feeling it again, right now, in heart-stoppingly vivid detail.

  I thought I’d lost this memory. I used my power to clear it from my head, to scrape it from my cells so I wouldn’t have it dogging me whenever I saw Wish, making being in the hideout so damn painful I couldn’t stand it. But it was just buried, locked away. I still have it.

  When the flying half of me falls hard back into the present, maybe minutes—maybe hours—later, I’m fever-hot, shaking, nauseous, and alone. No. I curl into a fetal position and groan my anguish. I don’t want to be back.

  Where’s Wish? I clamp my eyes shut and try to remember his hands on me, try to put myself wherever we were, but I can’t see it. It’s gone.

  I scream at my brain: Remember! It only smarts in response—throb, throb, throb, throb—and blood drips out of my nose.

  The truth hits me again like I’m ground and it’s a crashing plane: You’re broken. My past with Wish is the least of my troubles as I recall the operating room, the surgeon’s cold eyes above his face mask as I went under anesthesia, and the puddle I woke up in. I remember trying to tell my brain I was warm and ending up slumped against that grimy dumpster, dizzy and still cold.

  I hope with every damaged bit of me that I’m really dead. And if I’m dead, I want whatever black hole I fell into when I left Earth to suck me right back up again. I need to be home. I want to be back in the energy that made me, and I don’t want to be reborn. I want to die. For real.

  “First comedown’s the hardest.”

  The words force me into the concrete world, into my body. Oh Universe, I hurt. All of my muscles ache, and my skin stings where I’ve been clawed—I guess by the man? But my hole hurts the worst. I clench it in some misplaced instinct to try and see if I’m torn and end up whining embarrassingly. I try to sit up, but it’s too difficult.

  The man is by the wall, preoccupied in his duffel bag again, but I make out a light, the pink glow emanating from between the open zipper and reflecting onto his naked skin.

  “More,” I croak. I need water; my mouth is a desert. But I just know if the man shoots me up with more drugs, I won’t need it. I’ll be with Wish again. “Please.” There’s enough liquid left in my body to make tears, at least.

  “Shh.” The man shuffles over to me, syringe and tourniquet in hand. “I’m gonna take real good care of you.”

  2

  Fiend

  Ah, yes, my favorite night of the week! I make my way into City Hall at a run, the soles of my boots squeaking against the marble floor, and I only slow once I get outside Wish’s room. I stroke the outer space mural painted on the closed door with reverent fingers as I catch my breath.

  Wish is in there. My prey. My meal—caught, immobile—in the spider’s web.

  I press my thumb to the door’s sensor. “Welcome, Fiend,” says the sensual robot’s voice as the lock disengages.

  I fling open the door. “Wish!”

  As always, Wish lies on his back in the hospital bed, his perpetually shiny curls fanning out against the pillow beneath his blond head.

  I take my seat in the chair at Wish’s bedside and prop my legs up over his shins. Across from the bed, a large window provides a nighttime view of the fountain in the center of City Hall’s little courtyard. If we were in a taller building, it’d be glinting skyscrapers cloaked in fog.

  “You’ll be happy to know that Love production is as efficient as ever, Wish. I had to eat the manager of the South plant, but his replacement is just perfect.” I pat Wish’s hand, jostling the plastic pulse oximeter clamped over his index finger. “I have to thank you, you know, every time I see you, for giving us such a wonderful flower.”

  Wish can’t tell me “You’re welcome,” of course; he’s in a coma. But the uptick in his heartbeat makes me think he knows I’m here. He hates me, but such is the inevitable relationship of a child (though Wish is a man now) and his monster.

  It’s a shame I must keep him like this, but I have to if I want to stay real.

  “I ate your friend Thisbe, by the way.” I peer coyly at the heart monitor as Wish’s heartbeat jumps to an unhealthy level. “Now, now, you know I give them all peaceful deaths!” This does nothing to calm my prisoner, so I change the subject. No need to torture him with the details of just how her brain matter felt on my tongue (though I must admit, it’s tempting; she was delicious).

  I’m about to launch into an anecdote about my favorite soldier, Neisha, and the stray dog she found in the alley behind her building when my phone jingles. It’s her. “Think of the devil!”

  I tap the screen.

  URGENT: Possible specimen sighting

  Boss, my girlfriend (she works the door at the Love house on 9th) snapped this pic last night of a guy she said seemed lost and disoriented. Is he one of the ones you’re looking for?

  I open the picture and squint at it. It’s dark and a little blurry, but the facial features are unmistakable.

  I squeal, jump to my feet, and whiz over to Wish’s head. Holding one of his eyes open, I show him the picture. “Look! It’s Seraphim. Isn’t he beautiful? But you know that.” Because Wish knows everything I know, at least if it has to do with before we came here. I try my utmost not to think about that time, however, when I was locked in the cage of Wish’s subconscious, half-forgotten and half-real.

