by Devin Caliboso, art by Hailey Dorritie

It first happened when we were seventeen.

“Please,” Tyas whispered, voice breathy and whiny. That excited me, how desperate he sounded. He was usually so self-assured and composed. We had just finished having sex on his bed, the sheets were still damp with sweat, our bodies still naked.

“But won’t it hurt.”

“It’ll only be a little. I promise.”

I didn’t know what to do so I stayed silent. Tyas scooted closer. He trailed a finger across the middle of my forearm, so softly it made me shiver. “It’ll only be here. Just a little. It won’t even hurt that bad.” He looked up at me, with such longing. My stomach twisted. An overwhelming ache behind my chest. I hesitated; I nodded slowly. “Fine. Do it.”

He took my arm and raised it to his full lips, kissed the delicate skin there, licked it and left a trail of warmth and saliva. My breath caught in my throat from the pleasure. He opened his mouth. He bit down.

A tearing, a shredding. I couldn’t close my eyes. I watched as he pulled back, the skin and flesh caught between his teeth as it stretched and ripped. Agony. My entire consciousness concentrated on the pain of the bite, a blistering heat that swelled and lanced through my arm. Blood spurted out, fell with tiny patters to the sheets. “Ow. Ow fuck,” I whispered, tears welling.

“Fuck that hurts.”

Tyas closed his eyes and chewed, ecstacy dancing like light across the features of his face. His thick eyelashes fluttered, his sensuous mouth bloodied, brown skin glistening, all unified in a single sensation: pleasure.

I clamped a hand down on the gash. It wasn’t too deep, but it was excruciating. Tyas swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing along his throat. He opened his eyes and saw me clutching my arm, blood soaking through my fingers, tears streaking across my cheeks.

The pleasure evaporated from his face. For a moment, his eyes went dark and his face became unnaturally blank and he looked at me like I was a stranger. “I’m–I’m sorry,” he said. He rubbed his mouth with the back of his arm, leaving a streak of red on it and smudging it on his face like lipstick. “Oh,” he said, looking down at it. He rubbed his arm on the bed to get rid of the stain. “Oh, I’m sorry.” His voice was nauseatingly loud. We had been whispering before and his volume now felt like a sacrilege against that silence. He heaved in a breath and shoved it out. He heaved in another. He kept gasping and gasping and heaving. His eyes became animalistic in their panic.

He got up, stumbled off the bed, and ran into the bathroom, a blur of limbs. I could hear him vomit, so loudly it nearly sounded like he was screaming. I trailed after him and stood in the doorway as my arm dripped blood. He was naked and shivering on the cold white tiles, clutching the toilet with one hand. The other was in his mouth, his fingers in his throat. Over and over again he shoved his hand down his throat and retched, the grating, gurgling noise of it bouncing off porcelain. The veins in his forehead and neck were bulging. His face was red and the water was red and the muscles of his back kept contorting and shifting with every slight movement, like something was inside and trying to crawl out.

I walked over to him and rested a hand on his shoulder, then two on both shoulders, massaging him as he dry heaved until the contents of his stomach were spent completely. He seemed to calm at my touch, seemed to lean into it, and in that moment I understood slightly: his need to devour. “Let’s go back to bed,” I said. He nodded and sniffled. I helped him as he rose shakily to his feet. I led him by the hand back to the bed, and covered the sheets with a blanket so that he wouldn’t see the blood.

After he settled in, I went back to the bathroom to bandage my arm and was confronted with my naked reflection. Red handprints over damp pale skin. I wrapped gauze tightly around the wound. Hair matted with sweat. Snipped the excess with scissors. Ribs jutting out slightly. Blood dripped into the porcelain sink. Eyes bloodshot. All of it hovering there, confronting me. My hand was shaking as it gripped the scissors. I dropped them, turned from the mirror, and left
the bathroom.

