We Are Ash

by Samara Stone

  We wish to be with the Dolores right now and we do not like this feeling. It is not-nice. It is the alone. The lonesome, the lonely, the all alone. We are sad that the Dolores left us here and left while it was still angry about the mouth-smashing that we did not know would make it angry. We are interested in trying more extensive mouth-smash-kissing, and perhaps more of the body-touching that the Lane instigated, but we do not know now what is expected with the Lane. The Dolores said we could do these things, but it said it in the way that we have learned means it is actually Not Allowed. We must stay away from the Lane, because the Lane is interested in being into various parts of us.

  So we make a choice. We go to the place of the mother-thing because we do not want to be in the alone anymore. The alone makes us want to breathe into every squishy biped we see so that we can at least be learning without the Dolores. Our last breathing into taught us a whole new set of mouth-noises, the Spanish. We like the Spanish, but we are sure that this is like the bear and the cat and the dog mouth-noises and it is Not Allowed in public.

  We arrived when the Dolores parted ways with the Danny and slunk into a much smaller, less soft nest. We would like to remake ourselves next to the Dolores and soothe its worried face. Is the Dolores worried about the mother-thing, even though the mother-thing does not think the Dolores is as nice as the Danny? We do not like the mother-thing. We also felt that the mother-thing was very sick when we breathed into it. When we inhaled ourselves back, we thought that the mother-thing would be remaking itself very soon. Now we know that many of the squishy bipeds are terrible at remaking, but we cannot fix the mother-thing. We also don't want to fix the mother-thing that is not-nice to the Dolores.

  We watch the Dolores carefully, trying to be soft and silent. The Dolores is so clever—cleverness is one of the things we love about the Dolores. But it also means that we cannot watch the Dolores as much as we want. When the Dolores is swept into the arms of the very large, strong biped with nice dark eyes the next day, we keep our distance. Then we see the Dolores is sad and we move in closer.

  We want to remake and make sure this new biped is nice to the Dolores. It must not be unjust to the Dolores. The Dolores looks so sad that we know that the tall one did do something not-nice to it, even if we don't know what. But it also did the nice body squeeze. The humans can be very confusing with their social customs.

  We decide that we must watch over the Dolores when it goes with this biped at the five. This biped might be able to overpower the Dolores, possibly using the mugging or the raping. We will keep the Dolores safe from the large one. If the large one tries to hurt the Dolores we will breathe into the large one again and again so that it can never remake itself again. We will take and learn all the things inside the Colt if it tries to hurt the Dolores.

  We hear that the Danny and the Dolores are going to the mother-thing in the healing place and we know that we should not go there in case the mother-thing has gotten cleverer as it nears its unmaking. We will go find one to breathe into to see if there is something to learn about the Dolores here. The Dolores seems that it spent its larval phase here. We wish we could just remake and be with the Dolores. To wrap our arms around it and let it press our heads together while it leaks eye fluids of sadness. We like comforting the Dolores, we would give it a nice body squeeze.

  For now though, we seek a biped of similar maturity to the Dolores, suspecting that we should not breathe into the large one just yet. We drift over the Musketon and eventually find one that we think will provide some information. We go behind a lair, hoping to surprise it when it enters its exoskeleton—a very large exoskeleton with very large wheels and two big pipes sticking up. We stroll around the corner and the biped says, “Oh!” and smiles. We made ourselves a pleasant-looking biped like in the animes.

  We are cold, very cold, and we want to be done with the breathing because we don't want to bother trying to find more drapes. We suppose if the Dolores doesn't know we have a pelt sometimes, it can't say the pelt is Not Allowed. So we grow a nice furry pelt and the squishy screams, opening its mouth wide as we breathe into it. We see the things that it has seen and learn the things it knows and we suck ourselves back out and swirl into the sky. It falls to its knees, hacking blood onto the side of the exoskeleton.

  We will stay near the Dolores for now. We do not want to be the alone and we do not want to make Dolores sad by going back to the Lane. We will wait for the Dolores near the healing place.

