We don’t sleep early. I need to prove to myself over and over that you’re going nowhere. You cede control of your pleasure for longer and longer until it’s like meditation, riding high above the world on waves of bliss. When you can finally let loose, the tension floods out through one last bone-cracking orgasm. You reach a tranquility you have not felt for years, the closed fans of your eyelashes damp with tears.

We ate birthday cake and curled up around one another on the couch, reading. Your body, still exhausted, worked better as the essence of your departed prey slowly flowed into you. During the ride home I was chatty, jovial. As the evening wore on you watched me become more pensive. The pauses became longer. It was like observing a watch running down. My decline mirrored the decline of the digesting soul inside you, a coincidence that faintly amused you.

Your weight loss started precipitously. Thirty-five kilos shed in three weeks through sheer willpower and the strength that flowed from the blood of hundreds, the lives and flesh of several. Not everything that you took can be burned off, but your exertions catch up to you in the second month. A knock at your door jars you awake. Light is streaming around the blackout curtains that never fit right, but it’s not morning light.

“Nope. Arms in the air, like the Venus di Milo.” Your weight is displayed on the scales right now but your belly is in the way. And now I’m refusing to tell you the number, a glint in my eye. It’s frustrating because you’ve been looking forward to weighing yourself all day: you’d pushed yourself for a longer run, and even resisted snacking on a mother and her two pushchair-bound infants in the middle of nowhere, so damnit, you deserve this.

Your hallway is silent. A rose geranium in a little yellow pot cheers the narrow window that lets in the early evening light. There are shoes everywhere because let’s face it who’s hallway isn’t cluttered with shoes. A flier for a local takeaway hangs from the inside of the letterbox. Peace. No one is home. I slam into the door from the outside. The leaflet flutters to the ground as I scrabble keys against the lock.

I don’t realise you’re at the foot of the stairs, so I’m fucking about with the fabric tape measure I went upstairs to get. You catch me whipping it back and forth and making little “pew pew” noises. When I spot you I freeze mid pew. You smirk and continue walking to the kitchen. We never talk about the pew pew incident. It still keeps me up at night. “You can’t help but kneel whenever I’m naked,” you say, teasing.

You sleep for an hour. Most willingly pinned by your weight, I am trapped on the couch. Sleep doesn’t come for me, though. When you wake, I’ve been left alone with the raw physicality of your body literally pressed upon me. Hearing your breathing shift I lean to hug you, arms slotting together under your breasts. “I’ve missed you.” “Missed you too,” you murmur, shifting your hips. “You’ve put on so much weight.

Olivia is now exploring your inner thighs. Her kisses sometimes depress your pillowy skin, sometimes trace the curves where the suspender straps compress that skin into smooth valleys. There is one valley she discovers all of a sudden. Her pursed lips place a soft, melting kiss on your own. Without parting, her lips massage circles into you, trail kisses up and down your blossoming labia. You let out a sigh and Amelie leans down to kiss your mouth, deeply.

Carnality carries you through the night and into the morning. By the time Erika has stopped struggling in her filthy prison you are exhausted. You slip into a deep sleep filled with vivid dreams. At one point you awaken covered in sweat from a dream of Amelie. Your soul engulfed hers and she burned bright as you saturated all the pathways of her mind and heart. You tasted her childhood, her joys, her explorations, and you swallowed her terror whole.

Sometimes you stop me flying away. You recognise the signs. Normally I’m calm, cogent, clever. I look you in the eye and there’s a smile in my body language, if not on my face. When it happens, you listen to me and help me. I think back to one time: I was trying to articulate how the world feels wrong, how nothing builds to anything, how loneliness feels like a Ponzi scheme built into us by an unkind designer.