Through her tears, Yaya couldn’t tell which digested which. She tugged at the tentacle and cut her palms on Magenta’s barbs. Every pelvic and torso limb flailed, slashing at shower curtain, porcelain, clothing, Yaya’s skin. She scrambled back, tugging the tentacle with her.

Flesh stretched in painful strands beyond the bathtub rim. Tentacle lifted from arm, the gap between them a web of moist pink bubblegum, and then Magenta’s limb tore free in ragged ends.

Scared, she squealed.

“Me too,” Yaya said, coughing. She cradled the injured tentacle against her chest. Blood bubbled down her fingers and cleft, into her underwear, onto the floor, everywhere. Her forearm wiped tears from her eyes. What had gone wrong?

Connie remained unconscious. Yaya thought to put a bandage on the bleeding arm, but her muscles were still seizing with Magenta’s agony.

The tentacle crawled inside the cleft. It would heal soon, but it wouldn’t forget.

If there was some adaptation around this, Yaya hoped Magenta would figure it

out quick. Connie wasn’t going to work, her lucky day. They still needed someone.

Tonight.

Yaya splashed water over her face and hurried into clothes and coat, still warm from the dryer. She then bolted out of Doc’s apartment and into the night.

18

The pain was raw. She would be distracted if she didn’t heal, but to heal she needed what she’d be distracted from.

More than anything, she needed to stop the agony. That was the whole point, right? No stones, no crushing, no pain. Pain distracted. She could see clearly when the pain was gone.

Fire surged through her limbs. Adrenaline. The human body had remarkable means for detouring pain into power. That was how she’d come to be in the first place, wasn’t it? Every learned experience was a fragment of pain, and if she’d learned to pull one scumbag to pieces, nothing could stop her from tearing apart every asshole in Newark, New Jersey.

Across one street, a sparrow flitted around a streetlamp. Peanut butter?

No, not that. No birds. That was a rule.

But the big peanut butter? Those wandered everywhere. A few feet ahead, a man walked past a tree. When he turned at the corner, she followed. When he crossed another street, she crossed behind. He had a big peanut butter ball in his skull, and bless the sex gods, she could taste it, and when she went home, the sweetness would return.

But was the sweetness right? Was she being sexist by picking him out?

He turned and noticed her. Deep in his peanut butter-filled skull, he hadn’t forgotten that long, long ago, he was a lizard, a rat, a prey creature, and his kind had adapted to know when eyes followed him. Damned eyes. Big mistake, five hundred million years ago. If she didn’t have eyes, he wouldn’t have felt her watching him.

“Ma’am?” he said. “You alright?”