Blob by Maggie Su

Author:Maggie Su [Su, Maggie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2025-01-28T05:00:00+00:00

I walk in to find Bob standing naked in the kitchen. I take in the entirety of him—his muscular tree-trunk legs, washboard abs, hips, and an above-average but not excessively large dick. I’m surprised that it’s circumcised, and wonder who he used as a model. He’s unselfconscious, exhibiting none of the hangups indicative of natural-born humans. It’s clear that he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, though. They’re weirdly locked and raised away from his sides, like he’s a child pretending to be an airplane.

“Here.” I toss the shopping bag of clothes at him. He doesn’t catch it, and the bag falls to the ground.

“Pick something out,” I say, and head for the bathroom.

I strip out of my own sweaty clothes. I’m exhausted from the effort it takes to worry about someone else. I briefly wonder if this is what my mother feels like, but stop before I come to a realization about myself I might not like. I step into the shower and let the spray hit my face, turn the knob so the water’s uncomfortably hot, and try to scrub off last night’s makeup.

It’s not like my parents taught me to be selfish. If anything, they’re too polite—my dad can’t sit in the middle seat at a movie theater because if he had to pee he’d spend fifteen minutes apologizing to each person he passed for disrupting their experience. Maybe they were learning to be more selfish with the new house. Maybe that’s what my mother was learning in therapy. Maybe throwing away my childhood memories was part of their fresh start.

My parents were basically kids when they started having kids: twenty-two when they had Alex, twenty-six when I came along.

“Why so young?” I asked my mom once when I was still in high school. We were in the car driving to an extended family birthday party. My mom couldn’t find an oldies country station because our antenna was broken, so there was no music and we had to fill up the silence by talking to each other.

I expected my mom to say something about how she always wanted kids or couldn’t wait to start a family, some Hallmark-card bullshit.

“It wasn’t really a decision. It’s what everyone did. It was programmed into us,” she said instead. Part of me wanted to ask her if she’d redo it if she could, but I wasn’t sure I was ready for the answer.

Now I dry off and listen for sounds of Bob in the other room. Silence. I jimmy into skinny jeans that barely buckle and an itchy sweater I’ve only worn once. I open the door to the living room, and Bob’s standing in front of the fridge, dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt that’s too tight in the shoulders. For the second time that day, I gasp. Maybe even more so than when he grew a torso, he looks human.

“Food?” he says, and gestures to the fridge.

“Something small. We’re going to my parents tonight for dinner.”

I make him a fried egg sandwich with tomato, and he eats it in three bites.

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