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Seth
He didn’t always fall asleep after sex, but he never minded when he it happened, either. Was there any rest so deep and peaceful as a post coital snooze?
His nap ended abruptly when something sharp ate his fingertips, or at least that was how it felt. He woke with a cry of pain on his lips and yanked his arm up from where it had dangled off the edge of the bed. As he hurled his arm upward, the thing still clamped down on his fingertips, so he found himself staring into the surprisingly intelligent looking eyes of a tiny alligator.
“What the—?” He didn’t even finish the sentence before the creature released his fingertips and tried to land, face first, jaws gaping open, on Seth’s face.
After some awkward grappling and more than a little struggling with the sheet and pillowcases, Seth managed to bag the tiny thing. Kneeling, sweaty and out of breath in the middle of the bed, he held the pillowcase containing the miniature beasty at arm’s length as it continued to snap and struggle. “Seriously, what the fuck?” he muttered.
“I’m dying!” the creature in the bag cried and began to do a very reasonable impression of seizures within the bag.
“Nice try,” Seth replied, holding the bag while it continued to jerk.
After a few seconds of only gurgled noises, the bag began to slow. Seth risked a peek inside. The tiny alligator didn’t look so good, a strange grey cast covering his scaly skin. “I’ll get Flemming,” Seth promised, leaping to his feet.
“Too...late,” the creature gurgled, and Seth heard the shower running.
“Shit, I don’t know what to do!” Seth said, panicking. He didn’t know everything about Flemming, but he recognized what must be a witch’s familiar, and he knew how deep their connection must be.
One reptilian eye opened and focused on him. “Outside...there was a decorative pond. I need the water. Fast!”
The tiny animal let out a wheezing gasp that might be its final breath.
“Okay!” Seth said, glad for something to do that might help. Ignoring his own nudity, he sprinted outside and practically dumped the alligator out of the bag and into the water. For long seconds, nothing happened. Then the creature opened its eyes and stared at him.
Then, like one of those toys you soak in water, the alligator began to grow. “Is it working?” Seth asked.
“Yep,” said the helpful alligator.
By then, the gator was over a foot long. “Should I take you back out?”
“Nope,” replied the gator. If Seth wasn’t mistaken, it smiled at him. Of course, each of its teeth were about the size of his thumb tips by then. Should it be so big? Had he made a huge mistake.
A stranger’s voice interrupted his internal panic. “And you lucky viewers get to see this freaky-deaky man. Sir, who are you?” asked a man approaching with a selfie stick.
“I don’t have time for this,” he said to the guy, who continued to come up the driveway anyway. He needed to figure out what to do about the alligator—and fast.
“Wow, did you see that viewer count jump? We’re up to what, ten thousand in here now?” the guy continued, ignoring Seth entirely, despite him focusing himself in the frame with Seth.
“Are you live streaming this?” Seth asked, disbelief coloring his tone.
Just then, the gator came out of the water and, with one giant chomp, swallowed half the man.
Seth gaped, frozen in sheer shock. Flemming chose that moment, of course, to appear in the doorway wrapped in a towel. “COLBY!” she shrieked, running for the fountain. The man in the gator struggled, but the gator didn’t release him until Flemming smacked the creature on the snoot with knuckles, like an angry mother knocking on the door of a bully’s house. “Let him go!” she demanded.
The gator spit the man out in a motion Seth was reasonably sure normal alligators could not accomplish, due to the way their muscles worked. Surprisingly, other than being covered in a gelatinous looking saliva, the man was unharmed. His selfie stick dripped as he stared at them both. “I—” he said, and his skin went an unhealthy white. Seth worried he might pass out right there in the driveway.
“Oh, bother,” Flemming muttered. “I honestly thought we were past these sorts of displays.” She touched the man’s forehead and then touched his phone.
The man’s confused face went eerily blank.
“What did you just do?” Seth asked, as Flemming ushered the now full-sized gator into their rental house.
“Erased his memory, blurred his phone’s connection for the past little while. Basically, I erased his end of the experience.”
With a final glance at the man dripping on the lawn, Seth closed the door. “Why or what is he going to think just happened? Like will he know why he’s covered in translucent slime, or will he think he got abducted by aliens or what?”
Flemming shrugged. “Not my problem. Why did you put the alligator in water?”
Her fingertip drilled into his chest. He noticed her rash had vanished, replaced with an elegant tracing of freckles. “Your rash, it’s gone!”
“Don’t change the subject,” she ordered, giving his chest another firm poke. “I asked you a question!”
“I told him I was dying,” Colby said.
Seth glanced at the creature, surprised it defended him. “He did,” Seth agreed, waving a thumb at the alligator.
“Yes, but why did you listen to him?”
“I like you,” Seth blurted.
Since they’d slept together, repeatedly, throughout the night, admitting it shouldn’t cause him any kind of stress, yet it felt important.
Her expression eased. “I like you, too.”
“I figured he was important to you. I tried to make it better, but I failed. I’ll do better,” he promised.
She snorted in a bit of air. “Leo would never admit he was wrong.”
“I’m not Leo,” he said, but before she could say more, he added, “But I get why he’s on your mind. Due to that, I want to make a proposal.”
Her laugh made him smile, just as it always seemed to. “You promised you’d never propose to me. I told Colby you probably forgot.”
“Oh, I didn’t forget,” he said, tugging her closer. “I’m not proposing marriage. What I would like to propose is that you take a couple of months to get back on your feet. Figure out who you are and what you want to do next. Once you figure it out, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to date. Maybe we can date for the rest of our lives, if the mood suits us. You in?”
She grinned at him. “Yeah, Taradiddle. I’m totally in for that.”