What the Heart Wants, Wants the Heart Too

The woman had left quite an impression on me with her uncanny eating habits. But the most attractive feature in anyone is passion—intense, unrestrained passion. In this dull, mechanical world, when someone still has a spark in the eye, that light is contagious.

           What was she so enthusiastic about? Meat. Someone who can find excitement in the mundane is always a keeper. Since we’d met, on our first date, she occupied most of my mental screen time. My friends, they’d said of course I found her captivating. Of course, in my romantic, desperate eyes, biased by loneliness, I’d see a lion in a cat. Fuck them. I had to see her again. Whether she wanted to or not.

           Yeah, she said she didn’t want a relationship. She couldn’t. I believe there’s always a choice, and that the word can’t should be dragged out of the vocabulary and beaten to death. Why would she go on a date if she didn’t want to get involved?

Well, it hadn’t really been a date. She was sitting on the edge of a flower box, eating a baloney sandwich. I was walking by, minding my own problems, when I saw her, and that little voice reminded me, “You regret the things you don’t try.” So I walked up to her and asked her what she was doing. A dumb question, but I had no other options. She talked about baloney, how it was made and how it was better meat than people thought. She talked about that for twenty-five minutes, throwing in other kinds of meat like bacon and turkey and many more. “You seem to know a lot about meat,” I’d told her. She said she had a constant hunger even in the daytime. I thought it was cute. Then I asked her if she was with someone and she said, “No, and thank God for that,” and I asked why, and she said, “Because it would be a bloodbath every night.” She had assured me she could never be in a relationship. Then she told me to have a nice day, and she left.

           I followed her. Nothing creepy, just out of curiosity to see what kind of place she lived in. I went back there at night too, just to check. Did that a couple of times, just to get to know her a little, and I took some pictures through her window on the third floor, with no filthy intentions, but because I liked her so much. I believe that true, passionate love transcends decency and laws. That’s when I found out her secret.

           So I knocked on her door. She looked annoyed when she opened, but before she could complain, I showed her a picture that clearly showed her transforming. That shut her up.

           “We could make this work,” I said. “I know you think you can’t find love because of your condition, but I really don’t mind.”

           She let out a long, obnoxious sigh.

           “No thanks,” she said. “I don’t need this.”

           “Everyone needs someone.”

           “Not me. But thank you for your interest.”

           Interest? Try passion.

You get nowhere by giving up, so I came back in force, two days later, with a basket filled with baloney, bacon, and steak. She let me in.

           Her living room was quite messed up—the furniture was placed in a highly dysfunctional way, and a great variety of crumbs and stains covered a wide variety of surfaces.

           “So,” she said, “what do you do?”

           “I do a little computer programming, but I mostly walk dogs.” 

           “And you get paid for that?”

           “For the dogs or the other thing?”

           “The dogs.”

           “I charge five bucks an hour.”

           “Do you have a lot of clients?”

           “Masses. I have to plan and schedule the walks.”

           “That’s nice.”

           “What do you do?”

           “I’m in the process of thinking about looking for a job. I mostly stay home and draw stuff.”

           “What kind of stuff?”

           “I’m working on a graphic novel from the point of view of two hot dogs trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.”

           “Awesome.”

           “Yeah, the stakes are really high. You know since all the humans are looking for food all the time.”

           “Yeah, those hot dogs must live a very stressful life.”

           A silence flew by as we pondered on this.

           “Wanna get fucked up?” she said.

           “That goes without saying.”

           She ran to her fridge and got back with a bunch of beer cans. We drank them all in thirty minutes. After she finished the last can, she stared at me with a weird smile and said, “I wish you could stay here tonight.”

           “It turns out that I can. All the dogs are sleeping tonight.”

           “But you can’t. I’ll probably turn. And you don’t wanna be there when that happens.”

           “I told you I don’t mind.”

           “You don’t know what that implies. Usually, I just crawl around the room until sunrise, but if there’s someone else in here, I might eat.”

           I was turned on by this, but I tried to stay rational.

           “I believe that problems are better dealt with when they happen, not before.”

           Somehow that convinced her. We went to her room and engaged in sexual interaction. In the middle of it—her middle, I was done already, had resorted to using my tongue—she started screaming like a child at a NAMBLA convention, and I felt proud until something spongy and wet touched my shoulder, which made me feel prouder until I realized she wasn’t supposed to be wet and spongy on her arms.

I raised my head. Long, purple tentacles swung over the bed. Her forehead had tripled in size, and the shape of her head resembled a peanut. Her teeth, now flexible and elastic, stretched and curved like sharp worms out of her mouth. Her fingers were the same way—absurdly long, and they refused to follow the rules of joint flexibility. I counted six tentacles, out of her torso, but it was dark and I could have miscounted. She had turned into the ultimate Japanese porn star.