I rejoined Tyas in the bed. “Can we cuddle?” I asked. Sleepily, Tyas shifted over and I laid down beside him, both of us still naked. His arm was wrapped around me. My head was on his chest, my hand roaming over his heart, drifting back and forth over the skin there. He buried his face into my hair and breathed deeply.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, breath tickling my scalp.

Suddenly, despite the chill of the night, the entire earth was made of warmth, was delicate and soft. A feeling of content coalesced and covered me, like moisture gathering into dew drops on blades of grass. I would’ve let him tear me part if he only asked.

•

It was 5 a.m. and the sun hadn’t yet risen, just blueness and darkness and the gray of a fog that the car’s headlights couldn’t penetrate. I was on my way to Berkeley. It had been five months since I’d last seen Tyas. We only saw each other at irregular intervals ever since he moved for university.

After five hours and forty minutes, I arrived. I parked my car in a garage and waited for Tyas to collect me. I looked at my reflection in the rearview mirror and sighed. My hair was a mess, light brown, frizzy, pointing in all the wrong directions. My face, gaunt as it was, somehow looked puffy and lopsided. Tyas would have to see me like this. I turned away from the mirror in frustration and took out a piece of gum.

Twenty minutes passed, all of which I spent desperately trying to fix my hair, before he arrived. I watched him walk toward me. He looked slightly different. His hair was cut shorter, nearly into a mullet. He looked a shade paler. His shirt was tucked in–a new development–and where once there were sneakers he now wore boots. I wondered, faintly, when these changes had occurred, but by now I had become used to him growing without me.

“Hi, Dew,” Tyas said when he got closer. I had to look up at him, able only for a second to meet his nearly black eyes, narrowed slightly as he smiled at me.

“Hi,” I said.

We stood there and looked at each other for a half second. It was only slightly awkward. But after a few moments, that awkwardness was dispelled. I always worry that time has changed the both of us in different ways, and, when we meet on these rare occasions, we will find whatever had bound us together gone. But it was still there, present, alive, thrumming. It only took a few moments to find it. He took my bags and led me to his car.

I reached to open the passenger door. A girl’s face stared at me from behind the glass, her features were obscured from the glare, but I could tell she was smiling. I retracted my hand as if it had been bitten and climbed into the back seat.

“Hey,” she said once I was inside. She got up in the seat and turned around to face me, “My name’s Amanda.” She was still smiling as she said it, and I was struck at once by the warmth of her: how kind her eyes looked, how genuine and unguarded her smile was. Immediately, I disliked her.

It took me a second to respond. “Oh, hey. I’m Dew.” The trunk slammed and Tyas walked around to the driver’s seat.

“Everyone ready to go?” He asked.

•

We stepped through the doorway of his apartment. It was a mess. He shared it with two housemates. It was the middle of October and he had a few half-assed decorations: a skeleton sitting on top of the mini-fridge, purple and orange fairy lights, cotton spider webbing on a single wall. “This place is nicer than your last one,” I said, meaning it despite the chipped paint and scratched floors and walls; his last apartment was a hell-hole.

Tyas picked up a crushed solo cup and an empty plastic bag from the floor and threw them away. “Sorry for the mess. But yeah, this place is sick. It’s way closer to campus and my rent’s only like a hundred more than that shitty old place on Dowling. Do you remember that place? How many times did you come over then, twice?”

“Once.” I rubbed at a scar I had along my side, feeling the outlines of the puckered gash through my t-shirt.

“Do you need help cleaning?” Amanda asked. I watched her as she moved through the apartment and tried to gauge how familiar she was with the place.

Tyas shook his head. “No it’s okay, you two just relax.” He turned back to me. “The only thing with this place is,” his voice dropped to a conspiratory whisper, “my housemates are sorta annoying sometimes. I swear to God one of them is eating my peanut butter.” He wrinkled his nose. “But at least they’re a lot better than my Mom.”

I remembered the days in highschool I used to spend in Tyas’s house. How sometimes he’d leave the room and a few minutes later I’d hear his mother’s voice, screaming, muffled, through the walls; walls that would on occasion rattle after a loud bang.

