Page 54 of Odder Still
The blood that surges from Malloch’s chest blends with the black of their clothes. Flecks of it splatter their chin, red freckles on their brown ones. They stand there as the water floods in around my bare feet. The breather slips from their fingers. They collapse.
The water keeps coming, blasting up my legs. I manage a single breath before it encircles my head. The trash around me lifts, filling my vision with mold and peelings. Then, the door at my back opens, and everything drifts toward the sea.
I search for purchase within the chute, pounding on its door. Sheona still holds Malloch’s pistol, slumped in a sea of her own blood. Her lashes flutter my way, and her fingers twitch toward the console. Joint by joint, they fail. She slides to the ground, her chest still.
My grief swells, and I yearn to sign her a death proclamation, but my rising panic overcomes all else. It clenches my worn lungs and screams for me to breathe. I slam my palms against the glass separating me from air, but I only succeed in shoving myself backward, setting me adrift in the sea. The lights of Maraheem rise in a chaotic wall above, the nearest gate too far away to reach and teeming with people who will kill me in worse ways than the water. Even farther off, the hazy, blue surface of the ocean peeks at me from beyond the garbage chute.
It silhouettes Tavish as he fiddles with his cane, catching it in his mouth and spitting it out again. If only he could swim to me.
But he doesn’t know I’m about to drown. He doesn’t know Sheona is dead. He knows only enough to fidget, soaked in his anxiety but unable to act. Through my panic, I wonder if this is the real restriction of his blindness—that by being silent, we withhold from him his agency.
The screaming of my lungs shatters the thought, seeming to sever every nerve but its own. The parasite reacts by screaming in turn. Its fear magnifies mine, but it also knocks me to my senses. This will be the last time. It has to be.
I take hold of the aurora, as though I’m grabbing each side of its beastly face and shaking it. Then, I pull it closer.
‘Can’t breathe,’ it shrieks in a voice that sounds like my own, the original tone lighter and laughing. It’s not laughing now. But I ignore it and call for a different kind of help. Despite its terror, this parasite tendrils leach into me, its subconscious taking advantage of every moment I use its power.
Help me. If you want my body, then save it.
For the heartbeat it takes for the parasite to answer, I feel a piece of me siphon away in the trickle of bubbles that slip through my lips.‘Aye.’
Together, we call for aid. As we do, it lodges in my lungs. Its tendrils lock into the lobes, going from velvet to stone as it holds them in place. Dark spots form in my vision. I try to inhale as my brain gives one last cry, but this damned parasite—my parasite, talons digging into my consciousness with all its might—won’t let me. I choke, not on water but on stale, empty air. The world closes in, losing shape. As I float, I feel two things: Tavish’s soft fur brushing my side, and parasitic tendrils stretching toward my heart. And I see, darting through the blue, a glimmer of color.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Every Righteous Thing
Does it even matter in the least
if your backward glances don’t sway your feet?
If you’d only stay from my knuckles turning white?
Voice rigid, heart rapid,
I cling too tight.
I FLOAT IN NOTHING, black and empty. It feels like a languid cavity, where each second of sadness stretches into a millennium, eating back through the joy of the past. Beneath it all, lurks me. My parasite and I.Mine.
I don’t know where the possessive term comes from: me or this creature—my creature—wrapping through me. Part of me.
‘Mine.’
Life bursts back into existence as the nothingness turns to sky and ground. Our lungs tear open, drawing in fresh, blessed air at my parasite’s command. With each breath, the sensation of our body returns piece by piece. My body. My body, mostly, but within it I feel the coil of something more still working its way toward my heart. In a sob of panic, I strangle its crawl, battering it in an onslaught of rage. My parasite recoils like a guilty animal, winding back into my lungs where it oozes stark petulance.
Above me extends a listless grey sky. I force myself to sit up. Sand sticks to my back, and water brushes up and down my legs. I glare out to sea, barely spotting the ignation orca as it retreats, a pair of mutated dolphins at its side.
“What in the fucking Trench—” Tavish sputters as he settles into his human form, his diamond voice clipped and choked. “Ruby? Ruby!”
“I’m here,” I reply, reaching for him even though he’s a few strides away. “We’re safe now.”
“What took so long? Were those dolphins guiding us?”
“Yes—it’s complicated.” I drop my hand to the bag. Our clothes nearly slip through my fingers as I bundle his up and press them into his arms. “Change. I’ll explain after.” Withholding knowledge from him leaves a sickly taste in my mouth, but I don’t think the words will come just yet.
Tavish doesn’t argue. He ruffles his hands through his curls and slips back into his clothes, his abnormally fast pace the only sign he’s bothered by the wait.
I lift my shirt, but my arms tremble. My gaze tracks my bare skin where my parasite weaves itself into my muscles. The black lines knit together in patterns smaller than my littlest nail, working themselves up my right arm and over my shoulder in a design almost like a fishnet. A fishnet engraved into my skin, gleaming with flashes of color in its deepest depths. A fishnet that will become me.
