Flytrap

Word Count: 1800

I’m hungry, said one.

I’m thirsty , said the other.

It had started again, and she’d been so careful, cautiously slipping her arms in through the loops, connecting the hooks into the eyes, adjusting the cups just so. They’d been quiet for the last few weeks and her chest only looked as though she’d just had a bad reaction to some ill-gotten shellfish, swollen and a red that looked like a deep blush. Hallucinations, both visual and auditory could be explained by mixing cheap wine with expensive scotch.  She’d done it enough times, but never were the voice so specific, so demanding.

No.

It’s hot in here.

I’m itchy.

Sigh.

Where are we going?

I think I’d like some ice cream.

Ice creamfor pity’s sake. Now they want ice cream. The last time, before they’d gone blessedly dormant, it was mocha coffees. Earlier it was New York Strip, rare. The horror was, they would actually eat, little mouths working, hints of lots of sharp teeth.

Maybe Neapolitan

Chocolate cherry cordial

She fed them ice cream, peeling down the cups of her bra, holding a small spoon to the round little mouths, first the right, then the left. Never the other way around. That mistake she’d only made once, and the right threw a squealing tantrum, the likes of which would have brought Child Protective Services. However, no one else ever heard them.

The little mouths on each nipple opened as wide as the areolas and slurped down the cold ice cream. She didn’t know where the food went and only felt little spidery lines of cold radiating to her ribs and down her belly. In the last couple of days, the breasts themselves had grown noticeably larger. This was by design, she knew now, because it attracted prey better. As she fed them, she thought sullenly to the last date she’d had, which was the last one she’d let go further than a smooch goodnight. There was biting and blood and it was the first time she’d come to grips with the reality that the voices she’d heard from her breasts weren’t just a sign of impending mental collapse.

She and this guy, even his name was disappearing behind the mental wall her brain was building block by block, enjoyed a fabulous dinner at her place. They kissed and took breaths when they could, never leaving a lip unoccupied for long, never giving it time to dry.

They’d moved from the kitchen where they’d become more comfortable with each other over rum and Cokes, to the bedroom where they’d become more comfortable with each other under their clothes. Some fumbling and a lost button later, warm hands met smooth skin, and wet mouths explored the landscape with tongues, darting and taking notes. She’d deftly removed her bra, a no frills, basic edition dime-store acquisition, with only one hand. It was a show opener that never failed to impress. She forgot, simple as that. They’d wanted eggs this morning. Maybe a little coffee. She forgot, was all…

In the blush of passion, she’d forgotten they were hungry.

Immediately his hands were drawn to her breasts like loose metal drawn to an MRI machine. Whether the lust or the libations, she’d never know if he hadn’t seen the little mouths or hadn’t cared.  There was kneading and squeezing, an act of men that was always a mystery to her. She wasn’t a loaf of bread being prepared to rise but she stayed out of his way keeping her hands in his hair, remaining pliable and flexible. It was a guy-thing, and if that’s what it took to get to the good stuff, she’d endure.  He’d moved from kneading the loaf to pinching the peaks.

Ouch,” he tore his lips from hers and sucked in a breath of air. “Something bit me.”

“You’re so drunk,” she said, her voice taking on that low purr she hoped sounded sexy. There was a nibbling at the back of her mind but she dismissed it and it floated away on brain cells bloated with booze.

He giggled high and sharp, a sure sign of inebriation. “Yeah, I am.”

More kissing, more near asphyxiation.

“Ouch, sunnuva…” His lips drew back completely now and his giggle held a sharp edge of Really Not Funny. “Something on your boobs bit me.” She saw the jerk of his shoulders, first the left, then the right, and she remembered as she heard their little voices.

Too hard

I’m hungry

“Oh, damn it,” she said and it was the quiet proclamation of resignation, like discovering cat puke in a favorite potted plant.  “Oh damn it all.”

I taste

I taste

And then he was screaming that her tits had his hand, and unfortunately it was true. Her right breast seemed glued to his left hand.

She felt her left shoulder jerk forward and her left breast now had his right hand and he screamed louder. Any second the neighbors would start pounding on the walls and calling the cops. She had to keep him quiet and calm him down.

If she was caught, that’s what she would say.

