by Anson Barber
“Yep.” She started for her bathroom door and then turned to me with a smirk. “At the very least, I’m not going to spend the night on the sofa.”
I nodded. “Slow and steady wins the race.”
“Right.” She stood by the open window looking out at the last of the day’s glow fade in the horizon. “Missed another one.”
I could see she was ready for action which meant getting dressed, so I excused myself and went back to the kitchen to get out of the way.
I made some coffee and then I had an idea. She could probably use a cup too.
“Hello?” I shouted from the hall so I could find her without having to search the entire floor.
“In here!” she yelled back.
I continued down the hall to the first room on the left. The sun room, which was more of a moon room now. We hadn’t been in there since the initial tour.
Emery tilted her head as I came in with two large mugs.
Before she could say anything she saw that I wasn’t offering her coffee. “I warmed up your blood and put it in a cup.”
She seemed a bit puzzled so I explained. “You’re so preoccupied with feeling normal again, I figured this might help.”
“This one is yours.” I held it out to her at the same time she caught the whiff of warm food. Her face lost every shred of humanity as I tried to remember when last she’d eaten. “Shit.”
She ripped the mug from my hands, sloshing blood across the white tile. She didn’t even care that I was watching as she gulped it down, groaning and moving away from me to protect her meal.
I could have planned all that better.
It took a minute for her to regain her composure. She looked around at the scene in the lab. She’d knocked over some things on the island, there was blood on the floor as well as the panic I was sure was in my eyes.
“Damn it!” she yelled and threw the cup against the wall, shattering it and staining the wall with streaks of red. Then she turned on me. “What the hell is wrong with you? Why do you insist on trying to make this seem normal? It’s not normal! Why can’t you get that?”
“Seriously?” I yelled back at her. “This is a normal human fit if I’ve ever seen one! Now go get the broom and a mop and stop feeling sorry for yourself!”
With a sigh she left the room while I picked up what I could from the floor.
“Just let me do it,” she grumbled as she came back. “I’m—”
“You know what, Em? Save the apologies. We don’t have time for your little tantrums. I was trying to help. Trust me, it won’t happen again.”
She ran her fingers through her hair, trying to get it out of the way while she swept up the mess she’d made.
“I was just trying to do something nice,” I said. “I didn’t realize that was going to happen. I should have checked how hungry you were first. I wasn’t trying to upset you.”
“You have no idea what this is like,” she said when she was done.
“I’m aware.”
“If I’m not allowed to apologize, what do I do?”
I let out a sigh while I thought over how mad I was. Not that mad.
“I get that you don’t feel human, we’ve gone round and round about it, but I am human so it would be nice if you could treat me like one.”
With that she burst into tears, running like mascara. She looked up at me for the first time since she’d lost control. She looked very sorry. Once again, I gave in.
“No more. This is your final warning, I mean it. Yell at me again and I’m leaving.”
She nodded quickly. “Understood.”
“Good. Now get back to work.” I pointed to her workstation, but smiled so she knew I was okay. Pseudo-tough love at its finest.
“Yes, sir!” She saluted and pulled out a book. “But first, research.” She read for a moment, then looked up at me. “Before I lost control, I did appreciate it warmed up.”
“You’re like some kind of genius, right? Do you think you could keep better track of when you need to eat and sleep so we don’t have these kinds of problems again?”
“Sure.” She chuckled and snapped the large book shut before opening an equally massive volume. I picked up a car magazine I’d left there earlier as she read. About an hour later she was still just sitting there reading. It wasn’t any kind of journal on HANTS, just a general book on biology with big bright pictures.
“I’m not a scientist or anything, but I don’t think there’s going to be anything in those books that covers your condition.”
“Yes. I know. I’m looking for inspiration.” She rested her forehead on the book for a moment. I looked around the very white room. No pictures, no color, no nothing.
“Inspiration coming right up!” I smiled and went back upstairs. I searched around until I found my flashlight, the one that mounted on my head, and went back downstairs.
In Mr. Mitchell’s study I hooked my phone up to his computer. After printing out a few color pictures I went to the kitchen, hunting the cabinets for vases. I came up with two large ones, a tiny one and a giant pitcher meant for lemonade. I grabbed some kitchen shears and went outside.
The landscaping was fairly young around the new house, but up the lane there was a patch of wildflowers. How wild they were I wasn’t certain, their symmetrical placement made me think they weren’t wild at all.
I shook my head at humanity’s need to find order in everything.
After scaring off a raccoon, I collected a number of specimens and came back in.
Balancing my load of inspiration, I made my way back to the bland sun room.
Emery was too engrossed in her book to pay attention to what I was doing. I set the vases of flowers in the deep window sills and hung up the photos of the sun I had taken for her.
She finally looked up when I opened the windows.
