We Are Ash

by Samara Stone

  Now the Lane's hand is touching our hand. It is not not-nice. But it is not exactly like the Dolores. The Lane touches our jawline and leans toward us before stopping, our breath mingling, but we do not breathe into the Lane. The Lane's eyelids are lowering, but the Lane suddenly leans back and swipes at its nose, blood-juice streaking across the back of its hand and onto its sleeve.

  “What the–?” it mutters and swipes again. We have been afraid that we can hurt the squishy bipeds even without breathing them. We do not wish to hurt the Lane. We try the fixing, even though we do not love it as we love our crazy bitch. We let our fingers trail down the Lane's nose.

  It swipes again at its nose, but there is no more blood-juice leakage. We are pleased. We are still curious what the Lane was attempting when it leaned so close touching our face. We do not think that the humans can breathe into us or into other humans, but it seems like that is what the Lane was attempting. We are insatiably curious to see what it would be like to be breathed into, and we can always remake ourselves if it causes the blood-juice-cough.

  We lean toward the Lane, concentrating our will on the fixing so we do not hurt the Lane and cause more blood-juice to ooze out of it. The Lane startles us. We almost jump away as its other hand slides up alongside our jaw, so it is clasping our face in its paws. But it doesn't breathe into us. It presses its mouth softly against our mouth. Then the mouth-noise-shaping organ slips inside our mouth and we feel the smooth, slick hardness of its teeth, we taste the wind on its breath, we breathe the smell of its blood-juice. We do not know what the humans call the mouth-smashing, but we keep trying it, letting the Lane investigate our mouth.

  Then we taste the blood-juice and the Lane pulls back and says, “Jeez, I'm so sorry that I just bled on you. My nose must be all dry from how cold it is out here.”

  The Lane runs its thumb along our lips and we pull its thumb into our mouth, curious if it will feel as nice as the other thing in our mouth. We can smell that the Lane likes that and the Lane's pupils expand as it looks into our eyes. It has brown eyes like the hot coffee liquid, so different from the Dolores eyes which look like the wind feels. We wonder what the Dolores would do if we did the mouth-smashing with it. We feel an odd drop in our pelvis at the thought.

  We run our fingers along the Lane's nose again and its eyes flutter closed. We smash our lips against its lips one more time, then we feel its arms snake around our middle. We laugh, spin away out of its grasp and run away. We run back to the Dolores. We do not wish to hurt the Lane any more and we do not wish to hurt the Dolores if it hoped to put something into the Lane. Although we now understand that perhaps the Dolores hoped to put its own mouth against the Lane's and then slip its mouth-noise muscle into the Lane's mouth. We do not wish for the Lane to be into us if the Dolores wishes to be into the Lane.

  The Lane is calling after us, but we are like ash in the wind and we fly.

  13 The Return Home

  Dolores knew she shouldn't be jealous of Ash or Lane, but she was jealous of both of them none-the-less. Lane was trying to snipe her only friend and Ash was going to get some from the cutest guy she worked with. She also wished they hadn't picked the first day off she'd had in a long time for their date, especially since Ash had been sulky recently about never seeing the Dolores. Dear god, it was spreading—just how long had she been thinking of herself as the Dolores? Oh well, maybe this was better. She could go to the library again. Dolores wanted to research mail-order brides—her latest hypothesis for explaining how weird Ash was.

  Dolores finished her tea and oatmeal, annoyed that she'd slept in. She’d hoped to see Ash off with some motherly advice. It still freaked her out that she very rarely heard Ash leave, even though Ash was always gone these days. After Ash had returned frozen she’d gotten even more clingy, and Dolores had to try and explain that if they spent all their time together, they'd hate each other. Now she hardly saw Ash at all.

  Ash disappeared in the morning and returned in the evening or afternoon depending on when Dolores got off shift. She never ate with Dolores, never asked for anything really. Except Dolores's time—usually to play MarioKart or to take a bath. Lately Dolores had introduced her to the wide world of anime, though, and taken Ash to the library. Stepping into the library made Ash's eyes light up like fireflies.

  So where was she now? It'd been two whole hours since Lane’s appointed running date. Ugh, why couldn't Lane just date Rachel like normal coworkers in the incestuous world of Starbucks baristas? Rachel was cute, nice, and ate food like a normal person.

