Even in my mind, though, I can’t imagine any scenario beyond that point, beyond the point of pulling Ben into my studio, beyond the point of seeing him in front of me, his body so much weaker than mine, even when mine is at its weakest. I don’t know what I want to do with him. Seeing him purely as food is impossible. But, at the same time, I feel like I don’t know him well enough to spend the rest of eternity with him; if I turned him, I’d be joined to him forever and a part of me—I think the human part—right now is angry with him, for letting anything happen between us when he knew nothing could ever happen again, for pulling his hand away from my hand. And then there’s the other option. Does he deserve the other option? Just death? Just becoming sustenance for my body?

I take my phone out of my pocket and start composing a text, struggling to keep my head up, my fingers moving slowly. “I’m OK,” I type. “Just need to be on my own.” I press “send,” and a message comes back immediately.

“I’m worried though.”

“I am OK,” I type again. And then I add, “Please don’t call anyone.”

“Will you let me in at least?” Ben replies. And I think about it again. I press my body against the door. His pulse throbbing, the valves in his heart opening and closing; I feel him swallowing as though I’ve been hit with the vibrations of the sound and can feel them physically in my stomach. I put my hand on the door handle. But then I take it off again. “Maybe later?” I text. “I just want to sleep.”

“OK,” Ben replies after a while, and I feel his presence leave, and then rise as it ascends the stairs. I hear the sound of his studio door closing two floors up. Then I tuck my phone away, and take a deep breath in.

I stay sitting by the door for a while. I look at my veins and wonder what is left of both sides of myself, now that there is barely any blood in my system, and my veins have been washed out by milk. I think back to the dreams I’d had last night while the milk had spread throughout my body: the two strange eels that seemed to depend on each other to stay alive, and then the dream of my mum. While I’ve spent so much of my life fixated on my dad, thinking of him as representing the living part of me, I’d forgotten that my mum is the one who is truly alive—no matter how she acts and what she says—and that my dad is the one who is actually dead.