Cohost writing prompt: @Making-up-Monsters — Monster who no longer fits under the bed, but doesn't understand this
"I'm sorry," Lottie says.
The new apartment is — well, it's what she can afford. She has so little to carry around with her, now, and even then it's too much, doesn't fit. The bed is a narrow flatpack single, and there's a bunch of her stuff shoved under it because this place is too small to have storage, and—
Zuzie is lying face-down on the floor like a neatly-arranged cadaver, arms at her sides, with just her head shoved under the bed. "Don't look at me," she says, angrily and slightly muffled. "I'm under the bed, so you can't see me. I might or might not even be there, you'll never know, uncertainty is fear."
"Zuzie," Lottie says apologetically.
"Don't look at me," Zuzie snarls.
Lottie waits a beat. "There are other places—"
"I looked in the closet. There's too much in there, too."
Lottie sighs from her toothpaste-fresh mouth and finishes getting ready for bed.
"Zuzie," she tries again, when she's lying in the dark.
"What."
"You could—" and Lottie's nerve nearly fails; she scoots over, pats the mattress instead of saying it.
The top of a head rises slowly over the edge of the bed, like a fin in a shark movie. Venom-green eyes, furiously slitted and faintly luminous, glare in the dark.
"Look, it's not—" Lottie bites her lip. "It's an ecological crisis caused by capitalism, right? A couple of generations back, I'd be paying off a house of my own by now, maybe thinking about — about a family of my own, new little beds for you to be under, right? This isn't our fault, it's a — Millennials are killing the monster under the bed.... It's like, you know, big cats being squeezed into urban fringes by rainforest destruction? And then some of them turn maneater because of their new environment," because attributing threat to her is a quick way to butter Zuzie up.
Zuzie doesn't stop glaring.
"If I have to pee in the night, I don't want to step on you," Lottie says. "I mean, you can probably bite through my hamstring."
Zuzie's eyes twitch, as if she's thinking about it.
"I'll turn over," Lottie says. "All I'll see is the wall. What's that behind me? Could be anything. Could be here to eat me. Uncertainty is fear—"
Zuzie growls a little bit in the back of her throat. Lottie stops and lets it lie, for a few seconds.
"I'll see if I can pick up some Japanese horror films on DVD," she says. "We can watch them, you can workshop some new intimate creepiness stuff."
"Stop fucking talking and turn over," Zuzie says, sounding murderous, and slides under the covers behind her. It's not a large bed, even for one person; Zuzie presses against her, relentlessly slides an arm under her head.
Lottie finds herself pillowed on a wiry bicep, midnight-blue skin shading to a deep violet on the inside surfaces of the limb, and a creamier shade still in the hollow of the elbow. The arm's outer surface is scattered with long, stiff hairs almost like cats' whiskers, streamlined back along the skin, with a tiny, pale, almost silvery rim of flesh around the base of each; like stars. Lottie's never seen, never been this close to her before. Her breath hitches.
Zuzie's other arm wraps over her, palm pressing to her thundering chest. "Your heart's very fast," she says. "Are you scared?"
"Yes," Lottie says; mhm, definitely, yep. Scared.
Zuzie trails her hand to cup Lottie's breast. "Are you?" she says sceptically, at the breathless noise Lottie makes.
"A bit!" Lottie promises, arching. "You're — a monster from under the bed, I don't know, you might do anything, what if you have teeth—"
Zuzie pinches her nipple, and she turns her head and gasps into the unearthly-coloured skin beneath her cheek.
Later, sleepily:
"You're a biter."
"Sorry, Zuzie," Lottie says hazily, afterglowing, fumbling a kiss to the blackening marks in Zuzie's bicep.
"Maybe you'll nip my hamstring," Zuzie mocks, into her hair. "Go the fuck to sleep."