I tell the Hand to pull up the voice memo app on Nadine's phone. She's sleeping. The Temple has walloped her internally so that she's out for longer than last time. I've only just begun my story, and there's still at least ten of us to go, all new additions from the past year.
We're careful not to make too much noise—no errant moans or gasps from our many mouths. Our lips are tightly pulled together, as if glued and zipped and sewn just for good measure. We know that our stories must be heard clearly. Spoken with no interruption.
We don't want to be stuck to her much longer.
The Hand and Arm work together to bring the phone closer to where I am: the Hip. The Hand pushes record, and I open my mouth, stretch my lips and wet my tongue. I speak.
I'm going to start this story at the end of the first night. The beginning of the end, really. The first time I felt simultaneously in control and out of it. Bear with me, it's a windy road, but love—and obsession—usually is. I can admit that now. Can still see it, that first night, circular, replaying. Live it. Try to sleep and can't, so I live it again. Welcome to my thoughts, it's all I have left anyway. Let's go.
* * *
Three Weeks Ago
I'm paralyzed by her.
My face was stuffed somewhere in the crevice of Nadine's shoulder blades. I'm careful not to pull away, for fear of waking her with that unflattering sound and feeling of naked flesh unsticking itself from other naked flesh.
Since I couldn't move and my mind was far from sleep, I let it wander and take adventures, hoping to burn off the excess energy. The buzz of the night. The vibration still humming through my veins. I needed to let it fizz out so I could get some semblance of sleep before work tomorrow.
I yawned, smelling her again as I do. I couldn't help but feel a rumble of excitement, accomplishment, and a bit of anxiety swirl together when I caught that hint of her sex on my face.
It was my first time—with another woman at least—and I never thought that I'd feel so much like a toddler again, my legs wobbly beneath me as I try to navigate new terrain.
I thought about that gaze she sent my way, across tables at the bar, the local lesbian watering hole, from what I had gathered in my Yelp research. Apparently the spot for new and old queers. A drink or ten to build up the courage, a feast—of both women and really good sliders if you could stomach the grease.
I'd stared, mouth open, beef spilling out of my mouth when I made eye contact with her. Felt heat flush to my cheeks and my groin and a guttural, audible groan escaped my lips.
“No, no, that one's trouble,” Addie said. “I've heard that half the San Francisco girls have been her prey. Do you know how many queer people San Francisco has?”
“Shut up, Addie,” I said.
“Why not that one, over there? She's cute and looks safe. You can probably figure this shit out with her and she wouldn't eat your head off in the process.”
I looked over to where Addie was not so inconspicuously pointing. A sweet looking girl in a button up shirt and a cute nose-piercing waved in my direction. I waved back, letting my fingers dance like blades of grass in the wind.
She was pretty, and like Addie had said, probably safe. Not that I knew the first thing about dating girls. And that was my problem, because my ignorant ass seemed to be drawn to the most dangerous girl in the room.
“No, stop it, Suzie. I'm telling you, don't even bother. You know how many hearts she's broken? It'll be whatever that astronomically high number is plus one once she's done with you,” Addie said.
I watched the girl lick the excess alcohol from her lips, the honey-colored drink on the rocks making her look goddamn untouchable.
“The heart wants what the heart wants, Addie.”
“The heart doesn't want that. Trust me. The loins might, but the heart doesn't.”
“Please stop telling me how to gay. It's my gay or the highgay.”
“How are we friends?” Addie sighed dramatically.
“I'm going to the bathroom. Want me to bring back a drink?”
She smiled. “Ah yes, that's why we're friends. Margarita please. A double, if I'm going to have to watch you make ogley-eyes at her all night.”
I smacked Addie's shoulder and headed to the bathroom, which had a line of dancing queers that nearly reached the bar. Yet another unforeseen drawback of dating at the local lezzie bar: ridiculously long waits for the restroom.
I really did have so much to learn.
I tapped my foot impatiently on the sticky ground of the bar floor. My eyes darted around the room, falling on the array of missing posters behind the bar. At least a dozen faces, all young women, were tacked up on the wall along with the number for the local LGBTQ+ Community Center. I remember thinking that was odd—you'd think I'd have heard of a group of young women who'd recently disappeared before that moment.
I tried to note their faces, but they were blurring together from the alcohol buzzing through my veins. I turned my attention to the rest of the room. All around me, women were coupling up, eyes glazed over from alcohol, discarded plates forgotten beside them. There were new dishes each night, served hot, after all. The soft glow of string lights hanging from the wooden rafters made it all seem so idyllic. So normal. Maybe one day I'd find my peace here, but for now, I was overstimulated and stressed from its newness.
