Something at the back of the guy’s throat pokes Hana’s tongue. She reels back, but the dude must think she is being coy because he snags his fingers deeper into Hana’s hair and pulls her closer. After a few more minutes of making out and deepening the foreplay, Hana pretty much forgets about the abnormal feel at the back of his throat. It doesn’t happen again, and with the thrill of fumbling to push aside clothes, there’s no need to remember.

~

The ring of a text message normally doesn’t wake Hana up, but she faces the bedside table and the lit screen alerts her into consciousness. Hana groans and snatches the phone; her fingers move sloppily on the screen but she manages to unlock it. It’s a message from Raoul asking where she’s gone. She squints at the time: 4:12 AM. Why the fuck does Raoul need to know where she is at four in the fucking morning? She gropes around the bedside table, hoping that she’s loved herself and left a water bottle there, but no luck. Her fingers only knock against the plastic bottle of tequila from earlier. 

“Fuck,” she grumbles. A pounding bangs around in her skull; that last shot of tequila was a bad idea. She stumbles to the hotel bathroom sink and fumbles around the counter for a plastic cup. The faint metallic taste of the water can be lamented later, but right now it’s like her entire body has shriveled up and only the sweet solace of hotel water will soothe her. Her reflection glares at her, tangled black hair and shadows in every crevice of her pointed body. She nearly chokes on the water as it soothes her parched throat and burning, cracked lips.  After two cups, she crawls back into the bed. All she needs is to lay down a bit before she leaves. Her pillow is still warm when she settles in. The hotel sheets are still a bit stiff even after soaking in sweat from sex.

The guy she’d picked up after the show shifts beside her in the bed. Hana turns and the harsh blue glow from another text highlights the guy’s face. At least this one’s pretty. Last time she’d ended up with some toothpick chick with a bad bleach job that left her hair the orange of a shag carpet. But the man’s brown curls wave out on the pillow in contrast to the dark splotches along his neck and collar bone from their frantic sex. He reminds Hana of a gruesome painting in some art museum Lele and Raoul dragged her to years ago where she saw a pale, baby-faced saint with arrows nestled in his neck. 

Hana shoots Raoul a text about how rude his choice of timing is. It takes a while for the room to realign into the vague darkness of the hotel room after the blinding light from her screen. Eventually, a pale neon red light settles in from between the tiny gaps in the long, pleated hotel curtains. 

A moan rouses her from a light doze, and Hana nestles close to her one-night stand; their lips barely brush.

“What’s your name, baby?” Hana murmurs.

Ending up in bed with a stranger after a show has become a habit now. Before, she had stopped herself at backstage drunken make-outs or some groping down in the pit while the headliner plays. Recently, though, she’d begun drinking before their shows so that by the time the band after them were playing, she’d been pretty smashed. Raoul and Lele keep bitching at her to wait till after they play, but she plays better with some liquid luck in her. 

Water from her lips settle in the cracks of the dude’s parched mouth. The sex is a blur in her mind. Maybe she can rouse him for another go so that she can have something tangible to enjoy for the ride to the next town. Hana presses her lips closer. His mouth opens lazily, though his eyelashes still rest against the smudged outline of his sockets. She drags her tongue along his bottom lip before entering his mouth. All she incites is another sleepy moan, and then her tongue grazes against what almost feels like the dull end of a needle.

Hana pulls back. The sensation is vaguely familiar. A small irritation where her tongue had pressed against it too fast once before. What the fuck is that?

If she turns on the lights to check it out, she might wake him up, and that will be weird. There’s something at the back of your throat, any idea what it could be? She snorts. His mouth is moist against the pad of her thumb, and gently she pries his lips apart. Tiny breaths puff hot against her fingers.

It’s unorthodox, sure, but it’s also like 4 AM. Weird shit happens at 4 AM, especially when you’re living on the road and probably still a little drunk. Once Raoul made them all hold an impromptu roadside funeral for an armadillo in Arizona after the driver had squashed it. No one was happy, but now there’s one of Lele’s Virgin of Guadalupe candles next to a fermenting mush of roadkill. 

Careful not to slip so deep that he will gag, she slides her fingers into the dude’s mouth. Her fingers meet moist breath as they glide across the velvety softness of his tongue. Sure enough, there’s something there. It bends at the prod of her fingers, two thin nubs of plastic–maybe?–and at the base, there’s a tiny knot.

What the actual fuck?

