Bodies Are Disgusting (11 page)

"It came from the fact that your roommate
thinks he's in love with you but he's too confused to know his dick
from a hole in the ground, and he's been taking it out on me since
the beginning," she snarls. "Go home. Ask him. Ask him why he never
went out with anyone when he met you. See what he's got to say for
himself."

"Wow. That's... kind of a lot of vitriol
toward someone you don't really interact with on a regular basis.
He's my friend." The similarity to the conversation you'd just had
with Simon makes your head throb. It's the second conversation
you've completely lost control of today, and you're so very
tired
. "And so are you. I love you–
both
of you–and
this is pretty ridiculous. I mean, listening to you right now, it
makes it sound like you're projecting onto him."

Color floods Amanda's face, turning her
complexion almost plum with her anger. "Oh my god. Do you just not
listen to anything that comes out of my mouth?" Her hands shake as
she reaches for her water. The ice clinks against the glass.
"First, to project on him would mean I'd still have to have
romantic feelings for you. Which I
don't
. Second, for you to
think I am projecting on him would seem to indicate there's some
part of
you
that's hoping."

Your stomach cramps in your abdomen, caught in
the vice-like grip of dread. "I never said that," you respond
softly. "You made it clear that you think it's over between
us."

"I '
think
it's over?'" Amanda's
knuckles have gone white. "What the hell? I don't '
think it's
over
,' I
know
it is because I said it's over and a
relationship takes both parties saying it's still going to keep it
going. I made a mistake, trying to keep going so long."

"What, so I'm a mistake now?" you demand. The
tight feeling in your gut only grows.

"No! But trying to keep up a relationship with
you when I'm a lesbian and you're not a woman was a pretty stupid
thing to do." She gestures at the table with the hand not clutching
her water glass. "Come on, Doug, look at us! This is what we did!
This is
all
we did before I left! And I can't believe that
you're still holding on to the childish idea that if you wish
really hard
, I'll ignore who I am for you!

"And you know what? This was a mistake, too!"
She swings her legs out of the booth and stands. "I'm sorry I ever
thought you were mature enough to handle being friends. No wonder
you and Simon get along so well: you can both be immature and
emotionally constipated together. I'm
done
." She slams the
glass of water back down on the table, causing ice and water to
slosh out everywhere. In another jerky motion, she grabs her things
from the booth.

"Amanda, wait!" you cry.

She stops, back to you and shoulders shaking.
For a moment, you think she might sit back down and have a pleasant
lunch together. But the moment slips away, and, with it, so does
Amanda.

You aren't that hungry anymore, but leaving
the pub without making an attempt on your lunch seems somehow like
giving up. Two meals and an appetizer are more than you could stand
on a good day, though, so you ask the waiter to box most of it up
and set it in the footwell of the passenger seat.

By the time you make it back to the house,
Simon is already gone.

You dash off a quick text, reminding him of
his promise to you, but you don't have high hopes. It's tempting to
simply refuse to hold up your end of that bargain and leave the
house an unapologetic mess. It would certainly serve Simon right,
you think petulantly. However, you reluctantly squash the impulse;
you've got to do
something
with the your time, and staring
disconsolately at your laptop is not going to cut it.

Cleaning the bathroom does not take as long as
you'd hoped, which leaves you unfortunately at loose ends for the
rest of the evening. Despite not having slept in more than a day,
your body still refuses to let you, even when you throw yourself
down on your mattress and bury your face in your pillows. The
thought drifts almost lazily across your mind that you could simply
try to force yourself to pass out to perhaps get some relief, but
you physically roll over and wave the thought away. A quick glance
at your phone tells you what you already know: Simon hasn't
responded to you. You can only assume by your continued existence
that nothing untoward has happened, at least not yet. And so, you
choose to study the flaking plaster on the ceiling.

The sun sets, and your mind wanders. You prod
at the holes in your post-head-trauma memory in the same way one
would tongue a canker sore, though it all seems so much less
pressing now. What does it matter if you can't remember your first
date with Amanda, now that she's surely had done with you? Why
would you care about your parents' anniversary when they've proven,
once again, how thoroughly disowned you are by not even checking on
you after the wreck? (
Did they even know about it? Had Simon
even tried to let them know? Or had he remembered what you'd told
him about your relationship and decided to not even
bother?
)

On the end-table next to your bed, your phone
buzzes. Finally, a text is from Simon: "Getting some drinks. Don't
wait up." As if you have any choice in the matter. You use your
thumb to dismiss the message and roll yourself off the bed. No
sense to pretend you're going to sleep at this rate.

The clock widget on your phone declares the
time to be 8:37. There's no telling when Simon will come home.
If
he will come home.

You head downstairs. At least you have the TV
to yourself for now, and don't need to worry about waking anyone
this time. The next several hours are dedicated to one of the anime
boxed sets Simon picked up ages ago that you'd feigned disinterest
in, but by the time you reach the fourth disc, your stomach begins
to growl.

After shuffling to the kitchen, sniffing
leftovers, and deciding none of them appeal to you, you are left
with one option: a post-midnight stroll to the grocery
store.

