To the monster person prompt by amiserablepileofwords — Monster who's offended you think them a coldblooded killer. Do they look like a reptile to you?

Content warning: large insect, descriptions of insect physical features and sounds

'Babe' and their girlfriend are back! Fun fact: Centipedes don't have blood (they have hemolymph).


Initially, the misguided reeve was unsettled more by the motions of the forty metre long glossy dark centipede than the chittering, until the chittering started to echo off the stonework walls of the alley. She looked nervously behind her shoulder at the busy main street of town that was luckily not yet paying much mind.

The centipede’s girlfriend translated. “One, do I look like a reptile to you? And two, you think I have blood? Ugh!”

The reeve grimaced and shook her palms at the centipede’s girlfriend, who frowned and directed her to address the centipede. “No, no, there’s just—“

“What, am I a suspect?” The centipede’s girlfriend glared at the centipede and hissed, “Don’t interrupt. This interpretation shit is hard.”

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, the reeve scratched the back of her head. “Well, no. Monsters aren’t ‘suspects’ per se.”

This time the thunderous chittering did catch the attention of the main street. The centipede’s girlfriend was too busy also yelling at the reeve to translate. “Are you kidding me? Does this town have something against monsters? If a unicorn that spoke your language walked in here and killed a guy, would they be a suspect? Or just a monster?”

The reeve was flabbergasted by both shouting individuals, and both the hypothetical laid out and the reminder that yes, a unicorn could kill a guy. In fact, a unicorn killing a guy would look a lot like a centipede killing a guy in this instance. “Alright, alright.” They looked back at the crowd amassed at the entrance to the alley. “Just, uh, tell me how to find you in the event we need to talk to you.”

The centipede’s girlfriend leaned towards the much quieter chittering, with considering nods. After passing along the information that she knew was fake, she set a calming hand against a plate of the centipede’s body as they walked away together. Once distant from the alley, she asked, “You totally killed that guy though, right?”

The centipede’s girlfriend chuckled at both the reply and the attached sentiment that, if anyone was coldblooded, the guy sure was now.

Thank you again for reading You&&. If you’re seeing this and wondering what You&& is, you can find out more about my queer, monster-filled novella on its about page. It’s a sequel to my other, queer, monster-filled novella Sometimes The Mountain Buries You.

One day You&& will have a proper name instead of a working title. That’s not today.

First, announcements!

• There’s a third instalment in the series already under way, it’s a short story that will be posted December 25th, 2024. It will be 18+, with gore and sexually explicit content


• There’s plans for a final, fourth instalment but, honestly, I’m a little tapped out after writing two novellas in a year and losing the place I had been posting them and the rest of my writing. For now, let’s say it’ll start releasing in 2025


• I still have plans to edit Sometimes The Mountain Buries You and You&&, to release on my website as well as in epub and pdf formats. Sometimes The Mountain Buries You’s edit got delayed by the cohost shutdown. It’s possible I’ll decide to edit and release one or both before the fourth instalment starts releasing

Now extras!

You&&, a playlist. Fifteen tracks that, honestly, I had started putting together before even finishing Sometimes The Mountain Buries You. Some of them really encapsulated what I was going for, and some of those I don’t feel I hit the mark exactly as I intended but not so far off I’d remove them from the playlist.

While writing You&& I’d listen to it on repeat and would cackle every time the first song came back around.


Listen on: [spotify] [youtube] [last.fm]

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Bingo—! Not actually tho. You&& came so close to a bingo, the grievous injury to kidneys is only implied though.


~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Screenshot. Contains spoilers!

This is what You&& looks like on my computer, just like Sometimes The Mountain Buries You with the writing each chapter in its own txt file full height and then shrinking down to be a cascade for navigating between.


I have confirmed, this is indeed at least one person’s nightmare.

That’s all! I’ll be back with the third instalment on December 25th, 2024. I hope you enjoyed my rumination on home being other people.

Written to the prompt by Make Up A Criminal cohost prompt account — Thief who has been swapping things around.

In which we learn what Neph's non-crime job is and what crime Neph was doing that put him in the river in the first place.


Gauss stumbles out of his boots over the pile of Neph’s shop gear at the front door. He stops before stumbling over Neph in the hall with the broken coffee table leaning against the wall. “Weren’t you tossing that?”

“I was.” Neph looks up from measuring what is missing two legs, cracked down the middle, and too large for their living room anyways. He smiles wide at Gauss. His wide smiles shut his eyes, giving a pure and wholesome impression that Gauss has long since learned better of. “But now it’s full of good memories. I’m gonna take it to the shop and fix it.” He steps into the hands reaching for his waist.

