“…because the human body is unstable, right? Things erupt out of our skins, immune systems attack our own organs, vasectomies reverse themselves. The body is a strange and miraculous thing.”

     Glasses clinked and silverware scraped against plates. Brandon’s date blinked at him and sipped from his glass of craft cider. The kid didn’t seem terribly bright so far. Maybe he hadn’t heard Brandon clearly in the loud tavern. Maybe he was too polite or too bored to ask Brandon to repeat himself.

     Brandon continued. “I mean, you’re into tattoos. So many things can happen to the skin, and tattoos stay through most of it. Scrapes, minor burns, whatever.” He had seen the inscriptions swirling across Abe’s body in the pics on the dating app. Abe was a wiry thing, pulled lean by aerial silks and acrobatics.

     Abe stared back. Brandon wasn’t so bad, but Abe could tell that Brandon was judging him. Fair. Each sized the other up.

     Abe forked some prosciutto chicken into his mouth and talked around it. “Mmm-hmm. I had a dream once—”

     Just once, Brandon thought.

     “—You ever wake up in your dreams and think you’re really awake? I woke up one day and my skin had rejected all my ink, just like threw it up. There was ink everywhere on my sheets. In the dream, I mean. Not really. Ha!”

     A few particles of food flew out of Abe’s mouth. Brandon looked away, but he noticed a fleck land on his salad. He would eat around it.  The kid wasn’t perfect, but damn it, Brandon hadn’t gone out with anyone since the accident. It took him a week to muster up that courage to message Abe. The profile said that he liked smart, chubby guys. Well. Check and check.

     Abe was staring at him again, not in a creepy way, but the way a dog cocks his head and stares.

     “Do I have food stuck to my face?” Brandon asked, brushing here and there with his napkin.

     “You have really nice teeth,” Abe told him. “Rich people teeth. I love guys with nice teeth. Mine are fucked up.”

     “Thank you. My family isn’t rich. Middle class, I’d say.” Brandon looked down at his plate and picked at his pomegranate spinach salad. He’d finished the steak slices and now faced only the leaves and arils.

     Abe relaxed. “I’m new to the whole online dating thing. Late bloomer I guess. I like it so far. It’s like a catalog, or a menu. Hey! What a coincidence!”

     He held up the wine list and waved it for effect. Brandon nodded and faked amusement.

     The server came and went, promising more bread. Brandon stuffed another pile of raw spinach into his mouth. He wished he’d just starved himself instead of letting himself gain all the weight during the long bed rest. The painkillers weren’t helping, either.

     “I know what you mean about bodies. I’m also a contortionist, not just an aerialist. I can dislocate some of my joints without hurting myself. I can climb through a tennis racket!”

     That was flirting, right? Brandon imagined what that flexibility might be like in bed.

     Without segue, Abe said, “I was a shit kid.”

     “I’m sorry?”

     “Don’t be. I was a shit kid.”

     “No, I mean—I don’t know what you mean. You were a shitty person, or you were into actual…?”

     Abe laughed and danced in his seat. Brandon said a silent gratitude that the younger man’s mouth wasn’t full. Come to think of it, Abe’s own mouth was odd. Just a little too small for his face, something uncanny like that.

     Abe explained himself. “I was a shitty person when I was a teenager. I got shithead tattoos and did shithead things. I mean, normal kids don’t literally run away with the circus.”

     Brandon dropped his shoulders in relief. “Ah, okay. Because you never know, right? You could be into anything.”

     “I sure could, Brandon. Maybe you’ll find out what I’m into.”

     The server came back with a third cider for Abe and a new basket of bread and butter. Brandon would just skip the butter, eat all the salad, and have some bread to make it go down more easily. He wouldn’t order a second beer. Let Abe get drunk and loose.

     He changed the subject. “So Abe is short for Abraham I’m assuming?” Brandon plucked a roll from the basket.

     “Nope.” Abe cut another hefty chunk of meat and ate it. They watched each other chew.

     Brandon decided to play this game. “May I ask what it’s short for?”

     “Abelard.” The boy took a roll and tore a chunk off with his teeth.

     Brandon looked down and admired how much of his salad he’d made disappear. “Oh. That’s an unusual name nowadays. Like Abelard and Heloise? Is it a family name?”

     Abe narrowed his eyes and swallowed. “Not exactly.” The educated ones like Brandon always pried. Abe could keep this up for hours, but he didn’t need that long.

     “Hey, Brandon, what do you call this again? Pro-shoo-toe? Is that French?”

     Brandon laughed. “Italian. I’m glad you like it. It’s one of my favorites.”

                               #

     It was a pretty April night, a little damp but no rain. They walked from the restaurant to a nearby park, making a pit stop for ice cream. Abe was more genteel now. He hadn’t offered to split the check, but he paid for their ice creams at the fancy organic creamery.

     Brandon put his hand on Abe’s lower back as they walked. Abe smiled. Brandon imagined how they’d fit together. Abe was so slim, with those long arms and legs. For a moment, Brandon wondered if Abe had Ehlers-Danlos syndrome or Marfan or something like that. Maybe he was just malnourished as a kid. That would explain a few things.

     They talked about circus life. Abe would be in town for another week, then move on to Portland, but he’d be back in a couple of months.

     “A girl in every port, huh?” Brandon half-joked.