Hana pinches the knot and pulls. Maybe she should be concerned he will wake up, but honestly, the real issue is that there’s a fucking knot at the back of this guy’s throat. Hana pulls the knot out and uses her phone’s screen for some more light. What she finds is clear, synthetic string. Strands of spit stretch between the still-caught string and his thin lips. There is no sign of wakefulness despite how much string Hana reels out. He continues to breathe normally as he sleeps, even as the string squelches as it’s dragged up against the lining of his throat. Saliva dribbles down Hana’s fingers into the creases of her palm’s life and love lines. Her headache worsens, but she probably just needs water.

There’s now at least a foot of string. What the fuck is at the end of this string? She’ll probably need to call an ambulance afterward, but the dude shows no signs of stress. still a steady rise and fall of his chest. Car lights brush through the room, and a cord of light moves up his torso, like a body scan laser from some 80s sci-fi cult classic. His body glistens in the glimpse of light. Hana’s knees are moist, but she is feeling a bit overheated. They had cranked up the heater before falling into bed and its warmth stuck like a humid summer day. There’s too much string and spit. The inside of her skull bangs violently. Water, she needs water.

The dude then gasps, wet like a fish slapping against the deck of a ship.

Hana flinches and jerks the string. Something bulges beneath the skin of his neck and Hana’s heart constricts. Her headache takes a backseat to her shock at the unnatural bulge of his throat. It reminds her of the stretch of the skin of someone possessed in horror movies, a demon making its presence known through the outline of fingers inside the skin. If he wakes up, she can’t explain this. Could he even explain it? Either way, there’s now something larger than a string in his throat, and if he wakes up now and panics, he could choke. 

It’s more dangerous to have his throat blocked.

Fuck it.

After two violent yanks, the give on the string disappears as the bulge slithers up beneath his taut throat, the skin peaking around it as if it could split open at any second. A small hook the size of a dollar coin dangles above the guy’s lips with fleshy bits caught on the tip. A pleasant sigh slides from his throat. He rolls onto his side, away from Hana. The hook caresses his cheek as he moves, a strand of saliva arching in the empty space between cheek and hook, and dips down into the waves of hair.

Hana rubs the hook on the sheets to remove whatever it is that’s stuck on the tip but finds a gooey puddle upon the sheets. What the fuck? She recoils her fingers and wipes them against her thighs.

The hook is thicker than she thought it would be and cold despite being nestled inside a body. There’s a design etched into what feels like bone. No matter how much Hana squints, she can’t make the etchings out. Her phone chimes with another text notification, and the hook nearly slips from her fingers. 

It’s Raoul to warn her that they’re leaving in an hour whether she’s on the bus or not.

Hana snarls and sets her phone and the hook onto the bedside table. Her clothes are somewhere on the floor, and she uses the light from the curtain cracks to search. No need to turn on the light and ruin her getaway. After putting on her clothes, the leather jacket protesting as it slides up her sweaty, chubby arms, she grabs her phone and the hook, but it pricks her finger. 

“Fuck.”

It didn’t look that sharp, but then again, the lighting is shit in this room. She sucks on the minor wound, only a drop of blood soaking onto her tongue. Maybe she ought to leave the hook here, maybe the dude will know what to do, but Hana doesn’t set it back on the bedside table. It’s not like having a hook and fishing line in your body does anyone any good. In fact, if anything, Hana’s probably done the guy some good. 

The phone chimes again, and Hana throws it a nasty look. She knows that Raoul and Lele will leave. They did it once in some nowhere town in fucking Illinois. Raoul swore it was just to teach her a lesson, and his boyfriend at the time did come and pick her up, but Hana knows better. The drummer is the easiest person in the band to replace. Who cares about a ten-year-old friendship? Bands have discarded dead weight with stronger bonds than theirs. The only higher offense than being a no-show would be sleeping with the lead singer, but Lele doesn’t fuck anyone. Hana shoves the hook and phone into her pocket. She glances at the guy and flinches when she realizes his eyes are open, staring empathetically at her in the pre-dawn light. He doesn’t look so good. 

“Water,” comes a croak from the bed. 

Hana’s grip slips on the door handle.

“Water,” the guy begs from behind. It is the least Hana can do, but she can’t stay too long. Just a cup of water, and then she’s gone. The guy’s throat must be raw from having a hook taken out. 