“What about you?” Tyas asked. “How’s home?” He ambled through the apartment cleaning as he talked. He cleaned in a sort of haphazard way, moving back and forth, switching between tasks without fully completing any of them. Despite the unorganized clumsiness of his cleaning, the way he moved, his quick grin, his voice and the way he’d sometimes stutter, all of it seemed so bright and clear, like the spring water from snow melt.

I sat down on the couch I’d be sleeping on for the weekend. “The same. Boring. I’m just working, you know?”

“Are you still writing?”

The question stung. “No.”

“What? Why not?”

“Um, I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just not very good at it.”

“That’s not true,” Tyas said, “I used to love reading what you wrote.” My jaw clenched. Tyas had a bad habit of giving compliments that he didn’t mean. “Oh, also, I have another friend coming with us to the concert. His name’s Felix. You’ll love him.”

I smiled, almost genuinely. I had no idea Amanda or Felix would be coming with us. While we waited for Tyas to finish cleaning, Amanda and I talked nearly the entire time about different books we liked or hated. Right now she was reading Pachinko, but she thought it was awfully boring.

•

Crush of the crowd, crushing of sound. The singer screamed into the mic. The drummer’s hands were a blur as he smashed his sticks against the toms. A mass of shifting bodies, jumping, swaying, shoving. Sweat gleamed off of Tyas’s neck, reflecting the blue lights sweeping over the venue. The music was deafening, the heat omnipresent. The current of the crowd pushed him behind me, and then against me. His body pressed to mine. His hand found my waist, slipped beneath my cropped t-shirt, drew me closer. His teeth grazed my neck, breath hot. I shivered. I wondered if he’d bite me, if anyone would see. His grip tightened on my stomach. I turned to face him, witnessed the want in his dilated pupils.

And then he was gone. A new song played and I got shoved to the side as the pit opened up. My heart was racing, breath short. Adrenaline made my knees shake. I wiped sweat from my palms onto my jeans and realized I was erect. I joined that pit of thrashing bodies, flowing in a violent circle.

The next sight I caught of Tyas, he and Felix were lifting Amanda into the air so she could crowd surf. Tyas’s hands were all over her, her back, her shoulders, her legs. Her head was thrown back in elation, auburn hair spilling towards the floor as dozens of hands exalted her above their heads. The neck of her shirt slipped off of her shoulder and I saw the edge of a scar, jagged and puckered, still red and barely healed over.

I stopped dancing. The music seemed to quiet. I could feel my face crumbling, so I shoved my way through the crowd to the bathroom. I sat down on the toilet and cried in the dirty stall, surrounded by gum and graffiti, hoping no one could the muffled, wet labor of my breath.

•

We all got food together. A taco stand not far from the venue that Amanda had recommended. I’d recovered by the time the concert ended. The scar could be anything. She said she liked sports. Maybe she fell.

“So your name’s Dew?” Amanda said, “that’s so pretty.”

“My actual name is much less pretty,” I said. “Dewey. Like Malcolm in the Middle.” I took a bite of my taco.“What do you think?” Amanda asked. She was beautiful: short lashes but artful eyeliner, full lips tinted a brickish red, two full heads shorter than me.

I ignored her question. “How do you and Tyas know each other?” I asked. “We had a class together last semester,” she said vaguely.

I nodded. “Are you guys close?”

“Um…” she hesitated. My heart swelled with hope. “Yeah,” she finished. “I think I’d say so.”

I smiled at her. “That’s cool. Also, these tacos are so fucking good.”

She smiled back, genuinely lighting up. I wished so desperately for her to be gone. I couldn’t stand the sight of her.

•

Tyas and I got home exhausted. It was 3 a.m. and I had been awake for nearly 24 hours.

“How the fuck did they manage to make the living room dirty while we were away?” Tyas groaned.

“It’s okay, really,” I said, “I don’t mind.”

“If you say so. You wanna use the shower first or me?”

