io9 is proud to present fiction from Lightspeed Magazine. Once a month, we feature a story from Lightspeedâs current issue. This monthâs selection is âLegsâ by A.M. Maris. Enjoy!

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Legs

by A.M. Maris

He called her Legs. âLegs for days,â heâd say, his voice thick with wonder. When he spoke to her, she was filled with a warm, heady feeling that made her purr and rub against him. She had to be careful when she did, because she was still growing into her spikes and sheâd already drawn blood more than once. His skin was so flimsy, so tearable. She marveled he didnât end up a shredded mess just from going about his days.

“But thatâs what youâre for,â he said, recovering from his momentary flare of anger at being nicked. âTo protect me.â

⢠⢠⢠â¢

He called her other things, too. Legolas. Leggo My Eggo. Leg Cramp, if she was being obnoxious, which she often was. In her defense, she was little more than a toddler trying to get the hang of her many-legged body. She seemed to sprout new limbs every week or so. He kept a log of her milestones in a grid-block notebook, recording the date and measurements of budding appendages, lengthening tails, sharpening spikes, the coloring and roughening of her hide.

At six months old, sheâd grown into her body. She didnât trip so often over her string bean, seven-jointed legs. She no longer accidentally impaled things with her spikes or urinated on the carpet. For a while, she was very good, and he was proud of her goodness, and she was proud of his pride.

⢠⢠⢠â¢

He brought her around to show off to his friends. She was so eager to impress them, she did everything they asked: jump, bow, roll over, stick out your tongue. Some acidic drool got onto one of the hands poking around in her mouth, burning through the glove. (Sheâd just come into her salivary glands.) The owner of the hand howled and leapt away, shouting obscenities.

âYouâre sulking, arenât you?â her keeper said on the way home.

She couldnât speak in the way he did, but he could always tell what she was thinking. She didnât like being touched so much, at least not by strangers.

âDonât,â he said, rubbing her head. âThat idiot shouldnât have stuck his hand so far into your mouth. And they all agree, youâre beautiful. The most impressive mongrel theyâve seen in ages.â

She unfurled under his praise, leaning into him.

âOh, Legs,â he said, âyou miracle, you freak of nature.â

⢠⢠⢠â¢

Legs was unsure of her origins. She heard him say she was grown in something called a lab, whichâshe was less than pleased to deduceâwas a kind of dog, those horrid, furry, four-legged things she encountered on walks. She didnât understand how she could come from something so stupid, and with such few legs. Dogs seemed to have two brain cells, one for peeing and one for barking. They usually did both when they saw her.

She once witnessed a dog eat a literal piece of garbage. She growled and raised her hackles, letting it know she was offended and astonished they shared even one strand of DNA.

âEasy, Legs,â said her keeper, as the dog went berserk. âYou could kill him in one bite. Mangy ass lab.â

So this, then, was her pathetic lineage. She felt a deep thrum of shame, but he assuaged her mood by reminding her how smart, beautiful, and capable of murder she was.

⢠⢠⢠â¢

Still in her adolescence, exhausted from all the growing, sheâd sleep for most of the afternoon, until he came home. His arrival was the best part of the day, when he squatted and let her wriggle excitedly in his lap (she had grown hard keratin plating behind which she could conceal her spikes, almost always at will). The scent of him filled her nostrils, her very being. She purred so hard she thought her vocal cords would seize.

âMy beauty,â he said, scratching the soft innards of her ears. âMy smart, smart girl. Weâre going to go far, you and I.â

Then came the second-best part of the day, when they went out for a walk or a drive. She preferred drives. She hung her head out the window, lapping at the air, tongues lolling in the summer wind. On walks, he tethered her with a cord, which was worse to navigate than a new limb because she couldnât even feel it. She was always getting tangled in the cord, and her lack of coordination made him angry. Otherwise, walks were delightful.

Everything on two legs crossed the street and everything on four legs barked like crazy. The smells were excellent.

The bigger she grew, the less often they walked around the neighborhood and the more often they drove to a wide, open field. She loved its vast emptiness. She could almost recreate the face-in-the-breeze feeling by running as fast as she could, although he got angry if she did too much running and not enough of something else. She was never quite sure what the something else was. He yelled âDefensive shield!â and âSpikes out!â and threw tennis balls for her to catch in the air. He was always changing what he wanted. If she couldnât manage to produce his desired outcome, heâd get upset, which was terrible, and sheâd get a shock from her collar, which was worse.

