We Are Ash

by Samara Stone

  We should not follow the exoskeleton back to the mother-thing's lair, but how can we let the Colt have all the touching of the Dolores? Will the Colt get to have the grooming tub time as well? Will it get to press its long dark shins against the Dolores's long pale shins? In the breath amount we learned lightly breathing into the Colt, we saw its fingers in the Dolores's shiny black hair. We wish we had thought to run our own fingers through the Dolores's hair.

  We are Not Allowed. We must not go into the lair. We must Go Away, like during the stink-making. We know that the Dolores yells when we do something that is Not Allowed or we do not Go Away. We remake in the small grassy pen behind the mother-thing's lair and find that we are leaking the eye saltwater. The sad juice. We are sad. We came here to escape the alone, but now we feel the alone even more. It is worse to be the alone when the Dolores is so near. We blink away the sad eye fluid and look through the clear-hards on the mother-thing’s lair. We see the Colt is still oozing blood-juice. We unmake and try to fixing the Colt without remaking. We swirl back outside to watch.

  The Dolores cleans the Colt's face and then she is mouth-smashing again and we are so full of the not-nice feeling about the Colt that some bear sounds escape us. They stop and look and we run, but not before the Dolores might have seen us. We will run for days. We will run until the not-nice in our thorax goes away.

  We do not wish to make the Dolores sad, but the Dolores has made us sad. We are Not Allowed to mouth-smash the Lane, but the Dolores is mouth-smashing another biped. Maybe we are Not Allowed to mouth-smash at all? But the mouth-smash seems like a cure for the alone.

  It seems the Dolores also knows that we made the Danny blood cough. That we breathed into the mother-thing. The Dolores might yell at us. The Dolores might tell us it is Not Allowed to breathe into the squishies. We won't unmake any of the Dolores's other genetically similar bipeds or the ones she wishes to mouth-smash with, but if it is not allowed at all, we will stop learning. We will stop knowing the places the humans congregate. We will not learn the other mouth-noises. We like learning. We like seeing. We like being. It is not our fault that bipeds are so unskilled at remaking. They must adapt. They must learn too.

  We decide that we will run to the Lane. Maybe the Lane can explain the complex social interactions involving the mouth-smash. Maybe the Lane will help us feel less of the not-nice feeling. We do not like the not-nice feeling we have about the Colt being into the Dolores. It is like being shot from the inside and we do not like being shot. Not from the inside or the outside. Both are not-nice.

  We could unmake and get back to the Lane sooner, but the running is part of us. The Dolores doesn't understand the running. We must run, the way the squishies must always put plants and animals and artificial matter in their mouths to stay alive. We can hold still, but we do not know for how long—especially when there is so much to learn. So much surface to see, so many depths to plumb. We cannot be still for too long.

  Only with the Dolores can we be still. If we did not have the Dolores, we would breathe into squishies all the time. But with the Dolores, we are at peace. With the Dolores we can breathe. With the Dolores it is okay that we are not learning, not seeing, not doing.

  We are freezing, but in the dark and the wild where the bipeds haven't built their lairs we grow a nice plush pelt to keep us warm. We drop into the snow every time an exoskeleton appears, its blazing eyes on the horizon. We save a raccoon from one of the exoskeletons and the exoskeleton brays at us like a beast, screeching to a halt. The biped inside it jumps out and runs after us, but we are far too swift for it. The other animals raise their noses and sniff at us because we are not a human.

  We are not a bear—we are none of these other animals. No, we are Ash and we are the alone.

  20 Unmaking The Mother-Thing

  Dolores’s childhood bed was nearly overflowing with her and Colt’s tall, lean bodies. Someone had just slammed the front door, waking Dolores from sleep. She sprang up and pulled on her jeans and shirt from the night before. She closed her bedroom door quietly behind her and walked into the living room where Danny was kicking off his shoes.

  “I thought you were going to wait for me to...” she started, but trailed off as she saw his bleary eyes and snot-reddened nose. He shook his head, pressing his lips together so tightly they disappeared.

