My friend bought a dog from a hawker on the subway who sort of foisted it on him. A baby one. A puppy. Weirdly cheap, probably dropshipped. It was cute, I agreed: huge eyes, little nub-fangs, trembling gait, fur a stiff puff. But after only a week and a half it popped. Defective epigenetics from 6 generations of incest, we found out from a postmortem swab. The residue of a blister all over & seeped into the floor tiles. Couldn't even do anything with the skin. It looked like a smashed fish.

Because I have a black eye this week everyone’s been treating me with pity and hostility. My coworker Curter is the only one so far to ask what happened. I said: “These are the rewards of being cute.” After which he looked greatly suspicious.

Most girls wouldn’t like it if you vomited on their floor. Veris is special like that. Most girls wouldn’t make you do it again. And yes, I’ve been keeping count. As of today, six.

I have gotten interested in generated advertisements. On my commute every day I pass a 20-foot-high picture of a woman, hugely enthusiastic, biting into a wet peach endowed with the chortling face of a baby.

They’re not trying to sell you any specific thing lately. These ones that got put up across the street don’t even have a brand name on them. Just strings of text over smeary expensive-looking interiors. They said: Stye. Good Living Style. Same Time Nice Living.

What I do at work? Okay. I have, on a technicality, two jobs. The first one is gamete review. I work part-time for this eugenic startup that screens people’s sperm—mostly sperm—but also eggs. Surprisingly you don't need a medical degree or anything. An algorithm trawls the genome, flags any diseases and whatnot, and you verify the sequence. I also put together the reports that go out to customers informing them that if they have a baby it will be born dead or unacceptable. But mostly an algorithm writes those too.

The other thing I do is to model for this middle-aged photographer. I go far southeast about an hour to where she has her apartment, studio, and darkroom sort of sprawled over an entire floor of this half-demolished building. I get naked, usually, and she sets up an interesting and metaphorical backdrop like curtains on the floor, dishes of water, once a pet bird I think she rented. She sort of estimates how much to pay me per hour. She has been working with me the longest because my body is of consistent interest and always looking different. Because of all the things Veris does to me.

I spend more time at Veris’ than at my own apartment. To be fair, hers is larger and much nicer. Warm air, carpets on the floor. And it has the virtue of having Veris in it. We were hanging out with AinDel who is the only other current long-term one of Veris’ victims, or whatever we are.

AinDel took out this vial from their purse.

“I’ve been getting into fragrances,” they said. “This one’s supposed to be inspired by. Um. Passionfruit, and humidity, and decomposition accords. Like rotting flesh.”

“Lemme see,” I said. I sprayed a little on my arm. Because Veris is a legitimate necrophile. I brought my nose close to my wrist. But too close!! A little smudged my lips. Is perfume poisonous? No. Not most, right. Maybe this one?

Alcohol and something tart, something sweet. All up in my sinuses. I could see Veris eyeing me. I waited to smell like a corpse.

Everyone in this city has either a dog or a baby. One at minimum. And it’s the same thing either way. You want to know how? This morning as I was getting on the subway I saw, framed by the doors, but not entering, just standing on the platform. A woman holding a small boy by a leash attached around his neck.

Crushed against Veris' bedframe I drew in a searing breath. She had me pinned spread-eagled and was sort of fondling my ears.

VERIS: This is where you belong. Stop trying to fight it. You know you can’t hold me back. Not if I really wanted to kill you.

[Eyes dilate in as heavy and profound an enthrallment as death. The body allover slackens. And breathes deeply.]

VERIS: You want it. When you look like that I can tell. You don’t even need to speak anymore.

That’s good. There have been several things put into my mouth by this point.

SELF:

VERIS: You’d look good with your limbs cut off.

A trickle of blood runs down my ass.

VERIS: You’re so sweet like this.

Today at work my abdomen is hurting badly, and my thighs, and to a lesser extent the soles of my feet. I get antsy when I don’t have any injuries.

Curter spends every break scrolling with no headphones. Man’s now watching generated videos which purport to explain an invented pantheon. He keeps pausing and replaying this one. Deciding which one to worship? I like the look of the purple goddess with crystals rupting her skin.

