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I had not known initially what to make of the pile of mucus and flesh that befell my doorstep as winter arrived. Snow had yet to begin, but cutting gusts of frigid air whalloped my front door to be let in, only allowed to when the mail went too long without being checked. This was how I found it. It laid–although maybe it didn’t, maybe it just was–on the front porch in a quick-to-dry puddle of its own liquids. This liquid in question sopped where the fatty meat touched pavement, but what the air could reach had dried out thoroughly into a crispy top. I had been so frightened, but neither hollering nor gasping, I only stood with an open mouth, then closed it in case something that could make me sick got in there. The hunk did not smell good, but it evaded the sense of death as no bugs dared enter its space. Yet it was still rancid, if only a little. It sat like a parcel on my step, and I stood as still as the doorframe surrounding me. Squalls of wind whipped my face in tight lashings and I could not withstand it much longer. But the meat was on my doorstep. If I could move my feet maybe I would even go back inside, disregarding the mail key loosely dangling on my limp finger.

If nothing else, I remember this deep sinking feeling that it was not a dead animal. Not a dollop of hair coated the fat blob, no ears nor mouth, not an eye or even a foot, certainly no crevices that suggested such. It was just there, and I suppose so was I. Cut nails under winter gloves scratched my blistering nose, and with the movement, I remembered how to put one slipper-clad foot in front of the other. The initial plan had been to step over it, but I got scared and gave it space, hopping off the front step and cutting through my dying garden to find the path away from home. Not even once did I look back. If it was still on my step once I returned, I would burn that bridge when it came– but the mailbox needed me. All those bills and flyers stuffed together from weeks of neglect; last time I checked the mail, I wore a sweater without a jacket squeezed on top and fared fine. My stomach twisted.

How long had that icky thing been on my doorstep for?

There was no way of knowing until I consulted the calendar, but upon reaching the mailbox at the end of the driveway, I found myself scanning the dates on different papers to check early. The only nearby pizza place had bestowed on me a coupon that would expire sooner rather than later, the ‘great deal’ beginning about two and a half weeks ago. Not a dead animal, but whatever was waiting for me at home had definitely died. This would be a matter of plastic gloves and the compost bin, my least favourite matter. If it did not look like an expired slab of raw pork, I would gently nudge it into the garden to feed plants and the wildlife that frequented it, but I didn’t think a raccoon would survive eating whatever it was. Pockets packed with mail, I scurried back down the path home.

There it was. Just slightly more towards the door. A damp spot took over the space it had occupied, and the gushy underside faced strongly towards the sky, wet belly pummeled by the wind. I was once again stopped dead with an overwhelming sense of discomfort. Thinking rationally, it had not moved itself, but I desperately hated the idea that maybe it did, as that meant not only was it not dead, but it was capable of movement, movement towards my front door.

“You can’t come in.” I muttered stupidly, mostly to myself. As any sane person predicted, it had nothing to say, and didn’t move either. With caution I sauntered a bit closer, bending knees to get down to its level and double-checked it was not in the same position as before I left. It was now so very close to touching the step up to the door, a hair length away from the metal base that kept the bottom of the door in place. This time of year it was so cold you could not touch it with a bare foot, and I felt my hands tremble.
This, whatever it was, must have been so cold. Heat exits my house when the door is open, maybe it has been chasing that warm feeling. Mittens enveloped my hands to protect from the bite of what would inevitably become snowfall. What protected this thing? If it did not need protection, why did it speak into my brain, a silent plea to be surrounded with the warmth of a home?

