As I crouched a away from the violence, several people outside the restroom screamed as if they were being killed, too. Not just fear, terror, and surprise, but indignant rage.

  My ability to sehe emotions I was feeding on made it more acute to me. They felt like echoes of the goth’s death cry.

  Frenzy.

  I was surrounded and in the middle of it, with o go or hide.

  In the restroom, I had the most space between me and anybody else. But I couldn't see what was happening in that stall of death and feeding. And noises kept ing from it. Something was struggling with the seat of the toilet as it messily swallowed its meal.

  And when it was do could burst out and e for me. It clearly didn't care about being obvious.

  That made me want to run for the exit, and I was definitely putting space between myself and that stall.

  I turo look at the entrance of the restroom to sider diving into the crowd outside, where the frenzy was, but a man (I presumed) in school janitor coveralls and a navy blue trucker cap sauntered in blog my path.

  Everything was off about him, but not in a way that could be eed. The two key giveaways were that he wasn't trying to look like he belonged, not even by demeanor, and when he locked eyes with me he grinned with shark teeth.

  Ah.

  I had a brief thought that Felicity had set me up, but I didn't have time to think about it.

  Now I felt like my only escape was straight up through the roof somehow. And I was definitely being charged with enough energy to make that effort possible.

  It still wouldn't be easy.

  Transformations for me aren't instant. I have to exert skill aermination to make them happen. It doesn't hurt, but each body part ged requires attention. And I started with my legs, to give myself more power to dodge my assaint.

  Two steps back toward the accessible stall drew him further into the restroom.

  He walked crouched over, arms out to each side like he was trying to corral a chi. I was his chi. And he ccked his teeth in anticipation.

  Whatever had eateh finished up its meal and crawled off the toilet with a series of sps and thumps on the floor.

  I jumped and Sharky started, both of us gng at the still closed stall door.

  We both watched as two cwed flippers the color of algae infused cy spped down on the floor below the stall door, and the of a heavily toothed jaw made itself briefly visible. And there was a snort.

  I leapt before I was ready.

  As I rose up in the air, I forced my fio catch up to my now quite bulbous and shoeless toes, deepening my fingerprints dramatically and altering their molecur structure. I barely mao do this fast enough.

  Sharky saw me crouch briefly and made his lunge just as I left the floor. But he missed.

  And I was well above his head bringing my hands a up to the vaulted ceiling of the restroom when the door of the accessible stall broke and smmed outward with the force of the people eater’s weight behind it.

  I don’t use a fancy word for that kind of monster. It’s a people eater. It eats people. And probably also monsters.

  I was so gd that the theater had taken out the false pster ceilings ihrooms for better viral trol, thanks to covid 19. It gave me more room. But without looking up, I smmed into the exposed ventition duct, my feet and hands going further back than expected to g into the sides of it, to g there like a gecko. The noise was startling and distrag, and my posture was awkward and weak.

  But the crashing noise of Sharky being pushed into the line of sinks by a broken stall door, driven by what looked like a long limbed hairless walrus with the face of an eyeless sarcosuchus, was louder.

  There was a deep fluttering hat made my whole physical emanation feel like it was gently imploding, and then Sharky shouted like an enraged sportsfan. And the door and people eater began to rise up in the air as Sharky exerted his inhuman strength to get them off of him.

  Everything about this was arming and untenable.

  And the duct I was ging to started to buckle.

  Felicity was stretched thin and hurting badly.

  Part of her had been riding the young woman in the accessibility stall of the restroom when she’d been attacked aen by the sewer beast. The horror and pain of that, experieng it as if she’d been the one ed, had gripped her entire being and wrenched shrieks of terror from all of her hosts simultaneously.

  Later, they’d all have fshbacks they wouldn’t be able to expin.

  To say that she herself was shocked would have been a dangerous uatement. To say that she was in shock would have been closer.

  Part of her was missing, amputated with the death of one of her hosts. And she felt that loss acutely in a way that was fual to her very being. Like how a vertebrate might feel right after a traumatic brain injury.

  Almost immediately, she recoiled and recalled herself to her primary host’s psyche and curled up deep in her subscious. Not even thinking, she ed herself in darkness and quaked, giving her host the shivers.

  Later, as she regained sciousness, she would remember with a start that she’d made a new friend a her to die at the teeth of two other emanants. But it would take her a while to remember her friend’s name or the details of the agreement they had made.

  Some memories she’d have to restruct from sed hand ats.

  And my se of the duct colpsed, hinging on the end closest to the door. The screws and fasteners o my feet gave way, and as that end swang down it collided with the head of the upward moving people eater as it was being shoved by Sharky.

