We Are Ash

by Samara Stone

  The Dolores sighs and trudges towards its nest. It turns to us and says, “I'm really going to sleep this time.”

  We put on the running shoes and we run. We are surprised that after so much watching the Dolores is only now upset about it. Perhaps it knows that we made the Colt bleed from its snout. The Colt is likely the source of its yelling. We do not like when the Dolores uses the not-nice yelling with us. It makes us want to go find the Lane and mouth-smash the Lane just so the Dolores can feel the abandoned not-nice feeling, but we suspect that will only make it yell at us more.

  It is cold and we consider going back to the Mexico City to run there, but we did not like the air in the Mexico City. But it was warm there. We will find a biped to breath into that maybe knows of other warm places. Maybe we can see the ocean thing again.

  23 A Housewife

  Dolores didn't have much time to think about Ash or her dissolving the next two weeks. The silver lining of her mother's passing was that her life insurance covered the coming semester, which meant a whirlwind of registering, buying books, and trying to get her boss to acquiesce to a semi-regular schedule. An especially hard task since none of her sickened coworkers had recovered enough that they weren't complete public health hazards. Two were out of the hospital at least, but it turned out that coughing even a little bit of blood disqualified one from working in the food service industry.

  Winter was kicking the shit out of her too—Danny sent her snow tires for her bike after she took a nasty, helmet-cracking fall from a patch of ice. She hadn't had a chance to put them on yet, but Colt had texted her that he would help when he came through on his way back to Gonzaga. Dolores didn't want to have a man put her bike tires on but she also didn't want to do it herself, so she would probably just lean into the perceived gender role.

  Ash had nothing but free time, though. One morning on the way to work Dolores teased Ash that she was her housewife. Ash pressed her on the matter and—after far more explanation than Dolores had time for—delightedly exclaimed that she could be Dolores's housewife.

  Since that declaration, Ash had been cleaning and, bizarrely since she never seemed to eat, cooking. There had been a few mishaps, but once Ash understood the principle of “recipes” it was off to the races. It felt wildly decadent. Even as a child Dolores never had anything more elaborate for dinner than Shake 'n Bake chicken. Her mother didn't cook, so they’d mostly subsisted on a variety of sugary cereals, cheese, and the bargain bags of red apples that were more seeds than fruit. Only when her father was around would they break out canned green beans, overcooked chicken breasts, and boxed mashed potatoes.

  Dolores tried to ignore the conspicuous drop in new cases of plague since Ash had become her housewife, but it was undeniable. That was good, even if it was unrelated to Ash's shockingly good green curry. Ash told Dolores proudly that she had talked to the proprietors of Sweet Chili, one Bozeman's few Thai restaurants. The mind positively boggled trying to imagine that interaction.

  She was closing up at Starbucks for the evening dreading the long walk home, still not feeling up to biking again just yet. Marisol, her fellow closer that evening, had left moments before, so Dolores turned off the remaining lights, braved the cold, and locked the door behind herself.

  Suddenly she heard some kind of noise in the alley and spun around, keys between her fingers, ready to at least maul whoever had the gall to be out assaulting people in this weather. Someone appeared to be about to kiss Marisol, a person who was bare-armed, wearing only a thin tank top and ski pants. Then Dolores saw, to her great horror, Ash's most frequently used coat tucked behind the dumpster, only a few feet from Marisol.

  Unsure what was happening, Dolores froze. Maybe this was a tender moment. But when the figure reached up and grasped Marisol's jaw, Dolores felt herself screaming as the person exhaled tendrils of ashy looking smoke right into her mouth and nose. Her coworker thrashed against the other woman, her back and neck muscles spasming. The strange woman wrapped her other arm around Marisol to keep her from flailing and then her eyes slid open. They weren't green, but they did glow.