“More like full of my jizz.”

Neph hangs his arms up over Gauss’s shoulders in a tease. A tease because once his gear is ready, he’s out to the shop without delay. “Exactly.”

“You little shit.” Gauss steps back with Neph. If he resisted or moved to drag Neph further into the apartment, Neph would slip out of his arms and—should need be—physically immobilize him in order to get out to the shop. Gauss instead puts his effort into getting as much Neph in his hands and mouth as he can before they reach the door.

At the door, Neph plays into Gauss’s hesitance against letting him go to ply Gauss for— “You gonna help me load it into the truck?”

Gauss laughs and lets go with a smack of Neph’s ass. “Fuck no. Get out of here with your perv table.”


In the industrial area running along the eastern shore of the S’iyaq river, the forge takes up one unit of a long building of workshops and commercial kitchens running along the train tracks. If it weren’t for the rattle and shake, earplugs and hammering would drown out any and all notice to trains passing.

Neph ties his hair up and wears a baseball cap from one of the more crudely named local gay bars. He’s only just gotten to look at work orders in the office when Jagvir jogs in with the clomp clomp of steel toe boots to smack him hard across the shoulders.

“Hey dick brain, where’s the boyfriend?” Jagvir crows while fending off Neph’s attempts to wipe the smirk off his face.

At a sore cheek and two less buttons on the flannel colour-matched green with Jagvir’s turban, Neph quits his assault and returns to the charred clipboard of work orders with the tape label ‘OFFICE USE ONLY’. “Left him tied up at home.”

“I don’t want to know.”

Neph grins something wicked. “You don’t want to know.”

On a workbench, Neph draws out plans for missing legs with soapstone, having hauled the broken coffee table on the bench with substantially less cursing than hauling it down from the apartment to his truck. He looks up to a much less violent hand on his shoulder.

“You doing furniture repair now?” Jagvir earnestly looks over the plans with a considering nod.

“Fuck no. This thing barely fit in my truck.” Neph pulls a chunk of wood from where the screws of a missing leg had ripped out.

Jagvir laughs, breaks off to wave at Carson coming in, and gives a little shove to Neph while he’s distracted with his own wave at Carson. “That’s because it isn’t a truck, you pumpkin toadlet.”

It is a truck. It’s just reasonably sized and already loaded with Dan Pettersen’s twenty thousand dollar toilet that Neph didn’t get to finish swapping for the fuckface with the watch’s twenty thousand dollar toilet the other night.

Finally crossing off some of the last notes I wrote for You&& back before starting. Not many left now.

You&& (working title) is a queer novella about when home is other people, including the monsters lurking in the woods. Check out the about page here. You&& is a sequel to Sometimes The Mountain Buries You.


Winter is slow. You come to realize your slow healing has halted well before you're better by most any margin.

Shale is a great mediator for what happened with the fire. She handles your stubbornness, Basin's stubbornness, and her own hurdle of guilt to get someplace with how you all felt to an understanding and acceptance of how it had gone. It still feels bad. She tells you of course it would.

You try to keep away, to spend the remaining winter mapping viable crevices to take shelter in, but the draw of Basin's home is a comfort you've learned to crave. You start finding yourself with Juniper purring in your lap and Shale leaning over her guitar more often.

You watch Shale drink from Basin's favourite mug, leaving toast crumbs from the corners of her lips floating on the surface of tea. When she says your name, she remembers all the terns she's ever seen that made an impression on her.

You further understand how Basin is her home. How Shale is their home. How all that time Shale wasn't here, Shale was still Basin's home. Even if Shale never came back—if she had been ended by the what had latched onto her, or by some other violence, or sickness, or had to stay forever somewhere else—she would continue to be Basin's home; in their memories of each other, the way they've touched and shaped each other, the ways the world is different for them for having known each other.

You understand that knowing Basin has made the world different for you. Not just because they were the first person you ever talked to, but because that too. Because all of it, every moment, even the ones you weren't here for, even the ones you don't know about. Every time Basin turned the porch rock, restocked their peeling-veneer cabinet, knew something to say while talking to the many people they call home because they know you.

You just hope your presence won't always be pain; heart-weary and heart-ache or feeling bad about the fire for Basin. So you tell the two of them your plan to expand your home.