  17 The Healing Place

  The watched feeling evaporated as soon as Dolores stepped into the hospital. She wasn't sure whether her suspicions about the reason for this made her more or less crazy. She looked around furtively, sure she would see Ash lurking nearby. But there was no Ash—only Dolores's paranoia. Lane texted that he hadn't seen so much as a glimpse of her, but it wasn't like he was staking out Dolores's place. He assured Dolores that if he saw their weird friend, he would let her know right away.

  Dolores knew from her experience living with Ash, though, that it was unlikely Lane would ever come across her, especially after their confrontation right before she left. Ash would probably never touch Lane again now for fear of upsetting Dolores. Some friend I am, Dolores thought to herself, No wonder I always end up alone.

  The smell of the hospital made Dolores's skin crawl. It was like depression in olfactory form. She could practically see the grim reaper lurking in the hallways, his rusty scythe at the ready. Danny led her and the cinnamon rolls to their mother's room, nodding at the nurses who greeted them both by name. Some were mothers of her high school classmates, some their sisters. Others stared blankly at her, their children too far on either side of Dolores to know who she was.

  Then they were there, at the foot of the bed that held their mother, a husk of her former self, blood crusted around her mouth and nostrils. She was inside a plastic tent and dark red spots freckled everything around her. Dolores turned to Danny as tears glazed her eyes.

  “Jesus, Danny, how long does she have?”

  He shook his head slowly. “They say it could be any time now. She's barely getting any oxygen, that's why she's so—”

  A gurgling scream interrupted them as their mother gasped, “Get out of here! You ain't my boy! Get out!” She hacked until a huge clot landed very near where Dolores stood outside the tent. “Dolores, run, run away from that… that… abomination!”

  Danny began to back out of the room, tears streaking his face. Between sobs of her own, Dolores tried to calm her.

  “Mom, please, it's Danny. It's the real Danny. Don't be afraid. We're here. Danny's here, don't be scared. We love you.”

  Her mother's eyes briefly cleared and she gasped, “Bring 'im closer, but don't let 'im in the tent, Dolores.” Then she began to blubber—a horrible, bloody affair. She looked like a vampire that had thrown up. But Dolores brought Danny forward and watched while her mother's chest heaved, a mist of blood erupting from her with every breath.

  Finally she nodded. “You're my boy. You're my actual boy. Why would you do that to me, Danny? Why would you give your mother a scare like that? Why would you do that, my baby boy?”

  Danny's face darkened. “What are you talking about, Mom?”

  Their mother tried to work up the energy to say something else, but after an exhausted wheeze her head suddenly flopped to the side, as unnatural as Ash's head cocking.

  Danny rang the call button for a nurse and sprinted into the hallway, shouting for help. Dolores stood rooted to the spot. She hadn't really believed until this moment that her mother could be dying. Her mother wasn't that old: only fifty-one. Dolores had been annoyed the entire drive. She'd been frustrated that she was wasting her only time off to drive to her miserable little town rather than… well, rather than what? Hanging out with Ash? Had the mysterious whack-job become so important in such a short period of time?

  With a pang of longing, Dolores realized that she had. She wanted Ash to be here. She wanted that awkward excuse for a hug. She
wanted to fold their bodies into a tiny bathtub while Ash imitated Mario Kart noises and animal sounds from Planet Earth while their legs pressed together like two toddler sisters.

  Then their mother drew in a great, rattling breath and her chest shuddered as more red mist flew into the air around her. The nurse and doctor came in donning what looked like welder's masks, except they were made of clear plastic. They ducked into the tent and the nurse did her best to mop up what was foaming out of their mother's mouth. Dolores wished that Ash were there to distract her from all of this—the symptoms, the death, the witnessing.

  Dolores stood listening quietly next to her brother as the doctor explained that he had never experienced a case quite like this but that there was no obvious pathogen besides the lung cancer. When Dolores mentioned the plague that was spreading all over the country, the doctor gave her a patronizing smile and said, “Sweetheart, I understand that this is upsetting, but there is no plague. Just an especially virulent strain of pneumonia, which she does not have. The pathology on everything we've tested has been clear.”

