Welcome to the Nightmare Magazine Story podcast.

Enter freely and of your own free will.

I am your humble host, Terence Taylor, one very much at home with the children of the night.

Stay close as my muse, the medieval demon Gubana, guides us down into beautiful darkness.

In this episode, before our full-length story, we have a poem, consumed, written by Ashvale,

and narrated by Justineer.

But first, a word from our sponsors.

And now, Justineer. Consumed by Ashvale.

My lover has peculiar taste. Her cravings are unnatural.

She apologizes for her appetite, for it is monstrous and unbounded.

How am I to tell her to stop when my experience of being

loved as a woman is being consumed? Others have supped on my dignity, my resistance, my humanity,

cherished each vestigial organ on the tongue a delicacy.

What difference is it to me, then, if she tucks into me with relish?

After all, she only eats the parts I won't miss, eyelashes, hips, breasts,

memories, unease, contrition. She swallows the temptations of my body, ushers them away

with her spit and salvation. I dwell on the consequences. What if after she eats the bad,

there is nothing left? She smiles and pats her stomach, engorged now, bloated with my surrender, chewing, chewing, chewing, chewing.

If she eats what makes me a woman, then may she devour it all and savor the bite, for finally I am free.

Welcome back. You've been listening to Consumed, written by Ashvale and narrated by Justinair.

Ashvale, they then, is a queer, non-binary Canadian writer who has an affinity for teeth and weird little guys in the woods.

Their short fiction and poetry has been or will soon be published in places like Uncharted, pseudopod, if there's anyone left, and more.

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