CONTAGION

by Amanda Milo

  “No.”

  Aurora frowns up at me. “You don’t have to go?”

  I cross my arms over my sternum. “I can’t eliminate here.”

  Aurora stares at me. “You’re… just gonna hold it?”

  I jerk my chin to indicate that, yes, that’s precisely what I must do.

  “How long can you hold it?”

  I sniff. “Let us hope we don’t learn the end of my limits. Surely there will be some alternative. I’ll even accept a primitive option.”

  Aurora bites her lips before hooking her thumb towards the bush at our backs. “Buddy, it doesn’t get much more primitive. Accept it.”

  I gape down at her. “I meant portable facilities. Perhaps a pit latrine, if they offer privacy and the bare minimum of sanitizing after-products.”

  Aurora doubles over and starts laughing.

  Stiffly, I snap my tail. “I have timorous kidneys. They can’t possibly be expected to function out in the open like this.”

  Aurora straightens slowly and in increments because she’s being hit with shockwaves of ebbing giggling fits. When she collects herself, she wipes the heels of her hands over her cheeks, which are wet.

  Her cheeks turn wet almost every time she laughs. Humans are strange.

  “We’re almost to the rocks,” she says, her voice holding traces of shakiness and humor. “Come on.”

  My arms are still crossed—until she reaches up and pries loose one of my hands, guiding me to follow after her by force. Curiously, although I’m aware she’s had no contact with soap and she’s just voided, it doesn’t send me into a panic. I feel a vague dismay for her, but no disgust, not like when the human male touched his organ voiding device and didn’t wash immediately after. How odd. I shake my head. “It's getting dark,” I tell Aurora something she can clearly see. Or not see, as it were.

  “I know that, Simmi.” She tries to tug me closer to the rocks, which have gotten much bigger as we managed to tackle their mirage and get close enough for them to become real—but I balk.

  “What fresh hell will we encounter? More diseased chipmunks? More biting slugs? More apples to tempt us across life-stealing waters?” Actually, more apples would be welcome, and now that I know that I can swim, I could motor us across to reach them. Although I’ve decided I don’t mind the feel of Aurora’s lips, should the need arise for us to need to meet them again in a desperate CPR session.

  What I do mind are the BITING SLUGS (!!) that Aurora says are lying in low, marshy areas, waiting for their victims—she didn’t relay this detail in these words, but I can see it all perfectly clear in my mind.

  When I find myself staring at the night-dew damp grasses under and around my feet with paranoia, I force my gaze up and focus on the oddly pleasant sight of Aurora’s backside, delineated in her dress.

  When she turns her head slightly, I raise my gaze, and her eyes connect with mine.

  Her brows jump, making her appear surprised.

  I feel as if I’ve been caught in the act of something. But since I don’t know what I could have done that would be wrong, I don’t break our gazes.

  Neither does she.

  Neither does she release my fingers—although I have no intention of getting any closer to the giant rocks, and ha if she thinks I will.

  Our quiet goes on for a length of time that feels strange and weighted. It’s heightening my senses. To distract myself, I tell her something, even if she already knows it. “We haven’t found any sign of civilization,” I declare with doom.

  She turns away from her rock goal and approaches me with purpose. “Stay calm, Simmi. We’re going to be fine.”

  I hold up a finger between us. “I’m ignoring your rational voice from now on. I’ve had enough of it following me and trying to feed me lies.”

  She laughs, and geh! The sound of it does what her words could not: I relax.

  Seeing this, she presses her lips together—not that it does anything to quell her smile—and she encroaches my personal space even more. “Let’s find a place to bed down here.”

  I look at the rocks and curl my lip.

  She pulls on my hand, yanking my whole arm. “Come on, princess, we’re doing this. We don’t have any other options.”

  With painful dignity, I mutter, “If my translation device is right, and referring to me as princess means you think I’m a self-important, temperamental person with superior tastes and a peculiar difficulty to be pleased; then you’re correct, and I take no offense.”

  She laughs again—and my lips twitch, shocking me.

