masks would have to do.

“Of course, right, yes,” Blue Mask said, retreating toward Bryant’s driveway. “Enjoy the rest of your night, miss.” He patted his partner’s arm and turned to the street and their cop tank.

Black Mask lingered, his head tilting in study. Yaya didn’t move. She couldn’t tell whether he was onto her or using his authority as an excuse to soak her in.

“Please, have a good night, Mr. Policeman,” she said. It was the coyest she’d sounded since she was sixteen.

He withdrew at last and let her close the door. Another few seconds passed before his footsteps clacked down the walkway and back to the street. She retreated through the inner door and shut it, but she didn’t return to her bath until she heard the cop tank rumble through the suburb and toward Riverside Avenue.

By now, everyone in the neighborhood had to be awake and wondering which jackass had called the cops.

Yaya’s bath was lukewarm. A chitinous residue slathered the tub’s porcelain edges. It reminded her of strawberry jam, only instead of chunky preserves, this substance carried bits of bone or cartilage. She drained the tub of water and slime alike, turned the hot water nozzle to full blast, and threw her towel across the nearest wall-mounted hook.

The slime had shed with fresh changes over the last hour. Magenta seemed to slough cells when she was in a hurry, and Yaya dozed through most of it, her newfound clarity offering insights into both body and thought.

How long had she been depressed? She’d felt she was being crushed and drained for years, but depression hadn’t crossed her mind. Now it seemed obvious. She used to think everyone’s life felt this way and that she was being a baby about it.

An inherited rationalization from her mother, likely, which explained a few things about their relationship and why her mother had started contact again after months of therapy. Something had been wrong.

Obvious, so damn obvious, but Yaya’s head had been squeezed too tight to notice.

She was free now. The air itself breathed better against her skin. She was smiling when she didn’t have anything in particular to smile about. Relief, she guessed. Getting out of the tub to answer the door hadn’t felt like fighting the world. Now she had the chance to get back in the bath and explore her body again.

Her once-blue eye, now magenta, shined in the light. Her hazel eye now ran

orange at the edges. The cleft of her vaginal lips reached halfway up her sternum. Her bellybutton was gone. The blood running down her leg must have dribbled from there, but it wasn’t her period, and it wasn’t her blood. Her fingers prodded the edge. Each tap shot lightning through her muscles.

She hadn’t noticed the new chompers when Bryant had tugged at her shirt.

Thick and pointed columns of crocodile teeth grew to either side of the cleft, hidden beneath folds of sensitive skin. He must have seen them when she came at him. No wonder he was scared. What had he thought she would do?