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“Eat Your Heart, Your Feelings, or Both” by Leuna (read by B.P. Rugger and Yuugen)
There are tales of monsters on such nights as tonight, but what happens when you are the monster, that there is something clawing away at the inside, something you know is wrong, but you cannot ever confront it?
Tonight’s story is “Eat Your Heart, Your Feelings, or Both,” by Leuna, who works as an essayist, and is writing surreal short fiction at FurAffinity.
Read by B. P. Rugger, the ineffable Moo Moon, and by Yuugen, wolf of Wanderlust.
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https://thevoice.dog/episode/eat-your-heart-your-feelings-or-both-by-leuna
Transcript
You’re listening to The Ghost of Dog on the Voice of Dog.
Speaker:This is Rob MacWolf,
Speaker:your fellow traveler,
Speaker:and Tonight’s story is
Speaker:“Eat Your Heart, Your Feelings, or Both,”
Speaker:by Leuna, who works as an essayist, and is writing surreal short fiction
Speaker:at FurAffinity. Read by B. P. Rugger,
Speaker:the ineffable Moo Moon,
Speaker:and by Yuugen, wolf of Wanderlust.
Speaker:The terror without is handled simply enough. We lock
Speaker:the door. We turn on the lights. We practice
Speaker:superstitious folk
Speaker:rituals such as salting the threshold
Speaker:or installing home security systems.
Speaker:Perhaps not all effective, but simple.
Speaker:But two unwary lovers are about to learn, in the hardest of ways, that the terror within ourselves is not so straightforward:
Speaker:as the poet once put it,
Speaker:“Far safer, of a midnight,
Speaker:meeting external ghost than
Speaker:an interior.” Please enjoy “Eat
Speaker:Your Heart, Your Feelings, or Both” by Leuna Copy and paste your story here: What happens when you have a thought that you
Speaker:know is bad, but it can’t leave you alone?
Speaker:There’s really no secret benefit, nothing to
Speaker:analyze or fix, nothing to recontextualize, what you are thinking is bad and you know it is.
Speaker:It’s unhealthy, unhelpful, it’s driving a spike into your brain,
Speaker:it’s only making you feel worse.
Speaker:You know the healthier ways to think of these things,
Speaker:you know what you should be doing, how you should be feeling, that these things are just…
Speaker:nonsense, angry, blinding, obsessive noises in your head.
Speaker:You don’t actually think this.
Speaker:You don’t actually believe this, and yet it is just here to take center stage in your brain…
Speaker:seemingly for the purpose of
Speaker:agonizing you. I want to drink my best friend’s blood.
Speaker:It. Sucks.
Speaker:You know those stupid joke posts you see online about clueless lesbians?
Speaker:Oh I don’t know what’s happening with this girl I’m friends with, I wonder if she likes me,
Speaker:we’ve been living together for a decade,
Speaker:that kind of ridiculous shit?
Speaker:I’ve been sharing a bed with this woman for months and I have no idea.
Speaker:She still… kind of has a boyfriend?
Speaker:He’s horribly sick, I don’t think I’ve really talked to him ever?
Speaker:She sends him messages all day,
Speaker:I don’t even think he responds to them, she’s just always checking her phone when she thinks I’m not looking.
Speaker:I’ve snuck peeks on it when she puts it down without locking it.
Speaker:The messenger app is just her messages in a long strand, over and over, with the occasional apology in return.
Speaker:Sometimes at night
Speaker:I feel like I can practically hear her blood screaming in her veins.
Speaker:She’s everything I’m not.
Speaker:Prey species, gorgeous, soft fur,
Speaker:poor… I guess we’re both hung up on someone.
Speaker:But this isn’t right.
Speaker:If anything, it’s basically offensive.
Speaker:I’m a literal vampire bat.
Speaker:It’s so. Fucking. Aggravating.
Speaker:I don’t want to hurt her, I don’t want to actually, literally…
Speaker:do that thing, I don’t want these thoughts in my head, they don’t even make me feel good,
Speaker:they make me feel sick,
Speaker:but it’s like clockwork.
Speaker:I get near her, I see her on her phone,
Speaker:I see the frown she’s trying to hide, and I feel…
Speaker:hungry. Am I angry at her?
Speaker:Jealous? I want to stop her, save her, eat her heart, I don’t…
Speaker:I don’t know. I don’t know what I want, I want to stop feeling like this.
Speaker:I want to feel like I could have a normal relationship, ask her out,
Speaker:tell her how I feel and have those feelings be both normal enough that I’m not a freak and for them to be
Speaker:just the right kind of feelings that she’ll just say yes and we’ll throw her phone off the Block.
