My body feels especially weak now. It’s partly because I’m running on almost nothing; but also, I feel like when Ben left, he took something of me with him. Maybe it’s the simple fact that when we had sex, I expended energy I couldn’t really afford to lose, and it feels like that energy is something Ben took into himself, and stole from me; although, at the same time, he gave the human side of me life. Perhaps it’s just the demon that is hungry and weakened—never before have I inhabited my body to such a degree as I did when I was with Ben; never before have I felt so human.

Now, inside me, a part of Ben exists, I suppose, searching. I imagine a barren path inside myself, my womb a derelict cavern, my ovaries like sad, egg-less nests. I wonder, nonetheless, if there isn’t just a small, safe corner for a child to grow in there; if perhaps, like my mum, there is a little chance for life to be supported inside me. My mum never bothered to teach me about contraception, though, so I doubt it’s possible. She only warned me to not get close in the first place.

I let my head flop back and hit the wall behind me. A pleasing, faint pain spreads from the back of my head to my eyes, where it manifests as spots in my vision. I do it again, and then again.

I’ve been watching Buffy on my laptop. I’m at the end of season two where the instructions for restoring Angel’s soul have been saved onto a floppy disk, but Willow’s lost the floppy disk down the side of a desk, so Angel’s not going to get his soul back in time and Buffy will end up having to kill him. It’s such a dumb reason for a vampire to have to die—just a stupid yellow floppy disk, and the fact that a desk and a cabinet aren’t pushed close enough together. If it were today, the instructions would have been backed up to the cloud, so everything would have worked out fine.