The third-best part of the day, which was rapidly becoming the new second-best part, was dinner. He fed her new, thrilling foods: spider crabs, bats, live snakes with delicious, crunchy mice in their bellies.

After dinner, she lay at his feet while he watched TV. She was usually too sleepy to enjoy the evenings very much. She disliked the TV shows he watched, where people put their bodies together and made sounds like they were being injured. She had the vague impression they were ashamed of how few legs they had, that by combining their bodies they could exorcise this wrongness, this absence. It made her sad in a small, hollow way, because his two legs were muscly and beautiful, and he neednât be ashamed. If he was, sheâd give him one or two or three of her own. She tried to fall asleep very quickly, so he wouldnât notice how sad she was and think it had anything to do with him.

⢠⢠⢠â¢

One morning, she was left unsupervised in the backyard. It was autumn now, cool enough to be outside, but heâd forgotten to feed her breakfast. She waited to be let in, whining and pacing by the door, her hunger approaching ravenous levels. As the sun crested the roof of the house, she realized he must have left for the day. The neighborâs chickens clucked and rustled in the next yard over. Legs hated chickenâtoo lean, more slimy than bloodyâthough as the hours passed, her need for food eclipsed all previous distaste. She tore apart the chain-link fence and feasted for several glorious, feather-filled minutes until the neighbor came out screaming.

She was startled, then guilty, then afraid. The neighbor raised a gun and shot her several times. The bullets bounced off her plated armor. âJesus fucking Christ!â yelled the neighbor.

She didnât know what to do. When she couldnât figure out a command in the field, her keeper called her to heel (she was very proud of her recall) and she lay at his feet while he kicked her. After he cooled off, his next instructions were usually clearer.

âDennis!â the neighbor shrieked as Legs came toward the house, âDennis, your science experiment is going to kill me!â

So his name was Dennis. Her master, her diviner. What a marvelous, perfect name! She couldnât believe she was hearing it for the first time.

The neighbor took careful aim and shot her again. The bullet pierced the soft skin beneath her throat. She collapsed in the dirt with chicken gristle still in her teeth.

⢠⢠⢠â¢

Dennis raged and threw things at the walls. He didnât touch herâshe was recovering from surgery, her throat itched terribly and all nineteen of her legs were encased in cloth so she couldnât scratch it, and also she was extremely woozyâbut she wished he would.

She deserved it.

âYou can never do something like that again, do you understand me?â he shouted. âYou could hurt someone. Theyâll take you away from me.â

Legs whined in her nest, her cloth-swaddled limbs jerking lethargically.

One of her first memories was of shredding Dennisâs linens to make a nest, and of the chill silence that came over him when he saw it. She understood instantly sheâd done something wrong. He called her to him, soft-spoken yet firm. Once she was at his feet, he hit her over the head with a kitchen pot. The metal dented against her armor. He shouted, flinging the pot across the room, impotent in his anger. He hit her with an iron wrench until she lay whimpering, too afraid to move. After the beating he stood over her in a state of shock. At length he knelt, touching her head. She nuzzled him in relief. It was okay, they were still learning how to talk to each other. He bought new linens and she kept the ruined ones for her nest.

Now as before, Dennis wore himself out. He sank to his knees, his eyes wet and unfocused. He lay his head against her belly.

âOh, my sweet, hurt girl,â he mumbled into her leathery hide. âLegs, Iâm so sorry.â

⢠⢠⢠â¢

A few months after the chicken massacre, Legs succumbed to puberty. Puberty was nothing short of hell. She would be going about her day, sniffing in the yard or grooming herself or taking a nap, when some animal urge would flood her brain, and her traitor body would carry it out. Run around! said her brain, and she scampered for hours about the house, scuffing the already-scuffed floors, until her brain said, Sleep! and she fell, snoring, into her nest. One day, seized by the urge to chew, she stripped the living room couch to its wooden bones, gnawing until her gums filled with splinters. Dennis put her in a cage when he left the next day. Escape! ordered her brain, affronted, so she chewed through the cage. Dennis found her hours later in the yard, doing Run! again.

Fuck! said her brain. She vigorously and assiduously humped everything she could possibly hump, including Dennisâs sleeping body. The sound he made when he woke beneath her frightened her so much she peed, even though she hadnât had an accident in months. She scuttled to the living room, cowering in her nest, trying to say she was sorry before he started in on the hitting. Seeing his figure backlit in the doorway, she laid an egg out of fright.

