Disclaimer: The Animorphs and all related things belong to K.A. Applegate and Scholastic, not me. I just want to hang out in their world.

In a Jar

She is using me to try and disgust the human. She wants to see it cringe, shrink back, say "Eeew, what is that? Some kind of worm?" She wants to put this human to the test by seeing if it can overcome its disgust and let the slimy slug into its ear. If the human can bring itself to the utter degradation of touching me, then Edriss will know she has won. I just have to wait in this jar and see what happens.

If she showed me to the children, they might poke at me a bit, and then try to smash me with their tiny hands, if they didn't just stuff me into their toothless mouths and try to eat me. Nothing about the slug would resonate in their child minds, nothing about it would say that this was half of their father, half of the entity that held them in his arms when they cried and tucked them into bed at night. They came into life slimy and wet, but were quickly dried off and made clean, made pure, made into creatures worthy of love. When I am in Hildy, I am made worthy too.

I am not new to self-loathing. I have long been a failed soldier, considered too weak and emotional to really accomplish anything. But now I am so far beyond that; I am a failed Yeerk. I look at my body through a human's eyes and feel their disgust. I want to pretend for as long as I can that Hildy's hands are my hands, that Darwin and Madra are my children, that Allison is my wife.

Allison. Edriss. How quickly I began to think of Edriss as "she", just as quickly as I began to think of myself as "he". There is nothing male about me; I am a genderless blob, just as Edriss is. And based on human concepts of sex, she is the more masculine one. But when I look at her, I see a woman, and when I touch her, I am a man. I can hold her in my arms, Hildy's arms, but my arms, and ignore the rest of the universe. Pretend nothing else is out there, just twinkling stars that I can teach my children the names of.

It may all change when I come out of this jar. I will open human eyes again, and if they are Hildy's, then my paradise is safe. If they belong to someone else, this "voluntary" controller of hers, then it all goes wrong. She wants to bring in the rest, Yeerks who will never understand what a gift they are being given. They will look on humans like Hork-Bajir, ignoring the sanctity of a human mind. They will wedge their disgusting bodies into human ears that they will take for granted. They will stomp all over my little virgin world and make it as vile as they are. As vile as I am.

The jar is beginning to shift, sloshing me against the smooth cold sides. In a moment, I will feel human fingers around me, followed by a human ear. I will push inside it, invade this pure flesh, and put myself where something like me does not belong. I will go in and immerse myself once more in my beautiful fantasy. I want it to be Hildy so badly. Please let me pretend just a little while longer…

"You win, Sub-Visser."