  I gaze down at the picture of Seraphim and can’t help myself; I press a kiss to the screen. Then I pet Wish’s curls. In Wish City, he doesn’t have the shaved head or the incision, but I know where the latter used to be. I part Wish’s hair where I felt them slice us. I trace my tongue along the white scalp line. Those doctors, they were so, so cruel, taking Wish’s Earth brain out to play with. Wish probably thinks I’m cruel, but I would never hurt him like that. I’ve only put him to sleep.

  “It’s terrible,” I whisper, “how badly I hunger for your beautiful brain. You deserve so much more for how you make me suffer.” I kiss his forehead. I wonder as I wonder endlessly if the brain he has here, in Wish City, is healthy or tainted like Thisbe’s was, the desecration coming through as an unfortunate, coppery aftertaste. I can only assume
such damage was due to whatever the doctors did to her in that facility in Chicago. Any experiments they performed on Wish’s brain happened after they extracted it, however. My mouth waters at the thought of finally digesting my due, but it may never happen.

  I message Neisha. Where is my specimen?

  Still at the Love house. I’ve got eyes on him now. Should I bring him to you?

  I chew on a nail and tilt back and forth. What to do, what to do? No, I’ll come get him. Is he high?

  Yes.

  Well peel him off whoever he’s fucking and shoot him up fresh. I’ll be there in a jiffy.

  I made them hydrate and transport Thisbe before I made my acquaintance, but like Wish, I am of a certain persuasion, and Seraphim is the first male specimen to cross over into my kingdom (aside from Wish himself, of course). Why not have a little sordid fun with Seraphim before I put his brain on a plate?

  “I have to get going,” I tell Wish with genuine regret. “Try not to miss me too much for the next six days.” I, for one, will miss him horribly. But if I allow myself to see him more than once per week, I’ll end up curled up on him like a leech, aching and yearning and crying for his brain, which I can’t eat because of what his mother told us when he was five: “But honey, you made him. If he eats your brain, he’ll die, too. Do you think he wants that?”

  Gritting my teeth against the unsavory memory, I whip around and storm from the sickroom, my hands in fists.

  Sera

  One moment, I’m awkwardly sucking Wish’s too-big cock, his palm cradling the back of my head, and the next, I’m back in the sex-filled room, gasping and choking on air.

  What’s happening? I try to move, but my arms are trapped; someone’s holding them behind my back, and the man I’ve been fucking is growling and spitting while some men grab him, too.

  Goons? Have they followed me here?

  “Get off me!” I continue to struggle, not weak or sore like I was the last time I snapped out of the high. Only my stomach still bothers me, and the fact that I can’t reach the man who’s been screwing me like I need. My butterflies give a violent lurch as the goons pull the man toward a black doorway.

  I wriggle harder, but it’s no use. I run in place as my goons lift me, kicking at the floor with my bare feet. They hold me fast.

  The anguish in the man’s eyes mirrors my own as the goons drag him through the doorway, out of sight. I cry out. He can’t be gone! I need him to fuck me back to that half-here, half-backward space where the memories are. I can’t get there on my own. I know I can’t—I know!

  My goons yank me backward. I lose purchase on the floor as they lift me over the writhing bodies and take me through the beads, past the neon signs spelling “LOVE,” and through another set of beads. Suddenly everything’s naked concrete and flickering fluorescent lights as they pull me down a hallway past metal door after metal door.

  We stop at one of the doors. One guy opens it while the person behind me shoves me through. I land hard on the cement floor.

  I expect the goons to leave me here, but then they’re on me again. I manage to elbow one, and—

  I catch sight of the now-unmistakable pink glow of Love.

  The goons are tying a tube around my arm. Oh, Universe. Do I really want another hit? Are one of these goons going to fuck me? Or will they just leave me with the butterflies killing me from the inside out?

  “No,” I hear myself say. But I might as well be back in the government laboratory because these goons are as unfeeling as any nurse. The fingers prodding my inner elbow are frigid.

  Metal glints in my peripheral vision—here comes the needle. I flinch when it stings me, if only because I know what’s coming, and there’s no way it can be good, not with the effects from the last hit still churning in my gut.

  The initial sedation hits while the goons pack up and leave. The door shuts with a heavy clang. The only light here comes from a single bulb, too close to the high ceiling for me to reach. It’s enough for me to see the grit and grime on the floor, though.

  I clench every one of my muscles, waiting for the butterflies to get more vicious. Maybe they won’t get worse. Maybe—

  “Aaaaah!” It’s like the butterflies have turned to bats. They’re scratching and biting with their little teeth and claws at my all-too-sensitive tissues. I roll over onto my forearms and retch, but there’s no food or water for my body to expel.

  “Please!” I writhe, naked, and shout as loud as I can, until I’m coughing and retching again. “Please, please!” I’m so sweaty, so thirsty. The floor’s grit sticks to my skin. “Please!” I scream and scream until my voice comes rough from a raw throat.