  “She's gone, Lorri. She's dead. I wasn't even awake. I fell asleep in the chair, and when I woke up they were asking me if I wanted her resuscitated. I said no. She was covered in so much blood. I knew she would never come back to us, not really. Fuck. Fuck!”

  He crumpled onto the couch just as Colt peeked out from her bedroom. Dolores half-heartedly waved him out and slumped next to Danny. She couldn't call up any tears to match him, so she held her smaller older brother while Colt quietly came out of her room and sat beside her, wrapping his arms around them both. Danny didn't even look up.

  They sat in silence like that for a long time. The watched feeling had left the night before and hadn't been back. Dolores felt a little guilty—like she'd banished her only friend. But she would explain the birds & the bees and why you don’t watch other people without permission once she was back in Bozeman.

  The rest of the day was a whirlwind of funeral arrangements. Luckily Danny could handle everything with the church, and before long sympathy casseroles and cookies and soups began pouring into their home. Danny soberly packed any excess food away in the freezer, as if someone would be in the house to eat it.

  It took several days to sort everything out, and despite feeling both a vague shame and a brighter thrill, every night was spent with Colt, learning and luxuriating in each other's bodies. As great as the company was, though, she still found herself missing Ash and fearing that she had hurt her only friend by reviving an old one.

  Funeral day arrived and Dolores mumbled her way through hymn after hymn and tried not to fall asleep during the hour-long sermon at her mother’s church. Colt sat by her the whole time, with Danny on her other side, She was touched that Colt was so open about being with her, despite having recently divorced the mayor's daughter. Though she imagined people thought she and Colt were exactly what each other deserved. On this point, she tended to agree.

  Once her mother was in the ground she finally found her tears. Heaving, gulping, sobbing tears. Colt rubbed her back as she bent over and cried. Danny had walked to the gates of the cemetery with the bulk of the mourners so she and Colt were alone.

  Once she got ahold of herself, they walked back toward Colt's truck.

  “I guess you'll go now,” he said.

  “Yeah. I should. I'll get fired if I'm not back by Sunday. Plus all my coworkers will hate me.”

  “Why would they hate you? Your mom just died. It's okay to need some time.”

  Dolores let another sob shudder through her. “Yeah. Yeah. No. It's not that they wouldn't want me to have time. We've just been really short-staffed. Four of my coworkers have that new horrible respiratory disease.”

  “They think Ezra has it. He's still in the hospital from the night after you came through.”

  Dolores nodded absently. It was odd that there were four cases from her Starbucks, plus another if you counted the customer who had died. Maybe Starbucks was the link, and not Ash? Dolores desperately wanted the link to be anything but Ash. But how could one person cause such violent illness without showing any symptoms themselves?

  She thought back on the fact that Ash had told her not to worry about the disease, that Ash would protect her. Maybe Ash wasn't causing it—maybe she was some kind of secret spy scientist from another country trying to track and combat this new bio-weapon. Although it was a pretty inefficient bio-weapon by all accounts.

  She didn't even realize that Colt had driven her home. “You mind if I come in? If this is your last night, maybe this time you'll at least say goodbye?”

  “Only if you promise not to propose to someone else tomorrow morning.”

  Colt grinned, hopping out
and loping around to open her door for her. They kissed and walked inside. The reception would be going on right now, and Dolores knew that she should be there, but she didn't want to think about her mother's death anymore. Couldn’t think about it anymore. She didn't want to be surrounded by people that disapproved of her. And she didn't want to feel inadequate in her inability to comfort her brother either.

  So instead she took Colt's hand and led him inside.

  21 The Dolores’s Return

  Dolores wasn't surprised that Ash wasn't home when she arrived late the next night, but Dolores was sad nonetheless. She'd been looking forward to telling her friend about Colt—even if Ash maybe, impossibly, already knew about it. Had Dolores imagined a pair of bioluminescent green eyes at the window of her mother's house before she went to bed with Colt?

  Dolores crept through her house as though she were an invader and not the only tenant who paid rent. But she was alone, the only evidence that Ash had been there a molted set of clothing on the floor of the kitchen.

