Every night that week, Wallmoss fell asleep with Sunrise in her arms, relaxing to the rhythm of the redhead's slow breathing. It was very peaceful, and comforting, and really the best thing ever.
***
Next Monday, in the middle of the night, Wallmoss woke up. "What is it?" she asked. "Why did you poke me?"
Did something really poke me? Wallmoss asked herself. Or did I just imagine it? I probably dreamed it.
Wallmoss moved her hands up and down the pillow, feeling for any irregularities that she might have poked herself on in her sleep. She thought, if Sunrise was like a real girl, Wally was acting very fresh indeed! She giggled, as she squeezed Sunrise's thighs and buttocks, and stroked her stomach and back. Wallmoss squeezed Sunrise's breasts.
Wow, Wallmoss thought. Those are really big.
The real girl got out of bed, turned on the lights, and measured Sunrise's chest. Forty-nine inches. If that girl gets much bigger, maybe she won't be able to ride her motorcycle anymore. (Wallmoss often dreamed about Sunrise riding a big, noisy, throbbing motorcycle. Sometimes, Wallmoss even rode behind her, holding on tightly.)
This is crazy, Wallmoss thought. I have a girlfriend who isn't even real. And even though she isn't real, she's growing a bigger chest than I have.
Wallmoss checked her own chest. At least MY chest doesn't seem to be any different. So I'm not sleeping with some kind of...chest-stealing chest vampire. Chestpire? She snorted. I am being SO ridiculous. No matter what shape I squeeze a pillow into, as long as I'm happy and I sleep well, and I know what's real and what's just imagination, everything's fine, right?
Chest vampires aren't real, Wallmoss! Go back to bed, and get some more sleep.
Wallmoss turned off the lights again, and crept back into bed. She wondered, should I kick Sunrise out of bed, just for peace of mind? Just to prove I know she really is imaginary, and she won't have her feelings hurt?
But Sunrise felt so nice in Wallmoss's arms, absorbing Wallmoss's own warmth and returning it back to her. This is fine, Wallmoss thought. No, this is perfect. She fell asleep, dreaming of Sunrise's body slowly moving against her.
***
Daylight shone brightly upon Wallmoss's face. She felt her girlfriend's warm body moving on the bed beside her.
"Morning, Sunrise," Wallmoss said. She felt her girlfriend's slow...writhing?
What kind of girlfriend writhes?
Wallmoss jumped out of bed, screaming, shoving Sunrise away as hard as she could.
Sunrise fell on the floor. A seam burst open. A mixture of fluffy stuffing and squirming maggots flopped out through the gap.
"No!" Wallmoss screamed. "Sunrise was full of...MAGGOTS?"
The maggots writhed in a regular rhythm. Wallmoss recognized the rhythm of Sunrise's breathing, late at night.
"No. This can't be happening. NO!"
Wallmoss went to the bathroom, put on the biggest, toughest-looking, longest rubber gloves she could find, got all the cleaning supplies, and returned to her bedroom. She picked up handfuls of mixed stuffing and maggots, and threw them into a wastebasket.
"Oh, holy...I am going to have to throw away EVERYTHING. I wish this had never, ever happened. After I hose down this room with a flamethrower, and make everything absolutely clean no matter what it takes, I want to forget it all, and then I want to forget that I forgot."
Wallmoss wrapped up the 'Sunrise' body pillow in the largest size of trash bag she had, and sealed the bag shut. She wrapped the sealed trash bag in ANOTHER bag, and sealed that shut too. She was thinking about a third and fourth trash bag, when she noticed something odd in the wastebasket where she'd thrown the horribly contaminated stuffing.
There was a little envelope. Wallmoss's gloved hands opened it. She found a note, in her own handwriting.
The note provided exact instructions for efficiently and completely cleaning maggots out of a carpet, and out of a bed, and washing them out of any kind of fabric or sewn goods, until you would never know they'd been there.
That seemed...helpful?
On the next page, Wallmoss found instructions for how to obtain maggot eggs and sew them into a body pillow in just the 'right' way, so the moisture of someone sleep-drooling or crying on the pillow would make them hatch.
What the fuck?
After that was a recipe for selectively erasing some of a person's memories, using drugs and a "magic stone." Weird. Could anything like that really work?
The note ended with, "I know the very ending of what you just went through was horrible. But you also got to spend weeks feeling like your imaginary girlfriend was slowly turning real, while you cuddled her every night. Didn't those weeks make it all worth it? Didn't they, really? Finally feeling that you weren't all alone?"
"I'm thinking," Wallmoss said.