Special Issue #13 ISSN 1547-5957

We need food, the slug says.
Ellie walks slowly towards the stairs, her head tilted. “It sounds like it’s coming
from up here.”
There’s a snatch of song. “You should go and have a look,” Debra says.
For once, Ellie does as she’s told.
It takes Debra a while to realize the phone is ringing. She’s finding it harder
and harder to hear anything other than the song, now.
“Hello?” she says. Her tongue feels thick and furry. Unused to words.
“Deb? Deb, is that you?”
“Yes?” There’s a pause. She concentrates, tries to place the voice. After a while,
it comes through in the song. “Stuart?”
“Yes, it’s me. What’s the matter with you? Are you sick?”
“Tired,” she says. “Working. Learning.”
Another pause. “Oh. Okay. Well, I just wanted to—check in, I suppose. I haven’t
heard from you for a while.” He gives a short, stilted laugh. “You got another man,
now, to run all your errands?”
“We have everything we need,” she says.
No, the slug says. Not everything. Not yet.
“Are you sure? You sound—odd.”
We must grow.
“What? Deb, what did you say?”
“Nothing. I have to go now.”
“Hold on, hold on. Is Ellie there? I haven’t heard from her lately, either.”
Debra struggles to think. Ellie?
Ellie is gone, says the slug.
Debra nods. She remembers now. “Ellie is gone.”
“Gone? Gone where? Do you mean--she’s moved out?”
Debra takes the phone away from her ear and looks at it. It is ugly, and it
doesn’t sing.
“Deb? Did you hear me? Are you still there?”
She puts the ugly thing down and goes back upstairs. She has work to do.
Before, she would probably have thought the slug smelled bad now. But she’s
learning how to use her senses differently and she can hear the slug’s heat, see the
joy fizzing along its skin, and taste the colours that flow under its sleek surface.
Every part of it is beautiful.
Occasionally, the phone tries to interrupt their song with its shrill clamour.
In the end, she throws it away. She throws a lot of things away, because she doesn’t
need them anymore. All she needs is space. Space to grow.
She flicks away a fly that tries to land on her face. The flies are starting to get
on her nerves a little. All that buzzing.
But she can’t afford to get distracted. She has to focus on her own transformation,
now. There is so much still to learn.
50 The Literary Hatchet