This Is How You Know You've Kissed A Demon:
First, a hunger food cannot sate, coupled with a scorching in your throat that melts swallows upon swallows of semi-mashed rice into a trickle.
Then, the incessant urge to urinate that keeps you awake, attempting to release the pressure imploding your urethra, but your vigil births nothing, only a spurt of urine that slimes onto the toilet bowl, greenish, drooling with a grace that mocks you and there, again, is the hunger.
Snack wrappers and food droppings scattered about the floor hail your newborn voraciousness as you walk to the refrigerator. You shove a quarter-eaten loaf into your mouth; it does nothing. Your tongue goes stale. Half-eaten apples fly in the air as you spit the other halves out. You wrest a slice of uncooked steak into your mouth. It tastes like an embodied heaven. Smooth as golden seas. You eat—raw flesh, gobbled whole, and crumple to the ground. Right there against the wall, you fall asleep, your mouth: a corpse smeared tomb.
You dream of him, his eyes wrapped in waves of cerulean mirth. You stand in dewy meadows, grasses as soft as the smile stretching across his face. The smile stretches, and stretches...
Snack wrappers and food droppings scattered about the floor hail your newborn voraciousness as you walk to the refrigerator. You shove a quarter-eaten loaf into your mouth; it does nothing. Your tongue goes stale. Half-eaten apples fly in the air as you spit the other halves out. You wrest a slice of uncooked steak into your mouth. It tastes like an embodied heaven. Smooth as golden seas. You eat—raw flesh, gobbled whole, and crumple to the ground. Right there against the wall, you fall asleep, your mouth: a corpse smeared tomb.
You dream of him, his eyes wrapped in waves of cerulean mirth. You stand in dewy meadows, grasses as soft as the smile stretching across his face. The smile stretches, and stretches...
When the edges of his lips touch his eyes, you step back. A screech pierces his mouth. You scream. Toothed tentacles shoot out his head and they, by some infernal trajectory, tear into your mouth, into your bowels.
You awake screaming, vomiting green fluids speckled with pieces of your abraded intestines. Your lover runs into the kitchen. Startled, he wraps his arms around you. You flinch. He hushes you, and asks what happened. Your belly churns, sobs crash out your mouth, but you don't tell him you kissed the blue-eyed devil you matched with on Tinder. You don't tell him you cheated.
You awake screaming, vomiting green fluids speckled with pieces of your abraded intestines. Your lover runs into the kitchen. Startled, he wraps his arms around you. You flinch. He hushes you, and asks what happened. Your belly churns, sobs crash out your mouth, but you don't tell him you kissed the blue-eyed devil you matched with on Tinder. You don't tell him you cheated.
Tom Okafor is a daydreamer who bends dreams into stories. He lives in Eastern Nigeria. He has dreams published in Apparition Literary Magazine, Gnashing Teeth Publishing, and elsewhere. He's been nominated for the Pushcart and Caine Prizes.
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