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A grumpus gathers fallen palm leaves from the grove, burgundy fur slick with sweat. They pile the leaves on the beach, ignoring the bugsnax that shuffle about in the brush or investigate the stacked fronds. If they can get it lit, it will make a good bonfire, one that will be visible for miles. Their small fishing boat, tied up to another tree, lists in the shallow tide. It had cracked its bottom open on the rocks, during the storm that brought them here. It might be fixable, or it might not.
For now, they take a rest in the shade, sliding down the trunk of a palm deeper in the grove, where the trees are denser. The strange grumpus they’d met, the one with frosting all over his back and paws made of candles, he’d told them that this was a safe place, that they could take their time and fix their boat, but it was such a gorgeous island… Why not stay a while?
The visitor wasn’t so sure about that. Work wouldn’t wait for them. There were deadlines to meet, important people who didn’t care if you were lost at sea. The money was good, fantastic even, and they hadn’t clawed themselves up to where they were without stepping on a few paws along the way-
Something snaps. A dry palm frond? They look over, into the dappled, shifting greenery of the grove. Something’s standing there, a ways away, its true shape obscured by the swaying shadows and the labyrinth of palm trunks. Something grumpus-sized, but the proportions are off, the eyes goggling, lidless. It starts to walk towards them, its body jiggling unnaturally as if all the pieces were only loosely connected.
The visitor jumps to their feet, scrambling out of the grove as the monster lumbers towards them, letting out a thick, gurgling roar. As it gets closer, they begin to understand its shape; it’s made of food, just like the strange insects, a conglomeration of ice cream and meat and vegetables in the rough silhouette of a grumpus. They run to their boat, nearly tripping over their pile of palm leaves, frantically cutting the tow line and shoving off into the water despite the broken bottom. The creature wades after them as they paddle it, but it must not be able to swim as it stops when the water reaches its chest. It watches silently while the visitor pulls the motor cord, the engine sputtering to life.
There isn’t much fuel left, but maybe they can reach land before it runs out.
Anything’s better than staying here.
“I know where y’all are comin’ from. I really do. But,” Gramble sighs, looking between the two of them. “You gotta stop scarin’ off our guests.”
The firelight glistens off the sticky, mismatched faces of the snaxsquatches seated in front of him. They never formed exactly the same way each time, but Eggabell and Lizbert had their preferences. Eggler, cinnasnail, cheery for Eggabell. Scoopy, bunger and stewdler for Liz, and the other parts varied.
Lizbert growls, Eggabell resting a waffle paw on top of her own.
“She says no,” Cakerie states, peeking over Gramble’s shoulder. Unable to speak for themselves, Lizbert and Eggabell had to rely on the symbiote to translate. “And she isn’t gonna stop.”
“C’mon, Liz!” Gramble exclaims, lifting his hands and planting them on his frosted hips with a splat. “How many times are we gonna have this argument? You know neither me nor Snaktooth can control whether folks land here or not. Snaktooth won’t let ‘em leave. That ain’t up to me. No matter what, the island’s gotta eat. It’s my job to make sure that our guests are comfortable, and if you’re gettin’ in the way of my job, I’m gonna have somethin’ to say about it!”
Liz makes a wet hissing sound, and Cakerie giggles a little.
“What?” Gramble asks. “It ain’t funny, Liz.”
“No, no. She says, and what are you gonna do about it, you little pink cream puff?”
“She did not say that. C’mon Cakerie, you gotta translate right if we’re gonna get anything figured out at all.”
“Well, she was thinking it.”
Liz shakes her head, eyelids lowering in the closest thing she could approximate to a frown, Eggabell matching her expression.
“You gotta look at it this way,” Gramble says, like he’s said a half dozen times before. “Nobody gets rescued from Snaktooth. Remember us? Nobody heard from us for over a year. Nobody came looking… It’s just too dangerous, and we both know why.”