âHuh,â Dennis said. âThatâs interesting.â

⢠⢠⢠â¢

Dennis announced she was going to have a playdate. This was cause for great celebration, and she dashed about the house like she hadnât since her puberty days. Dennis didnât share her enthusiasm. He was nervous, on edge.

In the car, he put her in a cage draped with cloth, which he told her in no uncertain terms not to shred.

She was carsick on the way to the playdate and nervous from being carsick. Dennis was too distracted to be mad about the vomit. He put the tether on her, even though they were inside, in a parking garage. He put more horrible cloth over her snout, avoiding her eyes as he did so.

They got into an elevator, descending deep below the garage. Some of Dennisâs friends greeted them at the doors. She recognized them from all those months ago. She thumped her tails, trying to lick them, tasting only the dreadful cloth.

âRestrain your mutt, sir,â snapped the one whose hand sheâd burned.

Dennis dragged her bodily into the room. It was full of people, and movement, and overwhelming smells.

âLegs, listen to me.â He crouched before her, cupping her head in his hands. She managed, just barely, to focus on him. âThe other mongrel will try to kill you. You canât let that happen.â He gripped her head tighter. âDo you understand?â

She didnât. Dennis pulled her into another room, removed the tether and muzzle. The smells were hot and rank, blood and adrenaline. She didnât like this playdate. She wanted to go home.

A door opened at the far end of the antechamber. Something massive and saber-toothed screeched on the other side.

⢠⢠⢠â¢

Legs won the fight. She won because she had to, but it wasnât hard. She was good at engaging her armor when a blow was coming and retracting her plates to hit the tiger with her spikes. And dodging her opponentâs poison spit was similar to catching balls in the air.

She hadnât wanted to kill anything, even though the chemical rush of her final bite to the jugular was nice, a startling clarity. She sat licking her wounds next to the mongrelâs corpse. All at once the smell of death caught up to her, the ancestral knowledge that she killed this animal and now would eat it. There was no conscious thought between her realization and the act of eating. She leaned over, burying her jaws in a hunk of shoulder.

People yelled in disgust and delight.

The look on Dennisâs face when he came to retrieve her was pure reverence. He hugged her, skinning himself against the grain of her hide. âYou did it,â he said thickly. Tears streaked his cheeks. âLegs, you were brilliant.â

⢠⢠⢠â¢

The fights occurred irregularly, every few months. The more fights she had (Dennis insisted on calling them playdates, and he also insisted on saying things like âIs this line secure?â when discussing said playdates), the less she got to go to the field, or on drives for the sake of going on drives. She began to dread the car, the cage, and being covered in cloth. Worst were the injections Dennis gave her, which predated the fights by several days and made her even more ill than being carsick. Inoculations, he said. He rubbed her neck after every shot. His touch did little for the nausea and everything for her heart.

⢠⢠⢠â¢

There was a new person in Legsâs life. Her name was Amelia, and Legs hated her. Her smell was all wrong, artificially floral, tainting the familiar scents of the doorknob, the TV remote, the toilet paper. Dennis acted strange around Amelia, trying to seem relaxed. Legs could tell he was tense from the way he kept scratching the back of his head. She whined and padded at his heel as he moved from the kitchen to the living room, bringing Amelia a margarita.

âCan you tell that thing to go away?â said Amelia, eyeing Legs with distaste.

âHush, Legs,â Dennis said traitorously. âGo lie down.â

Dennis and Amelia went into the bedroom and shut the door. Legs paced the hallway, anxious, alone. It was too much, really: all the fights, the terrible car rides, being sick everywhere and never going outside, and now this new, floral-scented change. Sounds leaked from the bedroom, quiet grunts quickening into a strangled moaning. Finally Legs couldnât bear it any longer. She let her nausea coalesce into raw epinephrine, the way it did in the antechamber before a fight. She broke through the door and there was Dennis, lying atop Amelia, their four legs tangled in the sheets.

She howled in dismay, groveling on the carpet. Amelia was hurting Dennis, taking advantage of his two-legged shame, and she, Legs, had failed to protect him. She jumped on the bed. Amelia screamed, flailing in the sheets. Dennis flung himself between them, wrestled Legs to the ground, and stuck her with a needle. She felt her muscles go numb.