  Dolores texted Colt that she'd made it home safe and he sent her a smoochie-face emoji. The silence in the house was unnerving after being around so many people in Musketon. Dolores turned some music on just to fill the void before heading to brush her teeth. She screamed when she emerged to find Ash was standing in the living room wearing ski pants and a frilly woman's blouse.

  “Goddamnit, Ash! You scared me! And what in god's name are you wearing?”

  Ash glanced down and back up with her guileless green eyes. “Drapes?”

  “Clothes. We've talked about this. But why that particular combination? Where do you even find these, uh, drapes?”

  Ash narrowed her eyes. “They are not the Dolores's drapes. We do not take the Dolores's drapes. That is Not Allowed.”

  “They would be too long anyway.”

  “We could be longer.”

  “Okay, look, I'm too tired to talk in circles tonight. I've been driving for forever.”

  “The Dolores is not old enough for forever. It is barely out of its larval form.”

  “Ew. Just ew. Don't talk about humans having larval forms again. Will you be around in the morning? We need to talk.”

  “Is the Dolores going to make us Go Away?”

  “What? No, of course not. But we need to have a chat, so don't scamper off silently like you normally do. Where were you hiding anyway? In the fridge?”

  “We think it would be unpleasantly cold in the fridge.”

  “No doubt. Okay, I’m literally going to fall over if I try to stand here one minute longer. Goodnight Ash. Get some sleep.”

  “We are very glad the Dolores is home.” Ash moved toward her, but didn't touch her. Her gleaming eyes looked wet. “We missed the Dolores. Is the Dolores still our crazy bitch?”

  “Oh, Ash,” Dolores pulled Ash in for a tight hug. “More and more every day, I think.”

  Dolores pretended to go to bed, but then slid silently off her mattress. She'd deliberately left her door open a crack so she could watch Ash without tipping off her sneaky friend. As tired as she was, she needed some answers. Nursing what was left of her Big Gulp of cherry Pepsi, Dolores silently settled at an angle so she could watch Ash pacing around the living room.

  For a long time, Ash just read Dolores's copy of Brothers Karamazov, her brow furrowed. She frequently referred to her dictionary, but she never sat down, walking while reading. Although running might be more accurate. Her pace was more akin to most people's speed-walking.

  After three hours, Ash set both books down without a sound and watched Dolores's door for a moment. Dolores held her breath, feeling a faint tickle of fear for the first time in her relationship with Ash. Could the strange woman sense her somehow? But then Ash paced a few more times before clicking off the lamp. Ash's eyes were definitely glowing, and they only increased in brightness as Ash threw her head back like she was going to howl at the moon.

  Then, rising out of Ash's mouth came long fingers of what looked like dense smoke. Dolores clasped a hand over her mouth to keep herself quiet. Tendrils of ash swirled around up and out of Ash's mouth, faintly green from the light of her eyes, until suddenly Ash's body collapsed in a heap on the floor. Then Dolores could restrain herself no more and leapt to her feet, banging her hip on the knob as she rushed into the room.

  “Ash! Ash! What the ever-loving-fuck!” Dolores shrieked, reaching her friend's deflated body. Except that there was no body. Where mere seconds before had been her very real, very tangible, very flesh and blood friend, there was now only a pile of clothes. A sloughed off, artificial, horrifically mismatched pair of ski pants and a fancy blouse. Dolores whirled around, expecting Ash to be bent over, naked, and laughing at this new trick.

  Dolores raced through the house for the second time since her return and this time she didn't skip the fridge or the kitchen cabinets or behind the ugly cloth skirt that someone had glued around her bathroom sink. She peered under her bed with her phone's flashlight. Then she raced out into the frigid night and checked all around the outside of her house.

  Finally, Dolores shouted for Ash, first inside and then outside until her neighbor opened a window and told her he would turn her into ash if she didn't shut the hell up. Dolores took the hint and walked shakily back into the house. She nudged the latest sheddings with her toe and growled loudly, wishing she could make a bear noise like her recently disintegrated friend. Would Ash reappear in the same manner? Would she reappear at all? Had Dolores scared her off?