“You guys have spent soooo much time arguing with it, and I know, cuz I have to hear all of it.” Cakerie slithers out from Gramble’s collar, hovering in front of the two of them and wiggling slowly on their serpentine neck. “But Snaktooth doesn’t think the same way you do. You can’t make it feel bad, cuz it just doesn’t. It’s helping people. You think you’re the first one to try and change its mind? And besides-”
“Can’t get far on a leaky boat,” Gramble picks up right where their sentence leaves off.
Silence stretches between them, other than the crackle of the fire and the soft cries of the bugsnax in the trees.
“…Egg says she totally agrees, and that she and Liz were being stupid,” Cakerie speaks up after a moment, prompting Eggabell to lurch forward off her seat with an offended grunt. She holds her paws out in a gesture of exasperation. Lizbert stands as well, veritably looming over Gramble.
“Well you are!” Cakerie squeaks, as Gramble looks mortified. “You’re just getting people killed!”
Eggabell swipes for Cakerie, but they jerk back. The snaxsquatch’s body trembles violently before falling to pieces, various bugsnax scattering. Lizbert growls sharply, googly eyes narrowed before her construct crumbles as well. A strabby scrambles over Gramble’s foot, and he quickly scoops it up, holding it to his face as the rest of the snax vanish into the night.
“Sorry,” he tells it softly, patting its little head with a single candle finger. “I know they mean well. Just wish they’d try to understand us. We just wanna help, don’t we?”
“Strabby,” the strabby says.
Lizbert was right when she said fighting the will of the island was like fighting a tsunami with a bucket. Every independent action they made required all of their concentration. Forming a construct of snax took focus enough, let alone moving it to perform actions that Snaktooth disapproved of. They were taking hold of its own matter, its own flesh in the form of the bugsnax, twisting them against its wishes. The conversation with Gramble had been just another reminder of how decisively it could take back what rightfully belonged to it, disintegrating the only thing that came close to their old physical bodies.
How much of those were left, it was difficult to say. Probably nothing, absorbed into the meat of the undersnax. Fur and muscle and bone dissolved. They existed in their own bubble, their consciousnesses intertwined, and it was only with significant effort that they could separate Lizbert from Eggabell.
But unless they were going about one of their rare aboveground forays, that was fine. There were no more secrets between them, no more miscommunications, forgetting whose memories were whose. It didn’t really matter, anyway. There would be no returning to that life. It all seemed so petty now. But even in their cocoon, they couldn’t fully rest, not with Snaktooth constantly probing at the edges, searching for cracks like the roots of a tree seeking water through solid stone. It wanted in. It wanted them to become part of it. Together they were strong enough to keep it out, to keep themselves undiluted, but for how much longer?
In comparison, taking hold of a single bugsnax was easier. Controlling its body and seeing through its eyes, they could observe events on the surface. A razzby toddles along the beach with unusual focus, following after Gramble as he trundles through the brush down to the water. Day in and day out they watched him frolic in the lush meadows and forests of Snaktooth, playing with the bugsnax or simply taking in the beauty of the island. He napped in the warm sand or the cool, shady nooks of Flavor Falls. Their bodies ached to remember what it was like to feel that, to feel anything at all. To feel the weight of her paw in their own, to run their nails through her fur, to smell her, to taste, to be anywhere but the blood-red limbo of the undersnax.
Gramble pauses, spotting something in the water, then drops onto all fours to scamper over. The razzby skitters after him, watching as he drags something up the beach from where it was bobbing in the surf. Burgundy fur, waterlogged and bloated. He drags the corpse under the arms, Cakerie poking their head out of his collar to stare down at the razzby as he passes.
The dead were no good to Snaktooth. It could not assimilate a corpse. The island seems to tremble around them, faint notes of sorrow and rage and disappointment, like whispers from another room. Another one lost. Gramble brings the body back to his barn, lays it in the open dirt pit that occupied the lower floor, sits and watches the soil slowly swallow it. The bugsnax chitter and warble in a soft accompaniment to his sobs.
Anywhere’s better than here.