  The woman saw Dolores and quickly inhaled a great, sucking gasp, the stuff spiraling back out of Marisol's mouth. The tendrils seemed to go right back into the assailant's mouth, but as it did, the woman began to disintegrate and blow away into the snow, just as she had seen Ash do. Dolores finally regained her senses and ran over to Marisol, collapsed and coughing up great gouts of blood. Dolores dropped her to her knees and rubbed Marisol's back while trying to dial 911 with her other hand.

  “What happened? Did you know that person?” Dolores frantically asked.

  Marisol gasped in a few long breaths. “I don't know,” she said, blood trickling down her chin, out of her nostrils. “She said something about being cold, and since she was just wearing a tank top—” Marisol flew into another bout of hacking, the snow surrounding them almost entirely dark with blood.

  Dolores helped her stand. “We need to get you back inside—you'll freeze out here. Or do you have a car? I can drive you to the hospital.”

  Marisol began to cry a horrible mix of wet, gloppy sobs and barking, spraying coughs. She clicked her keys and Dolores saw a car's lights flash weakly from under a layer of snow only twenty feet down the alley. Dolores bent to almost ninety degrees and waddled to let Marisol wrap her arm around her shoulders as she supported her to the car.

  By the time they reached the ER, Marisol felt marginally better but still had blood coming out of both her mouth and nose. Dolores insisted that they go in, but Marisol shook her head.

  “I don’t have insurance,” she wheezed.

  Dolores sat for a long moment. Then she whispered, “I might know someone who can fix you...but it’ll be weird and you can't tell anyone.”

  “What do you—” Another bloody coughing fit. “What do you mean fix me? What the hell was that woman? Where did she go?”

  “I don't know, but I have a weird friend that might be able to help. It's the ER or her. I can't let you just go home. Look how much blood you've lost—you'll die if this goes on much longer.”

  Marisol's head fell back heavily against the car’s headrest. “I don't have enough money for an ER visit... so I guess... I guess... your friend,” she choked out.

  Dolores turned around. She hadn't considered what she would do if Ash wasn't home, but even as her mind raced to make sense of what was happening, she felt certain that Ash would be able to fix this. The woman who had attacked Marisol looked nothing like Ash, but there were the glowing eyes, the weird floofing away into the gale like an incinerated corpse. If nothing else, Ash would likely know what to do about this other ash-woman.

  So Dolores began the slow drive back to her house, Marisol's tiny, old Ford Escort fishtailing at every turn. It seemed to take an eternity, but at least it would give Ash some time to finish whatever she did during the day.

  Ash would be home, she had to be home. She would have to help.

  24 Fixing The Marisol

  Dolores penguin-walked into her little house, only grateful for the ice because she could slide Marisol's feet along. Now that panic's clarifying adrenaline had worn off, Dolores was trying not to freak out about seeing her coworker possessed and spraying blood like some sort of gory water gun. Marisol, for her part, was helping Dolores remain calm by staying mostly unconscious. She awkwardly fumbled with her keys in her thick mittens and finally managed to open the front door.

  It was a huge relief when she saw Ash kneeling before the fireplace, stoking a flame. Dolores could tell immediately that it hadn't been burning long, though. Ash sprang to her feet as soon as she noticed Marisol.

  “What does the Dolores have? Why does the Dolores have it? What is it doing?” Ash said in her many-layered voice.

  “You fix her.”

  “The You is useless.”

  “Ash! Heal her. Make her better. Fix her!”

  Ash backed warily away from Dolores as she set the wheezing woman in the cha
ir near the fireplace.

  “Did you, did Ash, do this? I saw what happened to Marisol and she didn't get a disease—she got attacked! Attacked by someone who turned to ash, just like you. Can you fix her?”

  Ash's green eyes danced back and forth between Dolores's and Marisol. “We can't. It is not-nice to do the fixing. We didn't mean for the Dolores to see. We thought the Dolores had already left the Starbucks.”

  “The fuck is wrong with you! I don't care that I saw it—I care that you did it! This is wrong, Ash! This is not fucking allowed! This is the MOST not allowed! You can't do this and you will fucking fix it or you will get out of my goddamn house and never come back.”

