You tried dating normally.

Really, you did. You went on the coffee dates, awkward dinner dates, the “never text back” dates. And after enough of those, you figured—why not give the weird guy a shot? He was sweet. Dorky. He watched you microwave leftovers like you were Prometheus delivering fire to mankind, which, hey, was more than you could say for your exes.

But the closer you got, the harder it became for him to keep the mask on. Humans were so inconvenient. Their bodies were sweaty and awkward, fluctuating between too hot and too cold. Their bones stayed in place. They blinked. They slept. He did none of those things. He could only keep up the act for so long before his fingers bent the wrong way, before his ribs pressed out against his skin, before he stopped pretending to breathe at all.

Not that you minded. Maybe it was because all your past boyfriends were crap. Maybe it was because you were so touch-starved that the idea of dating an unknowable eldritch horror didn’t faze you. So what if his fingers bent backward sometimes? So what if, on occasion, his ribs shifted inside his skin like something was moving under the surface?

You weren’t that picky.

Right now, his body stretched across the ceiling, limbs contorted in ways no living thing should move, all sharp angles and wrongness. His too-thin legs dangle down, bones cracking and realigning every time he shifts. He stares—not at the TV, which he still can’t quite grasp—but at you.

He hangs there for a moment, considering, then—crack. His neck jerks back into place. “The black moving painting.” His voice is layered, like an echo of itself. “It speaks.”

You sigh, shoveling in another spoonful. “It’s a TV, babe.”

Azri clicks thoughtfully. “I see.” Another crack, and he scuttles further along the ceiling, his too-thin limbs bending in ways they shouldn’t as he taps the screen. “I do not understand it.”