I bit my lip and caved. Bending down with slow uncertainty, I grabbed the fat lard in my hands, nearly dropping it from the shock of just how soaked it was on the bottom. Warm wetness seeped through my gloves where my fingers held the underside of the thing and I hurried to the door. Once inside, I laid it down as gently as I could onto the kitchen table and gagged at the squishing sound it made. The reality of the situation set in and disbelief washed over me. I felt incredibly stupid for bringing such a thing into my home. On the other end of the round table sat my phone and it would take only seconds to call anybody for help. But that meant someone would pick up the phone on the other end, and I would handle anything alone if it meant keeping my solitude. So instead, I threw an old kitchen towel in the dryer until it was warm, laid it down on the kitchen table, and wrapped the flesh mound until it was swaddled. I knew nothing but its desire for warmth and would grant it such. I held it, swaddled like a newborn child, and brought it into the living room to rest on the floor. I wanted to open my mouth and say anything, but it felt ridiculous to talk to something that was only debatably alive, so I nodded my head and went down to the basement for a smoke to clear my mind. While down there, I took the time to ask the internet as many questions as I could about what this thing might be. Nothing online had the slightest clue about what I was going through, a thought both isolating and exciting. As cannabis moved through my system, I found myself less interested in actual research and more inclined towards seeing this thing in person. I smoked what I could and left my den of peace to return upstairs, stopping at the kitchen to grab a few snacks before taking my place on the couch. On behalf of tiredness, I did not care much to investigate the hunk of meat then, either. My eyes lazily rolled between the thing, the cookie in hand, and the television, growing lazier and lazier until they closed.

I awoke sometime after with a fright at what was certainly sometime during the night. A commercial for a product I would never buy played in the dim light of the television, and the moment I became aware of my surroundings I searched for the flesh hunk immediately, which was no longer on its towel. Instead, it had rolled across the floor closer to my spot on the couch. Not interested in me, but rather the cookie that fell out of my inebriated hand when I slept. A trail of wetness no longer followed it, now moistureless and at ease. Its fat belly-like bottom had flopped onto where the cookie was, and when I picked the mound up, there was nothing left underneath but a few dry crumbs stuck to it.
“You’re hungry.” I muttered breathlessly. Still not an animal but not inanimate, capable of some sort of digestion and the familiar urge to consume. I could not help but laugh in the sense that the thing and I were laughing together. Sitting on my floor was an unidentified semi-living organism that ate and desired homeostasis. The existence of this chunk of meat was mine to unveil and unearth, and I would be damned if I did not make the most of this opportunity I had been blessed with. I went to my room and gathered all of the blankets I did not need on my own bed, laying them out on the floor to create a small cot for the thing to lie in instead of the towel. I picked it up and put it in the makeshift bed, and another cookie as well, and I would check if it had eaten it the next day.

Yet the next morning brought a surprise I had never imagined. On the top of the organism that never touched the ground, even when it rolled, tiny hairs had begun to grow, like short leg hairs or the beginning of a prepubescent beard. The curtains kept the natural light out, but I held it underneath the lamp to ensure that what I was seeing was true. Sure enough, there they were. My mind rattled with questions, running through all of the factors that could have made this happen. It had only been one day since this thing arrived in my home, but it was already showing such strong developmental signs. There was no way I could send it away. It needed my care to grow, like a plant, or a Chia Pet. After that discovery I began making a conscious effort to feed it more regularly than myself. When I woke up in the morning, I would lay out some simple breakfast on the table, letting the meat slosh around until it had absorbed what I offered and dried back up again, and the same was true at lunch time when I would help myself to various snacks I could find in the cupboards. At dinnertime, we sat in the living room, but the organism stayed on the floor where its food would be easier to clean. It did not respond the same to all food; while it took a liking to sweets and grains, it had no interest in vegetables or tart fruits. This was convenient enough; I had not ordered groceries in long enough that the easily perishable produce had become fewer and fewer, and there was no longer enough for us to split.