           One of her tentacles wrapped around my neck and squeezed. I thought it was affectionate, but it wasn’t—she was attacking me. She pulled my head toward her mouth, and her long wormy fangs went frantic with anticipation. I protected myself with my hand and felt the kiss of a meat grinder.

           I managed to free myself and sprint out of the room, slammed the door behind me, and leaned against it as she pounded from the other side. She made fierce, bubbly noises. The fishy smell spilled into the corridor.

The banging stopped. She moved around in the bedroom. Then nothing.

I thought about peeking inside, but changed my mind—better to leave her alone. In the locked bathroom down the corridor, a towel around the torn flesh of my hand, somehow, I slept.

           I woke up to her splashing water on her face and wiping her mouth with the sleeve of her bathrobe.

           “Hi,” I said, still hungover, traumatized, and wondering how she’d got in.

           She jumped with excitement when she heard my voice. She kneeled next to me, grabbed my shoulders.

           “You were right,” she said, “let’s love each other. Even if we know there’ll be trouble, so be it, let’s jump right in. I don’t wanna do the smart thing. I wanna dive head first into this. I wanna take it too far until we fuck it up. I wanna go insane with you. Let’s not take it slowly, let’s not save for later. I say we burn, crash into each other like trains. I want our love to blow up, not fade away. Ride the passion wave for however long it lasts without trying to stretch it. Let’s not water it down with expectations, let it die young and enjoy it while it’s there, OK?”

           My head was spinning.

           “So,” I said, “are we a couple now?”

           “That’s logistics. Fuck labels, can’t we just exist?”

           I got up.

           “You seem to have had a good night,” I said.

           “I sure did! Usually, I stay in the living room and eat anything I can find in the kitchen, but since you blocked the door, it pushed me to overcome my laziness, open the window, and get out of the apartment.”

           “Where did you go?”

           “To the park to eat some crackheads.”

           I had no words.

           “You said you were fine with my condition,” she said, perplexed.

           “Did you really do that?”

           She shoved her thumb and index into her mouth and pulled out a chunk of flesh that looked like a beige-and-red caterpillar. I felt sick.

           “I’ll make you some tea,” she said.

           “How do you remember all that stuff if you’re not conscious when it happens?”

           “I am conscious. I’m fully aware of everything I do.”

           Oh…

           “Then why did you…?”

           “Why did I try to eat you? Impulses of the moment, I guess.”

           “I’m a little concerned,” I said, showing the scratches on my hand, the little finger hanging by a thread of ligament.

           “I’m sorry about that. Just got a little excited. It won’t happen again, I swear. I’ll eat other people instead.”

           “Is that necessary? What if we fill the bedroom with ground meat?”

           “You don’t understand. It’s not the same when the food’s already dead. And the hunger’s stronger since we’re together. I have to eat people. You stimulate me.”

           She smiled.

           After the last woman I’d been with burned my car, I had told myself no more of that. I seemed to only gravitate toward relationships with hidden defects. A pill junkie, a kleptomaniac, a dog kicker. One got off by hypnotizing me and making me do jumping jacks all night, and I’d wake up strained and exhausted. But dating was a minefield. These things happen. A nice, normal woman would want nothing to do with me anyway.

           I swung by the hospital, blamed the whole thing on a blender accident, a smoothie gone wrong, and they reattached my finger.

           I had three dog walks scheduled for the day. Somebody was found dismembered in the morning with pieces bitten off, and the first thing people do when things like that happen is to find someone or something to blame. Whether the culprit was the right one or not was irrelevant. Since it was obvious that an animal had done it, videos games or fluoride or the government couldn’t be blamed, so the scapegoat they found was the Curly Eastern Sheepdog. Two of my regulars were of that breed, so a dark cloud hung over me as I walked the dogs. People glared. The ballsy ones spat at me or yelled insults while keeping a safe distance from the dreaded canines. But at the end of this rough day, I went back to the loving embrace of the woman of my dreams.

           At night, we kept the lights open, and as soon as the tentacles started to come out, I left the room, locked the door latch I’d got at the hardware store, and pushed the couch against the door. The door shook under the assault of the tentacles, but everything stayed in place. Violent knocks on the floor came from the old lady that lived under. I paid it no mind, slept like a chloroformed baby on the living room carpet. We were able to find solutions to the hindrances life provided us, and that right there proved how functional our relationship was.

        In the morning, I expected her enthusiastic and loving, but found her moody and cold. She was reading gloomy facts on the Internet.

           “Did you know that Hawksbill Turtles are critically endangered?” she said. “People sell their shells in gift shops. Fuck that.”

           “What’s up?” I said.

