Page 91 of Odder Still
But no longer. I pull my parasite deeper, feeding it myself as I strain, not against it, but beside it. Its work comes to a sudden halt when the last of our energy snaps out. Our eyes roll, our consciousness slipping for a moment. We have nothing left—not enough even to become one.
Lilias swarms us from every side, only pieces of her making it through our failing comprehension: her metallic smell, the heat of her presence, the fire in her voice.
“You’re pathetic,” she says. “I will see justice done. But you? You would have run, sooner or later, back to that little shack in the jungle, back to your apathy. You won’t right any of the wrongs you made under my thumb. You won’t help any of the people who’ve helped you.” With each initialyou, she twists the knife in, twice, thrice, a fourth time.
The pain should diminish. Everything else has. But the pain, the pain keeps coming.
“Maybe that’s smart. Why risk your old life for anything more?”
Just good enough. Greer had accused Tavish of the same thing. And he had shattered that accusation, shamed it, shown the world there could be better. Now he sits at the laboratory’s useless entrance, giggling as he drags a finger back and forth over the yellow ignit.
Lilias follows our gaze, our stupid, irresponsible gaze. And she grins, not a villain but a monster. “There’s onebetter thingyou do want, though, isn’t there? One thing here you actually care about.” She drops us.
We slump against the table. Each time our lungs expand, they gurgle. Our side has gone from fire to ice, but the cloth pressed against it is drenched. We can’t look down. We can’t look anywhere but Lilias.
She walks slow, sure strides toward Tavish. “But do you careenough?”
We try to let go of the table, try to reach out to the mutants still pacing listlessly, try to turn back time and do this all differently, but our head goes to darkness and knives. Blood drips from the corner of our mouth.
Each step seems to take longer the closer Lilias comes to Tavish. She nudges his cheek with her blade. He bats it away like it’s a fly and returns to his intoxicated mutterings, a smear of red welling on his freckled skin.
She rears back and kicks him in the shoulder, knocking him to the ground. The wet thud of it echoes in our mind, playing over the memory of her boot crunching into my favorite caiman until its chest went slack and its eyes glazed over. With her heel, she presses Tavish down. “Give me the aurora, and maybe he can live.”
“Please.” It’s all we can force through the lake of blood in our lungs. “Please.”
She shrugs and slams her heel into Tavish’s chest. He yelps, a breathless, terrible sound that chokes me. It draws pure joy across Lilias’s features though; cruel, merciless joy.
“Stop!” It’s a scream and a sob, and I think we’re crawling, want to be crawling, but our body doesn’t get any closer to Lilias. Any closer to Tavish.
What will you do when you reach her?It’s my thought, but my parasite wraps around it, forcing me to feel it in my shaking bones.I’ll die with him. I won’t let him be alone, I reply.
“You prefer the aurora, then, do you? Really?” Lilias’s bloody boot plows into Tavish’s side, and he mumbles something small and heartbreaking, so much confusion in his voice that it fractures us. “Pathetic.”
Our heart seizes as though it’s curling in on itself, withering away. “What do you even need it for?” The words gurgle, and we cough blood between them, too weak to wipe it from our lips. “You already won. The ignation, the Trench, the city, it’s all yours. What use will one more aurora be?”
“Use?” She scoffs. “You have it. I want it. What else is there?” It’s not a question, but a way of being: all emotion and no rationale. She brings her heel down again, producing a sickening crack like the splintered sound of a rib breaking, or perhaps just my imagination hoping for nothing worse. “So, do you care enough to save him?”
Care enough.
In the midst of our anguish, her question knocks the last week into perfect clarity. I care a whole damn lot. And maybe half of that started as my parasite’s fury and pain, but the other half of that is ours, our shared affection, our desire to make a change, one which goes beyond rage, beyond vengeance, beyond a return to life as we knew it. We do not feel as we once did, neither me nor my parasite. And thank the gods for that.
Because we’re done not caring. This outskirts existence isn’t just barely enough for us.
But caring or not, we can’t give Lilias that half of ourself; we don’t have the strength to peel ourself apart any more than we do to fully become one. And if we did, if we ripped in half and I handed my parasite over, and if by some miracle it survived, we have no assurances Lilias won’t kill Tavish all the same. We would be bargaining with a bomb.
There has to be another option.
Something touches us, something so foreign yet so familiar: the dying second aurora still in its tank but clinging to our other body with a phantom hand. They weave their fingers through ours and squeeze.
Their emotions pour into us, yearning and peace and pain. We feel their name on the edges of our consciousness, not in words but in song, a lament so hopeful it brings us to tears. This dying aurora wants to give us its remaining energy, not to see into the other dimension, not to save its kind, but just for us. For us, for our life, for our future.
For my stupid, selfish, wonderful parasite and me, together. And I know letting my parasite latch to me won’t be easy. It will mean being reminded of my past and urged toward my future. It will mean sharing myself and my flaws and my addictions and my lowest points. And it will mean having someone there to remind me that I am more than those.
Together?I ask.
Its answer comes like a flood, so full of warmth and affection that it nearly surpasses our grief for a split second.‘Life together,’then,‘asshole.’
Silt-breather.