The next visitor arrives with purpose. A fair amount of them do. Snaktooth is a place nobody returns from, and for as many who regard that idea as a challenge or a warning, there are just as many who find it comforting. She buries her face in Gramble’s sticky shoulder as he hugs her, murmuring to her how everything was going to be alright. She was safe here. She would be taken care of.
Her boat is drifting out to sea. She didn’t tie it up, but unlike the last boat, this one is intact. A tropicabug pauses its patrol, twitching, its body moving involuntarily to clamber onto a kweeble, followed by an eggler slithering up from the sand. Snax pile on top of each other, forming legs, a torso, but every new snak they grab hold of struggles to get away. Parts fall off, scatter into the bushes or disappear back underground. The half-formed snaxsquatch staggers, dragging itself upright with one arm, legs trembling beneath its mass. They make it to the edge of the foliage before the construct collapses, bugsnax scattering.
Their shell cracks as Snaktooth overpowers their will. For just a moment, it seeps in, gushing through the opening like arterial spray. There is hunger, but there is also concern, a deep, stabbing feeling of longing and relief. Then it’s gone, the barrier restored, and those emotions fade.
The visitor does not even notice. She pulls back from Gramble, tears shining in her eyes. Soon, her heart and her belly would be full, and she would understand the overwhelming love Snaktooth felt for every lonely soul that washed up on its shores.
Gramble and the visitor sit in the shade of the palm trees where Wiggle’s camp used to be. Her old beach chair is still there, its cheerful stripes faded by the sun and elements, but it’s still sturdy enough for the visitor to lean back in as Gramble bandages her non-snakified leg. The razzby watches from the bushes nearby.
Do you remember?
I think so.
The sharp, chemical smell of rubbing alcohol. Harsh fluorescent lights. The sting of disinfectant, looking down at her paws… her paws so small and pale on her gray fur, asking, what happened? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. Oh, just fell while looking around an old building in the woods. Really? Why?
“You gotta be careful around the shipwrecks,” Gramble is saying. “The wood rots away and leaves all kinda rusty nails and stuff stickin’ out.”
I hope she got her tetanus booster. Of course you’d still be worried about that. It’s okay, though. You worry so much because you care. That’s why you became a doctor . Long nights studying with the radio turned down and the window open, the sounds of the city drifting through, turned into long nights at the clinic with its lockers that smelled like sour milk, her paws raw from washing them over and over. Filbo looking away sheepishly as she spreads ointment on his burns. Filbo curled up under the slide at the playground, sniffling as she puts colorful bandaids on his scraped knees.
“Are we the only ones on this island?” The visitor asks. “The only grumps, I mean.”
“We oughta be, why?”
She sighs softly, letting her head loll onto her shoulder. “Just feel like I’m being watched sometimes, like it’s not just the bugsnax.”
Gramble sets her leg back down, looking thoughtful. “Snaktooth’s just got its ways of keepin’ an eye on us. I promise there ain’t nothin’ you gotta worry about. Especially not when I’m around.”
A little white lie never hurt anybody, not when it was in service of what he saw as relieving a much greater pain. It wasn’t even something that they’d never heard Gramble say before. After all, did they really count as grumpuses at this point? Past lies were worth hardly anything, with all of it laid bare, their selves spread open like a carcass for butchering, every selfish little thought and action on display. All of it, forgiven.
Money changing paws, a padlock undone under cover of darkness. A disoriented grumpus banging on the door to the exam room, leaving bloody smears and tufts of fur on the reinforced window. Yellow NO TRESPASSING signs glinting in her flashlight beam. Red and blue lights flashing through the blinds, paws over her mouth, trying not to scream. The smell of fresh earth. Broken glass on the linoleum tiles.
The visitor smiles, leaning forward to cup his face in her leafy paws and bump her forehead against his own.
Her fur between her fingers soft short coarse long, the smell of bleach of antibacterial soap of dust of sweat
“Thanks… I’m sorry. I guess I’m still getting used to living here.”
“Nothin’ to apologize for, it’s alright.”