Like shovelling snow and bringing in wood, Shale offers to help build it. She starts bringing back whatever will fit in Basin's car when she accompanies them to the decent town. Free on roadsides and the backs of businesses; pieces of plywood, cabinets ripped out of remodelled bathrooms, an antique wooden stand with a recess for an unfortunately cracked washbasin she's determined to find a replacement for, more eclectically acquired chairs.

A wooden kitchen chair with its back snapped off from one such decent town foray is added as a stool to the cabin's porch next to the porch rock. Shale sits on it, drinking from Basin's favourite mug, waiting for Basin to come back from the job they do to support all those people Basin calls home.

This year, they finally convince each other for Shale to stay. No Spring departure. You feel the weary sink of Shale's bones in relief.

By the end of winter, a dog—hardly more than a puppy—from one of the ranches accompanies her on the porch. "Ruth," she tells you, "short for Ruthless."

She shows you how to handpoke tattoo while Ruth and Juniper snooze together on the ample-cushioned ample seating closest the stove. You fill your skin with twig and needle, tree and pinecone, feather and flower, mushroom and berry.

The tattoos do help, like Basin had said. You wish you had tried before this new constant pain.

All hurt burns now. That hurt that you felt like you needed it so that you could overwhelm and consume the things that shouldn't be here, that hurt that felt good, is burn. It's different, awful, no longer overcomes the necessary violence of consuming the things that shouldn't be here. And burns all the while. It doesn't stop or ease.

You don't know what you can do to ensure never to make such a mistake again. Not like the fire, not like becoming complacent. Even with the knowledge from something else, from Basin, from Shale who knows so much more than Basin—there's so much you don't know.

Shale's mediation had revealed as much to her and Basin, when they asked you how it could have gone so wrong, when they asked you how you even knew the ritual in the first place. Basin troubles over this.

You avoid their head when they trouble over things—you, trouble over you. So while Shale walks with Ruth in the woods ahead of you, Basin falls back to where you are prone to following Shale as a tug in your chest directs you to continue the promise of keeping her safe and sound.

"Tern."

You move a part of your focus on all-encompassing nature to Basin, keeping up all of your awareness for anything that might threaten the promise of keeping safe and sound.

"I think there's supposed to be more of you."

There's more warmth of home than ever, but the pain; heart-weary and heart-ache doesn't leave. Just like how your attachment to Basin and now Shale are accompanied by how bad the fire had gone.

"I don't think you're supposed to learn all this stuff the hard way."

You watch Shale call Ruth to her side, reward her, then send her out again.

"It feels like you're not supposed to be alone, at least not at the start."

Basin's aversion to you from the start wells up in the back of your throat. "You, feel, like that."

Basin levels a flat look at you, You do too.

You bristle because they know you heard that. This is how the ways you are stubborn come to a head with the ways Basin is stubborn. For the most part, Shale laughs at the two of you for it. Even now, in the attention you keep on her, she turns and rolls her eyes at the two of you.

"Not like, it helps, to feel like that."

Basin sighs, kicks at the dirt. Breaks connections of twig and needle.

You hold out an arm to stop them. "Can, you, not?" you call, take a breath long and slow while they study your face, and then you explain why.

This one's kinda a love letter.

You&& (working title) is a queer novella about when home is other people, including the monsters lurking in the woods. Check out the about page here. You&& is a sequel to Sometimes The Mountain Buries You.


Shale comes in with the train. She smells like the train's acrid grease and friction'd steel hanging low in late-Autumn rain. She comes bearing news of who's moved where, of deaths, overdoses, disappearances into the woods, police violence, kids' birthdays, new bands formed, current bands broken up, old bands reunited.

She's come for the winter, like the winters before. Living with Basin while the snow would make travel more miserable than she cares to deal with these days. A solid place to land and stay, to rest and rely on, a home for travelling loved ones—for Shale. For Shale, who spends Spring through Autumn in all the places the people Basin call home live, Basin is home.

Not this cabin. Basin is home.

When Basin makes tea, Shale drinks from Basin's favourite mug.

When Basin is upset, Shale kisses the tattoos on Basin's palms, and then their forehead, and then their lips. She presses her cheek to the top of Basin's head when they hug, when they sit on the couch together, when Shale looks over Basin's shoulder.

Shale's long torso has Basin's regular shirts fit short on her and Basin's long-fitting shirts fit regular. When she plays guitar, she leans over the wide deep resonating wooden box with room to spare in the crook of her body. She reminds you of salamanders and weasels.

She laughs like she's already out of breath. Like her vocal cords are straining to make sound. She laughs a lot, a form of punctuation; periods "hahaa", commas "hah", semicolons "heh".

