How to Get a Girlfriend (When You're a Terrifying Monster) (Monster Girlfriend, #1)

by Marie Cardno

She had edges. Something between the Endless and this new, separate thing that was her. And with those edges and this new her-ness, a sudden and desperate desire not to be sucked back into eternal, omniscient obscurity.

She didn’t even really know what she was going to be, yet, but she was fiercely, confusedly jealous of it. And each experimental skin and limb and sensory apparatus brought her closer to herself.

The human’s limbs knew exactly where they were meant to be and how their jointed-ness worked. Her eyes were incredibly non-bulbous, and not even slightly on tentacles. And they were hardly bloodshot at all! Even their colour was exotically unchanging. She felt as though she could stare into them for hours and not get even a glimpse of uncanny light flaring from their depths, or a bubbling, glittering madness hinting at mysteries beyond all mortal ken.

This was what academia did to you. She couldn’t even small talk properly.

Ain’t that the fucking truth

And when she did come back, Trillin would say … something. Something really good. Smart. Witty. Maybe even … alluring. Trillin wasn’t entirely sure what alluring meant, but she suspected it was a big part of being girlfriend material.

Trillin ran through all her borrowed and inherited memories and couldn’t find anything to say that didn’t make her want to curl herself up into a tiny ball and roll away to safety. She couldn’t laugh maniacally at Sian. Or turn herself into a duplicate of Sian and taunt her. Those weren’t the right reactions.

People would get a bit weird if they realised she didn’t just want to find a way to prevent the Endless from ever threatening Earth again, she kind of wanted to bang it, too.

“I won’t eat you.” Trillin’s voice was so sincere, so earnest, that Sian had to bite back a burst of giggles. “I know how to, now, but I won’t. I want you to know that.” “I think that’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever told me.”

Trillin was beginning to suspect it wasn’t so much that Bunny didn’t want her to know these things, as that it wanted so much not to have to know anything, that it resented the knowledge existing at all.

Fucking MOOD