Her paw pads rough and calloused and soft, claws long and chipped and short and filed and gentle and firm, her breath sweet and carrying the scent of the cherry cough drops she’d just taken
She kisses Gramble’s nose, leaving a smear of honey on it. It trails from her transformed fangs and drips incessantly down her chin. “You’re sweet, Gram,” she murmurs. “Wish we’d met in a better place…”
I remember.
I miss it.
I miss it so much it aches.
“I’m glad you came.” He leans into her touch, frosting oozing from between her fingers. “Still pretty nice, though.”
“Yeah.” Leaning back in the beach chair, she looks up into the canopy of the palm trees, at the garlands of shells and driftwood he’d hung. Wiggle’s lanterns had long gone to tatters, stripped away by the wind and rain. The chair creaks as Gramble lays against her chest, her arms resting across his shoulders. “Still pretty nice.”
The morning is gray, clouds blanketing the sky, no picture-perfect sunset to wake up to. While the island might drag itself into warmer waters to overwinter, there was no outrunning the change of seasons completely.
Gramble sleeps curled up in his nest in the loft of the barn. He was far from alone, but bugsnax just didn’t compare to the warmth of another body. A good host did all they could to make their visitors happy. It was a privilege he cherished every time, but always a temporary one, before they came home for good.
Oh, well. No such thing as perfect.
The distant sound of a motor approaches, coughing and sputtering as it urges the boat to shore. Gramble stirs as the bugsnax chitter and start to squirm and clamber around him.
I don’t want to do it again.
I know.
You saved the rest of the expedition already. If there’s any debt to be paid, you’ve paid it. You’ve struggled for so long.
He shakes himself vigorously and pulls a poncho on over his head, ready to look presentable for whoever he was about to welcome.
But what if we can save them?
It’s too much to ask of you. To ask of anybody. It’s okay to admit when you’ve had enough.
I’m so tired.
So am I.
The boat, now apparently a small, speedy fishing boat, limps through the water until it bumps its nose against the sand.
I want to go home.
We can’t. This is our home now.
Can we make it a home? You always wanted to live by the ocean.
Gramble walks out of the palm grove, catching the visitor as they stagger out of their boat. They lean on him, grabbing fistfuls of his poncho. “Thank god,” they croak. “I thought I was dead.” Any further words or actions go unnoticed.
I think so. But we’d have to let it in.
They’d spent so long keeping it out, keeping themselves concealed while it churned around them, scraping its metaphorical claws against their door.
What if we lose yourselves? What if I lose you again?
We can’t live here if we’re fighting it all the time. If we don’t, I’m afraid we’ll lose ourselves anyway, and struggling will be the only thing that matters. An empty shell.
I don’t want to forget what it was like. I don’t want to forget us.
You won’t. I’ll be right here. I’m hanging on to you. Can you feel it?
Yes.
Don’t be afraid.
When the barrier falls away, they expect ravenous hunger, they expect the hurricane force of a vast and incomprehensible consciousness, a thousand teeth digging into them, threatening to tear them apart. It still hits like a tidal wave, but it’s not rage, it’s the heartbreak of a spurned lover, it’s the relief of a mother gathering her lost child into her arms. It’s love that burns with the heat of a volcano, it’s joy, it’s forgiveness, it’s sorrow for the time that was lost but hope for what still remained and what was yet to come when they would finally, finally, all be together and safe.
Standing on that cloudy shore, she looks into her lover’s eyes and looking back at her are the faces of every person Snaktooth had ever loved. It surrounds like warm broth, a gentle tongue and teeth, a hug from a long-unseen friend. The hands they join are not fruit and pastry but a thousand different paws in all sizes and fur colors and textures, remembered and cherished, all in one. Memories of damp sand between toes, of the smell of many different seas, of the wind tousling fur, the cries of gulls and the taste of salt.
Hand in hand, they walk down the beach, together.
We’ll rest upon the knee where all divisions cease to be
A root beer float in our banana boat across the tapioca sea
When letting all attachments go, there’s the only prayer we know
May it be so, may it be so, may it be so, oh