  And with my panic once more at bay thanks to Aurora, I fall quiet. When she tugs me forward again, this time, I pick my way behind her.

  We approach a tall rock and Aurora looks it over pointedly, then looks over her shoulder at me. “Could you please help me?”

  “Certainly,” I respond politely.

  When she doesn’t say anything more, I stare down at her in consternation. “What would you like help with?”

  She gives me a faint smile. “Could you please help me up?”

  “Oh,” is my response. I look from the rock’s dust-covered top to her soft-skinned form. “In that case, no.”

  “Simmi,” she says in a patient voice, “Don’t look at it; just help me up there.”

  Not for all of Creator’s pristine parlors could I keep my eyes from being intensely trained to watch for any manner of creeping thing on this filthy rock—but my hands move to her waist, which is the exact opposite of my own body in every way: soft on the outside, with her skeleton barely discernible.

  Lifting her carefully, I almost drop her when her body starts seizing between my carefully spanned hands.

  She’s… laughing? “What do you find amusing this time?” I ask in disbelief.

  “You!” she gasps. “I’m not going to break, Simmi. Just put me on the rock!”

  Not entirely convinced, I very carefully arrange her on top of the rock, and it’s different, having to crane my neck in order to look up into her face now.

  Aurora’s biting her lips—but if she’s attempting not to smile, she’s failing. “Now get up here with me.”

  “No.”

  “Simmi.”

  “Not in hells.”

  Aurora heaves out a sigh and throws her legs over the rock, revealing a large expanse of thighflesh.

  “Stop!” I place my hand on her leg where her skirt has ruched up and she stiffens under me. “Your skin is too tender; can’t you feel you’re scraping it up? I can hear it. Stop moving.”

  Aurora does stop moving. She even relaxes, smiling slightly. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not.”

  Aurora’s brows rise. “Are you going to fight me about everything?”

  I make a rude noise. “I vehemently disagree with your implication; I would never fight you.”

  Aurora widens her eyes meaningfully. “You’re disagreeing that you’re fighting with me.”

  I nod. “That’s right. We’re disagreeing. Fighting implies a violent sort of struggle. I’m merely informing you of something I will not do.”

  “Come on,” Aurora tries to coax. “Get up here with me.”

  “No.”

  “Get up here with me, and I won’t have to get down.” She says it so reasonably, I’d almost believe we shouldn’t be concerned about the dangers and discomforts of stretching out on top of a dirty rock. “Simmmmi…” she cajoles, and I let my neck fall back so that my neurocranium almost touches my spinal plates.

  Aurora claps as if she knows I’ve given in.

  Moaning only slightly, and oddly bolstered by Aurora’s goading cheers, I place my foot on the rock face and find I have an unexpected sort of traction: I’m clinging to it with ease.

  Gasping, I drop back and check my foot for the offensive ball of chewing gum—but it’s long gone, and this is the wrong foot.

  “What is it?” Aurora asks, all traces of humor suddenly absent from her voice.

  “I…” I te
st my other foot—and it grips too. “I think my body has an adaption for climbing.”

  “Is that a new thing for you?” Aurora wonders.

  “I suppose I must’ve always had the ability. I’ve simply never been thrust into circumstances that revealed the adaption,” I muse.

  “Aren’t you glad for all these new experiences then.”

  I give her the look this statement deserves. “Nothing could make me glad for these experiences.”

  She ignores my statement in favor of smiling at me serenely. “Let’s think of it positively, Simmi. This whole ordeal is really one big chance for you to test out what your body is capable of—now quit stalling and get up here.”

  Heaving a sigh, I ascend the rock, able to walk vertically, but unfamiliar enough with the ability that I must look like a small child attempting his first terrified steps, because Aurora covers her mouth with her hand and laughs behind it as if I can’t plainly see the rest of her shaking with humor.

  When I’m able to disengage my feet so that I’m seated beside her, she tentatively reaches up, and then she pats me on the shoulder. “Good job, Simmi.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Now lie down.”

  I give her an aghast look. “Not a chance in this lifespan!”

  “Lie down.”