Speaker:But I’m afraid that
Speaker:even if all of that happens, it’s never going to make me happy,
Speaker:that I’m just going to find something else to be miserable about.
Speaker:Maybe that’s all I’m designed to do,
Speaker:to crave blood until it sates me and pine after a fresh source.
Speaker:She’s here in my arms,
Speaker:I know that she cares about me,
Speaker:I know that she may even love me in her own way,
Speaker:so why can’t that make me happy?
Speaker:Why do I need to eat her, to be everything for her?
Speaker:Things are supposed to be going well, I’m working on my degree, I’m living with someone I’m crazy about,
Speaker:my family’s wealthy enough that I want for nothing.
Speaker:I should want for nothing.
Speaker:But every night I have to pull away from her and run off to the other room so she can’t see me slit my own hand and try and quell the urge,
Speaker:literally eat myself rather than face this disgusting part of me,
Speaker:but I know there’s no point.
Speaker:Nothing to face. What I want is wrong in so many
Speaker:clear, obvious ways,
Speaker:all confronting her would do is make her hate me and leave my life forever.
Speaker:I’d rather eat myself and live in the twilight of my heart
Speaker:than risk that. – What happens when you have a thought that you know is bad,
Speaker:but it can’t leave you alone?
Speaker:Somedays I wish my best friend was a vampire.
Speaker:I mean, she is a vampire bat,
Speaker:but I mean like in the horror stories.
Speaker:I feel almost a little old saying this
Speaker:but I remember the old stories,
Speaker:I remember the haunting tales of horror and lust and
Speaker:forbidden desires,
Speaker:so this new wave of “what if vampires were sexy”
Speaker:feels naive. They’ve always been hot,
Speaker:that’s the point.
Speaker:They wouldn’t function otherwise.
Speaker:But now it’s all these fluffy, consensual monster fucker folks.
Speaker:Everyone wants the aesthetic of it,
Speaker:the shape, the fangs, the drama,
Speaker:but none of the bite,
Speaker:none of the meat.
Speaker:I think I get it though,
Speaker:there’s just something kind of bleak to it all,
Speaker:no? Wanting to be a willing participant in your own destruction,
Speaker:but not wanting to feel like your partner is doing something wrong.
Speaker:I get the appeal I just…
Speaker:can’t. I know it’s wrong to think these things,
Speaker:and I know I can’t be that.
Speaker:I have a family depending on me to make something of my life but
Speaker:I failed that. That’s another thought, huh?
Speaker:I just… I dunno.
Speaker:I’m working, I’m living with a rich girl,
Speaker:she buys me food and I think I love her,
Speaker:but I’m just… that,
Speaker:huh? An accessory,
Speaker:hanging on her while I just can’t…
Speaker:get over my own shit.
Speaker:I don’t know what to think of Ace.
Speaker:We rarely talk and
Speaker:I keep on telling myself that it’s better to just stop,
Speaker:but when we talk it’s just magic.
Speaker:On those really lonely nights in bed with Becks
Speaker:I crave her, I need her to obliterate me,
Speaker:I want her to want that so badly that it destroys any other feeling I can have,
Speaker:but when I’m able to get in touch with Ace
Speaker:I feel like I’m living again.
Speaker:I don’t even care what he has to talk about.
Speaker:It’s so fucking sad.
Speaker:I keep telling myself that I want to live.
Speaker:I must want to live,
Speaker:because I’m still here,
Speaker:I’m still checking my phone, I’m still laying in bed with Becks and feeling her breath on my neck.
Speaker:I can feel my blood pounding,
Speaker:it almost makes me want to
Speaker:grab a knife and
Speaker:dig into my own body,
Speaker:really just fucking put myself on a platter for her.
Speaker:But that’s wrong.
Speaker:Obviously. Honestly it’s just exhausting.
Speaker:I have so many wrong thoughts,
Speaker:so many horrible wants that I know are only going to make things worse and worse,
Speaker:make me less and less a real person.
Speaker:It’s just blood and longing.
Speaker:It’s just blood and longing, every day,
Speaker:I pine and I pine and I can’t say a thing because
Speaker:could you imagine asking your bat
Speaker:friend to suck your blood?
Speaker:She… she has to know what I’m going through,
Speaker:I know I leave my phone open everywhere,
Speaker:I’m not a subtle person,
Speaker:and I want her to say…
Speaker:something about it.
Speaker:Anything. Tell me I’m an idiot,
Speaker:or ask me if I’m going to be okay,
Speaker:or hold me and tell me to leave him,
Speaker:but she doesn’t. Everything is just…
Speaker:fine. I guess. I should be happy that things are going well,
Speaker:and that she cares enough to keep me safe,
Speaker:and that maybe she does love me in her own way,
Speaker:but that love scares me too.
