Walk Me Home: Dating a Monster Girl

“So you can delete your memories, just like that?” asked Pseudo Mom, frowning with concern.

“And control my emotions, and generally edit my mind, yeah,” Amy added with a shrug.

Pseudo Mom gave a slow, contemplative nod. “Is that an A.M.E. thing, or …?”

“No. It’s a me thing,” Amy clarified. “Everyone does it to some degree. I just take it to the next level. There are side effects, though.”

“How long have you been able to do that?” queried Pseudo Mom.

Amy reclined on the couch. “Since a few months after you bodied me.”

“Oh, it was a coping mechanis- … wait, you clearly didn’t delete the memory of that,” Pseudo Mom noted.

“That wasn’t the point,” Amy explained, sitting up. “I felt weak, ashamed, and defective. The things you said were spinning in my mind as I went to my bed, pretending I was fine, then lost consciousness ‘cause, y’know, concussion.”

Pseudo Mom sighed, eyes downcast. “I can’t apologise enough.”

“It’s okay. It worked out,” Amy dismissed with a flippant wave of the hand. “Anyway, I wasn’t sure how to deal with myself in the aftermath. Then I came across someone online who claimed they could alter their thoughts, feelings and personality on command.”

“Did you get them to teach you?” Psuedo Mom commented.

“Of course not! It sounded phony!” Amy opined. “But I was desperate, so I did some research and found out even a sociopath can force their mind to feel empathy with the right techniques. So, I practiced until it worked.”

Psuedo Mom took a moment to digest that. “How often do you do it?”

“Constantly,” Amy answered. “My reasons are different these days.”

Confusion creased Pseudo Mom’s countenance all the more. “Sounds exhausting.”

“… Yeah,” Amy smiled, but there was muted despair behind her eyes.

“Then why keep doing it?” blurted Pseudo Mom. “You don’t need a straightjacket over your soul! You’re different now!”

Amy’s smile began to crack. What slipped through was haggard and desperate.

“Well, that’s the thing,” Amy explained, avoiding eye contact. “I’m not different. All I did was … whitewashed the tomb. It’s the only way I know how to be normal.”

“Then why don’t you ease up a bit?” came a new voice.

A purple tint darkened the atmosphere.

Pseudo Mom tensed. It sounded like Amy, but the tone, the manner … it was hair-raisingly wrong. Worst of all, it was familiar. The last time she’d heard that voice, it was from the mouth of a child. Now, it came from a woman, dripping silken venom. Pseudo Mom’s protective instincts flared. She whirled to her feet, coming face to face with another avatar. It looked like Amy, but this this one was even taller than Pseudo Mom. Its glow was blue shifted from rosy to fuchsia. Then there were the eyes. Amy didn’t really have pupils. Normally, her eyes glowed mostly homogenously. This avatar, on the other hand? Its gaze bore the slitted pupils of a feline, or perhaps a reptile. They were dark, too dark, like tears in the fabric of reality. The way it moved … too smooth, too evenly, and perfectly relaxed. An eyescraper could crush the house and it wouldn’t flinch. This avatar moved at its own pace, and there was nothing in the world that could change that. At least, that was Pseudo Mom’s impression. If Amy was a gazelle, this was a panther.

“I am Amy,” the avatar corrected. “More Amy than that … piteous shell of a girl over there.”

The eerie avatar moved towards Amy: the real Amy, as far as Pseudo Mom was concerned. Predator. That’s what this was. It didn’t walk. Its feet glided across the ground without taking a step. Pseudo Mom stepped between them. The Predator gazed straight through her. It raised a claw and flicked it to the side, like swiping a page on a touch screen. Pseudo Mom went smashing into the wall, embedded deep. Attempting to wiggle free, Pseudo Mom noticed how the atmosphere had divided. On that thing’s side of the room, the air reflected its purple colour scheme. On Amy’s side, it remained rosy.

Amy’s side was smaller.

The Predator rested a hand against the couch, leaning over Amy with a sad, sympathetic smile.

Amy looked away, pointedly ignoring it. Several moments passed, but it didn’t move. It didn’t even blink.

Amy blinked first. “I’m not talking to you.”

The Predator laughed. “You’re doing a marvelous job of it, sweetheart. That’s fine. I’ll do the talking.”

“No,” Amy deadpanned.

The Predator ignored her. “You’re not enough. Not this time. You know it’s true. You were barely holding together with, what? Thumbtacks, paperclips and dreams? That was before The Night Shift. This isn’t a superhero movie. This is grim, grey reality. I need to get my head in the game, or people will die.”

Amy stood and glared The Predator in the face.

“Here’s an idea. Why don’t you shaddup?” She hissed. “Don’t you dare try to tell me what I wanna hear. I invented that technique.”

“And I invented you,” it teased, booping her on the nose.

Alright, that did it! Nobody booped her except Norman!