“You go ahead,” I said, “I’m gonna lie down a while.”

I laid down on the couch and stared at the speckled ceiling, colored orange and purple from the twinkling lights. Exhaustion set in. My legs and feet ached. My head hurt. I listened to the shower running, water pattering to the floor, the sound of his housemates snoring. What am I doing here? I thought. Why did I come? I ran back through every conversation that I observed between Tyas and Amanda. What was she to him? How close were they? They hadn’t touched, or even talked much, but they gravitated towards each other almost subconsciously, drifting past people and objects until they were within proximity of each other. I slammed my head back against the couch to dispel the thought.

The bathroom door opened and steam and light rushed through the doorway. “All yours,” Tyas said, holding the towel together at his waist. I stopped for a second, my vision devoured by him. Those arms, the tattoos scattered across his torso, that chest, sleek with moisture. “I’m probably gonna sleep. Good night, dude. I’m really glad you came.”

A lump formed in my throat. I swallowed it down. “Of course. Thanks for inviting me.” As he walked past me I smelled that same coconut body wash he used to use, that same conditioner. At least that hadn’t changed.

•

Forty minutes later I was on the couch, staring at the ceiling again, black now that the lights were off. 4 a.m. I couldn’t sleep, despite the exhaustion. My phone buzzed beside me. A text from Tyas.

I can’t sleep.

Me either.

Wanna watch a movie?

Sure.

The door to his room opened. He was wrapped in a fluffy green blanket. He sat down on the couch. We couldn’t use the TV because his roommates were asleep, so we watched on my phone. I leaned against his side. The phone played quietly, its screen the only light in the dark apartment. I was so sleepy. We spoke in whispers. We laughed under our clothes to muffle the sound. At times, I’d shift my head and rest it in his lap to look up at him. He’d smile down at me, so gently, the features of his face painted on by the soft pale screen-light. His tired, half-lidded eyes, his lazy, beautiful smile.

He took my arm and traced the scar there. He lifted up my shirt and traced the scars there. Bits of me he’d taken. I searched his face as his fingers explored my skin. Inscrutable. Was it guilt there? Sadness? We were so close on this couch. The movie had ended. It was so quiet I could hear him swallow, could hear the unsteadiness in his breath as his hands trailed downward, so slightly, almost imperceptibly.

He pulled away, cleared his throat, and I knew then I had lost him.

•

The sky was cloaked in dirty clouds, the air blue and cold. The laundry spun in its machine, soap bubbles spattering against the glass. We sat on a bench, watching it, so close our arms were touching.

“Listen,” Tyas said, shifting away from me. “I just thought you should know me and uh– me and Amanda have been seeing each other.” He picked at the threads coming loose in a hole in his jeans, avoiding looking at me. It’s getting pretty serious. I know we’re just friends and that me and you were never really serious, but um, I just thought you should know.”

“Okay,” I said. The fluorescents in the laundromat were suddenly too bright, the bench suddenly too hard, as if it were cutting into my back.

“I’m sorry,” He said. My clothes felt tight and scratchy. Everything was so itchy. I scratched so deep I left welts. I barely spoke another word while we waited for the clothes to finish their cycle.

We drove back to his apartment.

“I’m gonna take a shower,” I told him.

Tyas nodded. He still wasn’t looking directly at me. “For sure.”

---

I thought of these things and mourned them, grieved for them so desperately. I mourned the fact that no new moments would be made.

---

I went into the bathroom and closed the curtain. The aching in my chest, the itchiness in my skin, were driving me crazy. My nails resumed their search, Beads of blood diluted as they were washed away. A sob escaped my mouth. My eyes and the back of my head had this terrible pressure. I leaned my hand against the wall to steady myself as I cried so thoroughly that I could barely breathe.