The line shuffled forward. With too much time spent waiting to release my bladder, I found my mind drifting to how I got to this spot. This oversexed bar with these overhorny people, in over my horny head. I didn't even know I was horny for other women a week ago.
Hardy-har, right? The thirty-year-old who finally figured things out after forced and failed relationships and a near giving up on love. How could I not have realized? Not have known?
I could probably overanalyze my sexual orientation-based misgivings until the cows came home, but I'll just settle on this: I didn't know, until I did. Just kind of struck my mind like a flick to the forehead one night, lying in bed with too much anxiety swirling in my brain. It struck me, it settled, and since then, the rest of me just fell into place.
And then I was there. In the bar. Apparently with a taste for the most off-limits girl in this humid, loud place.
The line shifted again.
A voice in my ear caused me to almost piss my pants.
“Hive mind urination, am I right?” I jumped a bit more than I would have liked in front of the girl I'd been making lovestruck eyes at not five minutes earlier. Addie's warning echoed in my mind. I ignored it.
“You've surely got a better pick-up line than that?” I fired back, hoping to sound as cool as I wished I was.
She laughed, the sound like a rainbow arcing over the loud music in the bar. Ugh, even my intrusive thoughts are gay.
“Who says I was trying to pick you up?”
“Everyone does, you just can't hear it over this abysmally loud bass drop.”
“You're right, my mistake. In that case, do you have plans later?”
And that was all she wrote. My naïve, fresh-lesbian soul felt like it had mated. Within the hour, I had left the bar with Nadine and was making my way up the steps of her apartment complex and into her bedroom and clothes were off and we were having sex and I was becoming whole. My whole world was vibrating and sending out ripples of color. I tried to let my instincts take over, remembered what felt good for me, see if it felt good for her.
I didn't tell her it was my first time. I didn't want to scare her off. But somehow, she knew, I learned, panting naked and slippery with sweat later that night.
“Pretty good for the first go at it,” Nadine had said. “You going to stay the night? I've been told I snore.”
I was still feeling whammed by the realization that I was exposed and revealed to be the complete newbie I was.
“I…I can stay,” I stuttered out.
“Just don't get too attached or anything. We can spoon, but I'm not really looking for anything serious.”
I couldn't think of a response that wouldn't make me sound any less like the loser that I was, so I settled on latching onto her back, draping an arm over her midsection, and trying to sleep.
She didn't say another word, and my mind was racing. I don't think I slept a wink that night, nor any of the nights since. I sighed. See? We've been here before.
I started the night over in my mind again.
* * *
That's how we met, so I'll tell you how we ended. I'm not sure I can continue tonight though. The sun is starting to come up and wheezing out these words has taken more out of me than I thought it would.
We're all in agreement, the Hand and Arm, and I, the Hip. We shut the phone off, place it back where it was as Nadine begins to stir.
Crisis averted. I know our mouths will seal when she awakens. Disappear when she regains control, and we'll revert to our place in the trunk, forgotten as she goes about her day. As I let myself fall back into her, I almost shout with what little energy I have left. I can feel her hunger, her need to consume. Maybe she'll go out again and gather another one of us. Her knee is looking rather bare these days.
* * *
It's a few nights later now. She's asleep again, and her bed is finally empty. She had a girl over the last two evenings, and I can only hope she's strong enough to fight the lure Nadine exudes. We couldn't, and we're paying that price.
The Temple, Arm, Hand and I work at it again, setting up the phone so I can tell the rest of my story. It'll be their turn soon, if this works out, and I know they're excited to use a voice they'd lost months ago.
Alright, the rest of my story. I started with the beginning of my end, so allow me a bit of meandering now so I can explain how I turned into nothing but a puckered mouth that only breathes when she's asleep.
* * *
One Week Ago
I found her at that bar again. A solid seven days had passed since we had sex for the first time, and my first kind of first, and I hadn't stopped thinking about her since. The morning after my inaugural trip down under, I made her coffee, eggs, awkwardly fixed my hair and pressed my clothes under my palms as she sauntered to the table. She had this look of pain in her eyes, like she could see what was happening and wanted nothing to do with it.
“Thanks…what's your name again?” At least she was honest.
“Suzie.” My cheeks flushed.
“Suzie, right. Look, don't take this personally, but this isn't going to be a thing. Unless, you know, you're okay with just the sex.”
I looked at her longingly.
“I'm not opposed to the sex, you know. You were pretty good. I'm just not looking for commitment. You've got that look like you're ready to lay down roots here in my apartment. Like you skipped stages one and two and hopped right into stage three. Don't. You wanted a good, easy first time, right?”
