Free Weird Tales, Volume 51 by Ann VanderMeer

Loenen-Ruiz
    In Which Ariel is Conceived Under a Set of Most Unusual Circumstances
    She began by chewing on the words he left out on the sofa at night. They were little words he'd written on a napkin and they tasted of beer and peanuts and the salt of his sweat.
    In the beginning, he used to write poems that made her weep. He created odd little tales filled with laughter, stories peopled with vicarious images, and pulsing with life.
    Nowadays, she watched him scramble for words.
    “They slip through my fingers,” he said.
    She watched him write short jagged sentences on bits of paper, and discarded boxes. Sometimes, he hissed through his teeth, his breath harsh and labored with effort. She listened to him groan in despair and her heart cracked under the weight of his sorrow.
    When they walked through the streets, she linked her fingers through his and cuddled up to him; wanting to arouse him, desiring to shake him out of the forgetfulness that made him walk like a man in a trance.
    “Sorry.” He said when she complained about it. He looked at her and shook his head.
    “Sometimes I want to write something so bad,” he said. “I can feel the words waiting to burst out, and here I am walking the boardwalk, desperate to go back home and all the while the words just keep on flowing. . .”
    She knew better than to tell him what she thought about his words. She'd told him before and she didn't think she could endure another week of him languishing away beside the window, moaning about words that didn't come as they used to.
    Nights, he came to bed late.
    After the first blush of infatuation faded, she realized he was obsessed with only one thing. Still, she stayed, believing the time would come when he would wake up and recognize his need for her.
    “I'll stay with him forever,” she'd promised. But she was growing weary of waiting and she was filled with longing for a baby.
    One night, the moon shining through her window was a bright sliver of silver fire. It fell across the covers of her bed and she saw them. They were little creatures with skin the color of nothingness; dark eyes like an iguana's and thin sticks for extremities. They crept up to her, and peered into her eyes. Wordeaters. That was what they called themselves. They did not have teeth or claws, they did not threaten or hurt her, they simply slipped down her throat like water.
    “Eat words for us,” they whispered.
    When he came up to bed, she lay still. She waited for the sound of his breathing, listened for his snores rising and falling in the quietness of the room.
    “Eat words,” they commanded.
    She sat up and dragged on her housecoat. Shivering in the dark, she made her way down the crooked stairs to the living room where he'd sat all night, drinking beer and chewing peanuts, cursing as he watched the telly.
    She found the words jotted down on a white napkin folded up to a fourth of its size.
    In the morning, he walked through the house dressed in his bathrobe. His eyes were bleary and red, and she felt guilty thinking of the words she'd consumed the night before.
    “Can't think straight,” he said. He headed for the fridge and pulled out a bottle of beer.
    She smelled the despair on his breath when he shuffled away from her.
    “I'll be writing today.” His words bounced off the walls and she caught them on the edge of her tongue. They tasted like dried up gum, but she swallowed them nevertheless.
    Days passed and she watched him sink deeper into despair. At night, she ate the words that tasted like burnt Brussels sprouts and sour milk.
    “Please.” She whispered to the darkness as she swallowed the words. “Please make him look beyond the words and see me.”
    One morning he looked at her and she knew what he wanted even before he spoke.
    He stopped writing and got a job at the local factory.
    And her belly began to grow.
    Inside her head, the Wordeaters grew more insistent. She developed a habit of going to the library. Wandering through