  And I let go a my momentum carry me forward toward the door, windmilling my arms and w my feet to stay upright. But once I gained my bance, I ran.

  I did not even bother to look back.

  The panig people in the hallway of the theater, what few were left there by the time I stumbled into view, might have seen me as half wearing a e of some sort. Boots, leggings and gloves of some sort of alien or horror movie monster. And if that startled them further and caused them to pick up their pace, so much the better.

  There eople eater iy. In public. Careless of the teratovore attention its antics might cause.

  Their survival depended on their fear and panic.

  As did mine.

  And as I ran through the building after the people retreating before me, I tio alter my anatomy for speed.

  By the time I reached the front door I was leaping in a long gallop on all fours.

  I got lucky.

  Nothing was chasing me when I zigged and zagged and gnced back. But I also didn’t slow down. Speed and darkness shrouded my bizarre appearance, and my body nguage adapted to resemble that of a fearful deer more and more closely.

  And by the time I reached my wooded lot, I no longer resembled a b-movie frog woman but had fully adopted the appearance of a doe.

  Before entering to reach my clearing, I came to a stop on the sidewalk and gnced around to be sure I was safe and away from any predators.

  And then I turned aively strutted into my home.

  And there, I curled up aed as a deer, tain my posure and sider what had just happened, before returning to my disguise as Synthia.

  I found myself worried about Felicity. She’d clearly been hurt, if not killed, by the people eater’s attack. And though my life could very easily tinue as before without her, I guess I’d developed the habit of g about the people I knew, even if briefly, whether human or monster, apparently.

  But the implications of the people eater’s hubris worried me.

  People eaters, by their nature, are the most corporeal of monsters. Even if they do some wild things like squeeze a pinaped’s worth of bulk through the pipe of a toilet, and restitute boney jaws strong enough to crush a goth, the fact that they eat a living being and draw sustenance from that biological matter means that they are more strongly rooted in physical reality. And therefore they are more vulnerable to the defehat living beings bring to bear, like guns, knives, fire, and the like.

  People eaters rarely, if ever, e into a city. And if they do, they typically lurk in the shadowier, more secluded pces, and hunt when their prey is alone. Not only do they want to avoid the attention of other monsters, but of the humans they feed on as well.

  People eaters are the first to die in a monster hunt.

  Think about how rare the monsters of urban legend are. That will give you an idea of how careful people eaters tend to be.

  It had been so long since I’d been around the antics of a careless people eater that I was looking forward to the human gossip of the few days. The headlines and eople might say during checkout would inform me a great deal about how modern humanity deals with such things.

  It would be a lesson I could use to further my own ces for survival.

  But also, I wao know more about the goth who’d died right behind me. I doubted that their identity would be knht away, or even revealed, unless someoed them missing. The people eater had likely left no identifiable remains. But as I cared for Felicity, I found myself g about them as well, and simply hoped that something regarding their life would be shared.

  And with that sed stray thought about Felicity, I felt the urge to talk to her. I wanted someone I could trade notes with, and she’d been there.

  Fog on my fake human life had immersed me in a world of discourse, and I’d gotteo it. Whenever something in the human world vexed me, I could always look forward to talking to Cassy, Ayden, and sometimes even Greg, about it. We could ask each other questions, share our experiences, and try out ideas together.

  I know that there are groups of monsters, or emanants, who get to do this same thing with each other. Epialivores, with their tendency to colle numbers within a single psyche, tend to be social like that. Other affectivores gregate or move in herds for safety, and I’ve dohat a few times myself. But I wasn’t currently among any of those groups. It had been a long, long time since I’d had a monster friend I could fide in.

  I wasn’t sure exactly why I had bee solitary, but looking back I could see that I’d started to drift away as I’d beore and more ied in humanity.

  Humans were a great y, and always full of new insights and perspectives. A great source of discourse!

  But if you’re an emanant, you ’t really talk to humanity about emanant matters.

  It eventually draws attention.

  So, now I had two reasons to find Felicity.

  I felt at least a little bit of responsibility for her well being, even if she’d been the oo lead us into that situation. And I felt like I needed her as more of a friend.

  Someone I could talk to.

  But I couldn’t figure ht away how to go looking for her. Not safely, at least.

  So I let myself rest.

  I don’t sleep. Not in the same way that most lifeforms sleep. But I do rex pletely a to my base state for a few hours at a time, because I’ve learhat that’s beneficial to me.

  I let my physical proje dissipate, let go of my thoughts, and dropped into the ambient probabilities of my clearing, to wait until m.

  theInmara