As the produce dwindled, the winter outside grew stronger by the day. The crisp wind had turned to flurries that turned to blizzards, and heavy winter snow piled up higher every time I peeked behind the curtain to check. The intensity of the light was jarring every time, but I never risked opening the curtain for too long. I would not do it with the amount of progress being made with the organism. Those tiny, blunt hairs grew longer and fuller every day, and the spherical shape of its body had started bulging in certain areas. I kept our routine simple, and the only time we separated was when I went to the bathroom or the basement for a smoke, no longer willing to brave the snow that only grew worse to smoke outdoors. The truth was, we spent so much time together that it took days to notice my phone lying dead on the couch. Once it was charged it still read zero messages from anyone. I had never gone so long without having it on me, even if only to read or play mind-numbing but occupying games. My excitement had been so grand that I never even documented my findings with my fleshy housemate. Not its traits, weight, growth, no evidence of its change but my own testimony, and a few Google searches from the first night I found it. Science fiction novels taught me what steps I should have taken; document the growth, see progress, take it into a government laboratory, get millions of dollars for my discovery, and live out the rest of my life while using all of my cash to block this from my memory. But that route is a fallacy that only exists in fiction. Though more importantly, I did not want to. The flesh was putrid and otherworldly– but I took good care of it, didn’t I?

I knew I did, because only a few days later, it grew an eye. Like a baby being born into the world, there it was, a staggering blue and quite large. The lump on the top that had grown hair now resembled a head, but its one eye was not quite where an eye would be on a person. I noticed that its eye was the same blue as mine, and I wondered if it knew too. We looked at each other a lot. It looked at the television too, but I do not know if it ever knew what we were watching. After the eye had formed, I began speaking to it more than before. I finally had something to speak to other than air, and whenever I talked it looked directly into my eyes like it knew it was supposed to. I can only imagine it was attracted to the movement of my mouth, because it did not form distinct ears until another few days after the eyeball. I seldom spoke of much that was important. Without going outside or checking up on the world through the news, there was not much of importance at all. My home now reflected the sanctuary I always knew it could be, and it was one of solitude but not loneliness. It never released the unusual liquid anymore, and it had not caused me any harm in all of the time we spent together. I had no memory of how long we did spend together, but I knew it had been quite a while. The bread in the house was not a bit moldy– it was putrid and coated entirely in green and white fuzz. The fruit had grown incomprehensible as once being berries and my meals had become snacks every now and again so I could ensure that the flesh was eating enough to grow. I had even abandoned sleeping on the couch to return to my room at night, and the thing slept in there with me too, albeit on the floor.

Though the flesh only slept on the floor for one night. The snow had picked up the night after, howling against the windows and wailing away as I fell into slumber. I had always been quick to wake with even the smallest disturbances, so my eyes fluttered open when I felt a hard weight pressing down on my legs. With my head turned to the left I could not see the flesh on its nest of blankets on the floor and I whipped my head forward to see that large blue eye staring beyond me and into my soul. I shouted loud with my heart racing, and in turn felt the beginnings of liquid seeping out of the flesh. As the situation cleared my heart settled, and the reality set in. On both sides of its body, a matching pair of something akin to arms lay uncertainly on my chest, and two legs sat hard on mine. All four limbs were scrawny and shorter than they should have been for the way the body was growing, but this being of meat was growing into something truly alive. I reached a shaky hand out and pressed into the lard where a heart could have been.
“It’s okay.” I breathed. The room was filled only with my breath and heartbeat. My hand trailed from its chest up to its head, cradling the back of where a skull should have been. The hairs there had grown long and quite beautiful, a deep brown made darker by the absence of light in my bedroom. A cavity opened South of its inviting eye and out came sound for the first time.
“Like you.” It told me, albeit broken and hoarse. Tears flooded my eyes the moment the sound graced my ears, and I brought my other hand up to hold her head gently, just as I had held her in her entirety when she was so small.
“No,” I sputtered. “Like you.”
No longer could the storm outside be heard. When my heartbeat settled, all one could hear was two sets of breathing. She laid down next to me, and we slept together all night. I was never interested in sleeping alone again. No longer did this connection feel superficial, it was a comfort I could not recognize having ever felt. I was never afraid to let myself out of consciousness. It was the most natural feeling of peace.