It was all going wrong, Legs thought with her head pressed against the shards of the door. The threat, the intruder into their peace, was on the other side of the bed, couldnât Dennis see? It had only ever been the two of them. Hadnât she been good? Hadnât her love been enough?

After that, Amelia refused point-blank to come into the house if Legs was in it, so Legs began to spend a lot of

time in the garage.

⢠⢠⢠â¢

A year after the first fight, Dennis came home in a good mood.

âHappy birthday, Legs!â He squatted down and let her rub against him like he used to do when she was little. âI canât believe my little monster is two. Want to go for a drive?â

They went for a drive in Dennisâs new cherry-red convertible. The wind came from all directions. She couldnât get enough of it. He laughed at how her tongues lolled behind her like the ends of a scarf.

They pulled into a gated estate far nicer than their own neighborhood. Dennis parked the convertible in the circle drive.

âCome on, birthday girl. I have a surprise for you.â

They went around the back of the house, through a gate humming with electricity. There was nothing, just grass and dirt and trees. Legs was confused until he said: âTen acres. All for you. I figured youâre tired of being cooped up in the garage.â He grinned. Legs quivered with pleasure.

The shade beneath the trees was full of sticks to chew and snakes to catch. Beyond the trees was a long, unbroken field. She sprinted ecstatically through the grass, leaping and pretending to catch a ball. This field was even better than the old one, because there was a slight hill on one end, and she could go so fast down it. Where was Dennis? Oh, heâd be so pleased to see how fast she could go.

When she came back to the gate, it was locked. Dennis and Amelia stood outside the enclosure, arguing. ââafford this?â Amelia said. ââeggs?â Amelia said.

Dennis took her by the arm. âOw, Dennis, Jesus,â Amelia cried, jerking away. Dennis didnât let go. He brought her up the hill and into the new house without so much as a backwards glance.

⢠⢠⢠â¢

Amelia sometimes came down to the enclosure after a round of inoculations, when Legs was lethargic enough for her to feel safe. She threw mice through the fence. Legs hadnât liked mice since she was about four months old, but she understood it was a gesture of apology and ate them dutifully. They tasted ashy, fried from the electricity.

Amelia didnât smell like herself anymore, jasminey and chemical. She smelled sad. She wore heavy, caked makeup and long sleeves even in the summer.

When Legs was injured in one of her fights (three limbs amputated after being crushed in hippopotamus jaws), Amelia brought her a bucket of writhing snakes and changed her bandages. She knelt over Legsâs body, making soothing sounds and scratching Legsâs velvety ears.

Legs couldnât help herself. She let out a little purr.

⢠⢠⢠â¢

Still she had not lost a fight, though sheâd come very close. She was in the major leagues now. Every match was more brutal than the last, every opponent more experienced and bloodthirsty. She was four when she skewered a giant beetle thing which, on death blow, burst apart into a hundred fang-toothed worms. The worms burrowed under her armor, into her flesh, heading straight for vital organs.

âFucking parasites,â Dennis raged. âThey wonât call the fight until youâre cleared of infection. Even ifââ he paused, eyeing her. He swallowed. âYouâve got to fight like hell, girl. I might have to split the pot.â

â¢Â â¢Â â¢Â â¢

The worms would not clear. Legs was loopy with antibiotics and anti-inflammatories and fever. They brought her into the house where they could keep an eye on her. There was blood in her urine, worms in her vomit. Amelia cleaned it all up while Dennis raved in the next room.

âRetirement!â he bellowed into the phone. âIâll show you retirement!â

Amelia wiped Legsâs brow with a wet cloth, the first tolerable cloth sheâd encountered. There were deep bruises patterning Ameliaâs neck. Her eyes were yellow, her mouth thin and lined.

âAmelia!â Dennis said from the doorway, hand over the microphone. âCover yourself!â

âWhatâs the point?â she said viciously. âI never leave the fucking house.â

âUpstairs.â Dennis glowered. âNow.â He looked at Legs, his gaze softening. Into the phone, he said, âWe were never sure of the life span for something like her.â

⢠⢠⢠â¢

She didnât die, but she was never quite the same. Something funky had happened to her kidneys, and her vision intermittently blacked out like poor cell reception. If she ran for too long she got dizzy and fell over. âYou will fight again,â Dennis told her. âYou will.â But she wouldnât, and they both knew it. Dennis watched her failure with stony eyes. They moved her back into her enclosure. Amelia did not come down from the house.

