something something eldritch monster azul thoughts.
he’s your childhood friend. you meet him in the woods, huddled in the darkness of a burrow beneath an ancient tree, its roots grotesquely gnarled. it’s pitch-black inside, and when you reach in hoping to find a cute bunny or maybe even a family of frogs you don’t expect the darkness to reach back. it coils around your wrist, an obsidian appendage that’s sticky and frigid to the touch. you gasp and the darkness quickly retreats.
“don’t go! please don’t go. i’m sorry if i scared you,” you say, feeling around for the creature and mourning its disappearance. “i won’t hurt you. come back…” two brilliant blue eyes open to watch you, quietly assessing whether you’re friend or foe.
hesitantly, almost shyly, the tentacle creeps back, searching out your arm. it curls between your fingers, a soft human hand. when you pull, a boy your age comes out from the darkness, covered in grime and cobwebs. you offer him your coat because he isn’t wearing anything, and it’s a cold autumn day. he blinks at you, one eye at a time. you ask him what his name is, but he doesn’t seem to have one. he doesn’t speak, but he understands you when he nods or shakes his head in response to some of your curious questions.
you bring him home, ask your parents if you can keep him. you’ve always wanted to live with a friend. your parents are horrified. “where did you find this boy?” they ask, wrapping him up in a blanket, hurrying to find clothes for him, prepare him some food, get him into the bath. “where are his parents?” you tell them he doesn’t have any—that’s what he told you, or that’s what you’re assuming. your parents think this boy might be lost. they decide to make missing posters for him, ask around the neighborhood, file reports. until someone claims him, he can stay.
you’re ecstatic, happily pulling him all throughout the house to show him around. “this is my room. this is my favorite plushie. you can’t have her, though. she sleeps with me. oh, but you can have this one! it’s an octopus. it’s blue like your eyes. take it.” his arms are full of things you’re giving him. expressionless, he allows you to bring him deeper into the weavings of your life. you share parts of yourself with him. you’re effortlessly kind. a warm presence. he decides he likes you.
later that night, while he sleeps curled on the floor in soft, sea-print pajamas, you dream of the shadow in the burrow. when you ask the darkness its name, it replies: azul.
no one comes forward with any information. days turn into months and then years. you grow up alongside each other. eventually azul learns to speak, to write, to do all the things you can do. his appetite is voracious. you used to giggle when he’d tear into his meals with both hands. it wasn’t until he learned how to feel shame, how to have manners, that he began to utilize his utensils, take small, mindful bites, tamp down his ravenous urges. you learn a lot about him when you sleep. you dream of that burrow a lot, about what resides in it.
he accompanies you to school. the children there make fun of him because he’s weird and different. not like the rest. because he blinks strangely and because he always smells like wet earth and because he acts funny and because he clings to you so much it’s codependent (“ooohh,” the bullies jeer, “(name)’s got a boooooyfriend!” and you fluster like it’s something to be ashamed of—like he’s something to be ashamed of). he wants them all dead, but before he can carry out a swift, spine-snapping execution you’re stopping him. “azul!” you shout, rushing over to him, heaving out great gasps. you’re crying. big globs of salt in your eyes. he can smell it, your fear, your sadness, your panic. very human scents. “stop! you can’t!”
he turns slowly. blood flecks his cheeks and knuckles from where he kicked and punched, from the stone he retrieved in the courtyard, its rough tip poised to gouge out an eye. the bullies look up at him in horror. it’s a different fear from yours. they’re terrified of him. you’re terrified for him.
it’s the first and final time he resorts to violence. the teachers give him an earful. your parents apologize profusely, insist he isn’t usually like this, are willing to compromise with the families of those rotten children, but then they don’t truly know azul. they’re going to make an effort to discipline him better, they say. he’s a good child. honest.
he sits outside the principal’s office, idly swinging his legs.
after that day, the bullies never mess with him again. after that day, he learns how to smile.
- - -
the years trickle by. azul has lived as a human so long that he’s forgotten what he really is. he’s not very strange anymore. he’s learned how to be mostly human, how to camouflage monstrosity with humanity. everything he knows, he’s learned from you.
he doesn’t know how old he is. when you were little, you said he could be your age. he looked it. you told him, “since you don’t know when your birthday is, you can share mine.” so every year that he’s spent with you, he’s aged just like you. the both of you are sixteen when he plants his lips on yours. you’re being naughty, sneakily watching an r18 film. he watches the actors as they wrap around each other. it’s more than an embrace. he asks you what that is, what it means, and you tell him it’s because they love each other. sex is what you do when you love someone.
so he kisses you. it’s just innocent curiosity, a peck that lasts a little too long. you fall backwards on the sofa, shocked, your fingers brushing your mouth, as if you can still feel him there.
“what…was that for?”
“love,” he replies. “isn’t that how it’s done?”
“do you love me, azul?”
“like the humans on TV?”
“that’s different. that’s…romantic. intimate. y-you know…”
he doesn’t.
“then what is this?” he points to his mouth and then yours. “what are we?”