“Hold on,” Hana says, and goes over to the sink. She reuses the cup used earlier and sets it down on the bedside table. A stillness pervades the room, but he doesn’t move to take it. His pupils have nearly eaten away at his irises, and his face continues to drip. It’s not just his face though. It’s like he’s begun to seep into the sheets. The dark stain that surrounds him has soaked all the way to where Hana had slept. A cold fear flushes her body, and she cannot move. The hook is cold in her jeans pocket, so cold it almost burns, but she can’t reach for it. What is she supposed to do, shove it back down his throat? Her stomach knots and her throat stings as the threat of bile fumes up from her stomach. She makes for the door again.

“Please,” he pleads. The single word flopping from his tongue, dead at her feet. 

“I don’t know what to do,” Hana whispers and tries to find the door handle.

“Please.”

She inches back towards him, and he reaches out, his fingers slopping around her wrist. His hand doesn’t feel solid. It’s like firm tofu, slick and wobbly, but that can’t be right. This feels like some bad trip, but Hana didn’t take any drugs last night, just drank until she was convinced it was a good idea to spend her measly earnings on a shitty hotel and a bottle of tequila.

“Water.”

Hana is already going to stiff him with the cleaning bill the hotel is going to charge for the tequila soaked into the carpet and broken shower head from clumsy shower sex; the least she can do is get him water. But she can’t stay too long. If Raoul and Lele leave without her, they might not send someone back for her this time. 

The dude is freakishly light. When Hana wraps her arms around him his body jiggles like a waterbed. The ooze from his body slops onto the thin, hard carpet between Hana’s toes. The short walk to the bathroom is arduous, with his body escaping Hana’s grip. Whatever he’s discharging is too thick to be sweat, and gooey like hacked-up phlegm. It seeps into Hana’s clothes, past even the thick padding of her bra, irritating her nipples. Is this some sort of medical condition? A side effect of some rare STD? 

Fuck, she hadn’t had a female condom for when he ate her out. Granted they were both drunk and female condoms are a bitch to find outside of big cities, and they remembered it when she rode him, but fuck, this dude could have mentioned if he had something wrong with him. Even if it’s not an STD, if this is some sort of disease that can be transferred via bodily fluids, he should have said something.

Hana digs her nails into the dude’s sides as his body begins to slip out of her grip again, the slime shrinking his torso more and more. Thank god she’d left the bathroom door open earlier. 

She turns on the light and dumps him beside the tub. It’s then that she realizes the ooze which had only been opaque, had taken on a pale pink tinge. She gazed in horror as the guy’s prominent bruised sockets now bulged with thick red tears. Pink veins stand out from skin that looks like the pale red of a tuna’s belly.

“Water.”

His plea pulls her from the ooze, and she gasps in a breath that sears her throat as though she had been forced underwater. It takes a few tries to turn on the bathtub water, her hand slipping on the metal knobs, and of course, it takes a minute to push down the water stopper and make it stick. The dude continues to moan, propped against the tub, “Water, water,” he pleads. Hana’s phone chimes aggressively against her thigh. She has to go. When there’s at least two inches of water, Hana grabs the dude and ignores for now how her fingers sink past the ooze into the meat of him. It’s no easy task to dump him in the tub, and she swears her nails catch on the thin bulges of veins. 

The moan he makes when Hana gets him in is almost orgasmic. His eyes roll back, and the slick from his body floats atop the lukewarm bathwater. It’s almost the color of rust in the harsh yellow light of the bathroom. His body seems to have swelled, but limply floating in the steaming water. He’s completely hairless, which had been a turn-on when she was sucking his dick, but now her own hairs prickle and she rubs her arms. His glassy eyes are wide as he and Hana take one another in. His body is haloed in glops of oil that shimmer under the harsh bathroom light.

“I gotta go,” Hana whispers. He reaches for her but she recoils as his gelatinous fingers touch her, dull fingernails grazing her skin.

“Stay,” he gushes, clear bile mixing with the glaze that already coats his sunken face.

The phone stops ringing. They’re gonna leave, and they’re not gonna come back. How can she stay? He asked for water, and Hana already went out of her way to give it to him. The bus was going to leave without her.

“Sorry, but I gotta go.”

Hana makes it to the front door, ignoring his gurgles for her to stay. 

The night air is a relief against the lukewarm sludge coating on her arms. Wherever she ends up next, Hana is going to need to stop by the local clinic just to make sure she’s not infected with something. Another chime sounds from her phone chimes, but it’s brief. Only a voicemail. Fuck, let them not have left. Something falls out of her pocket when she takes out the phone. It’s the fishhook. She should have left it in the room, but her phone begins to ring again, and she heads across the street to the venue where hopefully Lele and Raoul still wait.