But I learned fear. Despite the crackers and soup left in the cupboard, as I fell asleep on the couch one night, as I always tended to, she had used the growing strength in her wimpy arm to bring my hand to her mouth and chew. I woke the moment nimble teeth scraped my fingers with no consideration to how new they were and pulled my hand close to my chest.
“What are you doing!” I cried out, space now between us. She reached for me but I held my position firm.
“It’s okay.” She told me. It was the most coherent I had ever heard her speak.
“No, it’s not! Why are you eating me! You- you can’t do that!” It was like reprimanding a child who did not know any better. I felt my shoulders fall.
“Not eating.” She clarified, but I did not feel convinced. Still, I let her reach out for my hand again and even allowed her to take it. She pulled me back in to lie on her mound of a chest, and my fingers trailed back to her mouth, teeth nibbling on them but not hard enough to tear flesh. I grew tired with each inconsequential bite and fell asleep within moments. This infatuation with consuming only increased with time. She always assured me that it was okay, so I never worried about how weak I felt, never worried about the sunken face that greeted me on the rare occasions I passed by a mirror. I could not remember the last time I smoked, I melted into the couch every time I sat down without it. I was a husk that inhabited this house, my semblance of humanity gone as she grew more conscious by the day. All I did was lie down. I ate the odds and ends she brought me, but I never gathered my own food. I had no idea what she possibly could have been eating in our ransacked house until I lifted the blanket she had gently laid over me and saw a hunk of flesh torn out of my calf. So much skin and muscle was gone that the bone underneath shone bright, so much whiter than I ever expected it to be. I felt nothing, and wondered what other parts of my body were gone too. Her bulbous flesh was constantly reshaping and refining, and it always looked like mine.

She had become so much more than me, and I knew it on the last day we lived in that house, when she walked into the living room on two legs. I had never truly realized how thin I was until I saw the form that she inhabited, a clone of me, just as all of her other features had been. My stomach sank, but I could do no more than just lie there.
“What will happen to me?” I muttered dubiously. All she said was, “It’s okay”, but it possessed none of the comfort it had previously. It did not give me the sense that I would be okay, but maybe the situation would be. She walked over and picked me up into her arms, the same as I had done to her back when she was no more than an ‘it’, a cryptic hunk of meat on my front step. My head lulled gently where it rested on her shoulder as she walked to the basement stairs, and thunked on her shoulder with every step we descended. The ashtray still had buds left in it from the last time I had been down there, what felt like a lifetime ago.

She set me down on the cold basement floor, and without the blanket I could see just how much of my body had been lost to her hunger. Gaping wounds travelled up and down my legs, a gash taken out of my belly too. My mind felt clear for the first time– not just since bringing this thing into my home–but for the first time in years, the first time since I trapped myself inside this house for good. For the first time, too, I fought back vigorously. My open sores began to sting as I thrashed my legs, blood squelching onto every part of her body that I hit. My hands aimed wildly at her hair, pulling so hard that what I could grab came out in fistfuls. The blood rushing in my head grew so overwhelming I could hardly hear myself screaming anymore, but she started screaming too, broken and distressed, and when I got louder, she only did too. Saliva flew out of her mouth, and when I pressed her face to push her away my hand slipped off like a slip and slide of sorrow and tears. Between shrieks, she cried, “You don’t care!”, and I fought harder, if only to avoid even thinking about what she meant. Once she had both my wrists clasped in only one of her meaty hands, it was over. She extended a leg to catch onto the wooden chair I kept down in the basement for smoking, dragging it over in one swift motion. My legs had no room left to kick as she straddled my waist, releasing my hands for a mere moment to use her position on top to flip me over onto my belly. Her form had become so skinny, but when she sat on my arms, it held as much weight as if it was just a big lardish blob sitting on my back. The sound of the chair scraping against the floor again was followed by a hard blow from one of its wooden legs directly to the back of my skull. My face struck the concrete hard enough that my nose cracked on impact, the sound of my skull shattering echoing off the walls.

Blood seeped into my eyes from every fracture formed across my face and I moved no longer. Lying there, devoid of purpose, losing the ability to even gasp out, now just flesh preparing to rot in my own basement. I heard a shifting behind me, then a soft whisper brushed along my ear.
“I will go outside. I will live on.”
The second blow had nothing left to crack– just a gushy, wet sound.

Credit: Rebee Ryan