Page 18 of Spread Me
“I told you, you can’t hurt me.” They tug on her wrist again. She doesn’t have time to react, to resist—her hand surges toward them, and the needle plunges deeper, until it’s in them all the way to the hilt. Domino pushes her hand away again, letting the needle emerge by a full inch before pulling her back in. “Like that.” They sigh as the needle plunges back into them.
Kinsey jerks her hand away, stumbles backward. “What—what are you—no,” she stammers.
“Kinsey? Kinsey, what’s happening?” Mads is borderline frantic in her ear. “Are you okay?”
“I thought you liked it,” Domino says. Slowly, so slowly, they pull the needle out. A high, breathy moan slips between their lips as the point of the needle emerges. A thin trickle of sand follows it, streaming out of a peppercorn-sized hole in their skin. “Will you tell me what I’m doing wrong?”
“All of this is wrong,” Kinsey breathes, her stomach clenching at the sight of that sand. The lights flicker again. “Where is that sand coming from? What’s—what’s happening to you?”
“Kinsey,” Mads says urgently. “Talk to me.”
Kinsey pulls the earpiece out and tucks it into her pocket. She doesn’t think about why. She can’t seem to think about anything. Her heart hammers in her ears as she stares at that small black hole in Domino’s body.
Domino stares at Kinsey intently, their face a mask ofconcentration. “I didn’t get it quite right, did I?” they say at last. “You don’t like me yet. That’s okay. I think I see the problem. I can fix it.”
After a moment, the hole in their underarm begins to widen.
“Domino?” Kinsey breathes. “What’s happening to—”
“Shhh.” A few grains of sand make their way down Domino’s temple. Kinsey feels an answering bead of sweat at the small of her back. “Just give me a second.”
As Kinsey watches, the hole grows until it’s the size of a bottlecap. There’s still no blood—just pulsing red darkness, damp invitation. The skin around the hole ripples, then puckers up to form two neat parentheses of pink flesh. Domino shifts their weight on the lab table and as they move, the skin of their underarm rucks up like a lifted skirt, folds forming over and around each other, sliding across each other, crumpling like a fistful of satin before smoothing out again.
“Wait,” she breathes, just as a small tender node of raw pink pushes its way up out of Domino’s skin at the apex of the cluster of folds. She has to hold back the rest of the sentence:for me.
“Is that better?” Domino asks, reaching across their own chest to trace a finger along the brand-new orifice nestled in the crook where their shoulder meets their ribcage. At the brush of their finger, Kinsey catches the faintest glisten of moisture.
Her mouth floods with saliva. She doesn’t understand what she’s seeing, doesn’t understand what she’s feeling. She wants this to stop. She needs it to continue. She licks her lips and she tastes something sweet and floral on the air, something familiar, something that reminds her of pulsing muscle gripping her thumb and forefinger.
Domino twists their head to smirk up at her, still caressing themself. Spreading themself, just for her. They keep their eyes locked on her as they slide a finger inside the slick hole in their underarm. Kinsey is still holding the syringe in one hand. She feels her other hand rising of its own accord, reaching toward the dewdrop of moisture that’s seeping up around the edges of the hole. She’s going to touch Domino, she’s going to feel what they feel, she’s going to slip the tip of her tongue between those satiny folds and—
“Kinsey!”The door to the exam room opens with a bang. Kinsey whips around to see Mads standing in the doorway, their face stark with fear. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Kinsey says weakly. “It’s—we were just—”
“She was just getting that tissue sample,” Domino says. Kinsey looks back to see them lying with their arms at their sides, their hands folded neatly across their belly. The syringe is on the lab tray next to the discarded alcohol pad. Nothing looks out of the ordinary.
Kinsey can still taste Domino on the air. She bites her lips to keep from licking them.
She picks up the syringe, turns on her heel, and walks to the door. She hands the syringe to Mads as she passes them. “That should be enough,” she says brusquely. She knows she should clean up after herself. She knows she should tell Mads what she just saw. She knows a lot of things. But at the moment, she doesn’t care about what she knows.
Kinsey goes to her bunk. The wind on the other side of the back wall of her room is just picking up into a feral, wolflike howl. She ignores it. She ignores everything. She locks the door and pulls the painting off the wall. The photo taped to the back flutters free, the stickiness of the tape nearly spent.
She doesn’t put it back until the next morning.
Saskia shades her eyes with the flat of one hand. The sun is tyrannical today, lashing the entire team with whipcrack heat. The air around them is still as a hiding hare, not offering even a sour breath of relief.
“I think we should go inside,” she says evenly. “For at least a few hours.”
Kinsey looks up from the grid she’s laying out across the sand. “We haven’t even started taking samples yet. Domino, are you done with the scissors?”
Domino slowly cuts a length of twine, then hands the scissors over. Their arms move strangely, like they’re reaching through water.
Saskia points at them. “Domino is lightheaded. And Kinsey, you’re not sweating at all. Nkrumah hasn’t stood upright in half an hour. And Jacques…” She glances overat Jacques. “I don’t actually know. He doesn’t look different from normal, but—”
“We get it,” Jacques grumbles. “I’m fine, okay? I’m just tired.”
“We should go inside,” Saskia says again. She thumbs the necklace that hangs at her throat. “Water. Shade. Little recovery. What do you say?”
