she asked me what my spirit animal is and i said a lion

she laughed at me

that figures

lay around all day while the lioness hunts and takes care of the cubs

only getting up to fuck and feast

you’re no lion

i say back and thought about

seemed ideal really

a bone in my cock so i could take on all the females

not really needing to do much else but occasionally help take down prey

no

you’re spirit animal is a platypus

i asked her what that was supposed to mean

you’re an abomination

couldn’t argue there either

in fact

as loathsome as it was to admit

it describes me

the only poisonous mammal

one of the few egg laying ones as well

that doesn’t apply

basically a frankensteinian mishmash of functional parts with a poisonous barb and duck bill

she was drunk and kept laughing and wheezing between cigarettes while calling me a platypus

and i just smiled as she did

tipped back a beer

knowing before long she was going to be groping me and begging for me to take her back to bedroom

she might not believe i’m a lion

but she’d find out the truth after a while

now i am having visions of oversized platypi, platyplodes, platypus roaming the the land like angry anklyosaurus minus the spikes

a kaiju nightmare from lovecraftian hellscapes

causing death and mayhem

skewering the screaming humans on it’s poison barb and them disintegrating into pulp

lumbering on webbed feet

flat tail laying waste to office buildings

whatcha thinking about platypus

i open my mouth to explain and then shut it again

there’s no point going into the finer points of kaiju platypi, i’m going with that even if it isn’t ancient greek appropriate

she takes my silence for anger and stubs out her cigarette into the overflowing ashtray and tries to look seductive

but the drunken wobble isn’t as coy as she hopes and i find myself not in the mood for playing lion on the serengeti anymore

I bet her playful attempts away and feign a headache

not feign

the mother of all headaches is brewing behind my eyes and her incessant giggles serve only to exacerbate it

instead i casually show her the door and decide to empty the ashtray later

for now it is throbbing temples and giant duck moles for me

still think i’m a lion

but i’m only lying to myself