When she isn't laughing, she's pressing her tongue against the holes in her teeth. Pushing against sharp edge enamel.

When she kisses Basin, she presses her tongue against the holes in their teeth.

She more than helps with cooking too much on Monday evenings—planning and taking on the bulk of prep and cooking. Her skills are beyond that of the line cook and dishwasher jobs she's picked up on occasion; she's cooked for dozens in city parks and in camp villages, she knows how to skin a deer and tan its hide. Every time she turns on the kitchen tap, she thinks about cousins living with boil water advisories.

Her deft handling of cabinet doors earns frequent jabs from the cabinet door latches. She swears with each one.

She swears as much as she laughs.

Regardless of the cold she works on the cabin, sits on the porch, sits in the back corner of the yard. She shovels snow off the roof and brings the wood in; she shovels snow off the roof and brings the wood in for anyone who needs it on the strip of cabins. When she's done working up a sweat, her bra hangs on the clothesline strung in front of the wood burning stove.

She has a frenetic energy calmed by Basin, by playing guitar, by Juniper purring in her lap. It's put to use shovelling snow and bringing wood in, cleaning the cabin and tightening eclectically acquired chairs' legs, and lifting Basin's spirits after an emotionally exhausting workday of awkward and averse coworkers and decent townspeople.

When her hands skate across Basin's sides, the stretch marks truncated by surgical scars remind her of fish gills.

When she stabs ink into Basin's skin, she thinks of all the places distant in distance and time she's given Basin tattoos.

When Basin tells her about you, she holds Basin in her arms. Thinks only of Basin's troubles until after Basin's done telling her them, until Basin brings up Shale's troubles.

There are things you know from before you existed. Things told to you that were already in your head when you found yourself in the woods, fully formed and otherwise without thought or memory until elk and bird and insect first formed your body and mind. Things like being dangerous, being lethal. Things like how consuming the things that shouldn't be here requires a careful balance of being in and out of their heads. Things like collecting spruce tips and berries.

Things like the fire—the fire like shifting twig and needle, like rotating rocks, like dyeing the wind—that will solve Shale's troubles.

When you tell Basin that you already know how to mend Shale's troubles, Basin troubles.

Content warning: This chapter includes descriptions of gore and surgery.

You&& (working title) is a queer novella about when home is other people, including the monsters lurking in the woods. Check out the about page here. You&& is a sequel to Sometimes The Mountain Buries You.


The porch rock works quite well. Every time you go to visit Basin’s small cabin, the facing rocks are ajar—you consider telling Basin they don’t need to turn the porch rock for cooking too much on Monday evenings, you’re already well aware—and when you rotate a facing rock you can find a connection even with Basin's imprecise turns, provided the porch rock isn't turned away. The porch rock is turned away half of the time.

It is nice to know that Basin who needs their people has their people with them so frequently. It is nice to think that Basin is having a good time, that Basin has had good times. You think you are maybe starting to understand how Basin feels the way you know they feel about their people and the good times spent with them.

Between time spent in Basin's head, now thousands of connections you've made shifting twig and needle, entire landscapes of rotated rocks, and all the things that shouldn't be here that you have eaten, you have grown a level of expertise tracking and consuming the things that shouldn't be here. You have grown comfortable in your level of expertise tracking and consuming the things that shouldn't be here.

It's not that you are distracted. You're not thinking about the turn of the season, snapping connections of twig and needle, all-encompassing nature how it should be. You are simply out of its head a little more than it is in yours at the wrong moment. You were complacent.

It's good that you do not bleed. You would not have survived. Much like your response to pain, the fact that you do not bleed seems designed for the purpose of the relentless extermination of the things that shouldn't be here.

Overcoming your error through the innate drive to consume, your success is a gruesome lesson in the pitfall of overconfidence. At least this time you didn't fall into a pit and break apart your ribcage.

The trek to the strip of cabins on the dusty road is lengthy with inoperable limbs. Given flail and drag—prickling your own skin with many snapped twig and needle connections—you figure you've not healed 'too much' along the way.

Relief floods you when your approach's rock successfully faces the porch rock. If it hadn't, and you were to stop and lie here to heal, other things that shouldn't be here might happen upon you—they had previously when you've lied out in the open. And there aren't any viable crevices to hide away in nearby.

The remaining distance to Basin's small cabin is spent planning a spread of viable crevices to hid away in in the future. A project for the winter, before your spring home expansion.