  Dolores needed to get out of the house. She would go to the library and check her email to see if she'd heard anything back from the bursar's office about getting out from under her mom for financial aid. She could read up on the latest about the plague, too—it had finally made its way to the east coast as well as Mexico City. They were working with all the major airlines and flight manifestos to try to track down Typhoid Mary.

  The oddest thing was that there were never more than a few new cases per day, and even then the highest day had been four in 24 hours in an odd line across the Midwest culminating in Cincinnati. What the hell kind of contagion had such a leisurely but vast spread?

  It made Dolores want to scream that she couldn't apply for the CDC internship that coming spring, even though the CDC still seemed fairly calm about it all. They were insisting that since it had such low mortality so far, it just wasn't a top priority. But none of the victims had fully recovered yet, either. Most were simply languishing in hospital isolation units hacking up blood and receiving occasional transfusions. The cynic in Dolores was sure it would only get real attention when politicians started dying, or at the very least their donors.

  Suddenly Dolores heard Ash on the porch, her light footsteps springing quickly up the creaky stairs. She unlocked the door and stepped inside. She was beautifully flushed and her eyes glittered. Dolores raised an eyebrow.

  “You have a good run with your new boyfriend?” Her phone chimed from the kitchen, but she ignored it. It was probably Lane trying to get in touch with Ash anyway.

  “We did. Is the Dolores into the Lane? We do not want to be into anything that the Dolores wishes to be into.” Ash said as her post-run breathing immediately returned to normal. Just how much did this girl run? If Dolores had any spare income, she would buy some kind of step counter for her always running friend.

  Dolores felt ashamed of her jealousy. Ash was trying not to hurt her. “It doesn't matter, he isn't into me.”

  “Ever?”

  Now it was Dolores's turn to cock her head to the side. “What do you mean by that? What do you think being into someone means?”

  Ash's face contorted as she considered this question. “The mouth-smashing puts this,” she stuck out her tongue and touched it lightly and then continued, “in the other human's mouth? Then a human is into another human?”

  “Did he kiss you? Did Lane fucking kiss you while running at six in the morning? That dog!”

  Ash shook her head. “No, we are certain the Lane is not a dog. It is a squishy biped like the Dolores, but not as elegant and nice and pleasant smelling as the Dolores.”

  Dolores was ready to fire off a snide retort, but was caught off guard halfway. “You think I'm elegant?”

  Ash growled. “The You does not think so. We think so. We think the Dolores is pleasingly graceful and stylish in appearance or manner.” Then Ash muttered some more insults at the You.

  “Let's dial back the attempts to distract me. Did Lane kiss you, Ash? Were you even going to tell me? I'm your best friend, right? You're supposed to tell me these things.”

  “Is the kiss the mouth-smash?”

  “Yes, it's...” Dolores had the briefest vision of herself kissing Ash, but instead she pulled up a gif on her phone and showed her.

  Ash nodded sagely. “Yes. We thought that the Lane would just breathe into us and inhale itself back out, but the kiss is what the Lane did. The Lane is not as fast as we are. We
are like the wind.”

  “No shit. Wow, I can't believe he kissed you on a morning running outing. I did not see him as that type of guy.”

  “We won't kiss the Lane again now that we know it upsets the Dolores.”

  “I'm not upset!” Dolores shouted. But she was upset. She just couldn’t tell if it was at Lane or Ash or both. She felt equally mad that Lane was taking Ash and that Ash was taking Lane, even though Dolores had never really had claim on either of them… not really. No one could ever really claim control over Ash.

  “We made the Dolores angry and sad with the mouth-smash. We are sorry. We were just curious. We won't do the mouth-smash or run with the Lane anymore.” Dolores watched the light go out of Ash's eyes, like she had been excited to share this new discovery with her friend and Dolores had pissed in the poor girl's first-kiss Cheerios. She reached out for Ash, but Ash slithered out of her grasp. “We do not wish to hurt the Dolores. We are tired from fixing.”

  Before Dolores could respond, her phone began actually ringing. Like, phone call ringing. Weird. She skulked into the kitchen, Ash's eyes following her like the embers of a green fire. It was Danny.