Her hands went to his mouth to shush and quiet, but the fingers went to his nose and pinched it closed. Her palm went to his jaw and sealed his lips. She watched his cheeks puff out demanding air and getting nothing but swollen lips and broken capillaries in his nose. He tugged at his hands and the teeth held tight.

He went to his knees and after many long moments his eyes showed their whites and he went limp. His lips were swollen and bruised, but the worst were his hands. The little nipple mouths had gnawed through the soft fleshy tissue joining the thumbs to the hands and she could hear the determined crunching of the teeth through the metacarpals. The left was working inward to work on the knuckle on the index finger. The right was making its way to the wrist.  He stopped struggling and his eyes lost that spark she’d seen when first he’d asked her out.  It was the spark that made her say yes, but the only glint now was the dulling reflection of the lamp on the nightstand as he eyes began to cloud to white.

She sat on her bedroom floor waiting for them to finish, tears streaming down her face. The angle of the arms towards the shoulders proved to be too wide for the left breast to continue up the arm, so in deference to the right, now gnawing on the denser bicep on its way to the deltoid, it was munching across the chest.  It left ragged little teeth marks across the skin, through the shirt, on the bone. Ten minutes later, she looked down and saw nothing but full and bloody breasts and a dead man with no arms and a missing lower jaw on her floor.

The saddest part – really the worst part when she got right down to brass tacks – was the mouths were gone. No sharp little teeth, no begging, no complaining, not even a contented sigh and where was the gratitude, she wondered. At that, she choked back a laugh that escaped as a sob. Without thinking more about anything else, she pulled on a shirt, and with arms stronger than they were just that morning when she struggled with the mayonnaise jar, she put him into his car and drove him somewhere not near her apartment, somewhere distant and dark and full of things that flapped overhead or padded by on furry feet hardened by the elements.  She wiped everything down, and didn’t care if it wasn’t enough. She made her way back, first by bus, and then by cab, and then bus again, paying cash and keeping her sad, braless self away from everyone as much as possible.

She cleaned up her apartment and threw everything away. She would worry about police and investigators when that time came and she didn’t want to over think. He was here, they had a bite, and then he was gone. What she enjoyed most was the silence, and the fact that nothing was chewing through her shirt, or through her guests.

She was so happy, she cried. The next day, her period started, and it was heavier that she’d ever experienced. Two days in, she passed a blood clot that felt as if it were filled with broken glass.

Or bones.

She didn’t peek to confirm.

A few days later, police had come and gone, tracking the poor guy’s last movements through his phone records. Identification was almost impossible due to the fact that animals had removed most of the soft tissue on his face. Sure she’d had a date, she told them. It ended well, but he was drunk. She could have kept him, but she wasn’t that kind of girl, so she didn’t. When he didn’t call in a few days, she’d assumed he wasn’t the nice guy she’d originally thought.  She even cried again. It was good, the performance, the story, the cry. If felt real and the cops were nice enough to comfort her.

Things fell back into routine. Nice blouses, thin bras, it was getting easier.  Life was getting manageable.

Three weeks and she almost felt like she could start dating again. Her breasts had gone back to the normal B cups and where the mouths were, there was nothing but a splash of reddish spots. Rash maybe, wearing a dirty, sweaty bra.

Still to be safe, she treated her breasts like live grenades. Carefully putting on bras and blouses and sweaters, her body was a glass temple and she didn’t want to cause a crack in the serene surface. Three weeks of bliss-wrapped trepidation. And now

A steak

A coffee

Soon there would be swelling as they fed, becoming bigger, rounder, more irresistible to keep from reaching out, caressing, touching. She knew what they were really hungry for and she changed out of her simple sensible sweater and pulled out the low scoop-neck t-shirt. She wouldn’t wait for the bait to grow. A few hours and it would be done. The sooner she got this over with, the sooner she could get back to something like a normal life, for a few weeks stretch anyway. Maybe later she’d have a doctor look into it, but not every biological function needed a doctor’s blessing. She had her period, grew breasts, and now her breasts had teeth. Circle of life, right?

She’d learned to plan around her period when she was younger, keeping boys at arm’s length, nothing further than second base. This was just flipping the script a little.

Forget the appetizers, she thought giving the right one a surreptitious little stroke as she climbed the bus headed cross-town. Let’s get you guys the main course.

In her head, she thought she could hear them cheer.