“You need fresh air,” I said as I threw every one of them open. She wouldn’t get cold in the chilly night air, her body temperature was already low. One of those Haunt things.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s daytime,” I angled a flexible floor lamp’s neck towards the photographs and waved toward the setup I’d created.
“Flowers?” She looked at the vases lined up on the windows, flanked by pictures of the sun. “I’ve never gotten flowers before. I’m allergic.” She frowned and took in a deep breath. “I was allergic.”
She walked closer to them so she could get a good sniff.
“Thank you, Dillon,” she said sincerely.
I shrugged it off. Like it was no big deal. I pointed at a white board that covered one large wall. “What’s with the board?”
“It’s an idea board.” She looked at it sadly. It was completely blank. That had to be daunting. After seeing the walls at her place at the Outer Banks, I didn’t understand why they were still blank.
I picked up one of the markers as she took the small vase of flowers over to the counter. She set them next to her book after smelling them again.
I decided on an underwater ocean scene. People found fish relaxing, so I drew a bunch of colorful fish with seaweed and coral. It took a good hour to cover most of the huge board.
Down in one corner I discreetly drew two kissing fish. Subliminal message? Maybe.
In the section I had left undisturbed, I began drawing a car. The car I had been working on before Bobby showed up in my garage.
I sketched out the chassis and was adding the wheels when Emery finally looked up.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“The ocean.” I pointed toward the fish.
“No. The thing you’re drawing now.”
“Oh. It’s a chassis for a car.”
She squinted. I guessed she’d heard the word, but not seen one.
“You’ve never seen one?”
She tilted her head, admitting nothing. The brainiac had to know everything.
“It’s okay. Most people don’t think much about them, though without it you don’t really have a car—just a bunch of floating spare parts.” I laughed, but Emery was interested. Or at least interested in a distraction. She came to stand next to me to get a better look.
“It’s the part of the vehicle that gives the car its strength. You can put anything on top of this. You can have the most state of the art shell, but if the chassis is weak you’re sunk.” I turned to see her studying my crude drawing.
“That’s what I see in you.” I added without thinking.
Her head snapped over to look at me. Maybe she thought it was an insult. I had to explain.
“You are strong on the inside. So strong that you could be like a truck chassis.” She smirked at that. “You might not like your outer shell right now, and your fluid system definitely needs to be flushed, but underneath that you’re strong and sound.”
She just stared at me. No expression.
“I’m sorry,” I backtracked and looked away bracing myself for another wave of her wrath. Why had I told her she reminded me of a car? That was a stupid thing to say.
“Do you think I can do this?” she asked quietly.
“I know it.”
“How do you know?” She watched my face.
I sighed. This might come out worse than the car analogy.
“Because you hate what you are so much. Because you want to be who you were more than anything else. If anyone has the determination or desire to fix this, it’s you.”
I looked down at the floor. That wasn’t it. I decided to be honest with her.
“I really hope you can. Not just for the world, but for me on a personal level. Because you won’t let me be close to you while you’re like this, and I—I want to be with you, Emery,” I confessed and met her eyes for a second before looking away. I should have shut up, but I didn’t.
“I know what you’re thinking, but I’m serious. I care about you. Who you are, not what.” I sighed and looked at her face. She wasn’t mad.
She closed the few feet between us and latched her arms around my neck pulling me to her lips. She said nothing else.
We kissed there with the fish watching until I picked her up and carried her up to my room.
By the time I set her down she was already pulling off her shirt, throwing it to the floor next to one of my own before she reached for me.
I took a moment to look her over in the dim light from the moon shining in the skylights above.
She was so thin. I could probably count every rib, not that I was going to stop to do that. Even lacking the body mass she didn’t look frail. She still had a strength about her.
I wrapped my arms around her waist and my fingertips encountered two large circular depressions in her lower back. I flinched, thinking she was hurt. She pulled my hand away. They were the scars left from where the Bugs inserted the…
I swallowed as she stood motionless, looking at me for a response.
She expected me to be repulsed. I reached for her again and picked up where we left off.
I was way beyond being repulsed. I was finally able to run my fingers through Emery’s hair and kiss her without being called a freak.
As we moved to the bed, I found myself waiting for her to stop me. I never thought she would trust me enough to let me get this close. But there she was, in my bedroom half naked.
Her hands were in my hair, pulling me closer.
I backed away, just to ask whether a condom was necessary—I honestly didn’t know—and in that second everything changed. She started to tremble.
“Oh, shit,” I breathed. “What is it?” I worried. There was no way she could doubt how I felt anymore.
She shook her head in irritation, but made no move to get up or cover herself.
“I don’t know what’s wrong,” she whispered.
“Talk to me,” I begged.
“It’s not working.”
“What’s not working?” We were very much on the way to working. I was definitely working.