Speaker:What if she really
Speaker:loves me? Could I even process that?
Speaker:Could I even return that love like this?
Speaker:I can’t go more than 24 hours without pestering Ace
Speaker:and god if she just straight up loves me, I… I dunno. I’d fuck it up,
Speaker:I’d tell her I love her too,
Speaker:and maybe she’ll admit that she has a blood kink and I’ll feel useful for once in my life and
Speaker:I’ll promise I’ll delete the messenger app and that I’ll be her…
Speaker:thing, for as long as she can keep me and I’ll trick myself into being happy and
Speaker:I’ll open the app that I never got rid of the next day and notice that he
Speaker:didn’t even care to send me anything
Speaker:and everything, everything will come falling apart.
Speaker:And then I’ll have to smile at Becks and tell her
Speaker:I’m fine, just a little tired,
Speaker:and I’ll put my face back together and pretend that this is okay,
Speaker:that it means as little to me as it does to him, and I’ll
Speaker:pray every night that she loses control and nicks a major artery and my very heart and soul gets pumped out of my body all over us both
Speaker:and I’ll be lucky enough to die before ever having to think about what a disappointment I was going to be for her anyway.
Speaker:No, it needs to be like this.
Speaker:It needs to be just a dream.
Speaker:So when I saw her. –
Speaker:So when she saw me. –
Speaker:And I saw her, her hand rich with thick gouts of red.
Speaker:The way blood sticks to flesh and fur:
Speaker:noncommittally. No thick strands,
Speaker:it peels itself apart effortlessly,
Speaker:only getting stickier the longer it stays outside.
Speaker:I see it running almost tantalizingly down her wrist.
Speaker:How… how deep did she make the cut?
Speaker:There’s some clinging to her lips, to her fangs. I can feel my heart in my throat.
Speaker:I can’t be seeing this,
Speaker:I can’t- – God I hope there’s none on my face as I pull back.
Speaker:She had to have seen, I thought she was asleep- —
Speaker:I was asleep and jumped awake,
Speaker:a nightmare, the dreams keep getting worse- —
Speaker:I ask her what’s wrong,
Speaker:if she needs anything, I’ll be back in a minute I just needed some air- — There’s nothing wrong.
Speaker:There should be nothing wrong. —
Speaker:She’s lying to me. —
Speaker:She’s lying to me.
Speaker:Why? Why is she hurting herself like that?
Speaker:Why here and now and… and
Speaker:without me? Why does she not want to talk- —
Speaker:She had to have seen it.
Speaker:Seen me, palm cut open, god if there’s blood on my face. — I can’t even risk looking at her face.
Speaker:I just need to leave,
Speaker:go back to bed. Why couldn’t it be me?
Speaker:She’s so clearly ashamed… —
Speaker:God is this the end?
Speaker:How much did she see? I.
Speaker:I don’t want to lose her, I take it all back, anything, everything please- —
Speaker:I don’t want to lose her,
Speaker:I have to crush this,
Speaker:I have to kill my heart now so I can keep- —
Speaker:So I can keep our friendship alive, I need to clean up and get back there and just…
Speaker:just hope that nothing is wrong.
Speaker:That she doesn’t think of me as a freak oh god please- — She can’t
Speaker:know that I want this.
Speaker:That I almost can’t stand not fucking throwing myself on my hands and knees and
Speaker:begging to use me instead.
Speaker:After that? What if it’s… I dunno, what if it’s a bat thing?
Speaker:What if it’s just a thing she’s into?
Speaker:I know people who are weirdly into their own blood.
Speaker:I’m spiraling, I’m off track.
Speaker:The answer has to be that nothing’s wrong.
Speaker:That I saw nothing- —
Speaker:That she didn’t see anything.
Speaker:No matter what, she has to pretend.
Speaker:There’s no way in hell she didn’t see.
Speaker:What the fuck is wrong with me.
Speaker:I just can’t. I can’t lose her, please.
Speaker:I just want… – And now she’s back in bed.
Speaker:She’s slipping up along me,
Speaker:her arms wrapping around snug.
Speaker:I can feel a small tremble in them,
Speaker:I avoid touching her hands,
Speaker:even looking at them,
Speaker:just kind of squeezing in against her arms,
Speaker:trying to bury myself in against her,
Speaker:trying to lie to myself about what happened.
Speaker:It’s going to be another night of this.
Speaker:Another night of trying to make this work,
Speaker:of trying to lie myself into a happier place,
Speaker:but I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this.
Speaker:I don’t know how to forget the blood.
Speaker:This was “Eat Your Heart, Your Feelings,