When you arrive at Basin's home for others, your knock on the side door is not the labour of knuckle, wrist, stifle, hock, or elbow. With the control you've practiced on the lengthy trek, you manage to knock on the side door how Basin instructed you to by way of shoulder.

Considering they were asleep, it doesn't take long for Basin to emerge in their flannel pajamas and split open band tee. In that time, stationary, you drifted towards unconscious. Their cursing snaps you awake.

Their opening of the side door slams the arm you'd used to knock on the side door to the floor.

You shudder in pleasure at the pain as they assess you.

Basin says they'll be right back but you can't fully interpret spoken word. You know the words because they clearly think them before saying them. You know they're thinking the worst of this situation. You know they're leaving to change into scrubs they can later destroy.

You know they're grateful you don't bleed because getting you across the thick dark brown carpet resembling grizzly bear pelt is a laborious dragging process. Later, they'll realize you might have shed spines into the near bicentennial celebrating carpet and they'll consider retiring it.

Right now they sit on an eclectically acquired chair, head down on the wrists of their gloved hands as they take a moment to mentally prepare.

Part of this offer, to keep you in one piece, is to keep you in the best possible condition. Part of the aches and pains that have you considering tattoos are the aches and pains of injuries healed prior to Basin's offer, by way of lying out in the open or hiding in a crevice. You heal by yourself, though worse for wear. You would heal from this without them. You fight through a bawl, to assure them whatever they do will be better than nothing.

"You should understand I shouldn't know how to do this, not like this." The other person they thought of every time they thought of Sheppard had taught them. "It's going to be..."

Basin who is thinking in medical terms has become familiar to you, it's a logic and knowledge-based protocol-driven structure that you appreciate—it is easier to be in Basin's too many thoughts when their too many thoughts have rigid structure. Here now it is mired in uncertainties and second-guessing themself.

"It will be, better than, lying in a ditch," you reassure them.

They look at limp and torn limbs, some extremities still a part of you solely by few ribbons of muscle and skin, some you lost on the trek. A particularly gruesome ankle is placed late on the order of operations. Once Basin has ordered all the operations, they get to work sewing tendons and muscle—careful of your poisonous fascia and picking out spines. You learn as they go as they learn by doing, gaining expertise as they figure out which recommended suture patterns have enough mechanical advantage for your body and the state it's in—and then gain expertise sewing them again and again.

Once they've reassembled an arm they take a break to drink water and tea, and eat something with high salt content and something with high sugar content. It's enough time for your reassembled arm to be able assist them with your bones they don't want to touch.

It's daylight when Basin has completed their order of operations, exhausting their supplies and everything they could learn by doing. They are exhausted beyond measure. You wish you could do anything about it, but lying on the floor is the most you can manage.

They call in to call the day off work, cry from exhaustion in the shower, spend the better part of an hour napping with Jupiter in their room, and return to floor you're lying on to wash not their favourite mug.

Having just spent hours in Basin's head to best assist and accommodate hours of surgery, you're currently distant from their most active and clear thoughts for your own sake. You get the sense that this is what they had offered you, they know that, they're accepting that anew. They're adjusting expectations, steeling themself for the future they've dedicated themself to mending you.

They're adjusting the future they've planned and were living, to accommodate the future they've dedicated themself to.

"Let me tell you about Shale."

You&& (working title) is a queer novella about when home is other people, including the monsters lurking in the woods. Check out the about page here. You&& is a sequel to Sometimes The Mountain Buries You.


Basin's small cabin is warm, warmly lit, and full of people. Windows cracked open vent warmth into cool night air. Windows cracked open vent laughter into cool night air.

Basin's car isn't the only vehicle in the yard, the front door is crowded with shoes, the ample-cushioned ample seating of the living room is overfull capacity. The thick dark brown carpet resembling grizzly bear pelt surrounding the ample-cushioned ample seating is a cityscape of cans and bottles, mugs—none Basin's favourite—and glasses. There's already a half-soaked dishtowel from one overturned tower.

In the kitchen, Marjorie elbows and hip-checks a snickering Harpreet over the division of strawberry rhubarb pie onto every last plate and bowl in the cupboards not already in the sink from dinner. Jacob shoos them out of the way to retrieve the teapot, taken out of hir hands a step into the living room by Lyydia eagerly refilling mugs. Yawning children insist they are awake enough for pie as every last plate and bowl in the cupboards is handed out to every last person in the living room by way of bucket brigade.

