A new organ emerged from my wife’s body and it shattered my flesh and soul. It entered me through all of my orifices at the same time. Resistance was futile, my muscles were no match for this new intrusion. I tried to let go, to relax, understanding that I could do nothing, just try to look at my body from the outside as if I were a stranger to myself. I could hear the cracking of my bones, the tearing of my flesh. That was not me, it was somebody else, I thought. But then I understood – it was me! It was all me, at the hands of something greater than myself, and even though it was painful, humiliating, and destructive, it cleansed me of everything my life had become, even of myself, because now I had become nothing; pure emptiness. It wasn’t just the destruction of my body when my wife entered me, she entered my mind as well, my memories, my psyche. She took it all and impregnated it with herself; nothing was left of me but her. There was no hope anymore, and I no longer needed it.

I was home.

When she was done, she tossed me away like the rubbish I have become.

We have been living this way ever since. My house is a wooden cage under the ground. Every once in a while they throw in rotten food. We live in an open relationship; at least she does, as she has found other partners over time. Gender and age are not important; she takes what she likes. She throws them here next to me. If they survive the ordeal and are still capable of speech we often talk. We only talk about her. About our wife.

Although there are now many of us down here, I know that I’m the only one who matters to her. She never asks the others before she takes them. She never offers them a clean death. If that’s not a sign of love I don’t know what is.

Sometimes she visits me. After that, it takes two to three weeks until I give birth. The babies eat themselves out of my flesh; they crawl out from under my skin. I usually die by the time all of them are born, but here death and life are not so rigidly separated. I’m always brought back. I sometimes wish death would last longer so I could rest a bit, but it’s over before I even notice.

My children, dozens of tiny lizards, run around the dark cave in search of hot, living flesh. God bless the tourists we can always capture. Later on, my children enter the pupal stage, and then they gain their secondary form; they become like the girl who visited me in my hotel room. They become the tribe that hunts in the forests.

I don’t know what form follows after that.