  “Hey, what's up? Why are you calling this early?”

  “Shit, Dolores, you've gotta get out here. Mom's in the hospital. She's been in the hospital for like a month but they didn't bother to find next of kin. I want her transferred to Fargo, or at least Bismarck, but they’re saying from her scans that it's pointless.”

  “What? What scans? What's wrong with her?”

  “She came in coughing up blood so they did a CT scan and her lungs are just covered in spots. They said it's metastasized into her liver and her brain. Stage four lung cancer. She's not conscious now, but when she is, they said she screams for you. She freaked out when she woke up and saw me. She's rarely lucid at this point.”

  “Is she still in Musketon? Shouldn't the VA cover her because of my dad? The VA is good, right?” Dolores's heart was thumping out of her chest. Helplessness wrapped itself around her brain and muffled her thoughts.

  She heard Danny take a deep, shuddering breath. “Look, I'll pay for your gas money, but can you please just get here? If you leave now, you can make it tonight, right? I'll also pay for the ridiculous amount of Wild Cherry Pepsi it will require.”

  “Fuck, I've got to talk to my boss. Are they sure Mom doesn't have Red Pneumonia or whatever they're calling it this week?”

  “Yeah, they said this is just straight up end-stage lung cancer.”

  “Okay, I’ll call in and get my shit together and head out now. I love you, Danny. I'm sorry I didn't listen to you when you were worried.”

  “Jesus H., Lorri. I'm like six hours away, it's way easier for me to get here. I should've come on my last break but I was too lazy. It wore me down when I got sick last month...” An unspoken thing still hovered on the line between them. Then he said, “Be careful, okay? You still got the mace in your car? You pull over if you get tired, okay? Don't be a hero.”

  “Trust me, I won’t be. I’ll see you soon.”

  They hung up and she turned back to Ash who looked oddly pale. “My mom is dying. I need to go home to my shitty little town in North Dakota. You can stay here, okay? I'll be back in a week tops. I don't think I can take any more time off work than that. Do what you want with Lane.”

  The next moment Ash surprised her by pulling their bodies together into a hug, and Dolores couldn't deny the crackle of electricity that was between them. And she had that fuzzy sense of belonging again, that peace that she'd had the first time they touched. She wrapped her arms around Ash, and despite everything it brought Dolores some solace to actually have someone hold her when faced with her mother's mortality. She tried to tell herself that she didn't care, but did. She still wanted her mother to love her. To approve of her. To want her as a daughter.

  But Dolores was also a realist and she knew that her homecoming would not bring that long-wished-for dream of maternal love. It would likely just become another ugly memory together, this time of watching her mother eaten alive by cancer. She shivered in Ash's arms for a moment longer before pushing back, realizing she'd have to call Lane and see if he'd cover for her at work.

  Thankfully Dolores managed to stay awake the full drive home. It was not-nice having plenty of boring hours to contemplate Lane sucking Ash's face, though, and not to mention the fact that they were likely to engage in more while they had her house to themselves. She should make Ash pay rent. But then what if Ash chose to move in with Lane since she seemed to have no income and no skills beyond running and being weird?

  Dolores had already hit the road when she called Lane for work coverage. He grumbled about taking her shifts, saying he would likely fail a class thanks to her. She asked him about what he'd done with Ash and he told her that they had kissed, but that Ash had run off without a word and what was that all about? Dolores said that she wished him luck figuring it out, because the phrase ‘what was that all about?’ applied to nearly every single interaction she'd ever had with Ash. He had chuckled at that and said, “Good kisser though. But maybe you already knew that.”

  “No, I do not, and if I did, I would not let you kiss her without demanding satisfaction, good sir.”

  Lane laughed, and Dolores felt a pang of sadness, thinking he was one of the few guys she actually, genuinely liked in Bozeman.

  Dolores rolled into Musketon late enough that nothing was open and desperately hoped that Danny had gotten some food for their childhood home. She was shaking from nothing but Potato Skins and Wild Cherry Pepsi for the past thirteen hours. She used her old key—the one she'd never been able to remove from her ring—and stepped inside her mother's home for the first time in a year and a half. The first thing that hit her was the old, familiar cigarette smell and a new hint of peroxide.