Amy grew and morphed in inhuman ways, crouching so as not to wreck the roof as she filled a good chunk of the room. She spread her jaws, sharp teeth on full display. Her arms split into six, insectoid claws. Truly the form of a monster.

The Predator smirked wryly. “That’s cute. You’re trying too hard, though.”

Amy’s claws converged on The Predator. Not fast enough. It flashed forward. Bypassed them entirely. Plunged in its claws and tore Amy’s massive avatar asunder.

The Predator waited, casually licking its talons clean.

Finally, Amy’s default avatar respawned in the air. The atmosphere went haywire as she blasted towards The Predator. Every remotely loose item in the room jarred, flew or crashed to the ground. The window shattered. Still, The Predator snatched her from the air mid-charge. Amy’s hair tendrils lashed forth. The Predator’s tendrils parried them all. Small arcs of purple and rose lightning clashed throughout the hou-

“AMY!” snapped Pseudo Mom, having extricated herself from the wall.

“Yeah?” “What?” the avatars answered simultaneously.

With The Predator lifting Amy by the collar, they looked like a How to Talk to Short People meme.

“I understand that you’re having an identity crisis, but MUST you slowly and systematically destroy the house?” Pseudo Mom argued. “Have your anime fights outside!”

“Oh please. This moron was gonna destroy it anyway,” stated The Predator, freeing a hand to point at Amy, who tried to bite the finger. “She didn’t need any help doing that.”

The Predator’s hair flashed outward, emitting a signal. Aerosol reconfigured into reinforcement fibres that coated the room and its contents. Cottony constructs added layers of shock absorption.

Frowning, Amy couldn’t help but wonder why she hadn’t done that before. The Predator’s hair tendril tapped her between the eyes, drawing her out of her thoughts.

“It’s ‘cause you’re the idiot ball,” The Predator smirked.

Amy rolled her eyes. “Okay, you know what?”

She launched a devastating headbutt. The sharp impact racked the air, rattling cutlery and crockery in the kitchen. The Predator’s head whipped back with the blow. For the barest fraction of a second, it was dazed. Then it wasn’t. It grinned ear to ear.

“Try that again, sweetheart,” it purred.

Amy did. Her headbutt was met by a mass of hair tendrils. A trap. She’d walked right into it. Those tendrils enveloped her cranium, snuffing out her lightning storm hair. Her mind blurred a s they stri p p ed away its t h o- t h o u g h t s …

Amy’s split consciousness rebalanced in The Predator’s favour. Now, its eyes were the only ones she saw through. Maybe this meant nothing new. Maybe it always had the lion’s share of her consciousness. No … that wasn’t true. It had the same mental energy as her default avatar, except there were no safeguards, no ball and chain to its thoughts. It was free.

The predator removed its hair tendrils from Amy’s head … or rather, where her head used to be. When their work was done, she didn’t have one anymore. It basked in the sight of the headless, lesser avatar, but victory was hollow. It could ragdoll her all it wanted, but a mind convinced against its will was a mind of its opinion still.

The Predator sighed and flung Amy into the couch, which lurched with the impact. Amy’s head respawned and the balance of consciousness restored, somewhat. She tried to rise. It gripped her shoulder and forced her back down.

“Wasn’t that fun?” The Predator beamed.

Amy folded her arms and looked away.

The Predator’s gaze grew sober. “Seriously, I need to find a way to get all of this out of my system. A controlled release, or we’re gonna do something very sudden and very regrettable.”

“You don’t regret anything,” Amy growled.

“I made you, didn’t I?” The Predator quipped. “So far, you’ve done nothing but regret. ‘Oh! Why didn’t I treat the mean power company man better?’ ‘Why didn’t I visit that woman in the hospital before she flatlined?’ ‘Why didn’t I figure out where the landlords were two nights earlier?’ You’re sloppy, slow, simplistically sentimental, and worst of all. You’re. Hurting. Me.”

With every key word of the latter sentence, she poked Amy in the temple with a hair tendril. The Predator’s ire cooled to placid disappointment.

“You were supposed to be better than me,” it sighed.

Amy’s face contorted to a snarl. “I. Am. Better than you-”

“I thought you needed some breaking in, like a new outfit that’s a bit too tight,” it interrupted, talking over her voice. “It’s not even an outfit. More like a skin, constricting every inch of my being: a sick, twisted taxidermy of me.”

“Yet somehow, you manage to be more sick and twisted, even after all these years,” Amy countered. “Beasts like you should never see the light of day.”

The Predator gestured the night beyond the window. “You mean that? There is no light of day. Not for us. Not anymore. Out there be monsters, not merely in the physical sense. The only way to claw to the top is with the biggest monster of them all. Also, quit, thinking of me as an ‘it’.”

“You’re an animal. You don’t deserve a better pronoun,” Amy declared.

