SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

I feel decadent and filthy, swollen with the cruelest dreams I’ve ever tasted. I can barely feel Harvey’s feeble struggles; in this state, with the darkest parts of himself drained from his mouth into mine, he’s no match for me.

They’re never as strong as they think they are.

By the time he finally goes limp, the last of the thoughts disappearing down my throat, my body’s already changing. My limbs elongate, growing thicker, and my dress feels too tight as my ribs expand. I’ll have to work quickly. I strip off my clothes with practiced ease, struggling a little to work the bodice free of the gym-toned musculature swelling under my skin.

It doesn’t take much time to wrestle Harvey out of his clothes, either. My hands are shaking but strong, and as I button up his shirt around me and shrug on his jacket, my jaw has creaked into an approximation of his and the ridges of my fingerprints have reshaped themselves completely. Harvey is so much bigger than me, and the expansion of space eases the pressure on my boiling belly, stuffed with ugly thoughts as it is. I stuff my discarded outfit into my purse, my high heels clicking against the empty glass jar at its bottom, and sling the strap over my now-broad shoulder.

I kneel to check Harvey’s pulse—slow but steady—before rolling his unconscious body up against the dumpster, covering him with trash bags. Maybe he’ll wake up, maybe he won’t. Not my problem, as long as he doesn’t wake in the next ten seconds to see his doppelganger strolling out of the alley, wearing his clothes and fingering his wallet and the keys to his Tesla.

There’s a cluster of drunk college kids gawking at Harvey’s car. I level an arrogant stare at them—oh, but do I wear this body so much better than he did!—and they scatter.

I might not have a license, but Harvey’s body remembers how to drive.

The Tesla revs sweetly under me, but I ditch it in a parking garage in Bedford, stripping in the relative privacy of the second-to-highest level, edged behind a pillar. After laying the keys on the driver’s seat over Harvey’s neatly folded clothes and shutting the car door, I pull the glass jar from my purse and vomit into it as quietly as I can. Black liquid, thick and viscous, hits the bottom of the jar, hissing and snarling Harvey’s words. My body shudders, limbs retracting, spine reshaping itself, as I empty myself of him.

It takes a few more minutes to ease back into an approximation of myself, at least enough to slip my dress and heels back on, pocket the jar, and comb my tangled hair out with my fingers. The parking attendant nods at me as I walk out of the garage, his eyes sliding disinterested over me, his thoughts a gray, indistinct murmur.

The L train takes me back home to Bushwick, and when I push open the apartment door, Aiko is in the kitchen, rolling mochi paste out on the counter.

“You’re here,” I say stupidly. I’m still a little foggy from shaking off Harvey’s form, and strains of his thoughts linger in me, setting my blood humming uncomfortably hot.

“I’d hope so. You invited me over.” She hasn’t changed out of her catering company clothes, and her short, sleek hair frames her face, aglow in the kitchen light. Not a single ugly thought casts its shadow across the stove behind her. “Did you forget again?”

“No,” I lie, kicking my shoes off at the door. “I totally would never do something like that. Have you been here long?”

“About an hour, nothing unusual. The doorman let me in, and I kept your spare key.” She smiles briefly, soft compared to the brusque movements of her hands. She’s got flour on her rolled-up sleeves, and my heart flutters the way it never does when I’m out hunting. “I’m guessing your date was pretty shit. You probably wouldn’t have come home at all if it had gone well.”

“You could say that.” I reach into my purse and stash the snarling jar in the fridge, where it clatters against the others, nearly a dozen bottles of malignant leftovers labeled as health drinks.

Aiko nods to her right. “I brought you some pastries from the event tonight. They’re in the paper bag on the counter.”

“You’re an angel.” I edge past her so I don’t make bodily contact. Aiko thinks I have touch issues, but the truth is, she smells like everything good in the world, solid and familiar, both light and heavy at the same time, and it’s enough to drive a person mad.

“He should have bought you a cab back, at least,” says Aiko, reaching for a bowl of red bean paste. I fiddle with the bag of pastries, pretending to select something from its contents. “I swear, it’s like you’re a magnet for terrible dates.”

She’s not wrong; I’m very careful about who I court. After all, that’s how I stay fed. But no one in the past has been as delicious, as hideously depraved as Harvey. No one else has been a killer.

I’m going to take her home and split her all the way from top to bottom.

“Maybe I’m too weird,” I say.

“You’re probably too normal. Only socially maladjusted creeps use Tindr.”

“Gee, thanks,” I complain.

She grins, flicking a bit of red bean paste at me. I lick it off of my arm. “You know what I mean. Come visit my church with me sometime, yeah? There are plenty of nice boys there.”

“The dating scene in this city depresses me,” I mutter, flicking open my Tindr app with my thumb. “I’ll pass.”

“Come on, Jen, put that away.” Aiko hesitates. “Your mom called while you were out. She wants you to move back to Flushing.”

I bark out a short, sharp laugh, my good mood evaporating. “What else is new?”

“She’s getting old,” Aiko says. “And she’s lonely.”

“I bet. All her mahjong partners are dead, pretty much.” I can imagine her in her little apartment in Flushing, huddled over her laptop, floral curtains pulled tight over the windows to shut out the rest of the world. My ma, whose apartment walls are alive with hissing, covered in the ugly, bottled remains of her paramours.

Aiko sighs, joining me at the counter and leaning back against me. For once, I don’t move away. Every muscle in my body is tense, straining. I’m afraid I might catch fire, but I don’t want her to leave. “Would it kill you to be kind to her?”

I think about my baba evaporating into thin air when I was five years old, what was left of him coiled in my ma’s stomach. “Are you telling me to go back?”

She doesn’t say anything for a bit. “No,” she says at last. “That place isn’t good for you. That house isn’t good for anyone.”

Just a few inches away, an army of jars full of black, viscous liquid wait in the fridge, their contents muttering to themselves. Aiko can’t hear them, but each slosh against the glass is a low, nasty hiss:

who does she think she is, the fucking cunt

should’ve got her when I had the chance

I can still feel Harvey, his malice and ugly joy, on my tongue. I’m already full of things my ma gave me. “I’m glad we agree.”

Over the next few weeks, I gorge myself on the pickup artists and grad students populating the St. Marks hipster bars, but nothing tastes good after Harvey. Their watery essences, squeezed from their owners with barely a whimper of protest, barely coat my stomach. Sometimes I take too much. I scrape them dry and leave them empty, shaking their forms off like rainwater when I’m done.

I tell Aiko I’ve been partying when she says I look haggard. She tells me to quit drinking so much, her face impassive, her thoughts clouded with concern. She starts coming over more often, even cooking dinner for me, and her presence both grounds me and drives me mad.