Page 39 of Spread Me
But then she hears a second voice from inside the room. It sounds like Jacques. “Is that Kinsey?”
“It sure is,” Nkrumah calls from the other side of the door.
“Kinsey?!” His voice is raw and ragged. Kinsey’s body answers before her mind can form a thought. She crashes toward the door, her body slamming into it even as the knob turns under her hand, her momentum carrying her into the room with so much force that she falls headlong into Nkrumah’s arms.
“Woah there!” Nkrumah laughs, a light sweet giggle that makes Kinsey’s stomach drop. Nkrumah, the real Nkrumah, has never laughed like that in her life. “You okay? You look—”
“No,” Kinsey says, clawing her way up Nkrumah’s thinnightshirt to stand upright. “No, don’t talk to me, don’t say anything. I don’t want to hear it. Jacques? Are you in here?”
Nkrumah shifts so her body takes up Kinsey’s entire field of vision. “He’s fine, don’t worry about him. Do you want to shut the door?”
“No,” Kinsey says, trying hard to shove Nkrumah out of the way. It doesn’t work. She seems rooted to the floor, a boulder dropped in the middle of this bedroom by a glacier a million years ago. She is part of this place. She will not move.
Nkrumah catches Kinsey’s hands, folds them between her own. “It’s okay. You don’t have to do anything,” she says, smiling, bending her head low to look into Kinsey’s eyes. “I promise.”
Kinsey shakes her head, uncomprehending. “What? What does that mean?”
“I get it now,” Nkrumah says. Sand brims in her eyes, spills down over her cheeks. “I’m sorry I had it so wrong before.”
“I’m sorry I scared you,” Mads’s voice echoes from the hallway.
Kinsey whips around. The creature is behind her now. It’s still in the hall, not crossing the threshold, but it’s too close, and she knows she’s trapped.
“I won’t make that mistake again,” Nkrumah whispers, sand gathering at the corners of her mouth. “Just stay right there. You don’t have to do anything,” she repeats.
“Where’s Jacques?” Kinsey’s voice comes out low and shaky. “I heard him in here.”
“It’s okay. He’s fine. Me and Domino brought him inside and cleaned him up hours ago.” Nkrumah turns—no, rotates, the top half of her body turning out of rhythm with the bottom half, her legs only belatedly unlockingthemselves from the floor. “You just stay there. We came up with a plan you’re going to love.”
Nkrumah glides away and finally, with her out of the way, Kinsey can see Jacques.
Nkrumah’s twin bed has been dragged to the center of the room. It’s been stripped, the bedding dumped onto the floor in an unceremonious puddle. Jacques lies in the center of the bed.
He is unmistakably dead. His limbs are limp—ankles crossed, wrists tucked up to his chest. His body is curled into a loosely fetal parenthesis, his head tilted backward at an unsurvivable angle.
As Kinsey watches, frozen, Nkrumah climbs onto the bed and pushes at Jacques’s shoulder until he flops onto his back.
“Don’t—” she starts.
“Hush.” A heavy hand falls onto her shoulder—the creature is in the room now, right behind her, too close to ignore. “We understand now. We understand everything.”
“It’s not that you don’t want me,” Nkrumah says, pulling her nightshirt off in one fluid movement. She looks over her shoulder, the corners of her grin curling up like burning paper. The virus has replicated her perfectly. Every detail is accurate, right down to the stretch marks that pearlesce across her hips and breasts.
“It’s just that you prefer to watch,” the creature says with Mads’s voice. “That’s okay. It’s better than okay.”
Kinsey shakes her head. “No,” she says, “that’s not what—”
“It’s okay,” Jacques says. His head rolls from one side to the other, the movement of his neck loose and uncontrolled. “Kinsey, you don’t have to keep pretending you don’t want me. Nobody’s here except us. And I promise,” he adds, tipping his head at a further angle so Kinsey can’tavoid seeing the white film over his eyes. “We all want this to happen just as much as you do.”
“Everyone wants the same things you want,” Nkrumah says, a new rasp in her voice. She spits a dark clot of wet sand into one palm. Reaches down to grip Jacques. Kinsey catches a glimpse of the thick, rigid line of his cock before it’s swallowed by Nkrumah’s fist. “See?” His hips lift to meet her. She works the length of him with quick, fluid tugs. Kinsey can hear the shifting scrape of wet sand on taut flesh.
“See?” Jacques repeats, thrusting up into Nkrumah’s hand, matching her rhythm perfectly.
“See?” the creature asks, pressing Mads’s body against Kinsey’s back, nudging her ear with the damp sponge of its nose.
“This isn’t what I want,” Kinsey whispers.
But the truth is that she doesn’t know what she wants. She can feel her body responding to the virus. She can feel herself softening and spreading and yearning for it, for the way it’s taken everyone as its own, for the invasion and transformation and manipulation.