Mid-listening to a story from Divya, Basin takes up the plate put to their hands with a soft thanks. Here, creating memories of an evening with friends, being recounted memories of Divya, the first taste of strawberry rhubarb pie pulls up ridge and furrow populated by abundant leaves. Under hot summer sun the dirt underfoot is dry. A breeze feels good across sweating skin and in lungs caught up in dust devils. Crouching in a furrow to hunt out the brilliant red under abundant leaves, the taste of the hot summer sun in the warmth of strawberries picked by dirt and sweat hands is sublime joy.

Like elk and chamomile, like nettle and more plants Basin has picked, this memory of picking strawberries pulls on a complex blend of emotions. They tie to Basin's current emotions, current basking in the company of the people who are their home. You're starting to understand the connection between here-now, memory, and emotion.

The number of people packed into Basin's small cabin is dizzying to you. Everyone's individual enjoyment of each other's company—something that you understood from when Basin looks about the cabin but now here in the moment—is tensfolds and alive. Bursts of laughter, eyes smiling at each other, caring touches. Basin's small cabin teeming with home, as defined by Basin's needs.

Between bites of pie and exclamations that 'no, you did not', Basin catches sight of you piled up against the woodshed. They press their lips into a flat line.

Now is not a time for you to visit.

You were already leaving.

With every last plate and bowl in the cupboards stacked next to the sink—Selene already washing and Elm already drying—the conversation lulls only for the sake of yawning children finally put to bed. Quiet but lively still as cans and bottles, mugs and glasses are checked their contents with empties sacrificed to a filling garbage bag by the crowded shoes or next in line for Selene and Elm.

Nights like these are why Basin lives here. Nights like these are the culmination of every train hopped, every squat and crumbling collective house, road trip and band tour, work camp and blockade, zine party and cooking too much on more than just Monday evenings to see that friends and family are fed. Nourished. The way friends and family nourish Basin.

To the monster person prompt by amiserablepileofwords — Monster who got lost in their own maze

Content warning: large insect, descriptions of insect physical features and sounds, implied death, skeleton

If you’d like, y’can look up Scolopendra subspinipes, the centipede I based ‘babe’ on. Kinda like a face-cast situation.


The chittering of the forty metre long glossy dark centipede reflected off of immaculate stone walls, plates of exoskeleton rubbing ridges in escalating frequency until the chittering became indiscernible from a hiss.

“Look, babe, I’m sure you’re not lost lost in the maze.”

Quick serpentine movements rose the hiss’s volume until the frustrated attempts to talk over it quit instead. When ‘babe’ quieted down, the voice emanating from a point roughly above ‘babe’s head and moving with them spoke again.

“Ahuh. Have you tried only making left turns? Or is it right turns?”

The maze is a flat plane of tunnels, large enough for ‘babe’ to move through with ease and intimidating to any intruder. ‘Babe’ reluctantly chitters as they inspect the intentionally nondescript walls.

“It doesn’t work that way? Wait, your maze is magical?”

‘Babe’ sighs out of their many body segments. The wizard that sold them the maze had convinced them into the ‘value add’ of non-Euclidean infrastructure.

“And you never told me.”

The point roughly above ‘babe’s head remains silent for a long while. ‘Babe’ spends the time failing to think of an adequate excuse.

“So every time I came to yours, I could’ve gotten so lost I’d never see the light of day again?”

‘Babe’ now wishes they had spent the time failing to think of an adequate apology. They chitter defiant at the implication they might never see the light of day again.

“You are so lucky I’m so into you, I should be way more upset right now.”

Relieved that their relationship isn’t ending over voice call, ‘babe’ wishes they could be relieved they are no longer lost in the maze that dissuades people from storming their burrow. With an experimental foray down a turn, they happen upon a set of bones they’d rather not. The person they were dating who was currently speaking from a point roughly above their head would have told them—perhaps complained about in the same exasperated manner—if there were the remains of some ‘dissuaded’ person on the very specific route taken to safely reach ‘babe’s burrow. A route ‘babe’ needed to be on and clearly wasn’t.

“Ah, so, is there a wizard you want me to look up or something?”

‘Babe’ resists the urge to skitter in a self-deprecating spiral.

“What do you mean ‘no warrantee, no customer service, DIY install’? Are you kidding me?!?”

Content warning: This chapter contains descriptions of gore and injury.

You&& (working title) is a queer novella about when home is other people, including the monsters lurking in the woods. Check out the about page here. You&& is a sequel to Sometimes The Mountain Buries You.