  “No!”

  “We need our sleep.”

  “In order to sleep, I need my bed. My sanitized, foam-padded bed, and I—”

  Aurora shifts to her knees, skin scraping on the dirty rock, and she puts her hands on my shoulder and my arm, and when I turn my head to see why she’s doing this, she takes advantage of my distraction and places her lips on my nose.

  My eyes struggle to keep her in focus at so close a range. “What are you doing?”

  From this infinitesimal distance, I watch her cheeks change color. “Kissing you quiet.”

  “Well it’s not going to work—”

  She draws back just enough to land her lips in a new spot, on my cheek.

  There’s absolutely nothing that should be appealing about an alien touching me with her slightly wet, fleshy margins. After all, these margins form the opening of her mouth—not unlike the alien slug, which, when it attached itself to my leg, ignited a threatened reaction in my person.

  I don’t feel threatened by Aurora’s mouth flesh touching me.

  But when she draws back only to move her lip-touches to the side of my own mouth, I do stop talking.

  When she tugs on my arm, I sway into her. When she uses pressure to guide me to lie down beside her, I mutely follow.

  I’m wondering just how we went from me declaring I would not lie down, to how she managed to maneuver me into dropping prone beside her.

  Too busy with my thoughts to even register the satisfaction and pride sparkling in her eyes at her massive accomplishment, I don’t at first notice the insect with a shiny shell and a serrated horn on its head. It scuttles out from under the dusty, stubby greenery growing in a crevice between us.

  I jump back from it and tumble right off the rock.

  It’s not a far fall, but Aurora shouts, “SIMMI!” and clambers down to drop beside me anyway, sounding like she’s grating her skin completely off as she scuffs and slides. “Are you hurt?”

  I’m about to answer that I’m fine and we need to remove ourselves from the ground because the last time we were arranged like this we ended up horizontal on it—notably, after which we discovered I’d gained an alien slug which was trying to chew its way through my leg—but before I can rattle this off, and before Aurora accuses me once more that I’m exaggerating, like she did when she didn’t believe we could see bacteria, which we can, because some bacteria can grow up to—

  Aurora runs her hands along my sternum.

  My mouth does not open to discuss the imperative that we stand immediately. And I’m no longer thinking of visible bacteria.

  Aurora proceeds to put her hands all over me, and all of the operating components in my brain misfire.

  I just lay there, soaking in her touch.

  It’s pleasant.

  It’s so pleasant, I’m no longer plagued by the phantom gnawing sounds of leg-hungry slugs anymore, and I’ve been hearing those for megacycles.

  Aurora’s touches turn slow, and my normally germ-concerned, germ-consumed thoughts stop tumbling one over the other. I simply lie beneath her, compliant.

  Aurora’s voice is soothing, calming, nearly hypnotic. “What scared you this time?”

  “A bug,” I reply almost lazily. “It was stalking for us from some rock tripe.”

  “Some what?” she asks in confusion.

  “The low greenery that grows on rocks,” I wave dazedly where she was stretched out a moment ago. “Who knows what beastly thing it was about to do.”

  “Yeah.” She pats me, and I watch, feeling as if I’m seeing her from a safe place, a comfortable, clean, floating place, as she lifts a hand to brush her fingers back and forth over the margin of her upper lip before she pinches it slightly between her finger and thumbnail.

  What an odd thing to do when your flesh is so soft. I’d think it’d be painful, but it seems to be an absent sort of behavior, her eyes taking a far-off quality as she does it, and who am I to intrude? I rest there, still under the welcome weight of one of her hands on my sternum. I take the time to examine her thin fingers. Her fingers’ nails. Human nails are interesting. Although Aurora has a line of dirt under each cuticle, I struggle to ignore it and manage fairly well. Her nails are flat, almost clear, and not very claw-like at all. I noticed this about our male captors too, although Aurora’s nails appear comelier than theirs were.

  Somehow, hers also appear cleaner.

  But if these ten see-through top-finger covers are truly all humans have for defense, then against the next slugs or bugs, it’s up to me to protect us if something attacks—and if I’m our only defense, we are in grave trouble.