⢠⢠⢠â¢

In winter, Legs experienced being cold. Sheâd been cold before, though sheâd never been unable to warm up from the cold. She was fairly skeletal now. Nights were awful, spent shivering in a nest of dry leaves and bark. During the day, she lay out in the sun, moving every half-hour as shadows chased her across the yard. Snakes and lizards dozed with her. She had no energy to catch them anymore, and no desire to eat them.

Amelia came to visit. She brought no food, no gifts of surrender, only one long, slender needle in her hand. Wary of the needle, Legs sheathed her spikes and rolled onto her back, tails thumping in the dirt.

âWant to go for a walk?â said Amelia.

Legs always wanted to go for a walk. They went through the trees, now bare and letting a lot of light through their branches, and into the field. Run! said her brain, and she gave in to the urge, running until she was overcome with joyous convulsions.

âOh, Legs,â said Amelia. She was crying. âHow did we get here?â

The seizure passed. Legs sat up. Amelia was next to her in the grass, rubbing her ears the way she liked.

âIâm afraid youâre not long for this world, old girl,â said Amelia. âYou should experience freedom before you go. From him, from this.â

Legs was too busy purring to listen. She closed her eyes in the sun, leaned against Amelia.

âI left the gate open. My last gift to you, perfect girl, better than us all.â

There was a grunt, a gasp, and her weight shifted. Legs opened her eyes to Amelia, keeled over on the ground, the needle protruding from her arm.

⢠⢠⢠â¢

She didnât mean to. She didnât even want to, but want had never held influence over her base instincts. Ameliaâs flesh was as weak as she always imagined human skin to be, pulpy and soft from the bruising. She nosed deeper, rooting for the kidneys. The squelch as she bit in, the rich iron flavorâshe was so involved in feeding that she didnât hear Dennis approach.

âLegs, NO!â he roared, running out of the trees. âDrop it!â

She tensed, eyeing him even as her teeth still worried at Ameliaâs intestines.

âGet away from her!â he screamed. He slowed as he neared the corpse, approaching with caution, a rifle aimed at Legsâs head. She growled, bristling at the gun. Digestive juices dripped from her jaws.

âDown, girl. I said down!â

She tore at Ameliaâs stomach, unable to stop gorging, never taking her eyes off him. He was fifty feet away, then thirty, then twenty. He wasnât a great shot.

âDamn it, Legs. You were never supposed to hurt anyone. If this is the pedigree, the eggs will be worthless.â

He edged closer: the man who made her kill a hundred times over.

The threat of the gun overcame, at such close proximity, the pleasure of eating Ameliaâs organs. She unsheathed her spikes, lowering her weight onto her haunches. Her tails twitched. She did not blink.

Dennis paused. His expression flickered from disbelief to fear to revulsion to default rage. âYou wouldnât,â he said. âYou wouldnât hurt me.â

Wouldnât she? She loved him, his barely-managed temper, the intensity of his fury and his affection, loved him all the way down to his sad, shame-filled core, and people hurt the things they loved. He had taught her that. Amelia, lying on the ground with her innards all over the grass, was dead because of it.

She lunged. The rifle went off with a loud crack. Legs was knocked out of the air and landed hard on her side, bleeding from the throat. She hissed in anger and pain, rightening herself with flailing tails. Three staggering steps and Dennis shot her again. Blood seeped from her neck. She tried to growl, managing only a wet gurgling.

Her legs seized and gave out.

Dennis stood over her, still holding the rifle. He didnât look angry anymore, only stunned. He tilted her chin back with his foot.

âBad girl,â he said, but it sounded like I love you.

About the Author

A.M. Maris is a speculative fiction writer from Cape Cod, MA. She is a 2025 Clarion alum and 2026 Creative Futures Cape Cod fellow. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Lightspeed and Apex. She lives with chronic illness and chronic pain: most of her writing is a rumination on the horrors of having a body. You can find her at ammariswrites.com, or in the woods somewhere.

Please visit Lightspeed Magazine to read more great science fiction and fantasy. This story first appeared in the August 2026 issue, which also features short fiction by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Brooke Bolander, Vajra Chandrasekera, Adelehin Ijasan, Joel W.D. Buxton, Susan Palwick, David Anaxagoras, and more. You can wait for this monthâs contents to be serialized online, or you can buy the whole issue right now in convenient ebook format for just $4.99, or subscribe to the ebook edition here.

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