She smashed its bottom against the bar and aimed glass teeth at Yaya. “Don’t touch me.”

Yaya extended open palms. “Fulki, please.”

“I’m not into that shit.” Fulki wagged the bottle, biting the air up and down.

“Whatever shit it is, I don’t want it.”

“You know me,” Yaya said, stopping two steps from the bar.

“And?” Fulki’s hands were trembling, and twinkling glass snow rained over the bar. A glower reshaped her face. “You want a pass just because I know you? It’s always been trouble on your end, and I’m not here to make you feel better. Get lost.”

Magenta’s limbs squirmed, a nest of hungry snakes. Yaya could lift her top and let those snakes spill over the bar, glass or not, toward Fulki. They would know each other better then.

Blood coated Yaya’s abdomen and palms. If she left now, someone on the street would notice. She rubbed one hand down her face and smirked at Fulki, a whisper in Yaya’s brain telling her that she’d picked up the gesture from unsavory sources.

She wouldn’t do this to Fulki. She was better than that. “Need to hit the ladies’ room, then we’re gone,” she said. She skulked past the bar, its wall dressed in queer memorabilia and Pride flags, and pressed open the ladies’ room door. “Sorry, Fulki. If it matters.”

Regret stroked Fulki’s eyes, but she didn’t lower her broken beer bottle.

Yaya sank into the ladies’ room. Its mirror reflected overhead light and the semblance of Yaya’s shape.

Another woman stood in front of the sink, a denim vest wrapped around her body. She was young and checking her hair. “Everything okay out there?”

Yaya stared, unmoving, until her muscles coiled through her chest and down her abdomen. Magenta’s snakes were growing too large for their nest. She burst loose, all teeth and limbs. The young woman in denim staggered back from the sink and then bolted out of the ladies’ room.

Pretty, Magenta said, recoiling into Yaya’s chest.

Yaya scrubbed cold water at her face, palms, and midriff, careful not to touch the cleft. Its teeth seemed longer and thicker, her overgrown vagina sharpening by the day. The cairn piled onto her thoughts, each stone heavier than before, as if relief from their weight was a drug that lost effect with every dose.

She needed to make the best use of her clear mind while it lasted.

She was big peanut butter, Magenta hummed.

“We’ll find you a thesaurus,” Yaya said. “You can learn your own words.”

I know my words. What do YOU know?

“And what if she was another chimera?”

Magenta wriggled. Poor Sabin. Should we be scared too?

A sound like thunder pounded in the distance, but not from the sky.