  Dolores dropped onto the couch with her head between her hands, knowing it would be even harder to fall asleep now with her friend in the wind, perhaps literally. She thought back to the weird experience Danny had described—hadn't he said that the woman had breathed ash into him? Didn't Danny think—fear—that the same thing had seen their mother somehow? Did it visit her? Was inhaling Ash—intentionally or not—what was hurting people? When her mother undoubtedly yelled at it, did she inhale it too?

  22 The Not-Nice Yelling

  When we returned to the Dolores, it had collapsed on the couch, doing the nest-thing but not in its nest. We still wish the Dolores wasn't so stingy with its nest. Especially now that we know the humans do a nice thing in the nest, an extended form of the mouth-smashing. What is the Dolores doing out here? Why does it hold our previous drapes? We were going to reuse those drapes today. Instead we quietly use the others that are still on the floor. The Dolores is always taking away our drapes and putting them in the strange machines that make them wet and then dry again.

  Just as we complete the zipping, the Dolores begins to shout. It won't come near us, and it is not-nice yelling, waving the previous night's drapes at us. We do not know why the Dolores is making so much noise at us. Usually if we wear the drapes, the squishies do not yell so much. We hold our hands up as we sometimes see the humans do as a sign of submissiveness on the glowing box.

  “The Dolores is not happy? The Dolores is upset that we did not stay? But we are back. We are back. Does it see that we are back?”

  “What? Aren't you listening to me at all? I don't give a shit that you left, I care that you left by turning into some kind of weird smoke.”

  “Ash.”

  “Whatever. Wait—are you just admitting that you do some kind of dissolving?”

  “Does the Dolores mean the unmaking?”

  The Dolores sits on the couch again, shaking its head. “What? What is unmaking?”

  We cock our head to the side, forgetting that it is Not Allowed. “We go places sometimes by the unmaking, it is much faster than running. Did the Dolores watch us? We did not mean to wake the Dolores—”

  “No! No. Stop. You didn't wake me. Were you in Musketon with me? Were you watching me?”

  We straighten our head. We suspected the Dolores could sense us.

  “We are sorry. We didn't know the Dolores would be sad about it. We were the alone. We felt sad. We only wanted to be with the Dolores.”

  “So you were there
! The fuck?”

  “Is the fuck why it asked us to leave?”

  “Where were you? I couldn't see you, but I could feel you.”

  “We were unmade. We were ash, as the Dolores saw.”

  The Dolores loses much of its facial coloration and covers its mouth. We did not realize that it would be so sad that we went to the Musketon.

  “We are sorry. Since finding the Dolores—since we have become its crazy bitch—we do not like the alone. And we did not think the Dolores actually meant that we were Allowed to be with the Lane to fight the alone—the Dolores said it in the way that typically means something is Not Allowed. The Dolores said it in the sarcasm way. We are already the alone so often because of the Starbucks. Does the Dolores want us to Go Away?”

  The Dolores is quiet for such a long time that we feel a new feeling—we think it is despair. We feel our body getting ready to unmake again, to go as far from the Dolores as we can, because otherwise we do not know how we will ever stay away from the Dolores.

  “We love the Dolores,” we say, fighting the sad-eye-leak juice.

  “Then no more watching me! No more of that! You hear me?”

  “We hear the Dolores, but we cannot speak to whether the You hears.”

  “Goddamnit, Ash, you're the you! Don't spy anymore. Don't leave weird molted piles of clothing everywhere! Just act like a human! Because I don't want you to go away—I don't want Ash to go away—but there are people who will definitely want you to go away if you keep it up. No more sci-fi shit, okay?!”

  We wish the Dolores would speak more plainly because we do not know what it is trying to convey. But we do understand that it has said we do not have to Go Away, and we are happy. We do not care about the other things, but we know that we must say “okay” whenever another squishy says “okay,” so we stroke the Dolores's hair and say, “Okay. Okay, the Dolores.”