Pizza

The hills rose wide out from the ground. I stood on one of them; knelt down, into the flaming ashes. I was sorting through half-burnt baby blankets. Things I had seen, but did not remember. Not until now.

There was a contraption… like a riding lawnmower, though this had the plumes and pillars of an old locomotive. It was sparking at the bottom. It had run over a bear trap.

Soon, it would be covered in flames.

I picked up the telephone. I think I was calling someone to repair it. Or find my wallet.

“O, goede dag,” came the woman on the other side of the line. I recognized Her voice; and I knew what sShe was saying. Though I did not know what language it must have been.

“Oh, hello,” I repeated. We talked for a bit.

She told me of times when I was a baby. Some sort of operation that She had done on me. I was very grateful.

The call went strangely. She spoke Her language; I spoke mine. Somehow, we both understand.

Her heart flit like a butterfly.

“I just want to say,” I meant, ‘tell you’. Somehow, She understood. “I’m very grateful for what you did for me, and,”

“Oh, dank je. Afscheid.” She said, suddenly embarrassed.

The call had ended.

The Humans were rummaging through our ever-increasing flat. They were looking to buy things that I was not selling. I asked a family member to help me at cashiering. They were angry, and did not help.

“I’ll do it myself.” I forced a smile. I was going to sell them the things I could not deny them, at a price higher than they would go for.

But what if they went for it?

What, then?

I could not find my wallet.

I had to make change for this to happen.

I searched through the tower, no longer our tower, ever-increasing in height.

I walked into the Woman’s home.

With every day, our ‘home’ was becoming Her and my home. I did not mind. This much, I had preferred. As Humanity began to blend into the scenery, and nothing but We two were into frame, I felt at Home.

I thought about sitting down, as if it were a Doctor’s waiting room. But I was intruding inside Her.

A woman appeared.

Her form was out of focus. So beautiful, and so incomprehensible, that it damn near made me weep.

Slowly, Her chosen form folded into frame. She was an ordinary Woman.

I was disappointed.

I ingraciously interrupted Her as She spoke. “You’re not human, are you, now?” I added ‘now’, as a matter of politeness.

She frowned a cute little ‘sad’ frown. “No.” She paused. “I am not.” She paused. “Would you prefer that I was not?”

I sighed, happily. “Oh, no,” I shook my head, before looking back up at her. She was growing in size— in height. “I would much prefer that you were not human.” I said, contemporarily.

She smiled.

Her skin split bloodlessly, into a thousand thousand tendrils, like blades of Grass.

We stood side by side, my arm around Her, Her around me, and We walked.


A large and terrifying advance. A structure that rose from the ground like a sine wave, then flattening, plateauing, as it reached the height ceiling of our now-shared World.

“This oven is almost older than mankind.” she revealed. “It was made by…” she told me a name of a people I had never heard of, before. It seemed to fit. “… one of the first ovens ever made, by a human.”

For a moment, we both admired it, bathed in its faint light.

My hands were behind my back of my own volition.

“Would you like some pizza?” she asked.

i NODDED, and sMILED. “yES.”

“I am older than the stars.” she said. There was a pause. The woman’s form undulated like seaweed, water flowing over it. “It is so very lonely.”

I looked at her. “Do you want a hug?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I hugged Her.

She hugged me.