Page 55 of Eat Me Alive
“I have to go, my sweet dreamer.”
“Will you be back?”
It’s quiet as the eyes shadow over.“In the dark, you will never be alone. Whenever you close your eyes, I will be there. Now, sleep and forget.”
Datu
I have been keeping secrets.
I admit I’ve been very evasive my whole existence. My existence, after all, is embodying nothingness. The curtain behind the curtain where there is no wall but just emptiness. One would think I am accustomed to it—feeling,beingan utter void, but I am not. The longer I feel nothing, the stronger my need is for…something. Anything.
Unlike my sister, Sateva, I do not have a physical form. I constantly linger in her shadow when she’d controlled the island. Her realm had always been so giving, selfless. The allegorical, very human story of The Giving Tree. She gave everything of her until she had nothing left—leaving me to pick up the pieces of her failed godhood.
The Void doesn’t have a form, it doesn’t have a face, a voice, but it has eyes and a mouth. The Void can imitate whatever form it eats, but it can never become it. I am strong because Itake. I take and take and take to soothe a gut-wrenching desolation. I wander in dreams to taste, to experience some semblance offeeling. If I had not begun those trips, I am certain I would have lost myself, my godhood, like Sateva.
It is in those trips I’d gained believers, planting the seed of hatred for their kind. They mark their bodies to make sense of mine. The problem with humans is theyalwaysneed an image to worship. It had festered through generations, my existence indistinct from physical things they had built in my name. Idolatry, the worship of objects like it is a god.Me.
When it happened, I resorted to visiting the dreams of children. They are all so pure, so uncorrupted. Their laughter and joy is a balm to my reality. Despite my affection for them, I always leave knowing I will never see them again. I never intervene.
The only time I did was when I met Xiaoyu. She had been a little girl, hungry and terrified. I became…upsetseeing a child treated the way she had been. That night, the storm had been unforgiving. It had rained continuously for several days and nights in Esoterra, my domain—the blood and bones I built. The trees had leaked a nectar that emptied the mind.The phrase "lost their mind" had never been so literal.
That same night, I had helped her forget before I ate her pathetic monster. I had hoped she would heal, move forward. When I followed the little shiver in my gut, I had not expected it to be my sweet dreamer. But instead of being a child, she’d been a fully-grown woman. Time truly is different in the Otherlands.
She’d taken a liking to plants—studying, watching,lovingthem grow while trapped in a sterile life surrounded by the unnatural. I had never shown myself, and I had not lingered long enough for her to notice. I have always thought her special, but now, she illuminates.
Constrictors coil in me. It is a bitter realization—knowing what she seeks is nothing I can provide. Sadly, it had been my hope, my longing to be what she wants that had pushed me to take the Terra form. To be something rather than…nothing.
It bothers me how much Xiaoyu—a human—can rattle my existence so deeply.
I also resent Sateva even more now that I finally understand why she’s here.
Xiaoyu isn’t here to heal me. Far from it.
“Datu?”
She’s bathed in moonlight, her skin aglow. Her cheeks are rosy, half-moon eyes reminding me the divine feminine does exist. It exists in her, quiet but torrential. She is just too shy to acknowledge it.
Unable to resist it, I curl myself around her, my mind in turmoil. I see my demise, and it is in her eyes.
“Let me feed you.”
“I’m not hungry.”
My cock unfurls for her, but I ignore it.“Are you sore?”
She smiles, the image of her like this immortalized in my mind. She has filled up from my feedings and her hair is longer now. She blows away the shorter hairs on her forehead.
“It’s a hairstyle. We call it bangs.”
“You can read my mind?”I ask wryly.
She shakes her head as I pick her up toward the shallow pool I created. “You’re silly. Isn’t your whole shtick in conversations telepathy?”
“That is true. I wish I could speak to you.”
Her eyebrows knit together as we dip into the warm water. “Why would you say that? You can talk to me.”
There’s a weight on my chest I do not like. It makes the pretense of breathing difficult.“I want you to hearme.Not just this voice in your head.”
