Drip Jaw Red Hunger – He Forgot to Swallow

The drool is not hunger. It is grammar.

He is trying to say something. The mouth is open because the sentence is too long. The teeth are arranged like punctuation — commas, semicolons, the occasional exclamation point that is actually just a canine. The drool is syntax, the physical manifestation of a thought that started in one language and forgot to finish in any.

The red eyes are not angry. They are frustrated, the color of someone who has been waiting for you to understand for three hours and you are still not understanding. The frustration is not with you. It is with the gap between what he means and what your ears can process. The gap is wide. The gap has teeth.

The triangles on his cheeks are not decoration. They are directions, pointing downward, suggesting you look at the drool, which is suggesting you look at the teeth, which are suggesting you stop looking and start listening. He has been speaking this whole time. The sound is below your hearing range. The drool is the only part you can perceive. It is subtitles for a language your species has not evolved to receive.

"He is not drooling on you. He is translating. Badly."