by Alex Lang
Water flooded into her nostril. She tried covering it with her hand, but she was sinking.
“My reflection’s chasing me.” Then the world went dark.
***
“Yellow-Spot?”
She opened her eyes and looked up at Sweet-Berries. She sat up. Her left antenna felt wrong. She reached up to feel and winced. The pain stung her nostril so strong that she almost sneezed at the smell.
“Your left antenna and left speaking arm are broken,” said Sweet-Berries. “And I think so too is your right leg, or maybe it’s just sprained. I bound a wood splint to it, to keep it straight. Too bad Paste can’t soothe broken bones.”
Yellow-Spot made to get up, but Sweet-Berries held her down.
“You’re not going anywhere too soon, sister. But I’m so glad you’re alive.” Sweet-Berries looked down the river, which disappeared over a cliff only a few hundred people-lengths away.
“We were going there, weren’t we? I wished you had told us, so we’d know. Why didn’t you just tell us?”
The demon appeared. Popped into existence. Yellow-Spot pawed the ground, trying to back away. Fear-so common a smell now-thickened the air.
“My gods, sister. What is it?”
“Do…” How was she going to form the other side of words with a broken arm? She thought about using her left gripping arm, but the fingers were all different. The words wouldn’t make any sense. She decided to use her right arm for both sides of words. It’d take longer to speak, but then Sweet-Berries could understand her. She began again, “Do you see it?”
“See what, Yellow-Spot?” Concern showed in her voice, color-face, and smell.
“The demon.” She pointed. “Standing right there!”
“No.” Sweet-Berries looked perplexed.
“You don’t? She … it looks just like me. It’s been haunting me since I’ve been with the false gods.”
“Oh …” Sweet-Berries’ color-face still showed yellow-green concern, but then it softened to a neutral white. “So is that what told you to leave, to violate the Queen’s { } and to found a new colony?”
“Me? Found a colony? Ha!” Laughter mixed with the negative smells.
“Sister, what’d you think we were doing? Why’d you need a Nurse and a Builder who’s not you, and a Drone too, unless you were going to start a new colony?”
Yellow-Spot stared at her sister and tried ignoring the demon. The Drone was busy sniffing around. It walked right into the demon as if the demon wasn’t solid. Even though she’d seen the words, comprehension was slow to register. “So …” she said to the demon, not caring anymore that her words could be seen “Was that the plan?”
“Yes,” Yellow-Spot’s doppelganger confirmed.
Yellow-Spot looked back at Sweet-Berries, who said, “You saw how those soft-bodied false gods … those softs treat us. I can’t imagine spending so much time with them. How’d you cope?” Sweet-Berries looked at where the demon stood. “Ah, I see. Your mind created a false voice to tell you what to do.”
It made sense, or more sense than the gods implanting the demon, anyway. “How do you know so much?”
“Please, sister. The Queen sees several voices. It’s how she partitions all her responsibilities, I think. It’s a secret among us Nurses. Now, come. I think we should { }.” Sweet-Berries’ antennae touched Yellow-Spot’s. She’d expected pain from the broken antenna, but instead felt {
} surging through her, uplifting her, healing her. The person pulled away, and in that brief { } her various pains had abated.
Yellow-Spot looked at the river disappearing over the cliff. Just beyond lay a canyon with several caverns pitting the canyon walls. She knew this because she’d been with several gods …
softs who’d scouted the area. Just beyond the canyon was the southern people’s colony.
Sweet-Berries helped her sister up. When they’d been experiencing { }, it’d felt like Yellow-Spot’s pains had been healed. But now, she winced when she put pressure on her right leg.
Sweet-Berries helped Yellow-Spot walk over to the canyon’s edge. The Drone dumbly followed. Yellow-Spot gasped when she saw the southern people’s colony. Or what was left of it.
Fires blazed through much of it, domes melting and collapsing from the flames. Pale smoke streamed into the sky. She felt red anger. When she looked at the demon, it was becoming less distinct, no longer looking like the blue-furred, yellow-spotted reflection of herself.
“Do you think these false gods will ever leave us?” Yellow-Spot asked.
“They are powerful beyond any words. In a sense, they are gods, just not gods we’d ever want to worship. We’re dumb animals to them.”
“Ironic. They’re soft-skinned like many dumb animals.” Yellow-Spot patted the Drone, as if for emphasis.
“I don’t understand why they’re fighting each other. They’re so powerful.”
“Yes. We can stand here all day trying to figure out what they’re up to, but we need to find a way to get down to one of those caverns.” Yellow-Spot saw the new resolve in her voice.
“I agree.”
They heard a mewling from below. Sweet-Berries spotted the source first. “Look!” She pointed at a figure climbing up toward them. Pale, soft skinned, but with six limbs, eyes and antennae. A person that had just hatched out of her cocoon.
