“I think . . . I think I remember being dead,” she says.

A beat of silence holds suspended in the air.

“That was just a bad dream,” he answers.

“A bad dream?”

“Yes. A nightmare. It wasn’t real.”

“So . . . I’m not dead?”

“You don’t know what death is, do you?”

She pauses at this. “No.”

His lips curl over his teeth. “So, how can you be something you don’t understand?”

She nods slowly. “Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“Why are you so far away from me?”

“I thought I would give you some space.”

“Why?”

He walks over to the mattress and sits down next to her. His breath smells pleasant and metallic, like iron laced with sugar. Her mouth waters for it—for him. And that is when she realizes she can smell him now, too. Smell his sickeningly sweet scent.

It’s . . . too sweet.

She gulps down the taste and leans into him. He pulls away. He grabs her legs and swings them onto his lap. She doesn’t protest. He looks down at the sample of her anatomy and presses his thumbs into her muscles, squeezing his hands around her calves and up her thighs. He shoves his hands into her stomach, digging his fingertips under her ribcage and working his staccato touch from her chest to her collarbones. He runs his hands up along the sides of her neck, placing pressure beneath her jaw.

“Open your mouth,” he orders.

She obeys.

With one hand, he takes out a thin black stick from his pocket and clicks its end. Without warning, an intense white light shines out from the tip of the stick. She growls, hating it, but he ignores her. He points it down her throat then flashes it in her eyes.

She flinches, expecting it to hurt—like the day she stared so intently at that uvulal light dangling from its concrete palate—but the pain is not as bad as she remembers. It is only mildly uncomfortable, making her eyes feel like they’re petals separating from her irises, like the flowers her daddy has shown her photographs of. The flowers the creatures love to destroy.

“Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“What are you—”

He presents a lollipop from his pocket and her question disappears from her throat. Her eyes grow wide and she giggles with flirtatious embarrassment.

She opens her mouth and lets her wet tongue roll out. Ribbons of saliva stretch between her pale lips. He unwraps and places it, the contact immediately triggering her taste buds. She bites down impulsively, shattering the treat to pieces.

She halts, stunned by her own force, then shrinks away with an anxious glance. But he doesn’t seem to mind.

He is smiling at her. So she continues to chew.

The pieces dissolve within her mouth. The spoils feel even better than usual, as if a needle was shoved into her brain through her temple and ejaculated euphoria straight into her skull. Salivation snakes down her throat. Her stomach growls, begging for more. Embarrassed, she curls over her belly, trying to mute her hunger, but to no avail.