I Threw My Fang in the Compost

I threw my old fang in the compost that night and something started to grow.

Another me. 

Deep in the big heap, among the scraps of bat slough and congealing kills steaming in the winter snap.

In the moon's safe glow, I could see it getting bigger through the glass front I'd installed for the occasion. She was curled up like a leather baby.

A humus baby lady feeding on the rot and squalor, bone marrow and blackened blood.

It was warm in the pile too. The fumes of decay heating her body like a sunbed. It grew and grew. 

Arms, legs, head, face. It was all there, a completed crossword of skin and bone. Her hair sprouted and rose through the top of the mound like a fungus. The filigrees were just like mine. Black as midnight. Thick as history.

When her head popped out I shrieked.

Odd really, I knew she was coming. 

My time was waning. The blood dried up.

Out she came. A soily birth head first and plup!

We hissed.

I brushed her naked paleness with my hands, flicking away the layer of detritus clinging to her. Her birthday suit of earth.

She smiled. I smiled too, one fang missing, the other coming loose.

Ready?

Ready.

I climbed into the compost and got fetal, snuggling into the bole she'd grown in.

It was her time to live at night.

It was my time to die.

I watched from inside my loamy coffin as she walked away.

It was another me, just newer.

Another hungry mouth to feed.