The monster squealed and gnashed its teeth in the breaks between the kicks to its head.
Monster-Fanny was still strong, still fighting so that I struggled to stay atop her.
I knelt over her, pressing a knee against the arteries along both of her inner thighs, and did what I never once, in my entire life, so much as imagined myself ever—ever—doing.
I hooked my curled fingers around the fleshy snood that hung loosely around her neck like a scarf … and tugged it down.
It was a little bit like peeling a banana. Enough that I might never eat the fruit again.
I stripped her of her flesh suit down to her hips, revealing more of that slimy, shiny, pasty, gray flesh.
And more Bobo. Bare of her borrowed skin, the outline of my dog pressed against her upper body, clear as if he were simply covered by a blanket.
Seeing him more clearly, trapped inside her, drew another savage cry from me. As if he’d been buried alive, I began digging at the barrier between him and me.
I rended and ripped at the gray flesh—strangely cool to the touch.
The monster’s screams, as disturbing as they were, faded into the background while I zoned onto my singular task.
Save Bobo. Get him out of there.
I yanked and tugged and shredded flesh until I hit the black of Bobo’s fur, wet and slimy, slick instead of fluffy and soft like itusually was. At some point, other hands joined mine in excavating as I continued to unearth my sweet boy.
Until all of him was exposed, curled into a tight ball within a large, gaping body cavity. Indeed, the monster had no ribs, and there was nothing to indicate whether Fanny, in her true form, was actually a female or male.
Finally, I rose from where I’d knelt my weight onto the monster’s legs, keeping the beast immobilized while I dug Bobo out. With the kind of care I’d taken with him when he was just a tiny puppy, entirely vulnerable and dependent on me to meet his every need, I slid my arms under his body. I couldn’t fully ignore the squelching that accompanied the action, or the way I was reaching into abody, dammit.
Slowly, the reality of what I’d done, what I was still doing, began returning. Sounds, which had been muted and dull, started sharpening. My pulse, a constant whooshing that had acted as a buffer between me and my surroundings, began to slow, to hush.
Bobo slid from inside the monster with a pop like a calf bursting free of its mother’s womb.
His weight flung against me, knocking me onto my ass. I fell awkwardly, half seated, half sprawled across the monster’s legs, the bunched-up human suit, which felt, incongruously, just like flesh, even though it had pulled off like a costume.
Bobo’s weight was heavy across my lap, pressed to my chest.
“Is he alive?”
The question floated toward me as if from a great distance. But it arrived now. It touched me.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled, sounding foreign to my own ears.
“Fanny’s dead,” another of my friends told me, though my senses were still emerging from the haze, not yet capable of identifying which of my friends had spoken.
I bent over Bobo. His chest was unmoving. His eyes were closed. His body entirely limp when I moved him.
Someone’s arms tugged me and my precious cargo back off the monster’s body. Ah, not someone.Griffin.I always did recognize his touch before anyone else’s…
His legs slid around mine, bracketing me. His arms rested gently on my thighs beneath Bobo. His head rested softly on my shoulder in silent support.
“Is he breathing?”
This time I looked up and was met with Hunt’s stare. The dark chocolate of his eyes was bright amid the blood and gore that had splattered his face.
For the first time, I noticed that I was covered in it. I’d be getting it on Griffin. My fingers and arms were coated in gore.
I bent my head over Bobo’s, examining his nose, his mouth, then his chest. No movement whatsoever.
I shook my head. Hunt’s eyes darkened.