I think this is the most I've heard her speak since we've met. I stayed silent.
“So, you got it. Easy, no strings attached.”
“Okay,” I finally said. “Okay.”
“Alright, glad that's sorted,” Nadine said through a smile.
I excused myself, went straight to work in last night's clothes, reeking of alcohol.
“Sorted” she had said. I couldn't help but feel used. I spent the next few days thinking about just how used I had felt until all of a sudden that feeling of being yesterday's garbage finally got taken out to the dumpster and I seemed to forget my torment.
I found her at that bar. We went back to her apartment. We had sex.
We did it again the next night, too. I craved the way my hands seemed to find holds everywhere in her body, like I was climbing a rock wall and she was the path. It felt like I was slipping into her, becoming her when she reached her peak; we'd climb Everest together, flesh and flesh.
Each time she finished it was an orchestra of moans and screams. It sounded like she was everywhere at once, and for a second, I wondered if she had an extra mouth hidden somewhere.
I lay nestled into her back again, thinking about her dimples, her laugh, and how much of a woman she was. And that was really something to me. She was a woman and I was a woman and I couldn't get over the fact that we had been together in that way, after spending a whole life not realizing just how amazing it could be.
The next day at work, Addie pressed for information, teased me for falling in deep. Said she could see it written all over my face like I'd fallen asleep first at a party and someone had scribbled “this bitch is in love” in Sharpie across my forehead.
But she was right. I couldn't believe it. A week and a half, and my heart was hammered, drunk with Nadine.
I texted her that night. “Can I take you out?”
“Drinks?”
I tried to be bold, texted: “Dinner???”
There was a long pause of blinking ellipses on the screen as she typed. “No strings remember?”
I breathed, chose my words carefully so I could get what I wanted: “No strings, just burgers.”
Another long pause, but she agreed to meet me at the restaurant next to my favorite park where I planned to win her over under the stars.
We met, we ate, I paid, and made some excuse about walking the food off. She didn't protest, claiming to need the fresh air herself.
We walked, moonlight illuminating the way. I tried to grab her hand, but she shoved it in her pocket. I tried to kiss her, but she turned her cheek.
I longed for her touch, and she seemed to want to be anywhere but with me, her phone buzzing occasionally in her pocket. She stopped walking, turned to face me.
“Please don't ask me to be your girlfriend.”
I sputtered, feeling called out and ashamed. She turned down the thing I wanted and I hadn't even asked her.
“Look, Suzie, you seem real nice and all. You're going to make some girl really happy. But that girl isn't me. I promise you that.”
“But how do you know?”
She sighed. “I see this all the time. The first girl you sleep with, that one that basically reorients the rest of your life, it makes you fall in deep. You can't help it. I try not to make a habit of sleeping with the newly gay, but you were so forward in that line to the bathroom I didn't think you were.”
“Can't you just pretend I'm not?”
“That's beside the point. It doesn't matter what I want, it's what you think you want.”
I was trying not to cry.
“I'm not worth it,” Nadine continued. “Do you know why my phone keeps ringing? It's my on-again, off-again girlfriend asking if I got my free dinner from the Stage Five Clinger.”
“Ouch,” I said, wincing internally more than I let on, trying to mask the utter raw pain.
“This girl, she's my puppeteer. When you and I sleep together, she's the one I wish it was. You fall, and no matter what, I can't stop you. I'll eat you alive. And I'll smile the whole time.”
I could see what she was doing, being needlessly cruel. It was working.
“I get it,” I said. “You can stop.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Can we still…you know?”
She laughed. “You do have those talented fingers. Just a fuck?”
I nodded my head, weighed down by the lump in my throat. “Just a fuck.”
And we did.
I lied to myself as much as I lied to her. For another week I tried. Just the physical. Grunts late into the night. I wouldn't stay over, but rather gather my clothes and shuffle off for long night drives wishing I wasn't doing exactly what I was doing.
I kept having sex, because it was the only way I could be with her. It was humiliating, but exhilarating.
I'd stare into her eyes and imagine a lifetime of doing so, and she'd stare back, challenging me. She had all the power, and she knew it. From her coy smiles, I could tell that she liked it. Thrived off it, even as she protested against it. It was a dance she danced often, and she had mastered every step. Every house I imagined us owning together, every kid I imagined cradled in our arms was another card in her voraciously selfish deck.
She was winning every night, but at least they were nights with her.
I was falling in deep. Trying not to let her know. But somewhere within the confines of her hardened shell, her body knew. And it was absorbing me.
Talented fingers and all.
