Later, while I’m lying next to Ben, who is snoring, I wonder to myself whether, perhaps, it’d be possible to just live as a human—or, at least, mostly human. If it would be possible to suppress the demon to the extent that I would be able to be normal, apart from my diet, which I’d restrict to black pudding. Maybe my will would actually start transforming the cells in my body. Perhaps, eventually, I’d be able to stay out in direct sunlight and not get so easily burned; perhaps I’d be able to meet someone and go somewhere beautiful with them, somewhere with beaches, and just lie outside like humans do, doing nothing, playing with the sand, letting it run through the gaps between my fingers, picking it back up and starting again. Maybe, eventually, I’d even begin to age. Perhaps I’d look at myself in the mirror one morning and find that all the times I’d been laughing with my partner had rubbed off on my face, and faint lines were appearing around my eyes and mouth. New strands of my hair would grow out of my head a fine silver color; my bones would eventually become more brittle and I’d have to be careful out walking on concrete. My partner, my friends, my mum—all of their lives would end at some point; and, then, when I was much thinner than I am now, maybe a little shorter, my hair wispier, and pure white, I’d see an opening at the end of my life like a break in the clouds and I’d reach toward it, and I’d feel life just falling off my body, being shed like scales, just scattering everywhere, and I’d get lighter and lighter until I was, eventually, just nothing—just absolutely nothing. Gone.

“Is that . . . a duck?” Ben is awake and half sitting up on the yoga mat. He’s looking at the sink. I suppose his eyes have adjusted to the light, as he’s no longer squinting.

“Umm,” I say. I sit up. “Yes. Basically.”

“Oh my god,” Ben says. “Is that the . . . the smell?”

“Well . . . yes, I suppose it is.”

Quite suddenly, Ben’s face contorts and he retches.

“What?” I say. “Come on, you’ve been smelling it all night. You only think it’s disgusting now because you know what it is.”

Ben picks up my clock sweatshirt and covers his mouth and nose with it. “Why have you got a duck?” he says through it. “I mean, like, it’s fully clothed and everything. Or, you know, whatever you call a duck that isn’t like what you get in supermarkets.”

I stand up. I put on my shorts and slip my boots onto my bare feet. I’m still wearing my shirt. “It’s okay, I’ll take it out,” I say.