Sweet-Berries, being the Nurse, clambered down to meet her. Yellow-Spot stayed up above with the Drone, feeling helpless.
“Must’ve been one of the survivors,” Sweet-Berries said.
“She’s sure lucky.” Though she didn’t really believe those words. Yellow-Spot couldn’t imagine being torn from her clutchsisters. Perhaps the dead were the lucky ones.
Sweet-Berries looked over the survivor. “Her shoulders are broad and her gripping arms big and strong. She’s a Builder.”
Dark thoughts invaded Yellow-Spot. The memory of Electric-Touch stabbed her. She stepped forward. She felt herself falling.
Sweet-Berries grabbed her. She pushed Yellow-Spot into the canyon wall. “You didn’t do that on purpose, did you?”
“Please … what’s the point. Look around us. The softs have already won.”
“Is that so?” Red anger showed on Sweet-Berries’ color-face. “You force-fed me your Taste and made us touch antennae when I wanted to charge that soft. I felt the { } with you so strongly that I can almost see your thoughts. Now I understand what needs to happen. As crazy as it sounds, we need to form a new colony, a secret colony, without those softs. Whatever they did to us, that’s in the past. We need to look to the future.”
Beyond the canyon another dome collapsed, melted and burning. Yellow-Spot said,
“They forced me to learn their strange noise language only so they could communicate with us better, to subdue our culture and our colony so they could … feel better, for whatever strange purposes they use our Paste. They’re too powerful.”
“They’re just stupid, soft animals,” Sweet-Berries retorted.
Yellow-Spot looked at the Southern survivor. A ghostly figure appeared by her. Though indistinct, Yellow-Spot could see its strength and power. It gave her confidence. “We’ll name her Electric-Touch-On-Red-Fur.”
“And if she doesn’t grow red fur?”
“Who cares? The name is symbolic. A remembrance of her.”
“That’s the Yellow-Spot I know and love.” They touched antennae again, feeling renewed { }.
***
Just beyond the direct opening to the cavern, so the softs couldn’t easily see them,
Yellow-Spot lay in her oversized cell. She’d grow into it as she became a Queen. Sweet-Berries was teaching Electric-Touch the rudiments of language.
It’d been slow going to find a suitable place to create the nest for their colony. The softs had been too busy with their own petty war to mind what the three persons and one Drone were doing.
Presently, Yellow-Spot watched the new Electric-Touch with interest. It also brought new pangs of gui
lt and sadness. The strong ghost comforted her. Now it was but one of many. So this was what it was like to be Queen, to consult with imaginary advisors.
Yellow-Spot wanted to get up and move, perhaps to relieve her boredom. But with her leg, that was difficult.
“Can we get this started?” She made exaggerated motions so Sweet-Berries would understand the imperative.
Sweet-Berries grabbed the wax basket in which the Royal Paste was in and began feeding it to Yellow-Spot. “You’ll feel drowsy very shortly, and sleep most of the time for several moons. Even when I wake you to feed you, you probably won’t remember. Then, when you’re fully grown, you’ll wake all the way, and be our new Queen. You’ll probably also heal, especially the leg and arm. Not sure about the eye and antenna though. Anyway, that’s how it’s supposed to work. I haven’t …”
Sweet-Berries’ voice faded as Yellow-Spot fell asleep. She dreamed of a world without the softs.
I hate my dad
THERE’S DAD, ASSHOLE EXTRAORDINAIRE, evangelizing to the pigeons. The day is damp, the sky looks like mud, and he’s got a plastic grocery bag on his head, handles knotted under his stubbly cleft chin. His thigh-length coat is spattered with bird shit. He looks homeless. He is. And so I have to be too.
He’s wandering among the pigeons, who coo threateningly and barely amble out of his way. They know who owns this plaza, in a part of the city that most people have given up on. Other living-rough folks are here, though, too; and it’s really these that Dad is speaking to, in his madman’s croak, peppering his words with crazy phrases. It sounds like goon babble-until you listen, or you just can’t help but hearing, for a few minutes. Then he starts to make his own special kind of sense. If you try, you can catch the camouflaged meanings, the strings of sane words among the gobbledygook.
Some are listening, gathered on the rusting benches, sitting out in the drizzly open, as Dad roams the cracked pavers of the plaza. What a douchebag.
I’m on lookout. I’ve been doing this since I was nine, all the small squirrely stuff, because I could go unnoticed. But I’m getting too big for it. People look at me a lot more now; and I’m aware of the attention in new ways.
Dad goes on with his mutterings. Some people listen, some doze on the benches. This can’t last forever.