“Me.”
“Em, you’re going to need to spell it out for me. I don’t understand.”
“It’s like food.”
I’d heard of sex being compared to food, but that couldn’t be what she meant.
“Remember what I said about food? I remembered how good it was, but when it’s right there, I just can’t eat it?” She looked at me expectantly.
“You don’t want to have sex?” I finally clued in. She had been panting and running her fingers down my back, which was always an indicator that a girl wanted to have sex.
“I do, but when it’s about to happen, I just…can’t. It’s like you’re…not…right.”
“Wow.” Ouch. It might have been better if she’d yelled.
“Not like that. I’m sorry. I’m not explaining it right.” She took a deep breath and pointed to her head. “Emery Mitchell up here wants to have sex with you in the worst possible way, but this body…doesn’t. It’s not working right.”
“Oh.” I blinked as it clicked. “Oh.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s not your fault.” I rested my head back on the pillow, wondering if there was some kind of workaround. “You never tried before now?” I asked.
“No.”
I don’t know why that should have made me feel better, but it did a little.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t figure it out before we got this far. I should have guessed this would affect basic biological processes like…” She shook her head and rubbed her temple.
“Em. Please stop apologizing. It’s not your fault, and it’s not a problem.” I kissed her. “You like doing this, right?” I checked. She nodded. “And holding you is fine?”
“Yes. It feels nice.”
“Then we’ll do this.” I shrugged.
“But you’re a man,” she protested.
“I’m not a seventeen year-old boy who can’t control himself. This is fine. There’s a connection. I’ll take this and be perfectly happy.”
“Perfectly happy?” She didn’t believe me.
“Perfectly.” I kissed her again and stroked down her back, coming into contact with one of the scars on her back.
She jumped.
“Does that hurt?” I asked with concern.
“No. I just don’t like it. It’s disgusting. It must seem gross to you.”
I touched the spot again. “You should know me better by now. You haven’t been able to scare me off yet.” I tilted my head and continued to trail my fingers down her back. I turned around and came back up. The scars were deep. It must have hurt like hell. I couldn’t imagine how scared she would have been that day.
“Why aren’t I able to scare you away, Dillon?” she asked.
I chuckled. “Are you still trying?”
“No. But, why don’t you find the scars gross? Why aren’t you frustrated that I can’t do anything more than this with you? How can you lie here touching my cold skin and be happy?”
I thought it over before I answered. I sure didn’t want to compare her to a car part again.
“There are women out there who might be perfect on the outside, but their insides are full of black goo and they haven’t even been infected, you know what I mean?”
Her brow creased. I wasn’t explaining it well. Again.
“It’s not just about a pretty face. I like being with someone who has the whole package. You’re pretty, and smart, funny, caring, strong, and tenacious—in this case, that’s a good thing.” I smiled. “Someday you’re going to look like the photo your father gave me, but you’re going to be the same person, Em. The only difference is we’ll be able to hang out together outside in the middle of the d
ay.” I kissed her and pulled her closer.
“You’re an amazing person, Dillon McAllister,” she whispered and touched my cheek. “Maybe even a prince in your own way.”
After a few minutes more of the snuggling and kissing we got up so she could get back to work. I kept her company in the idea room that contained no ideas as of yet.
Em walked over to look at the fish, making fun of the ones kissing. “Really?”
“That’s us,” I told her with a grin.
“Ah. I thought this was me.” She pointed at the chassis drawing.
“No.” I shook my head knowing I was going to pay for this vehicle analogy. “I said you were strong like a chassis. Not that you looked like one.”
“Are you saying I look like a fish?”
“No, I…ugh. Never mind.” She could twist anything around, couldn’t she?
Emery chuckled, looking at the chassis again. “So this is what a car looks like…naked?”
“More like its skeleton. The backbone.”
“Ah,” she said again.
Then she was gone.
She was still standing in front of me, but her mind was somewhere else completely. Her brow creased and her eyes blinked while she looked at the floor, or through it.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“Yes.” She waved at me to be quiet while she was thinking. “I have an idea. I need your help.”
“Okay,” I said, but she was already at the door.
I chased after her. She was rummaging through drawer after drawer in the lab until she came up with a needle that was nearly as big as the one I’d stabbed into Corey’s arm, but even longer.
“I’m going to instruct you so you can do an LP.”
“An LP?” I didn’t know what that was, but I sure didn’t like the looks of the ginormous needle.
“Lumbar puncture.”
I still didn’t get it.
“Spinal tap?”
“Oh no! No way! I can’t stick that into your spine!”
“Please? I obviously can’t do it myself.”
“Emery! I’m an auto mechanic, not a doctor!”
“You’ll do fine.” She made it sound like it was no big deal.
“And if I don’t do fine, what could happen? What’s the worst case scenario?”