  To her surprise, Ash's glittering eyes filled with tears. “The Dolores is making us Go Away?”

  “I don't want you to go away, but you need to fix Marisol. Fix her and you can stay.”

  Ash looked at Marisol with obvious distaste and glanced balefully back at Dolores. “We will try,” she said softly, “but the Dolores must know that we can't do this again. The fixing… it is unnatural. It hurts us… and… and we can only fix when we love. We love the Dolores, so we will try.”

  Dolores watched warily as Ash squatted down in front of an unconscious Marisol and closed her eyes. She stretched her hand out and grasped the small woman's face. Then Ash's head rolled back and her eyes flew open, glowing so obviously now that they cast light bright enough to read by. Dolores covered her mouth to stifle a scream as blood-red ash came twisting and spiraling out of Marisol's mouth and nose as if twisting in a fast breeze. They seemed to go into Ash's hand, her veins turning black and her arm shaking more than the rest of her.

  It was over in less than a minute, but Ash fell to the floor, gasping. A moment later Ash was out the door, disappearing into the night without a coat, leaving Dolores to try to explain what had happened to her suddenly awake coworker. Marisol coughed experimentally into her hand and then looked up into Dolores's eyes.

  “Did you spike my drink with acid during our break? Because I have no idea what just happened.”

  Dolores slumped onto her. “I would love to explain it to you, but I have no idea what happened either. You can't tell anyone about this, okay? My friend, she… she can't help the others. I'm going to try to figure it out, but… but… you're okay, yeah? You're gonna be okay.”

  Marisol's face was blank. “What others? What are you talking about?”

  “Never mind. I'm just tired. Are you cool to drive yourself home? You can use my bathroom to clean up first if you want.”

  Marisol nodded and tottered unsteadily into the bathroom. Dolores supposed that Ash had cured the cough, but couldn't have put all that lost blood back into Marisol. Or maybe she could? Who knew?

  Dolores was exhausted, but she was also terrified that she'd never see Ash again. And what if Ash just went out and did this to someone else? What if this was how Ash “ate”?

  She knew she shouldn't feel bad about saving Marisol, but she hadn't expected Ash to respond that way. She expected her odd friend to be compliant and confused, but she hadn't expected Marisol's suffering to transfer to Ash the way it seemed to have. Had Ash caused all the cases of the plague?

  “I'm gonna go,” Marisol said, her voice a little shaky and clearly eager to leave all this behind her. “And, um, thanks, for whatever your friend did. Where did she go? I was pretty out of it until she was leaving. Will you thank her for me?”

  “Yeah… sure.”

  Dolores got up to walk Marisol to the door and stared for a frigid moment out into the swirling snow, hoping to see glowing green eyes just waiting to return, waiting for Dolores to be alone again. But there was nothing but snow and darkness and cold. Fear filled Dolores at the thought of her coatless, shoeless, lightly clad friend out in that maelstrom, sad, sick, and alone.

  Once Marisol had driven away, Dolores called out to Ash, but there was nothing, not even the complaints of her neighbors, only the whining howl of the constant wind.

  25 Searching, Waiting

  Dolores spent her day off in misery, worried that Ash was frozen and dead in a snowdrift somewhere. The worst part was that Dolores would never know, and even then Ash's death would go completely unnoticed except for Dolores. Well, and maybe the proprietors of Sweet Chili.

  Dolores didn't even know where to begin looking for her constantly running friend. Dolores had no way to contact her and no sense of where or how she spent her days except the running, but that didn't exactly narrow down a location. Usually Ash found her. The only place Dolores could think of was Starbucks, and all she found there was the same coat from before still behind the dumpster. Not a good sign.

  Colt was coming into town for two nights, but Dolores could hardly even get excited. The fear and worry she felt for her friend was overwhelming. As was the confusion. How many people had Ash killed or made sick? And had Dolores made it worse by trying to teach her to pass as human? She wanted to exonerate herself, thinking of the cases that were identified before she'd ever met Ash, but then she remembered that Starbucks seemed to be the bloody epicenter. Her friendship with Ash might be responsible for most of the local cases.