  “It's clear on the plague victims too.”

  The doctor sighed dramatically and Dolores wanted to kick his legs out from underneath his stubby little body.

  “I understand losing your mother is painful, but there's nothing we can do except try to keep her comfortable. Her lungs are basically all cancer, and we’ve discovered additional tumors in her brain. Enjoy what time you have left—that’s all she’d want right now. I'm sorry that she's suffering this way. She's a good, God-fearing woman.” Dolores was fairly certain his eyes lingered malevolently on her when he said this. He went to their mother's church, but he had also refused to prescribe birth control for Dolores as a teenager without her mother's permission even though she only wanted it for acne.

  After the doctor left, the weak winter light gave the dying woman a corpse-like pallor. They were about to sit down and wait for their mother to regain consciousness when they heard a cacophony outside their room.

  “Some crazy bitch burned my lungs!” a man cried out. Danny eyes jumped to Dolores's and they both ran out into the hall.

  It was a kid from the class below Dolores. His flannel shirt and Carhart jacket were spattered with blood, and he had even more dripping off his chin and out his nose. His eyes were red with tears, and the same nurse quickly re-donned her blood-spatter-protection mask and approached him. Ezra, that was his name. The nurse told him to calm down as she called to the doctor in a voice that sounded more like the bleat of a panicked sheep.

  Danny turned to Dolores with wide eyes. “Did you hear what he said? Did you hear it?” She nodded and he whispered, “What the fuck is happening, Lorri? What the fuck is this thing? What is it?”

  Dolores’s fear that she knew the answer grew, and it continued to break her heart. She could never tell Danny—he wouldn’t understand. Aside from sleeping with Colt, it would be the first thing she had ever kept from him, but she couldn't lose him.

  She couldn't lose Ash either, though. And as soon as she got home, she needed to find out what Ash knew.

  18 The Layers

  Danny decided to stay at the hospital when Dolores started to get ready to meet Colt.

  “Jeez, you’re making me feel bad for leaving,” she said.

  “Naw, don’t. I don't think she'll wake up again today, but if she does I’ll call you. Colt's a good guy—you could do worse.”

  Dolores rolled her eyes. “Super glad that you think so highly of me.”

  Danny laughed weakly. “That's not what I mean. I just… you never had much fun growing up, Lorri. Go have some goddamn fun. I'll take the night shift. You can come over in the morning. Just be careful out there, okay?”

  Dolores gave him a hug. “It's really kind of a rip that you got all the height,” he said.

  “No shit.”

  “Go feel small for an evening.”

  And so Dolores left that horrible place with the smallest smile. She warily drove Danny's truck in the rapidly falling snow, and as she stepped back into her mother's home the watched feeling came back as if on cue.

  “Ash? I don't know how, but I think you're here. Go home, Ash. Go home.” The feeling weakened but didn't go away.

  Before long there was a knock at the door. Colt was bundled up and wearing heavy duty hiking boots. Dolores looked down at her worn out Dr. Martens and grimaced.

  “One minute—let me layer up a bit.”

  After throwing on a couple extra pairs of her mother’s socks, Colt drove them outside of town to the deer trail that led winding back and forth up the backside of the bluff. Dolores expected he'd try to feed her a bunch of dumbass excuses for being a prick, but he didn't.

  “I'm sorry, you know, about what I did. I know that don't mean much now, but I am. Chelsea scared me. Right after you and me, you know, after that night, I had a bunch of crazy texts from her and that morning she told me she was knocked up. I didn't know how, because I swear, Lorri, I swear, I always bag it. My brother scared me so much about my dick rotting off that I don't even know if I'll ever be able to have kids. But I just felt like I had to take responsibility, but I wanted to talk to you, but then you just left. You just fucking left without so much as a slap across my face.”