     “Nah, too much work to keep track. I just meet who I meet. It’s the life of a traveler.”

     “Yeah? A bit of a gypsy?”

     “Nah, tramp and maybe thief, but I’m not a gypsy I don’t think. I thought we weren’t supposed to say ‘gypsy’ anymore?”

     Brandon laughed. “I don’t know. Nice Cher reference, by the way. You a fan of hers?”

     “Yeah, I guess I can relate to a lot of her early songs. ‘Gypsies,’ ‘Halfbreed,’ ‘Dark Lady.’ She would’ve been a queen at the circus.”

     Brandon decided to push a little into vulnerable territory. “Do you still have contact with your family?”

     Abe didn’t answer, just consumed his ice cream.

     “I’ll take that as a no. What happened there?”

     Abe stopped but didn’t look at him. The ginko tree above them dripped.

     Abe decided to tell Brandon part of the truth. It probably wouldn’t change things at this point.

     “My family is in a cult, Brandon. My parents named me Abelard after one of the founders of their batshit religion, some guy who supposedly married a sea goddess. They used to make me drown little animals for their fucked up rituals. I have scars on my body under my tattoos from all the shit they did to me. I ran away from home at fourteen and sucked and fucked my way across the country until I joined the circus. Is that enough background? Do you wanna know more?”

     Brandon could feel how widely his eyes bugged, the hot blood at the surface of his cheeks. “Oh. I’m…so sorry. Sorry.”

     Dammit fuck shit, Brandon thought. He’d pushed too hard. Who would run away with the circus but someone escaping that level of crazy?

He studied Abe’s face, and Abe looked like he was barely hiding his pain. Brandon didn’t know what else to say, so he made his own confession.

     “Abe, I had a car accident three years ago. I was so drunk that I hit a fucking tree. I was in the hospital for weeks, and I had to drop out of my Ph.D. program. That’s when I got fat; I used to be ripped.”

Abe made that puppy dog head tilt again. Brandon continued, “My brain injury makes it hard to read for very long now, which is the worst. I hate it. And I know that’s not nearly as bad as the horrible things your family did to you, and you were innocent and this is my own fault, but I hope it makes up a little for me prying.”

     Abe’s face held a distressing lack of expression. Then he said, “Hey, kiss me.”

     Brandon did. His heart raced. Abe wrapped his long arms around him, and they kissed like hungry things.

                          #

     They did not go back to Brandon’s. Abe invited Brandon back to his trailer at the circus, and Brandon figured, Why the hell not?

     The dim light in the trailer came in pulses from the lights of the carnival fifty yards away. Red, blue, yellowish white. Now that they both stood naked, Brandon noticed other peculiarities to Abe’s body. Poor thing, Brandon thought. I bet he’s inbred. Fucking cultist bullshit.

     Abe was a little too long, yet his chest seemed too short, the nipples too small, his abdomen stretching between the rib cage and the pelvis. His arms continued just an inch or two after they should’ve terminated in hands, but the hands were dainty. His feet were huge, but his cock seemed too small for the rest of the body. Somehow, it made him all the more fascinating.

     Abe pulled away from Brandon’s kiss and said, “You ready to fuck me, stud?”

     Brandon blushed. “Can I rim you first? Do you like that?”

     “Mmm…Go for it.”

     It was a beautiful little ass. Abe reclined while Brandon crouched in between his legs, looking up at him.

     “Here—” Abe flipped onto his hands and knees, facing the wood-paneled wall at the head of his bed. On his lower back, Brandon saw an elaborate tattoo, some kind of pseudo-Japanese mural difficult to make out in the faint light. Underneath that, he could feel scar tissue–a lot of it. He began licking at Abe again, but he stroked the man’s back in an attempt to feel out what shape the scar suggested. It felt like a starfish. Fuck, Brandon thought. This poor kid.

     Abe decided to enjoy it while it lasted, but after a few more minutes, he said, “Brandon? Hey, Brandon?”

     Brandon stopped worshipping Abe’s ass and said, “Yeah?”

     Abe still looked at the wall a few inches from his face. This part always made him a little sad. “For what it’s worth, I really do like you. And I’m sorry, but this is what I do.”

     “Huh?” Brandon said, but Abe’s ass was already dilating. Scarlet tissue, slick like the skin inside a mouth, pushed out like a parachute.

     “What the f—” Brandon began, but the tissue kept coming out and in an instant lurched forward and clung to his face, quieting him.

     “Shhhh. Please. Just don’t,” Abe said, continuing to externalize his stomach, but Brandon couldn’t really hear him. The smooth muscle of Abe’s gut surrounded Brandon’s entire head, then jerked back and forth, snapping Brandon’s neck. More smooth muscle came out, covering him down past the shoulders to mid-torso, locking his arms against his body, but he was paralyzed.

     Like a sea serpent consuming prey larger than its own head, Abe’s body cavity expanded tremendously, the pelvis and joints and limbs clicking apart. The starfish stomach sucked Brandon in, and he suffocated before he could feel the worst pains of digestion.

     When it was done. Abe said the little prayer of thanks that his mother had taught him. Full now and lethargic, he’d sleep for a week, breaking down Brandon’s soft tissue. Then he’d shit out the bones, but he’d keep those beautiful teeth.

     Abelard always felt jealous of the ones with good teeth.

originally published in print and audio in Forbidden Futures issue 8.