Parasitoid

She was the greatest kisser I had ever kissed up to that point. Her lips mirrored my lips’ every move, every jot and tittle. all night long. If I deliberately twinged a tiny muscle on my top-right lip to tickle the top-left lip on her, she correspondingly twinged her top-left lip in the same place to tickle my right, and it became a dueling duo of twinging, tickling upper lips; if I nibbled a spot anywhere on her lip, she playfully nibbled mine right back in the same exact spot, mirroring everything my lips were doing at any given moment. Her lips danced the dance of my lips, same exact dance as mine, whatever I did, mirror for mirror, her tongue the same, step for step, all the way not home.

I thought it was because she liked me. I thought it was because we were simpatico, were compatible, so complementary, so right for each other. My mind did not yet know what a narcissist was, my eyes could not yet see the demon behind the veil of her coal-black dolls’ eyes, the one controlling her from the spirit world, making the lipsticked meatsuit move and mimic and mirror.

I wriggled in bed with her, with it, as an unwary caterpillar as the wasp laid its eggs. Over the next decade and a half—more, actually—its larvae hatched, burrowed into my skin, and fed on my internal organs.