Becoming Monsters: In the Mirror Ch. 01

"You didn't get any customers today, did you?" It might have sounded like a question. It wasn't one. She knew me often better than I knew myself, and just watched me nearly succumb to my Hunger.

"There were two this morning, but they weren't Demonics. Beastfolk in heat who needed someone who could Sterilize, and a pure human monster chaser."

Lucy's face got thunderous. "And you just ran off the second a dungeon monster was in the area? You KNOW you are running on fumes! Neither of us likes just topping off, and you just pulled 50% out of my Hunger without trying. Going to have to do favors around here tomorrow instead of job applications so that I stay sane. You're probably a day or two off of the same, and you just spent it all willy-nilly on flight and Aura?" She left unsaid that the main reason we went there was to feed, not to make money.

"Both were the right thing to do, love!" I protested. "Both times, there's no way we could have done otherwise!"

"Ideals aren't going to keep us fed, Jeremiah Kithkin. They aren't going to let us start a family, or get out of this rat race. They aren't going to let us be together." The tears were back in my eyes. This was an unfortunately common argument around our apartment. The problem, of course, was that we were both right.

I could not have let that scorpion go, nor preemptively attacked the harasser, and still been able to look myself in the mirror. No more than we could survive the monogamy we both wanted for our marriage. Getting and keeping an above-board job as a Demon, no matter what anti-discrimination laws might look like, was a lesson in continual frustrations. It didn't help that my Aura drew others toward me the second we were both feeling horny, which was nearly constant. Some jobs might not mind, but trying to code with a coworker sucking you off under the table led to some poor code, which gets you fired. Please don't ask how I learned that one, I just did.

By the same token, people saw a Succubus and assumed any application was 10% for work and 90% to be the office bicycle. Lucy was an amazing person, credentialed with child care and education... but that reputation meant that Succubi were never going to be hired unless the boss had a remarkably open mind. Thus far, nearly zero luck, and the one time she got a job it lasted for six blissful months before a concerned parent protested the presence of a sexual predator around second-graders. That she was no such thing didn't matter, it was the end.

Like this, we each fought for a living. We did our best to capitalize on our Hungers, to minimize our expenses. We both did remote work when we could, we both hid who we were when we could. Our savings dwindled, dollar by painful dollar, as expenses rose and income wasn't reliable. Absent a sudden resurgence of monster activity that neither of us wanted, or a sudden epiphany of tolerance and understanding that neither of us expected to ever come, we were stuck.

And so, there we were. Hearts aching but still hanging together. We were like two cards standing in a house of them, leaning on each other but ready to fall if we were alone. Each other's strength. We decided to turn in early, stashing away the dungeon-sourced coins and components, settling together in the same bed we bought when first married. During the chaos of the first year after the Change, when nobody knew if humanity would even keep working. No matter the arguments, trials and tribulations, that was all I could ask for.

Or... so I thought. The future, as it does, would not take my wishes into account.