* * *
I push hanks of wet blond hair off my forehead as I burrow down into my sleeping bag. Eight months without a haircut. Dad used to keep it short and more or less even, but he had his scissors-little orange-handled ones, like I remember cutting construction paper with in kindergarten-taken away at a Handoutlet, where nobody can have anything like a weapon. I don’t miss school. And I like my hair longer. I look a little bit dangerous these days.
We’re out of the rain, though we’re not in a great spot, which is why nobody’s near us. And since no one is around Dad can tell me, “C’mon, Cedric. Go ahead and say ’em. It’s okay. No one’ll hear.”
Like I’m getting a treat. I don’t sigh so loud that he can easily hear over the rain sizzling on the concrete on either side of the slim overhang we’re under. It really started coming down after nightfall. But when I do my “Now I lay me…", I exaggerate the singsong, just a little. Just enough. I see the disappointment in his eyes even as he tries to hide it. It scares me for a second. I want, briefly, to be good. The good son. Good Cedric.
Well, screw Dad. And screw Cedric too.
He goes to his bag, and I hear him whispering for an hour, the same stuff he’s been saying all day in the plaza. Only now it’s crystal clear; and I’m the only one in earshot. I don’t drop into sleep until he finishes.
* * *
When my sister, who was older than me, was still with us, she’d say again and again, “Let’s get out of the city. There are places in the country where no one’s going to bother us. Wide-open spaces.”
That stuck in my mind: wide-open spaces. I remember shopping trips and stuff to the suburbs when I was just a kid, back when we still had our home and Mom. But Adalia was talking about something else, someplace grander, I always thought. Wide-open spaces probably meant there wasn’t any danger of somebody overhearing what Dad said. No threat of arrest. I’ve had to be afraid of the police all my life. Thanks to Dad. Dad and his dipshit beliefs, which I went along with for a long, long time, and now am so sick of I can’t stand it.
My sister left. Cut and ran. She even told Dad she was going, but he didn’t-couldn’t- stop her. Adalia is just a jumble of images to me now. Mostly I remember that she was the practical one. Like Mom was, I think. Only, Adalia didn’t waste away in a hospital bed, with Dad weeping and praying over her until an orderly heard and told him she’d call the cops if he kept it up.
That was a while ago. Things are different. Dad wouldn’t get a warning now.
* * *
I’m not with him every minute of the day. Today, for instance, I have to go get his eyedrops. I’ve got a pharmacard that identifies me as Bright Estabrook, a name I like a lot better than my own. I look like the picture on the card, which Dad got from somewhere. Dad’s eyes give him headaches, but I got to give him this-he doesn’t bitch about it. He’s had this trouble with his eyes since he was a boy, he says.
Stains wipe off my coat; it’s some slick synthefabric. I look presentable when I go into the pharmacy. But, like I said, I’m not a kid anymore, and on the way out with Dad’s drops some adults standing on the corner notice me. They wave, call me over, with friendly smiles.
I know I should keep on walking, but I don’t. A little of that is the thought of an extra few moments of discomfort for Dad; but the rest of it is curiosity, a tingle of strange excitement.
“Hey, man, how’s it goin’?”
“You on your own?”
“What’s your name, little bro?”
There are four of them, and the one who hasn’t asked me anything is a woman half a head taller than me, with hair a darker blond than mine is and a face that makes me think about beautiful sunrises and the first taste of hot food after a long time without it.
Nobody makes a grab for me. No one asks what’s in the bag. These are rough-looking types, maybe not living on the streets but close to it. Their friendliness seems real, though.
“I’m Bright,” I tell them. They like it. They laugh, but they’re not making fun of me. One has a smoke going, cupping it against the wind. The marijuana scent blows right over me. As it gets passed around, one tough asks if I want a toke. “I’m underage,” I answer, expecting mocking laughs this time.
But the woman, who I’ve been trying real hard not to just stare at, says, “That’s smart, Bright. You wouldn’t want to do it out here where anybody could see, right?” She takes the cigarette, sucks in the smoke, releases it and adds, “Maybe we’ll see you.”
It’s a dismissal, but she’s not gruff. More like she’s treating me like a grownup. I like that. Like it a lot.
I bring Dad his eyedrops. He’s pacing across the mouth of an alley, jaw clenched so tight it’s white. It isn’t just the ache from his eyes. The nimrod is trying not to pray out loud.
* * *
I know I should miss our home, but I don’t, really. I remember it, sort of. A familiar series of walls, a bed to sleep in every night. Before Mom got sick and while Dad still had his job, we ate regular meals and were warm, with a roof over our heads. I remember our TV.
But it wasn’t all fun. It was like we were in our own separate world, Dad, Mom, Adalia, me. Dad ran it. He told us what was right and wrong. He told these big, powerful, wild stories that were sometimes like nightmares. He said we were being watched, every second. I thought he meant the cops, because he told my sister and me that the government was looking for people like him. But what he really meant was somebody else. Somebody bigger.