After a while I grew tired, so I sat down on the tile as the scalding water fell upon me. Dim light shone in softly through the cream curtain, water fell and fell from the ends of my hair, my eyelashes. I stared out past my naked body and thought of the first night I had met him. I thought of how easy it was, to be near him, to talk to him and touch him. I thought of us speaking on the phone late into the night after he had moved for university, separated by over 300 miles and yet unwilling to not communicate. I thought of the nights, in high school and after, when I’d go into his room and, naked in the dark, we allowed to exist the physical manifestation of our feelings for each other, in tender kisses, in desperate touch.

I thought of these things and mourned them, grieved for them so desperately. I mourned the fact that no new moments would be made. The relationship would plateau. These feelings, these memories, he, all of it would fade and fade like the color of things forgotten in the sun.

•

I had already left. I was three hours away when he called me. “What?” I kept saying. “What? Slow down. Tyas–Tyas slow down.” I couldn’t understand anything he was saying. It sounded like he was crying. It sounded like his mouth was full of spit or water. “Please,” he sobbed, “just come back.”

Without hesitation: “Okay. Okay, I’m on my way. I’ll be there in a bit.”

He sent me an address I didn’t recognize. I exited the free way to turn the car around.

•

It was night when I arrived. The door to the apartment the address led me to was unlocked. There were no lights on. Just blue moonlight filtering through pale curtains, just shadows and silhouettes, so still they unnerved me. “Tyas?” I called out. I found a light switch and turned it on.

There were spatters of blood all over the apartment. “Dew?” Tyas called out, sounding like a lost child. He was on the couch, staring at something on the floor, hidden from my view by the coffee table. He was covered in blood. I took a step forward. “No,” Tyas said, “don’t come closer.”

I kept walking.

“Please,” Tyas said. He got up to stand in front of me. I could barely make out his features through the blood, dried, crusted, and brown and flaking. “Please don’t.” Even though he was taller and heavier than me, he looked so fragile. He was shivering, as if with cold. Tears cut lines through the blood coating his cheeks. Bits of meat were in his teeth. I pushed him aside gently and he obeyed like a puppy. “I’m sorry, Dew,” Tyas said. “I know I fucked up. I’m sorry.”

There was something on the floor. I looked closer. It was an amalgamation of holes and mushed meat, scattered clumps of hair matted with blood, smeared flesh and scraps of cloth, brown and red and purple and pink. There was a smell rising from it like steam: the reek of shit and iron. Something, vague and amorphous, was spreading throughout me, multiplying in my gut like bacteria.

“Please don’t hate me,” Tyas said. With a feeling of revulsion, I recognized the thing within me: jealousy. I envied her. So many parts of her were now in Tyas’s stomach. They were one. He had seen and tasted every inch of her, had explored her to a depth unfathomable. Everything she was and will be was in Tyas now.

“Dew?” Tyas pleaded when I didn’t say anything for a long while.

I hit him. My knuckles smashed against his cheek bone. He took a step back and I hit him again. I hit him until my knuckles were split and my hands ached and until he was on the floor. I wrapped my hands around his throat and squeezed. He grabbed my wrists, buckled his hips, and then all at once he went still. He was staring at the ceiling, crying silently. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to hurt him until he looked as unrecognizable as her. But he kept crying, and I couldn’t stand the sight of it.

I let go and he heaved in a breath, coughing, turning on his side. “I love you, Dew,” Tyas said.

And I said: If you loved me, you wouldn’t have done this.

And I said: Get that corner of the rug and help me roll her up.

---

“Sustenance” by Devin Caliboso appeared in Issue 45 of Berkeley Fiction Review

Devin Caliboso is currently an undergraduate at UC Berkeley but will be graduating very soon. This is his first time submitting a story anywhere, and he’s excited for many more opportunities like this to come!

Hailey Dorritie is an illustrator and writer who graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 2024. She’s had a lifelong love of storytelling in all its forms, and jumped at the opportunity to create a piece for this grim, disturbing tale. A recent personal piece of hers, “Pug in Pointillism”, is also set to appear in an upcoming publication of Bluffton University’s “Bridge” Literary Journal.