Just a Bit
She thought he was biting her at night. Not a vampire bite, those two dots on the neck. A bite on her calf. She never felt him bite her but the marks were there in the morning. A first he didn't draw blood, just made bruising indentations. He could not recall doing it. He might be trying to eat her. In the beginning she was flattered that he wanted her flesh so much. When she woke up and took a shower she could feel her skin reslick with his saliva which had dried on her body the night before. But he was always hungry and the night she caught him in the act was the night he took a full bite out of her deltoid. She screamed and there was a lot of blood. He was draped over her chewing, still asleep.
He was a vegetarian. He should have been a little horrified that he just eaten human meat. His stomach churned and he vomited it up, red in the toilet. He didn't go into work the next morning and neither did she. But she couldn't stand to be in the same room with him and he was filled with shame. She couldn't watch him eat his breakfast, dip his toast into the runny center of his egg.
She returned to the bedroom and closed the door behind her. She dragged the sheets off the bed, stretched them wide to look at the blood splotches and finally balled them up to soak in a bucket of bleach.
Night came again. “What are we going to do about this?” she asked. “I think it was just a one-time thing,” he told her. “I'm not going to do it again.” She wanted to believe him.
He did it again even though she created a pillow buffer between them. He brushed his teeth furiously in the sink, then meticulously flossed the gristly bits he'd ground into his molars.
Because it takes time to pull him out of it, to snap him out of his feast. It is as if his body is determined to consume a bit of her, however small. He must chew and chew and swallow with his dull teeth before his eyes will open and he can see.
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Author's Note
This story came to me at Union Station in Chicago as I was traveling from one place to another.
Other stories by Meagan McAlister
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Whoa. I"m sure there's metaphorical meaning or something, but just on the face of it, this is a crazy bit of stuff that is fabulous. Of course we knew everything's going off track from the beginning, but "In the beginning she was flattered that he wanted her flesh so much." She's implicated there... like one of Hitchcock's heros. Nice stuff.
Very cool. I am opposed to words that require the average person to stop and look up in a dictionary or to simply continue on without knowing the meaning of the word....BUT!!! I am a huge fan of invented words, words intentially used out of context or parts of words put together to catch the truest meaning....like "reslick." I looked it up and found nothing, but I caught the drift anyhow. Great read!