Someone You Can Build a Nest In

by John Wiswell

Hers ended when one of her sisters bit off Shesheshen’s left heel. Her siblings matured too quickly and hungered for more than their father. Shesheshen had to defend herself using jagged fragments of their father’s pelvis—his final and most gracious gift.

This third man was definitely retching. She hoped he had a helmet on so it painted the inside.

For years she’d fantasized about prying a limb or two into the perfect mate’s flank and shapeshifting parts of herself into slimy eggs. But would it work? Would she naturally produce the eggs the way they were supposed to? What if she made them wrong? She’d never actually created an egg, since she’d never had anyone who felt like a true parent worthy of them. Instantly her abstinence felt like a mistake.

If she thrust two bones out through her shoulder and under the man’s wooden mask, through that collar, Plutocracy would bleed out before he could define his form of government.

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

“Nobody talks to me like this,” he said. “Do you think you could threaten me a little more?” This time, she shrank away from him. All the excitement she’d read in him—and why he’d come out to talk to her in the first place—took on grotesque new context. He wasn’t afraid for his life. This was the highlight of his life. Or it was both of those things. She did not understand humans. Today, she did not want to. Oh, she threatened Laurent. Threatened him right through a door, and out of her lair. He left infuriatingly happy.

Homily had another way of sidestepping humanity’s penchant for complaining: enjoying herself. People could simply choose not to hate things.

“So often, I don’t know what else to do other than give. It’s like I won’t exist if I don’t do something.” “I feel that. Sometimes.” Specifically, she felt it for Homily. Was she going to turn into the same kind of wreck?

They had to talk about this streak of self-sacrificing, and the secrets they’d kept. They couldn’t become good parents to a brood if they lived like maniacs.

“Angry about you defiling the corpse of the sister that I . . . that I murdered?”

With my whole family, everyone who was out to kill you. And you drank rosemary wine. Doesn’t rosemary kill you?” “It is highly poisonous. I let it poison me.” “Why?” Despite herself, Shesheshen looked down. “I wanted to impress you.”

“You want me to name you, and you don’t care what? The puddle of my girlfriend’s parts doesn’t care so long as I talk to her?”

She deserved what Shesheshen had to say. In the voice of her sister, Shesheshen said, “I am sorry for what I did to you.”

No shut up… you’re crying 😭😭