           “I didn’t eat anything last night.”

           I made her a bowl of cereals, but she ate it apathetically.

           As I was leaving for work, the old lady stopped me before I could exit the building.

           “Are you with the girl who lives upstairs?”

           I proudly nodded.

           “Come here,” she said, “I got something to tell you.”

           I got closer.

           “Tell her that next time she’s noisy like that in the middle of the night,” she said, “I’m going to kill her. I get real impatient at night and I have a hunting rifle I use on weekends to shoot birds. I’ll blast her non-bird head off.”

           I winked and walked out. Just a lonely, grumpy lady who had forgotten all about love.

           The following day, she was happy again, and when I slid the latch and pulled the couch out of the way she came bouncing out of her room to jump in my arms. Two homeless people were found with their hearts snatched out of their chests and their heads in a garbage can.

           A few days passed, following a similar pattern. When she’d eat during the night, she’d be passionate and warm the next day; if not, she’d be frustrated and distant. I accepted that it couldn’t be a rainbowy romance every day. Sometimes, I’d help her clean herself up in the morning when she woke up covered in blood and gore. Sometimes, I’d go pick her up in some park or alley. With the anesthetic power of love, nothing mattered—not the strain of her condition, not people’s looks as I walked the dogs, not the old lady yelling threats from downstairs. But still, something was poking my conscience. Sure, things were happier and nicer when she’d eaten, but on the other hand, she killed people. I talked to her on one of the happy mornings.

           “I transformed every day since you came into my life,” she said. “It used to be like once a week. You have quite an effect on me.”

           I tried to be subtle about my suggestion.

           “Don’t you think it could be a mildly reasonable idea to install bars on your window?”

           She stared at me.

           “You knew what you were getting into when we got together.”

           “But don’t you see anything wrong with what you’re doing?”

           “For once in my life, I thought I’d found someone who wouldn’t judge me. I thought you accepted me as I was.”

           “I do. But maybe we could find a compromise.”

           “We’re just too different, I guess.”

           She went into her room. I pushed the couch, locked the latch. Every couple goes through a rough patch now and then. True love prevails over such benign things.

           But during the night she tried to eat my heart.

She was pissed off. The door didn’t stand a chance, couch or not, latch or not.

She burst it open and rushed at me. I turned to run, but a tentacle wrapped around my ankle, and down I went. When I tried to kick it off, my foot slipped on the slime.

She pulled me toward her. I grabbed the picture in the purple little frame on the coffee table—of us with the poodle I walked on Thursdays—and threw it at her. I had to, sorry. She shrieked, and the pressure on my ankle lessened. Enough for me to free myself and crawl to the corner of the room. Followed by her.

The bubbly, gurgling sounds from her throat conquered my whole awareness, along with the banging on the floor. The banging on the floor, from downstairs.

I grabbed the cupboard with both hands, pulled, and it crashed face first, with the porcelain tea sets shattering. I jumped in place, pounded the hardwood with as much weight as possible. Before four tentacles seized my arms and legs. Another one wrapped around my neck, and she lifted me toward the ceiling, used her last appendage to slap me in the face.

Her mouth full of squirming fangs headed for my heart. Things got blurry. The air got rare. Was this the kind of relationship I wanted?

           I was about to pass out when a shotgun blasted the front door open. The old lady stepped in, rifle in hand, boiling with fury.

The love of my life dropped me and charged the elder, who shot once, twice, as my tender half sank her fangs into her throat. The old lady fell to the floor and wiggled in a puddle of blood until two tentacles put her out of her misery by snapping her neck.

           I sprang up to attend to my lady’s wounds, but nothing could be done. Sitting on the floor in a sticky puddle, I held her against me. This was all my doing. I had betrayed her. Her head lay on my shoulder, her wormy teeth softly piercing my skin. I clasped one of her tentacles as I watched the life stream out of her yellow eyes. 

           That’s just how life goes. You’re going along with whatever you think you’re supposed to be doing, and then love comes into your life as a seed of opportunity, of hope, for true romance, and a voice inside tells you it won’t be like the fantasy you make up in your head, but it might be close enough, and close enough is good enough, so you jump into it, and next thing you know love has tentacles and a shotgun blast through the chest and it’s dying in your arms.

           But true romance is more like a lightning strike than a lightbulb, no matter how hard we deny it or how much we try to stretch or control it. Love does happen, in a flash, out of nowhere. So does shit. Sometimes you get both, together. That’s just how it goes. 

           Before I left, I wiped the tears from my eyes and swore to myself I’d make wiser choices from now on.

           And yet, as I walked on the sidewalk, my torn shirt covered with blood, this cute woman looked at me with her wonderful, scaly reptilian eyes before entering a coffee shop, and I followed her right in.