Someone You Can Build a Nest In

by John Wiswell

There was a sophisticated pleasure to terrorizing and devouring someone who thought they were above everyone. A good predator was also a reminder, she thought.

be told by a drunk rich boy with inconvenient hair that she had never really existed?

This revelry was a kind of fear, for hatred was the fear people let themselves enjoy.

“Fire! Fire is the wyrm’s one weakness!” Being burned was a weakness of hers, insofar as it was a weakness of every living thing she’d met. You could roast a sheep or a human on a fire and nobody called that their “weakness.” Having fire thrust into their eye sockets was a threat to them. Weaknesses were a human invention. They called it your weakness if they fantasized about murdering you with it.

Nobody actually helped each other. That’s why people had religions, hoping gods would provide help where people refused.

Romance was awful. She couldn’t even do something as simple as murdering rude people anymore.

Shesheshen’s mind threatened to melt and leak out of her orifices. Every thought she tried to begin dug its barbs into her psyche and refused to leave.

sidestepping humanity’s penchant for complaining: enjoying herself. People could simply choose not to hate things.

Killing was simpler than a conversation. Civilization made everything so complicated.

Like smothering a victim, comforting was easier to do with a good grip.

Out of nowhere, that damned heart-like abomination in her chest blazed. It felt like hands wrung it out, like a dish towel full of blood. Her entire body started to feel wrung out, and she had to seal up various

The wind was in a mood.

This damned anxiety was worse than kissing.

Can understand anxiety but not attraction

Convincing someone was one of the worst forms of talking.

Violence had fewer uses than she wanted.

Out of sight, out of mind, never out of liquor.

Shesheshen did not grasp what a botanist was. It was some kind of intellectual herbivore.

Time was the sort of thing you had to care about when you belonged to more than yourself.

the water vapor that tasted on her tongue like nonconsensual rest.

Her lifetime was carrion.