Lunch with the friend whose dog burst. He’s taken me to some, I quote, eatery, which I would not have assented to had I looked it up at all before heading here. The amount of citrus peels in this salad seems like something has gone wrong.

I open my bank account, just to make sure of the situation. I’m regretting a lot. There are no longer three digits in it. Even so, that leaves some wiggle room.

Dry red dog shit on the pavement.

I hold the door open for an old man. I am trying to be nicer! He enters shivering, shuffling, blowing, snorting, and sort of whooping. Come to think of it I’m not sure whether in fact he lives here.

He says: “After the operation I got no skin. So the wind just goes right through me.” He seems to have skin as far as I can see but I don’t know what's going on under his clothes.

Veris spends a lot of time in the same few postures, mantislike, half-curled, placid. She mostly orders food online. Her apartment is a sanctum like a big egg. This makes it easy to construct her as some sort of puppet master secluded in a tower. When I’m out at work I have this fun way to think of myself as an ant collecting scraps for an ant queen or something. But I don’t really buy things for her. So I guess the scraps are actually me.

Her feed, from what I’ve seen, is mostly generated videos of waifish sick-looking girls being tortured or explaining torture methods. But also, and this is intriguing, aquarium hobby content. Like people tenderly feeding frozen chunks to expensive live fish and other water animals. Which indicates maybe something I don’t yet know about her.

About two or five gallons of dog mucus all slick and white strands across the sidewalk right outside the door. I put my shoes down with care such that only the soles contacted it. But I didn’t warn Curter behind me & so he stepped into it with blind zeal, nearly fell, and put a hand right in the puddle to stop himself.

The warranty for the protective self-repairing case on my phone has been up for a few years and I’ve dropped it so many times that its neurology is rather fucked by now. It’s extruding spikes lately. Sometimes when I pick it up they puncture my hand. Lots of bloodstains in my situation recently.

I see, over Curter’s shoulder, a video of a baby bird melting. Some text over it about how it was born in a zoo. Chirpy music. The bird’s body slowly deforms, sliding off the edges of the gloved palm it’s cupped in. Has to be generated.

They jacked up the price of access to the laundry room—it’s a monthly subscription—so I can’t do laundry in my building anymore. So I was over at Veris’ loading my clothes in and out of the washer-dryer in her apartment, in the living room, which regrettably made things noisy. There was a big crack sprawling over the ceiling like some lightning-strike spider. Which was odd. Usually I think of her place as immaculately nice. Veris was standing nearby, at my back, and listing all the things she wants to do to me: “Some sort of, of crucifixion thing. Like through your hands and feet. Um. Maybe nails here too...” I felt her hand trace my groin. Her voice was calm, almost apathetic.

She paced into my peripheral vision as I extracted a gross shirt, and nodded to herself, head tilted toward the flawed ceiling. “Cut your tendons. So you can’t get away. Burn you. Little burns all over your body. Cut out your tongue. Sever your spine.”

In the elevator it’s me and the building super and the old man who claims to have no skin. Some brown fluid is dripping from the ceiling. I won’t ask.

I missed a phone call from my job because the things Veris had inserted under my skin would not permit me across the room to retrieve my phone. But! The photographer paid me double my hourly rate when she saw the aftermath of that.

On the subway a screen displaying advertisements registers my presence, accesses some information about me from godknowswhere, and generates a listicle titled The Best 10 Gifts For Your Sadist Girlfriend. It did honestly make me laugh. She wouldn’t like any of that shit.

I have realized that I have to get rid of AinDel. Or rather to engineer Veris getting rid of them. It’s not personal. I don’t have anything against AinDel. In fact I usually really like them when we’re hanging out together, just us. But it’s just that I can’t any longer stand anything between me and Veris. And they get in the way—I think of Veris thinking of them while she’s, not hurting me but doing mundane shit when I’m not there. Shopping for groceries, maybe. Actually I know she doesn’t do that. Going to sleep? It’d be bad if she thought about them while going to sleep. So I am going to have to prevent them in some way or at least nudge her toward this hopeful conclusion.

