She had never really liked cis-men that much. With their constant peacocking and need for consolation, they reminded her of big, onerous babies. And yet nothing catalyzed her transformation into a ravenous beast faster than when one of them spurned her. An unsatiated seduction? It flipped a switch in her head. She became a bloodhound on the prowl with a one-track mind.

So as he hemmed and hawed and dragged his feet to put a label on their relationship, she slipped beneath his skin, disguising her entrance with a coy tickle that made him dizzy with desire. She wove through the hairs on his scalp, but he was unsuspecting and shivered under her titillating caresses.

Before he knew it, she was showing him off as a party trick. She fashioned herself as a ventriloquist, and everybody thought that his darting eyes were a charming feature of the dummy’s personality. With each passing evening, he found himself losing control over another faculty, another muscle group, his joints became creakier by the day until they were jammed shut. The only thing that worked, and went into overdrive, was his anxious mind.

One evening, instead of driving towards the city, she took the auto to a crumbling building. Word on the street was that it had been an exotic harem of circus-freaks back in the day.

She pushed open the creaky door and a voice tinkled from across the dimly-lit room: “And with what gimcrack thingamajig do you hope to win back my heart this time?”

Bending forward, she whispered into where his ears used to be: “It’s showtime!”