* * *
Nadine rolls over, and I shout at the Temple. Scream at it with my mouth and tongue flapping at her hip to slam a concussive force into her skull and stop her. I'm almost done with this story.
If Nadine learns that we've grown, this whole thing is over and we're back to being trapped.
If she figures out that we've opened like slits across her body at night, that as we remember more about who we are, that we become mouths and speak, we're done. We've learnt about each other each night and want to tell the world about Nadine, the many-mouthed beast.
We can't lose. We have nothing left of ourselves.
The Temple does her job. Nadine is out again. The Hand and Arm reposition the phone by me at her Hip.
My story. The rest of my story.
* * *
Last week
Deeper, harder, faster; I fell. And the night that it happened, that I lost nearly all of myself, I was full of regret.
I remember that first time I saw Nadine, at the bar when Addie told me to choose a different girl, that nice-looking girl. Someone easy and kind and who wouldn't eat me for breakfast. I chose to be a meal, though, I just didn't realize how literal it would be.
I was in her bed when every colossal shit from the past month hit the fan at warp speed. I found myself doing something I had promised myself I wouldn't do.
I was crying into Nadine's back, clinging to her tight.
“I'm sorry,” I sobbed, ashamed that I couldn't help the attachment I felt.
“Oh, Suzie. I didn't want this for you.”
“It's not like you didn't warn me.”
“Yeah, about that—”
“I just can't help it. You're so great and everything.”
“I'm really not.”
“You are, and I don't think I'll ever find anyone like you.”
“Please don't say that,” she said, and for the first time I heard fear in her voice.
“What's wrong? Why are you so resistant to this?”
Nadine's body tensed, and in that moment, I felt a shift within her. She started to sweat, and my arms wrapped around her body had become soaked with her. I knew that if I didn't act fast, this might be the last time I saw Nadine, and I didn't want to lose her. I started to rub her skin with my clammy hands. She told me not to stop. From my position, behind her goosebump-covered frame, I tried to work my way into her, ready to pull her apart with my teeth and lick her wounds with my salted tongue.
She climaxes, fast, and when she does, all of her mouths open.
I stare at the gaping slits. They're close to everywhere: a pair of full-bodied lips on her shoulder, a cleft-lip at her temple, a pinched mouth on her forearm and a toothy mouth on her hand. Mouths, teeth, tongues, everywhere on her exposed skin.
I don't even have time to think about how I never noticed them. Later, once I was assimilated and started seeing it happen to someone else, I realized it's because when you're face-deep in someone, you're not really paying attention to much else. Especially not in that moment, when the stars align and the climax triggers.
But here I am, fully aware in her moment of glory and I can see them all, the dozen mouths, all groaning at once, making up a monstrous scream of ecstasy that tumbles from every pair of lips Nadine has.
Then, for the first time in our short-lived relationship or whatever this was, she turned to me, her voice—voices?— hoarse and offered the magical words of reciprocation.
“Your turn,” she husked.
I scrambled away from her naked body, her mouths gasping at air, moaning in an off-tempo and out-of-key way that sounded like a whole graveyard of encroaching ghouls.
She grabbed my hand.
“Let me teach you. You just place your hand here, and I'll do the rest.”
I hated that I was so turned on by her still, with the mouths on her body aching for air, aching to scream again. She was finally giving back, and I just wanted it so badly that I didn't even notice when my fingertips started sinking into her skin, through it, as if her very pores were inviting me in.
“Stage Five,” she said, when I finally realized I was wrist deep in her hip, my flesh fused to hers.
She reared her head back, and all her mouths smiled.
“Now cling .”
And with that, I was lost. I could do nothing to pull away, my body sinking inch by inch, folding and melting into her own. I funneled into her bones, her flesh, her blood, and became as much her as anything else.
I felt myself disperse into her, stuck on everything inside, my entire existence squashed into hers. Sucking and squeezing and breaking and realigning filling every gap in her already crowded body.
I finally had what I wanted, attached at the hip. I wondered if Addie would miss me. I'd been kind of a shitty friend for the last few weeks.
I hoped she'd feed my cat.
* * *
So that's how I became the Hip. Not all that different than the Arm and the Hand, though the Temple's story is a bit more treacherous, I'm told.
Fell too deep, and now we're stuck. Forever falling, nothing but flesh around us to cushion the blow.
The Hand taps the phone to end the recording. My story is over. It took us a while to figure out how to navigate Nadine's body while she was sleeping. But when we did, we reached for the phone. We hit record. We spoke.
Tomorrow, a new story. Until then, our lips seal together, we recede, and we wait.