Power to Yield and Other Stories by Bogi Takács

Author:Bogi Takács
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Broken Eye Books
Published: 2023-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

A Technical Term, Like Privilege

I get home and the rental needs to drink my blood. Again, always, the fourth time this week and it’s only Wednesday. I strip off my top, undershirt. I’m not going to take off my pants, I don’t care what the rental thinks. Does it think?

I think it only feels, feels a deep resentment of humans living inside its caverns, its air bubbles. Housebeasts have sensory nerve endings on the inside, feel us tickling them as we live our petty lives, squeeze us for blood.

The life of flesh is in the blood, the preachers say. The housebeast doesn’t need my blood, type O, good for transfusions. It needs the magic. But most people, their magic is sparse, less heavily invested in their body. The housebeast needs the blood, to squeeze out every drip of sustenance—not from the blood itself but from what it carries.

While tentacles slither around on my skin, while the wall glues itself to me, I wonder for the fifth time what I can do to get out of this. I feel my bone marrow straining to produce more red blood cells. I need a break. The wall grabs a lock of hair, and I know it’s a total loss—I’ll have to cut that one off too. Should’ve just worn a cap, should’ve cut it all short—should, should. I need to call the rental office.

Twelve apartments in this beast, or was it fourteen? The third beast on the block, a student neighborhood. It was all right before the semester started. I don’t know what the new students are doing, but the beast needs so much more magic now. Are people puking in the disposal-holes? Trying to squeeze out broadband from the beast-nerves?

The worst part of it is, it feels good while the beast drinks. It needs me, yes, but I can feel that it loves me. It wants to keep me close.

I stagger away from the wall, rubbing my bruised skin, crashing onto the sofa, staining the cover. Too tired to take a shower, but at least we’ll have enough water pressure now. My hand is searching for the receiver, and it helpfully pops out, shakes drips—of what, synovial fluid?—off of itself. I groan into the receiver, ask for the rental office.

“Yes, I understand it needs the magic. Yes, I understand these were the terms when I signed. I was”—I take a heavy breath—”just wondering if it needs to be so . . . direct. I mean, I can give it magic without the blood. I can do that.”

I scratch the side of the receiver with a stubby fingernail. It squirms. I’m too faint to understand the explanation from the chirpy person on the other end of the line in an office somewhere nearer the head. But it’s a no—it’s always a no. “The contracts aren’t written with someone like you in mind, you have to understand,” but heck, they need me if they want to keep the beast going. Maybe they should recruit from the Department of Applied Magic and not from, I don’t know, engineering students.

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