Dodo Eraser

A hedgehog runs onto our futon, waking me up.

“It’s me, Susan!” she chirps. “Sorry to be back so late, I was out drinking with, um, friends; we wound up at this after party at the witches’ house, someone goes, ‘drink this and you’ll swap bodies with a hedgehog,’ and I thought why not, hedgehogs are fun, but, ‘what about my body, what happens to my body when the hedgehog is using it?’ and one of the witches said ‘don’t worry, just be the best hedgehog you can be and we’ll take care of the rest,’ and the safeword, oh crap crap crap I think I forgot the safeword, Hey Agatha! do you remember the safeword?”

Dozens of definitely drunken hedgehogs come running in, snuffling and snorting, climbing up onto the futon and/or just getting it on. One or two hedgehogs hanging out in the garden are kind of sweet, but I feel distinctly uneasy sitting in the midst of what is rapidly turning into a hedgehog orgy in our own bedroom.

What would Susan’s safeword be? And which one of these hedgehogs is Agatha? How many people do I know are now hedgehogs, not minding that it’s me watching them cavort, knowing who I am? Meanwhile, how many people now awkwardly ordering breakfast in this town used to be animals, enjoying having hands and clothes and money and not having to kill anything if they don’t feel like it?

Me, I have trouble socializing. I’m the one who always hides in some corner, avoiding conversations where I’ll pounce on the wrong part. I feel jealous that Susan is so much better at being a person than I am, even if she’s now a hedgehog. Nobody ever invites me to the witches’ house, not anymore.

Someone who looks exactly like my wife walks out of the bathroom, stretching like she’s trying to reach that itch on her back like she used to but can’t quite anymore, and when she sees all the hedgehogs her face crosses. “Susan!” she barks.

“Who are you?” I ask the person who looks like Susan, but obviously isn’t, while the hedgehog version of my wife is doing the come hither with three (four!) frisky types.

“My name’s Agatha. I’m the hedgehog that lives in your yard.” She lifts Susan out of the pile. “You and your friends are going to wreck it for the rest of us!”

“No, we won’t,” Susan giggles, her legs paddling in the air. “Not if we don’t use the safeword.”

“Do you know the safeword?” I ask Agatha the former hedgehog.

“Maybe,” she says, tossing Susan back into the pile. “But the thing is, according to the witches, when you use the safeword, all the fun stops: the hedgehogs turn back into people, and the people turn back into hedgehogs. As a person I’m really enjoying how slow you people are.”

“I dare you to use the safeword,” Susan chirps, nipping one of the hedgehog’s ears.

“How slow are we?” I ask, my own safeword slowly tumbling in my mind, like one of those jars they toss into aquariums with something delicious trapped inside.

Agatha gives me a really focused look, like are we flirting, or did you used to be a predator? The witches must be enjoying every moment of this, scrying at us with their caldrons and crystals.

“Why don’t we let the hedgehogs be hedgehogs?” she decides. “Get dressed. Then you can take me out for whatever you people eat at this hour of the morning, and you can tell me more about what it’s like to be a person.”

I feel so flattered she thinks I know what that is.

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Hugh Behm-Steinberg’s fiction can be found in X-Ray, The Pinch, Invisible City, Heavy Feather Review and The Offing. His short story “Taylor Swift” won the Barthelme Prize from Gulf Coast, and his story “Goodwill” was picked as one of Wigleaf’s Top Fifty Very Short Fictions. A collection of prose poems and microfiction, Animal Children, was published by Nomadic/Black Lawrence Press. He lives in Barcelona. https://linktr.ee/hughsteinberg.