  The door opens again.

  I freeze, clutching my stomach, but the pain subsides just a little now that I’m not alone.

  I expect more goons, but this man has a presence. Like the guy in charge at the laboratory who came to look at me once per month.

  The man wears all black: black coat, black pants, black shoes. He’s lean and bald. When he bends toward me, I see he doesn’t have any eyebrows or eyelashes, either, but if anything, that only adds to the ethereal beauty of his smooth, symmetrical features.

  The man smiles. “I brought something for you.” He drops to his knees, the picture of feline grace, and I shudder involuntarily as a new feeling crawls up my spine. I’m too overloaded to figure out if it’s from the drug or not, but it makes my scalp tingle and my temples ache faintly.

  I recoil.

  The man shuffles closer. He shrugs off his coat, revealing an expanse of muscled skin that would make my mouth water if I wasn’t so dried out. He pulls a white juice box from the folds of his coat and stabs a straw into it.

  “This will hydrate you,” he says. “And it’ll heal up any injuries you may have acquired.”

  “B-Butterflies,” I manage.

  “It won’t help those. But we’ll ride out those together.”

  My bottom lip trembles as I fight not to lose the last shred of my sanity. How is some fucking juice going to help me?

  The man pokes my bottom lip with the straw. “Drink,” he orders.

  I turn my head.

  The man grips my hair and forces the straw past my lip, cutting my gum in the process. “Suck!”

  I hollow my cheeks around the straw if only to avoid another injury. I don’t regret it. The juice is cold and quenching, and my body’s base instincts are in control now, desperate to sate my thirst. I grip the juice box and slurp until I can’t get any more of the sweet nectar.

  The stranger pulls the juice box gently from my grasp. “I have more for you. Breathe.”

  I run my tongue across my teeth; the cut in my gum is gone. And I don’t need any more juice. The monsters in my belly are once again the top priority. I manage to rise to my knees, and I reach for the man. I plaster myself to him, making him bear my weight.

  He falls back onto the cement with an innocent, “Oh.” He’s my clean, hairless life raft on this dirty floor, and I rut against him, the rough denim of his pants this side of torture against my sensitive, swollen cock. I give a breathy moan anyway; any sexual stimulation will do.

  I unbuckle the man’s belt. Or I try to. My brain’s moving faster than my fingers, and I wish I had scissors. How am I going to get away from this lovestruck nausea—and back into Wish’s arms—if I can’t get a cock in me? I whine helplessly.

  The man takes my wrists, holding them almost lazily, but too stiffly for me to pull them free. I attempt to stab him with my eyes.

  “Don’t think I’m going to let you disappear,” he says.

  He sits up and twists us around, lowering me back-first to the floor. Beneath me lies his black coat, shielding me from the hard cement, while he puts his hand beneath my skull to ease my head down.

  My stomach gives a sickening flip at how perfectly he’s handling me (aside from the fact that he isn’t filling me up fast enough), but it’s probably just the drug making me swoon.

  “Fuck me.
Please,” I say. Doesn’t he get it? I need to give him my sickness, my heart, and my Love-flooded attention. I need him to use me.

  He pins both my wrists with one hand. “There are other ways to get through the high. I think you’ve had enough fucking already.”

  I’m like a fluttering piece of parchment under a paperweight. I pull and pull at my wrists, longing to scratch the body against me. Pain stabs my chest as I remember the man in the sex room, so willing to help me, so perfect. I liked him a lot better.

  This new man pets through my hair as he leans closer. “Shh.” I feel something stiff and wet at my temple. …His tongue?

  I wince and shake my head. “No—”

  “You’re going to taste delicious.” He pushes harder against my wrists, the unforgiving cement tight against my bones, and swipes his tongue across my cheek. Then he proceeds to lick my entire face.

  Ugh! I scream. I buck. But the sickening sensations don’t stop, so I give up fighting. I don’t know why I bother anyway. Nobody ever pays attention to what I want. I sob, my tears mixing with the stranger’s saliva as the hot, wet muscle slips and slides across my lips.

  That feeling down my spine comes back, slithering past my nerves like a worm. I choke on my anguish. The tongue on my face isn’t taking me back to Wish, maybe because he would never do something like this.

  The man licks my neck, sending a fresh shudder through me.

  “Yes, yes,” he hisses. “Feel my affection. It’s honest and true, Seraphim.”

  Through the haze of my suffering, surprise registers. Not once has anyone uttered my name since I got here. “How—How do you—”

  “Oh, precious!” The man pulls back, grinning in a way that sends my skin breaking out in goose bumps. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “But—”

  “You’re in Wish City.”

  Wish City. My insides, despite their already wrecked state, bottom out.

  No way is this Wish City! It can’t be! I retch like before, instinctively trying to roll onto my stomach so I don’t suffocate. But of course, I can’t move. My fingers tingle where the man still has me pinned. At least it’s only a little bile that comes crawling up my throat.