Applying your experience and what you learned from Basin’s thoughts before leaving them, you get by most of a year mending yourself before considering their offer again. It's a year spent learning more ways to connect and affect the all-encompassing nature. It's a year spent learning more effective and efficient ways to eradicate the things that shouldn't be here. It's a year spent observing their developments.

You consider Basin's offer not for the limb that you pull out of your torso to consume last, but the fall from the cliff where you shielded the thing's landing. The first thing you learned, when the hunger overtook you, was that killing them is not desirable. They have to be alive when you eat them. The consequence is what you're pretty sure is a rib meeting fresh air and several more similarly broken.

The trek to the strip of cabins on the dusty road is lengthy with rough terrain. By your count with impeccable precision, it is the better part of an hour before you reach the decision to pull the perforating bone rather than trek with its impaling intrusion shifting constantly through muscle and fascia, and jabbing with your every move. A bugle-emitting yank excises the offending former body part. In your hands something seeps from the bone, staining the ground with a darkness that is spreading and is not at all like the bones you've observed of the animals in these woods.

The empty rib bone that was you, you don't think will go back in. It lost something that had been a part of you, and feels inert now in your hands—even if Basin could put it back in. Once you start the trek again, you place it at the base of a memorized tree, to collect on your return.

When you left Basin's, you split the difference between the highway and the winding road hidden from the highway to avoid being seen. Now your lengthy with rough terrain route cuts across the winding road. You spend the wait for the sun to set sensing a pair of human bodies you recognize and the bed of a vehicle that smells like you.

In the light leaking from windows of neighbouring cabins and the full moon, you pile your mass into something large and bundled together against an exterior corner of the cabin. The walls groan but hold you while you brace yourself.

Inside, Basin is the sole human inhabitant of Basin's cabin. Without someone to talk to, their thoughts are many as they prepare for the evening, prepare for bed, prepare for work tomorrow. The splitting pain doesn't return to your head. Having taken what you learned from being in Basin's head to hone being in the things that wouldn't be here's heads, you feel skilled in return at being in human heads.

You drop from piled in the corner to slink around to not the door facing the dusty road but the door located for the convenience of fetching firewood from the woodshed. You find it unlocked, remember the tapping sound Basin made on the door, and raise talons with a false start, erring on the side of caution and then experimenting until contact with the windowed door replicates Basin's prior tapping.

Side door who— "Fucking hell!"

The Basin who opens the windowed door is a rattled kind of alarmed.

"You scared the shit out of me, get in." You make a note to attempt different approaches in the future, until making your presence known doesn't scare the shit out of them.

The floor of the kitchen is where you woke up. You promptly skitter across the thick dark brown carpet resembling grizzly bear pelt and lay on the asphalt tile ready for surgery.

"The fuck happened to you?" Basin is already pulling supplies from the peering-veneer cabinet after making sure to lock and curtain the windowed door.

Basin's rush of thoughts are still many but there's a driving purpose to the frenetic chaos as they run through assessing your physical state. You delay your reply while you learn the systematized assessment they've long since memorized and many times put to practice. "Cliff, bones broken and dislocated, stabbed."

"Broken and dislocated, fun," Basin curses. They place gloved hands on your torso and think through the process of assessing your injuries with a clarity of focus about what they're feeling and your reactions that have you curious about what else they know. "Just the two open wounds?"

Basin pressing against your shattered ribcage sends a shudder of pleasure up the interlocking vertebrae of your spine. "Yeah, sure, okay," you gape as all the air leaves your lungs.

Inhale, fuck's sake.

The suspension and tension of trying to enforce stillness keeps you from sucking in air until you're no longer trembling from holding it all back. You notice when you do finally inhale that Basin had been holding their own breath.

"We'll handle the dislocations first, then work on sewing you up." Basin has a running mental checklist of bones to relocate that end with asking you for any they've not accounted for. "Anything else internal you'll have to heal unassisted, I'm not cutting you open."

You wonder about and learn that they will go through great lengths to avoid cutting you open.

"I hope you didn't heal too much around your dislocations." Basin's not sure they're strong enough to relocate bones into sockets with muscle and tendon in the way.

You wonder about and learn how to relocate joints, their textbook descriptions, and every time Basin's observed and aided a dislocation in many animals including several different humans. "I can, assist."

"You bet your ass you're going to assist."

With you pulling information out of Basin's head until the splitting pain in yours returns, your assistance makes quick work of relocating your dislocations. Basin is already finishing stitching up the hole you pulled your rib out of when the non-human inhabitant of Basin's cabin emerges on soft, cautious footfalls.

