SLINKY

At night my blood leaves me to join the other in the room. It lives under my floorboards like a pearl and has done since I was born. I never really see it clearly but it enters my dreams every night. I will never hurt you but I need to lend your blood it says to me in raspy whispers as if its gurgling the mouthwash my Dad uses. I know it leaves the house but that's all I know for sure. The rest is siphoned in my head whilst I'm dead to the world so it could all be made up. I sense it leaves my window, slops across the lawn like a water bomb and scales the garden fence. Beyond lies the village where it feeds all night. Not blood. It feeds on muscles. Not enough to kill but enough to make its victims weak. In time they strengthen again. Like all cattle I guess. It liquifies their muscles and drinks them. I think its brown, the juice. Its brown in my dreams. Pouring out of their mouths into its quivering open excited cavity. It slurps and smacks and licks. Such enjoyment from something so gross. Muscle soup. Yuk! People wake up utterly tired and visit the doctor. A tonic is needed she says. To fortify you. Its a bug. There are lots of tonic bottles in homes in our village. When its full it comes back home. I sense it cooling down in the fishbowl, licking my goldfish and making it thinner. I have to chuck extra flakes in when it does. My poor fish. Hardly any muscle left. I think it came from the sea, my floorboard friend. Or the hospital waste. Sometimes I sense my dead Mum. Like I was, I suppose its sort of my undead baby. Living next to me. I've seen tentacles in my dreams, blood-filled tendrils reaching into open throats to do their slippery work. They head for the heart first, its favourite treat, so thick and strong. Then the limbs get diluted leaving just enough to move. For fun it often fingers the anxious brains of its victims but this thinking mass is of no real interest to a muscle eater. All those stringy neurons. All that baggage. That's how I know it drinks muscle. In my dreams. We're sort of connected mentally I guess. Sometimes it leaves a trail of fluid like snot across bedroom floors and straight out the windows, but by morning it's crystallised into nothing. Maybe its my strange placenta or a sick moat mollusc. Who knows. It could be ancient. Or my age too! Its hard to say. Anyway, I call it Slinky because it moves like one. You know, sort of flippy floppy. Sometimes, if my head is turned straight, I see it back-flipping up my bedclothes towards my mouth. When I get my blood back in the morning and re-inflate I feel great. Really great. I hope my parents never move house. I'll have to take Slinky with me. In the fishbowl I imagine. For now we're doing well. I'd better get up. It's time for school and as usual I skip breakfast. I take an apple or two to keep my Dad happy and then I run. I run past houses where I know its been. Like circuitry the faded trails all lead to me, a battery of blood muscles ready to pop. I lean back in class and smile at the girl sitting next to me. She looks tired. Really really tired. A thin line of brown stuff dribbles down her chin.