Theodora’s Reviews > A Kiss With Teeth > Status Update

“Paul needs a normal family. We agreed.”

“He needs a father more. One who’s not too scared of himself to be there.”

“I’m a monster.”

“You’re just more literal than most.”

He wants to be her monster. To transform her life in its ending.

She’s young, her life still a web of dream, her love just touched by sadness.

Vlad is over-empty, a great mounting void, and the world rushes to fill him.

This is no way to be a father. No way to be a man.

But Vlad was a monster before he was a man.

Even if someone beneath looked up, what is he? Wisp of cloud, shiver of a remembered nightmare, bird spreading wings for flight. A shadow among shadows.

“I am tired. I start to forget.”

“Or remember,” she says.

“I always remember.”

“This is only for now,” says Vlad’s wife. “Once your work gets better, you can watch again. And play.”

“Okay.” The boy is not okay, but he knows what he is supposed to say.

Vlad wants to teach Paul to sharpen his pencils with a knife, but sharpening pencils with a knife is not common these days, and anyway they’d have to collect the shaved bits of wood and graphite afterward. The old ways were harder to clean up.