The things in the woods that should be there don't mind you so much. You are only predator and prey to the things that shouldn't be here, but the tooth and claw of animals that resemble the things that shouldn't be here still make you itch. You hear the footfalls transition to asphalt tile with gentle 'clack clack clack clack' of those claws. "What, is, here?"

Basin blinks, working through the words they heard, interpreting them, interpreting their meaning, then looks up. Their surprise is laced with fear akin to you tapping on the windowed door, and then defensive caution. "This is my cat." They cut suture thread and hurry through safely setting down tools and removing gloves, watching Juniper continue his approach. "Do I have to worry about you eating my cat?"

"Do you, not want me to, eat your cat?"

Pressing their lips into a flat line, Basin sighs deep out of their nose. "Please don't eat my cat."

"I won't, eat your cat." You consciously relax muscle and nerve—which helps with the splitting pain in your head—while the small black and white creature sniffs at a limb you consciously keep still. Rather than anew the splitting pain in your head, you ask, "When did, you get, a cat?"

Basin waits for Juniper to finish his initial survey of you before they scoop him up, causing a cacophony of purrs that fade after he's placed on an eclectically acquired chair. "Spring," they wash, dry, and glove their hands again. "Juniper's a barn cat from one of the ranches— well, less barn, more kitten."

From Basin's head you know the layout of the valley. From high on mountaintops you already knew the layout of the valley. Carved by a river, a highway runs from well past the strip of cabins to well past the decent town. A tributary makes a fork in the valley, just past the strip of cabins, where the less vertical walls of the mountainside make for better grazing.

From Basin's head you know that Basin spends calving season driving to work in the opposite direction of the decent town, spending whole work days at ranches.

It's easier to know things after asking. To not have to wonder, wander through the entirety of mind to pull information as it avails to you. If Basin's verbal answers are insufficient, their nearest thoughts are satisfactory.

Settling on the chair, Juniper blinks and purrs at you.

"Next time," you interrupt Basin examining the hole you pulled a limb out of, "how should I, knock?"

You&& (working title) is a queer novella about when home is other people, including the monsters lurking in the woods. Check out the about page here. You&& is a sequel to Sometimes The Mountain Buries You.


Winter is relative downtime. Basin works more to make sure their car doesn't get snowed in than works extra hours on ranches. Less of their people travel in winter, less of their people come to their cabin to rest and rely on them. The second bedroom houses one consistent guest over the winter who leaves with the thaw and so overlaps their stay with Mark and Ghost's arrival for all of one evening the following breakfast.

The morning's plates are washed, dried, and put away by Mark and Ghost while Basin drops their consistent guest off at the decent town's bus. Mark and Ghost are lounging on the porch when Basin returns. They kick the underside of Mark's combat boots then drop to the porch themself.

"You good?" Ghost asks, offering a can of cider across Mark's chest.

Basin exhales long and steady. After another breath they finally sit up to take the drooping can, only to fall flat and press aluminum against their face.

"Miss them already?" Mark asks, back to lying flat on greying planks after flailing at the kick to his boots. He gives a whining "hey" and turns away when Basin reprises a kick to his ankle but at Basin's grin he breaks into his own.

Ghost laughs with the dry twangy crackle of decades smoking cigarettes. It matches Mark's. When Mark gives Basin a shove, Basin rips into their own peals of laughter.

"Fuck," Basin breathes, wiping the corners of their eyes with the heels of their palms. "Been busy scaring my neighbours?"

"I'll have you know," Mark declares in the most mockingly affronted voice, "that your neighbours love us. We've endeared ourselves to them. They can't live without us."

Ghost catches Basin's eye with the not-wink crinkle at the corner of his own. "It's true. We've waved at all of two of them."

"Any you recognize?"

"I don't think so," Ghost replies while Mark rocks his head against the porch in a shake. "Will see them at dinner tonight probably right?"

"Ahuh." Basin thinks of the groceries in the car for their usual cooking too much on Monday evenings, taking up the seat that had been the consistent guest's during her stay. They think about the empty space left by the consistent guest in the kitchen for cooking too much on Monday evenings. Mark and Ghost will also help cook too much, but they don't fill the consistent guest's space—they occupy their own space. Basin presses their lips into a flat line that has Mark and Ghost share a look.

Mark splays an arm out across greying planks. "C'mere, you fuck."

Pausing only to think they ought to bring in the groceries, Basin rests their head on Mark's arm. They exhale long and steady.