“we’re friends.”
he feels it two years later, when you bring your first boyfriend home and it’s made abundantly clear what he is and what that boy is. he learns there is an important distinction between boyfriend and a boy who is a friend. he’s the latter.
he snoops through your laundry, searching for the ones that smell like that boy. you yell at him, fiercely embarrassed. you smell like him more and more every day. when he was little, he’d climb into your bed for warmth and you’d allow it. not so much anymore now. now you share your bed with another. you tell him he can’t just go through your things or snoop around your room, especially your laundry! it’s not right. he’s your friend. he’s like family to you. azul thinks all of these distinctions are so troublesome.
your boyfriend is troublesome.
- - -
he’s hungry. he needs to eat more to keep his energy up. the human doctors told him it’s because he’s growing. he needs something fleshy, though. he needs a pulsing heart between his teeth, warm, moist gore spattering his maw. he’s not sure what he’s doing when he stands over the mangled corpse on the side of the road, backdropped by towering trees. it’s an unlucky deer. freshly hit. he’s hungry.
so he eats.
azul feels whole when he’s with you, serene, like the world is one piece and all is well. he lies on the grass beside you, peering up at fluffy cumulus clouds. the sky is so blue. “are you going to marry him?” he asks suddenly, and you turn to look at him, utterly baffled.
“n-no way. i’m too young for marriage. b-besides, that’s something you do when you’re really in love.”
“then are you really in love with him?”
“i like him.” you prop yourself up on your elbow and poke his cheek. “we need to get you someone, zuzu. then you’ll understand.”
he highly doubts that.
years ago, he snuffed the violent tempest raging within him for calm seas. gentle. tender. humans like those traits. he wants to be an ideal human for you. it’s harder than he thought. lots of energy.
for you, he’ll do it.
for you, he’ll do anything.
- - -
he stands in the doorway, watching you like you’re one of the humans on TV. he remembers the movie. sex. that’s what you do when you love someone. you told him that. if you love him, why are you also loving someone else?
he still doesn’t understand the complexities of love. his thinking is black-and-white. animalistic instinct. logic that borders survival.
you’re horrified. you yank sheets up and over yourself and your boyfriend, squawk at him to get out, toss a pillow his way. it lands at his feet. he thinks fondly of throwing your boyfriend against the wall and listening to his skull crack.
he leaves. the door shuts behind him.
- - -
“if i was a monster, would you still like me?” he asked once, while you were relaxing on the beach. a vacation to a warmer place in the middle of winter. like migration.
“where’s this coming from?” you peek at him from over the mound of a sandcastle. he digs his feet into the grit, feels it cake between his toes.
“would you?” he presses, pushing deeper until a crab breaks the surface and skitters away. he tracks its frantic departure with his eyes.
“you’re not a monster.”
“but what if i was? pretend for just a moment.”
you stop patting the sand. the misshapen castle is on the verge of collapse. a quaint sea breeze blows between the both of you.
“i’ll always love you, azul. even if you’re a monster.”
“do you promise?”
“i promise.”
you smile at him, and the tension breaks. he allows you to bury his lower half in the sand.
did you mean it? he wants to ask every day after that one. will you really love me when i’m a monster?
- - -
there’s blood everywhere.
at first, you think a bear ripped your boyfriend apart. trampled the campsite and tore him from his tent, all while you were off gathering twigs and sticks for kindling. but it’s not a bear.
you have to choke back your vomit. the smell is so strong it sticks and cloys in your nostrils, on your person. the gruesome scene is burned onto your eyes, your brain. you’re never going to forget this.
there’s a monster in the middle of the campsite. a writhing mass of black. you dry heave; bile climbs up your throat, muffles your scream. you swallow it even though it burns.
the creature turns slowly. it’s…an octopus? you’re not sure what it is, but it’s reaching for you.
you think you should run. it’s going to come after you next. it’s going to kill you, tear you to pieces, feast on the meat of your corpse. it will be a painful death punctuated with sheer agony.
a tentacle wraps gently around your wrist. you’re brought back to that day in the woods, where you pulled a little boy out from his burrow. you remember the dreams, the voice, the shadow. you remember.
“you promised,” he says, and he sounds so hurt. so sad.
“azul…?”
he’s holding you with the only tentacle that isn’t stained red with blood. the only one that’s clean.
“do you love me?” he asks, and the answer sticks in your throat. your boyfriend is in tatters around you, and this creature—the one responsible—is asking if you love him.
you can’t speak, so instead you gather him in your arms and hug him tightly. he’s tense, afraid. you cling to him so he won’t run away.
“of course i do,” you say around a heartbroken sob. you’re also scared and he knows this, but still you show him kindness. you’ve always been so forgiving. “i will always love you. i don’t care what you are. you’re my azul.”
feebly, not wanting to hurt you, he wraps himself around you, every cold, sticky limb. he anchors himself to your warmth just like he did the first day you met.
love is a beautiful, confounding feeling. but for the moment he thinks he understands it.
my azul.
he couldn’t be anything else.
