The Cold Ones – fiction

Nimue Brown

Jul 19

Your adoration is fascinating. How your warm, soft bodies respond to our cold, unyielding forms. We hold the perfect balance of familiar and alien. We look like you and yet we are not you, and so you are enthralled by the heady mix of beauty and horror. We are so very cold to the touch, and there is no give in us at all.

You are so moist, with your many fluids, and there are so many ways to make those liquids emerge from your soft bodies. What comes out of you is like the sea, and perhaps that makes sense. We seem dry to you, like bone or stone. You are always drawn to touch what you do not understand. We frighten you, and you love to be frightened.

Perhaps it is because of all this liquid and softness that you change so much. Your faces change moment to moment. How you stand and move alters, especially if we make the moisture come out of you. It does not seem that you can put the moisture back in, when we have finished. This is clearly a weakness and we do not understand why you have evolved this way. If too much liquid comes out, your bodies cease to function, becoming cold and hard like our own, but unlike us, you do not move when you have become properly dry.

You tell me that you love me. I can only think it means that you are happy to give your soft body as sustenance. It is, after all, the quickest way you can become like us. It makes perfect sense that you would long to be as we are. It is the only thing about you that makes any sense at all.

(Art by Dr Abbey, text by me)

Comment