  School started the next Tuesday, so she would have even less time to keep tabs on Ash—a worrisome prospect. But it wasn't as if casting her out would solve the problem. She just needed Ash to listen to her, to understand. If she had learned nothing else in her months with her possibly-alien roommate, it was that Ash really didn't understand a great deal. Maybe she really didn't know that hacking up chunks of blood and lung was bad for “the squishies,” in the same way she didn't seem to understand that eating was good for them—necessary, even.

  Above everything else, though, and as selfish as it was, Dolores had simply grown accustomed to having an actual friend. A roommate who was also her own weird-ass bestie. She didn't know if she could go back to her sad, lonely life without that friendship, as unique it was. Especially because she felt certain this would be the last time that she and Colt would see each other until spring break. She hadn't meant to get attached to him, but much like her relationship with Ash, she found herself almost instantly drawn in—high on the feeling of belonging she found in his arms

  The blizzard continued into the following day and still Ash didn't return. Colt texted that he was leaving early to give himself plenty of time on the shitty roads. Dolores even called Danny, trying to think of a way to discuss her situation without outing Ash as… well… as whatever she was. Unfortunately, he didn't pick up, so she was left all alone with her whirling thoughts.

  Nothing. No molted clothes, no sudden appearance to scare the shit out of Dolores—just the awful silence of her house, so sparingly furnished that without her friend, it seemed almost unlived in. As the evening wore on, she finally decided to don her winter clothes again and at least trudge around the neighborhood looking for her. Maybe Ash had holed-up in someone's shed or garage like a lost cat. But any tracks that might've been in the snow were quickly obliterated by the unceasing wind. Eventually she admitted defeat.

  What Dolores had really hoped for was that while she was gone, Ash would appear and be waiting for her as she often did when Dolores came home. But the house remained unchanged. Dolores brought more wood in, hoping it would dry out enough to burn soon. She had never bothered to ask Ash where she had procured the wood. Dolores assumed they were stolen from other people's woodpiles, since they were mostly but not all cut. There were so many types of wood, though, that she knew that any theft was fairly small and spread widely.

  Dolores spent a second night all alone on the floor in front of a crackling fire, and as she drifted off, she let herself cry: for her mother, for Colt, and for herself. For finding a friend who was maybe killing people, and maybe now gone forever.

  26 The Pelt and The Den

  We no longer care that we are Not Allowed to have a nice, shaggy pelt like the bear. We finished fixing the squishy that we'd only just breathed into, but then we were so angry at the Dolores that
we went into the wretched cold of this place with our weak, soft, hairless body. We instantly regretted that we ever became a squishy biped with their inability to handle the elements. We ran away into the night and as soon as we were in darkness, we grew a nice fur.

  We cannot decide if the Dolores will ever want us back—if we will ever want to go back. We will not fix any more squishies. The fixing is terrible for us. We lost everything that we had learned from the small-statured biped, and we are exhausted now, so exhausted that even to run is tiring us out. But we must run because we cannot stay out in this cold with the snows and the icy breath of the sky on us, even with our nice, dense, pelt, like the fat, floppy creatures that live both in water and on land.

  Eventually we find ourselves back at the place of the bad No-Tip Human, but there are new squishies in its den, so we continue out into the forest, searching, searching, searching for a cavern that we had seen long ago when were new and when we ran into the hills to fill all the times that we were the alone. Now the Dolores will be the alone, but unlike us, the Dolores will find other squishies to love it, to hold it, to mouth-smash it. Other squishies to share its grooming tub time.

  We growl a deep bear growl at this thought, but no, no, we are mad at the Dolores, not the other squishies. The Dolores is always making things Not Allowed. We never get to make anything Not Allowed, even the stink-making. We tried and we only got yelled at and asked the question, “And I suppose you don't shit, your majesty?” To which we responded that we still didn't know about the ever-accursed You, its shit, or its majesty.