“Girl … I’m YOU,” The Predator hissed, finally losing her cool as she grabbed Amy’s face and glared into her soul. “I’m not the A.M.E., or some figment like Pseudo Mom over there. I’m Amy. Only Amy, and I’m getting T̷̯̩͋ͅÏ̶̢̛̪͔͜R̸͎̎̀Ȇ̶͓̺D̴̹̭̖͈̔̃ of wearing you, silly little skin that you are. Do you know what I could be when I ̵̘̙̦̟̈͋͊̍͜ ̴͚̦͛̀̓F̴̨̡̪̻͋̆̊̋Ȋ̵̡̥̱̻̂Ṉ̵̢͉͋̓̓A̶̜͈͉͌͝L̵͎̈́̈͝L̸̛̟̩͈̜̆̌Y̸̜̫͝ take you off?”

“sTaRk RaViNg NaKeD?” suggested Pancake Amy.

“Huh?” grunted The Predator, who had forgotten about her.

Amy, Pseudo Mom and the pancake burst into laughter. For once, The Predator looked a little flustered.

“Everyone’s got an animal within,” Amy grinned, peeling The Predator’s claws from her face. “Mine’s a bit unusual, but we have to dress it up, be human beings, through force of will and … possibly other things. You’re what happens when you take away all the hard work I put into myself, and just let go: a little kid id ego who wants to be lazy.”

The Predator fumed. “And yet you’ve made zero progress in taming me. All you’ve done is build a cage and leave me to starve. That’s not a solution. What happens when I break free? I must be fed.”

“Eh, I’ll figure it out,” Amy brushed off. “In the meantime, there’s the window.”

She grabbed The Predator by the hair. Not a moment later, it went hurtling through the window at half the speed of sound. Amy proudly dusted off her hands.

Pseudo Mom doubled over in laughter. Amy chuckled along with her before plopping herself into the couch.

“Man, I’m tired,” Amy commented.

“Seriously though, you need an outlet to vent in a healthier manner,” Pseudo Mom declared. “Why don’t you join my Sigma Femme program? You can take the remote classes. The real me would love to see you.”

Amy quirked a constipated smirk. “Mom, that’s super cringe. Besides, I’m pretty sure you’ll disown me when you find out I’m an A.M.E.”

“I’ll be horrified at first,” Pseudo Mom admitted, “but never underestimate the power of motherly love. I can’t stand the thought of losing you, which means I’ll cling to any hope that you’re still inside that thing. If you play your cards right, it’ll work out once I get used to the idea. Better get on top of it before I find out on my own.”

“Good point,” Amy mused. “However, letting you find out independently would allow you to come to your own conclusion, rather than assuming I’m just a monster trying to trick you. If I build up a good enough reputation, maybe it’ll speak for itself. You’ll be able to do your own research, figure out whether or not the person in the news is still your daughter. Anyway, that sigma stuff’s still super cringe.”

“You can’t argue the results,” Pseudo Mom asserted, smooching her bicep.

“Oh, you mean like this?” asked Amy, innocently flexing her bicep into a hulking thing almost the size of her body.

Pseudo Mom raised an eyebrow. “That’s really disturbing. Cheating, too.”

Amy shrugged, returning her arm to its petite size. “I can’t not cheat. This avatar can look any way I want. Standard exercise regimens would have no effect on me. To put things in context, I’ve been lifting a Cheff@ building to increase my strength. I could probably yeet your gym into The Sun.”

“Heh, I understood that reference,” Pseudo Mom proudly proclaimed. “Even so, do you have any idea what having a monster girl mascot would do for my gym? Especially when she can bulk up on command? Pretty much anything you do online is bound to go viral.”

“Hmm …” Amy pondered. “That’s definitely something to consider. I do need the money …”

Chilly raindrops pierced Amy’s aerosol around the house. In retrospect, she’d heard them pattering in from the distance. It didn’t seem relevant at the time. The smattering grew to a downpour. Interestingly, her biomass had a way of not getting trapped within the falling droplets. Nonetheless, rain was a mildly irritating sensation. It made her feel a bit sluggish, but she appreciated the drink. Something tickled at the back of her mind, though. Why was the rain worrying her? Oh, right! Norman! Rain would add a new difficulty level to his journey! Was he even still out there? It had been a while. He could have gotten home, right? Either way, she made up her mind to go check, just in case.

As Amy made for the window, her phone rang. In a blink, she’d darted over to it. If Norman was in danger, she’d be there yesterday. Amy paused to squint at the number.

“Not Norman, I take it?” asked Pseudo Mom.

“No … um, what does ‘535’ mean again?” queried Amy. “It’s a video call too.”

“That’s a government number,” Pseudo Mom stated.

Amy looked at her. How strange it was that she could get insight from her figments. She supposed it was simply a matter of bouncing thoughts off herself until something clicked.

She answered the phone. The caller’s face hit her like a ZR van. A greeting died on her lips as she stared like a deer in the headlights.

“Goodnight, Miss Beckles,” came a disarming voice no one didn’t know. “Sorry to call at this hour, but I hear you’re a bit of a night owl these days.”