Already I’ve been in trouble at work. I showed up an hour late today. I just don’t really care to be on time. Can’t summon the effort. Thinking about Veris makes me feel warm, sleepy, and immobile. I get distracted a lot. And turned on. I was in the bathroom masturbating, and by the time I had finished my head wasn’t any clearer. I turned on the tap to wash my hands and some water got all over the sink counter. In it I saw this greasy rainbow. I watched it for a while, shifting in and out like breath. The water was warm, and I kept my hands in it and kept pouring more of it onto the sides of the sink to see the iridescence bloom. Only when I had finished did I realize how much of a puddle there was on the floor. And I heard the next person to use the bathroom say: “What the hell went on in here?” I think I’d like to know that too.

I showed Veris how broken my phone case was, with the spikes, and she took it from me and started hitting me with it. Love that for innovation. If we were animals she’d be one of the animals that can use tools. I hope I wouldn’t.

AinDel and Veris and I went to the museum together because admission was free that evening. I was pissed that AinDel was with us but it was at least an opportunity for me to sabotage them, so I kept sort of goading them into saying things I knew Veris wouldn’t like. She seemed to care more about the artwork than about us. Particularly the ones of sacrifices, disemboweling, etc.

Okay. I started to pay attention to the art too eventually. There were some crazy cool things. Ancient stuff, oilspill-looking glass from thousands of years ago, snarling carved lions, these ceramics with a thin layer of metal on the glaze, and I got honestly worked up because, wow, history is a constant stream of life. Everyone who’s ever lived. And even now it’s touching us. The same world this whole time. It all felt clear and shining and complex in a way I could understand for once. Then we looked at some vases which depict pederasty.

Like I thought, I got told today not to bother coming in to work now or ever. I am fired completely. It’s almost a relief no longer worrying over whether they’ll fire me.

But I did start worrying that this would endanger my situation with Veris. I haven’t told her about it yet.

When I went to see the photographer last night, I noticed some new thing in a corner, a tank about seven feet tall. Inside: a figure, long curving limbs askew in illuminated brine. Closed eyes, closed mouth, a knot of genitals crushed against the side of the tank. Some sci-fi prop? Or for Halloween? And how much does something like that cost? Before I could see any more, she swept a dust-stained curtain over it. For the rest of the day I thought intermittently about it glowing unseen in the dark.

I met up with my friend, the one with the short-lived puppy, for all of fifteen minutes today. During which he tried to sell me what he claimed was a nootropic tincture with a light dose of psilocybin and a number of other extracts.

I explained to him that I was let go from my job and didn’t want to be recklessly spending money. He says: “Right. But this'll shift your whole framework.”

The dog is wearing clothes. Its owner, not so much.

“That’s,” said Veris. Looked me over for a long moment. “That’s cool. You don’t need a job. Anymore. I’ll just keep you.” She has that soft certain smile that indicates she’s planning something elaborate to do to me. “You know I like you the best.”

Bask in that. Perfect world. Perfect fucking world.

I know I sound stupid or obsessive. But I can’t keep from asking: “What about AinDel?”

“I’m not seeing them anymore.”

“Oh!”

Don't show too much enthusiasm. I don’t want to come off like that’s anything I care about. It’d make me seem like I schemed it, maybe.

“They just didn’t interest me. You know? Like eventually I felt like I’d found out everything they were capable of and it wasn’t enough for me. After a while. God, I sound awful, I mean. That’s really rude, right? That’s cruel.”

“No,” I say, trying not to smile too much, just a bit in a warm and reassuring way. “I get it. I get that. I know exactly what you mean.”

I'm glad we agree on me losing the job; like it’s easier for Veris to trap me in some way now. The crack all over the ceiling is just fucking huge. And dimensional, like I think I can see right into it. I’m lying on my back looking up at it. I’m on the carpet, and the bristles are actually fairly rough against my hands, which are pinned under me. I can’t shift from this position so I’ve been looking at the ceiling for maybe twenty minutes. Time flies. I think the ceiling’s going to collapse, maybe even this year or month. I’m very happy.

“I love you,” I said, over and over. Licking the top of her foot. The wiring of tendons & a few little delicate hairs against my tongue.

She looks up from her phone briefly. “Love you too.”

I’ve won.

Henry Kay Cecchini is a recent college graduate living in New York. They write about ecology, bodies, and nightmare worlds. More of their work can be found at Zoetic Press, Fantastic Other, and https://antemaion.itch.io/.