  I shiver, about to tell Aurora that we can’t sleep here, even though I know she can’t make a nice, clean, well-lit, and insect-free dormitory appear out here any more than I can—but as if she can sense that I’m about to babble myself into a swivet, Aurora’s fingers turn bolder in their exploration, sweeping along my chitin. “We’re going to be okay, Simmi. We’re going to find ‘civilization’ really soon. There’s not much for wild places on this planet. There will be roads and a town; we just have to go a little farther. But for now, we need to get some rest.”

  I shudder out a breath. “I hope your logic proves true.”

  “It will.” She sounds so confident.

  Closing my eyes, I nod. “I’m accepting this.”

  “All right. Good. Now let’s try the rocks again.”

  I tense all over but she pulls on my hands, and for reasons I would like an explanation for, I get up and follow her without a word of protest.

  I do try to pull away long enough to beat at my backplates in case anything’s clinging to me, but before I can fuss about it, Aurora moves—still squeezing one of my hands—and brushes me off, even my tail.

  “Thank you,” I tell her wearily.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “We’re probably going to contract some disease,” I tell her seriously.

  “No panicking, Simmi. We’re past that.”

  I nictate down at her. “I’ll never be past panicking. Not for any of my days.”

  Aurora shakes her head as if I’m being absurd. “That might have been the case before, but things are different now.”

  “How? How, exactly, did you come to this conclusion?” I’m thinking that no event on this planet has changed this about me, there’s just no way. Not when we’re facing a darkcycle out in the open on an alien planet with nothing but dirt-covered, unsanitized boulders to serve as our bed. My cardiac rhythm rate is increasing exponentially, and I clutch the chitin-covered area beside my sternum.

  Aurora grabs my arm. She’s much stronger than she looks and she drags me down to her face’s leve
l.

  “Don’t try to kiss this awa—” I try to say, but my words die off the moment her lips cover mine.

  CHAPTER 11

  “Are you okay?” Aurora asks.

  “Grrrrrmggrrrr,” I answer from where I rest on my back. I tried lying on my front, but the dust on the rock surface swirled under my nostrils and I panicked. It was extremely upsetting.

  Aurora opted to pillow her head on her arms, but I can’t make myself put my face that close to the rock’s surface where I know there is dirt. It’d at least offer two arms’ length from the end of my snout to the dust—I realize that, but I’m unable to do it.

  The temperature has dipped subtly as the darkcycle has stretched on. A rhythmic sort of vibration starts up soon after. It’s an odd enough sound, a sort of soft clacking, that I roll to my side, half concerned by the myriad of horrific possibilities for the noise, and half emotionally numb to the latest horror we’ll be forced to contend with.

  But it’s no new leg-sucking bug or beast. It’s Aurora.

  It’s Aurora’s teeth.

  “Why are your jaws doing that?” I ask. Then my eyes narrow. “Have you had a vaccine to prevent tetanus?” Perhaps she’s contracted the disease and is fighting the effects. I frown. “The muscle contractions are supposed to be excruciating. Aurora, are you all right?”

  Aurora hugs her arms tighter over herself, and manages to huff a laugh. “I’m cold, Simmi. I’m not sick; I’m just cold.”

  “Oh.” I relax. “How unfortunate. I’m sorry to hear that.”

  The moon outlines Aurora’s smile in silver. “You weren’t hugged as a child, were you?”

  “Never. Why?”

  She hunches her shoulders and brings her knees closer to her chest. “No reason, Simmi. No reason.”

  I watch her for a few more beats of my cardiac muscle. “What is the purpose of your jaws doing this when you become chilled?”

  “It raises my body temperature.”

  I roll further onto my elbow, studying her. “By biting the air? How does the effort of your jaws raise your entire system’s temperature? That’s fascinating.”

  Aurora chuckles softly. “I’m shivering. That’s what brings up my temp. Full body shivers make my teeth chatter though, as a side effect.” She widens her eyes at me, the orbs showing white all around as she assures me, “No tetanus involved.”