  Dolores laughed at that last part. “I wouldn't have slapped you. I should've known better. But I don't regret it. Not really. It was nice.”

  “That is not the way I'd hoped you'd describe our, uh, lovemaking.”

  “Lovemaking? Really? What are you, some Harlequin author?” He looked at her so blankly that she laughed again. “Look, it doesn't matter, okay, it's all water under the bridge. So did you have a kid or…?”

  “She was never pregnant. I got suspicious after we got hitched and saw tampons in the trash. She fessed up that Andrea had seen you and me leave the party. She wanted me back and she panicked.”

  “Wow. How long did things last after that?”

  “About as long as it takes to go through the paperwork for a divorce. Luckily we didn't have a house or anything—we just lived in an apartment together. So I left.”

  “You left Gonzaga? You left a full-ride? You stupid asshole. What I wouldn't give for a full ride anywhere.”

  He shook his head. “No, I'm just home for Christmas. I scraped by my first semester, though. Couldn’t keep up with all… that.”

  “Well, that’s good at least. Still, I’d gladly take it off your hands.”

  “You got a boyfriend?”

  Dolores snorted a laugh. “No. No I do not.”

  “I bet you could get financial aid to Gonzaga.”

  “Jesus, Colt, slow your roll, buddy. I haven't seen you in a year and a half, and before that you took my virginity and got engaged to someone else within a twenty-four hour period. Forgive me if I'm just gonna keep on living my life in Bozeman.”

  “I didn't know it was your virginity. You were good.”

  “Honestly, if it's warm and wet, isn't it always good for you guys?”

  “No, it's not. I had more fun with you than I ever did with Chelsea.”

  “Well, that's a real comfort.”

  “Don't be mad, Lorri. Well, at least not about that.”

  The snow whirled around them, biting into Dolores’ knuckles where they peeked out of her sweatshirt sleeves. Seeing her shiver, Danny wrapped his big muscular body around hers and kissed her forehead.

  “You're going to freeze to death in just a couple sweatshirts. You lose all your sense in Bozeman, or just your winter coat?”

  “Just my coat. And maybe some of my sense. Or all of it. I don't know. It remains to be seen.”

  “Danny coming home tonight?”

  “No, I don't think so. I'm supposed to go relieve him in the morning.”

  “You want some company?”

  “Colt...” Dolores started, but he interrupted her arguments by kissing her. Mouth-smashing, she thought. She had forgotten how nice kissing was—it had been so long, and even before i
t had only been with him.

  Then Colt suddenly pulled away from her to wipe at his nose. Dolores felt the watching again, this time so strongly it was almost as though someone was squeezing her. Colt looked around warily, rubbing his fingers together where he had taken his glove off to dab at his nose. Dolores could see in the moonlight that it was bleeding and her stomach dropped.

  “Fuck, I'm sorry, I seem to have sprung a leak. Let's go back to my truck.” He kept glancing around as if he expected someone to lurch out of the snow and attack them at any moment. “Man, I suddenly got the heeby-jeebies. Like someone was watching us.”

  Dolores addressed the air around them: “Yeah, me too. I hope it stops. It would make me sad if it kept happening.” Then she muttered under her breath, “Watching people kiss is not allowed.”

  But the feeling only withdrew, when other times it had completely dispersed. Now Dolores felt certain that somehow, someway, Ash was here. And that Ash didn't like her kissing Colt.

  19 The Not-Nice Feeling

  We know now that the Dolores is too clever. The Dolores can sense us even when we are unmade. This is upsetting. We very much liked being able to always be with the Dolores and now the Dolores is indicating that we are Not Allowed.

  It doesn't yell at us because it is with the tall biped. We do not like the not-nice feeling we get when the tall one mouth-smashes the Dolores. We know that the Dolores likes the Colt and the Colt is not hurting the Dolores or making the Dolores sad, so we also know that it is not-nice for us to feel not-nice toward the Colt. We wish that we had taken a form like the Colt, but now we cannot remake ourselves since the bipeds are so good at identifying other bipeds.