  She crept into the living room and saw an ominous dark stain on the rug near her mother's well-indented spot on the couch. Turning on the light, she saw that it had obviously been blood, scrubbed to a dull brown. Danny was slumped on the couch fast asleep in an old Metallica t-shirt and black sweats. Her heart ached to see him. He was pale and sick-looking and she wondered again what the hushed up incident had been at his work. But maybe it was just taking care of their mother that had worn him down. He hadn't told her how long he'd been here.

  Danny was ten years older than Dolores and the closest thing she'd ever had to a father. Her own had been perpetually abroad or drunk, both amounting to a similar level of parenting. Dolores's mean, crabby grandfather had died the same year as her father, but via heart attack rather than IED. Her grandmother had lasted another two before her appendix burst after refusing to go to the doctor when she spiked a high fever. The only other alternative for familial affection was her mother, and that didn’t work out so well.

  She texted Lane that she'd made it and would he please tell Ash so she wouldn't worry? He texted back that he would if he saw her, but he wasn't sure that would happen. Now Dolores growled that he was going to drop her friend just when she'd come to terms with them being together. What a piece of shit. But she couldn't cope with that while strung out on high-fructose corn syrup. Instead she’d have to work on getting Ash a cell phone once she got home.

  Dolores set her bag down and Danny instantly sprang up off the couch like Bruce Lee. His eyes were wild, and when they landed on Dolores she knew without a doubt that she'd been right about something still being off with Danny.

  “Danny, what the fuck is going on with you?”

  He sighed and she beckoned him to follow her into the kitchen. Dolores made herself a grilled cheese and a can of watery tomato soup. As she cooked she watched Danny’s haunted face. After their long silence he finally started to explain.

  “I don't even want to tell you—you'll think I'm fucking crazy. Even I think I'm fucking crazy.”

  14 The Doppëldanny

  Dolores settled in with her food. She offered Danny some, but he shook his head as his face turned a
pale shade of green.

  “So, tell me what the fuck is going on?”

  “You promise you won't think I'm crazy? That you'll believe me?”

  Dolores laughed and answered with a mouthful of grilled cheese, “Oh my god, crazy is like my oxygen these days. You have no idea. Go ahead—it'll probably seem sane compared to the shit I've been dealing with.”

  Danny looked unconvinced but continued. “So, a while ago—the day I got sick—I was out hunting with a group of guys where we really shouldn't have been. We were up in the area that's been closed down by the government because of whatever disaster the mine caused. One of the guys wanted to bag a bear.”

  “That's terrible. What did bears ever do to you? And do you think the disaster is what made you sick? Do you think you have radiation poisoning? Oh my god, Danny, you should be in a hospital!”

  He held up his hand. “No. No. Just shut up for like ten minutes. Well, we spotted a bear, but then out of nowhere this weird looking, buck-ass naked woman appears with it. It wasn’t warm enough for any kind of naked nature activity, so that was weird enough, but she was also, like, trying to touch the bear. It smacked the shit out of her and we went running over to kill it and hopefully save her. And we did. But then… when we got to her—and it was so fucking freaky—she could roar just like the bear. She sounded just like the bear. And she wasn't… she wasn't a chick, not really. She had dude parts too.” Danny shook his head a little.

  Dolores's mouth went completely dry. “Did you say she made… bear… noises? What did she look like?” But then she reminded herself that Ash did not have a dick. She had seen Ash naked, and had verified there was no penis.

  “What? Oh, well, that's the most fucked up thing. She looked one way—brownish hair like the bear's actually and these weird glowing eyes—but then… then her face changed and she had my face. She had my fucking face, Lorri. I can't get that image out of my mind… this mauled person with her chest in tatters just morphed to make herself have my face like out of some goddamn horror movie. So I was trying to figure out what her deal was, trying not to panic, but then my friend seriously freaked out and he… he shot her. I tried to talk to her and I grabbed her arm to help her up, but all she did was say the exact same stuff back to us in my voice. In my exact voice—how is that even possible? It was the creepiest goddamn thing. Even creepier than the face. But then when I grabbed her… her arm, it like… it… it disintegrated, like into ashes.”