Page 55 of Consume
His face, just inches from mine, spiraled into black smoke, and he funneled inside my mouth once again. His memories transferred to me. This time, though, I didn’t taste his rotten core as he passed inside. My organs didn’t shift with his possession. I didn’t feel as though a battle was raging within. He was simply there with me...and then he wasn’t. He passed through me to the hereafter.
I’d done it. I felt woozy and unsteady, but I’d done it.
Doctor Daryl tapped the final wall and turned toward me, his expression confused.
“Daryl. And you.” I pointed at Red’s captain at the back of the room. “Go in.”
They swept up into black smoke, sucked back into my mouth, and then into the hereafter.
Red appeared at my side, and without taking my gaze from the Saelises, I grabbed her hand and squeezed. She squeezed back, her grip firm and arctic. Her tobacco scent coated the air with familiarity.
The dazzling light gleamed off the Saelis males’ oil-black scales, casting rainbows at their feet and spotlighting the razors in their mouths. Their hard, green gazes searched the light, my face, and back again.
“Come in,” I said, this time to the Saelis females.
They morphed into a storm of black smoke and hurled toward me. All of them passed to the other side just as easily as Nesbit, scales and teeth and all, but with more of a loving caress to my soul. I couldn’t be sure, but I swear they checked in on my baby before leaving me for good. Protectors until the end.
Their loss buckled me to my knees, a mix of exhaustion and heartache. Red let me stay there and angled her body in a protective stance in front of me, a ghost against a horde of Saelises.
I looked to them, my mouth opening and closing with the rush of everything I thought they should know, whether they could understand me or not.
But all those things scrambled when they edged closer. They towered over me, the tufts of white hair on their heads shimmering like gilded silk in the hereafter’s light. One of them clicked and another answered. They were discussing me as they peered closer.
I didn’t dare move, except for the shivers that rattled down my body. My fingernails dug into the glove of my free hand, a painful reminder of how fragile I was, how easily I could be chewed up and spit back out.
But would they hurt me if they knew who I was? Or who I could be if I allowed myself a second to absorb it?
Their...goddess?
“I-I’m sorry.” I touched my fingertips to my chest over my heart, right where those words had come from. “There are about ten humans that I know of who aren’t assholes. We should never have killed your females for the sake of mining their parasites to power humankind’s advancement. It was wrong. But this behind me... I just sent your females to the hereafter because they helped show me how.” I rolled my next thought around inside my head, then tasted how honest it was before it came out. “Me. Feozva.”
They shifted and clicked, seeming to process as much as I was. After a long, breathless moment, the tallest stepped forward.
My body went rigid. My heartbeat spiked. Red squeezed my hand even harder.
They didn’t believe me. Of course they didn’t. But when I looked up to meet my fate, I found his attention over my head toward the hereafter. Slowly, almost hesitantly, he lifted his claw to my shoulder. I stopped breathing, waiting. He grazed my protective suit but not enough to tear it. It was more of an acknowledgement. Maybe acceptance.
With a series of soft clicks, he stepped past me, and then he entered the hereafter. Not through me but just...walked right into it? I turned to watch, but the light scorched the backs of my eyelids, so I couldn’t be sure.
The rest of the Saelises followed as a collective unit. All of them brushed past me on either side, a wicked claw at my cheek that never scraped and scales catching in my hair. One by one by one. Then, they were gone. Dead? Still alive but in the hereafter anyway to reunite with those they’d lost? I had no idea how any of this worked, but they hadn’t killed me. They definitely could have.
The sudden silence, thealonenessinside my body for the first time in months, roared between my ears. I wasn’t completely alone, though. My baby girl kept me company, her survival urging me to get up and go, to never stop until she was safe, even though exhaustion and shock weighted my limbs. But with Red’s help, I stood and put my hand to my belly to borrow some of my daughter’s strength too. I wasn’t sure how, but I sensed her emotions matched mine—a mix of relief and loss that the ghosts, the good ones anyway, were gone.
“Red.” I turned to face her, hating this part the most. “It’s time to go.”
With one last hard squeeze, she released me, scattered into black smoke, and swept inside me with my next inhale. The hereafter swallowed her up too.
“Goodbye,” I said, my voice hitching.
The wall of light powered down as soon as I blinked as if sensing I was done here. I took the book from the podium and my helmet from the floor and slipped toward the open door, my senses on alert. Was I really all alone now? I prayed to...Feozva that I was.
The hallway was silent, abandoned. My footsteps echoed softly as I took in the dark beauty of the ship. I hadn’t noticed before but the metal floor was carved in a similar meticulous fashion as the iron book with pictures and flashes of letters. It seemed to tell a story about a goddess and a place called the hereafter. It was a story I didn’t quite grasp yet, but in time and with the book’s help, maybe I could understand.
A soft shudder shook through the walls as the ship seemed to slow. Maybe I wasn’t as alone as I’d thought, but as I found my way back to the sewer, no one tried to stop me. Did they know? Had they somehow seen what I’d done? Was that why they weren’t coming after me?
As soon as I opened the sewer door, I tensed. The murky water below remained calm and unmoving, though, a false promise I didn’t trust. Before I plunged myself in alien shit, I pulled on my helmet. My shoulder blades tingled with a presence, but that thing here—whatever it was—stayed away. Because it sensed everything that had unfolded aboard this ship? I had no idea.
A strange combination of a sob and a victory cry choked out of my mouth when my feet found the steep embankment. That was it. It was over. Somehow. Just me, my baby, and a body full of ghosts had averted a devastating crisis for humanity. For good? As in the end of the Black War? Yet again, I had no idea. The Saelises were in the hereafter, some of them anyway, and for now at least, it seemed like that’s where they wanted to be. Together.