* * *

Something flickers at the edge of your vision,
like a clutch of cockroaches scattering when the light's turned on.
It isn't exactly
dark
, so much as everything seems gloomy
somehow. The only source of illumination is the kitchen light.
You'd left it on so you wouldn't return to an empty house, that
much you remember. But it's a thin sort of illumination, as though
the photons are coming from some distant star rather than just the
kitchen a few yards away.

You reach for your phone; it's in your right
pocket, where it lives while on your person. It's undamaged and
functional, with the clock widget on your home screen reading
01:37. There are no missed call indicators, but you have a few more
texts from Gavin, all dated between 1:23 and 1:34. All of them are
varying degrees of "What the hell?" or "What's going
on?"

Between the phone's backlight and the wan glow
from the kitchen's direction, you can see something strange on your
hands. Your fingers are discolored somehow, and when you rub your
thumb and forefinger together, it reminds you of the time you tried
to mix chalk dust and oil pastels in your high school art class. It
goes halfway up both your forearms, wicked by the fabric of your
sweater almost up to your elbows.

At your feet, something glitters. You pocket
your phone again and stoop to investigate. Coiled like a snake's
shed skin is the chain that Simon had taken to wearing lately. A
little further afield, several apples rest on the carpet,
apparently having come from a plastic bag the bottom of which had
split open. A handful of other items lay strewn on the floor: a
package of brown sugar, premade pie crust, a four-pack of butter.
You remember deciding to bake yourself a pie, but can't recall the
actual trip to fetch ingredients.

Out of the corner of your eye, you glimpse
motion. The shadows collected near the ceiling and in the high
corners of the living room have begun to flake away. The alien
quality to the dimness dissipates while the shadows somehow fall
like ash. You take a few steps forward, not failing to notice the
way the carpet seems to squelch under your feet, and snag the
pull-chain for the lamp next to the couch.

The coating on your hands fizzles and smokes
when the light touches it, as does whatever has soaked the area
around your feet. A pragmatic part of you breathes a sigh of relief
because you're not sure you didn't buy milk, nor would you want to
try to clean it up if you had.

That pragmatism dies once your eyes fully
adjust.

Half-naked and curled in a fetal position on
his side, Simon lies crammed as far into the corner of the couch as
he can manage. He's buried himself partially under some of the
throw pillows, but the noise the oily dust on your skin made when
it evaporated caused him to twitch violently enough that some of
the pillows have fallen to the floor. He whimpers. Has probably
been whimpering this whole time, but the throw pillows muffled the
sound.

"Fuck, Simon," you hiss, dropping to your
knees to be on eye level with him. You can't see any major
injuries, though he has a few jagged lacerations on his hip and
back that you're fairly certain weren't there when he left. When
you make soothing noises and pry open an eyelid, his pupil
contracts exactly as you'd expect it to. Running your hands through
his hair reveals no sign of head trauma. "Shh, Simon, it's okay."
You try to pull him close to your chest, but he's as unyielding as
steel. You settle for trying to get him sitting upright. "Come on,
Simon, talk to me; tell me what happened. Come on, Simon, come on,
talk to me."

A few stuttering, incoherent sounds make it
past his lips. His hands unclench, find your fingers, wrap around
them. He tilts his face up as if to look at you, but his eyes
remain squeezed shut. He tries again to speak, but it's still
nothing but jumbled syllables with no discernable language to them.
With his hands gripping yours, it's impossible to do much but sort
of head-butt his knees with your forehead and continue mumbling his
name in the most soothing tone you can muster.

Your phone begins buzzing in your pocket
again, the pattern of buzzing consistent with an incoming call
rather than a text message. It takes a few seconds to disengage
Simon's hand from yours, but you manage to do so and answer before
the call falls over to your voicemail.

The voice on the other end is masculine and
unfamiliar. It belongs to someone who is older than you are, or who
made a habit of gargling with gasoline around puberty. "Douglas,
what happened?" You pull the phone away from your face for long
enough to glance at the caller ID: Gavin. Despite the California
area code, the words you hear are thick and Midwestern.

"I don't know," you say, pinning the phone
against your shoulder so you can return your hand to Simon's grasp.
"I was thinking about some late night apple pie, and then next
thing I know, it's almost an hour later and my roommate's
practically catatonic on our couch."

On the other end of the line, you can hear
Gavin suck in a breath through his teeth. "Shit. Alena won't shut
up. She's just cackling, keeps saying she didn't think Ori had the
stones."

At the mention of Ori's name, your heart tries
to skip and then trips over a few beats. "Ori did this? Whatever it
is?" Simon gurgles in response to your agitation, but calms when
you give his fingers a reassuring squeeze.

You hear a woman's voice murmuring something
you can't quite make out before Gavin responds. "Yeah. Look,
whatever happened, Simon's off the board now. I don't know what Ori
did and Alena isn't telling, but I do know Simon's not a game piece
anymore."

His words enter your brain, but you can't
really make sense of them. Too many other thoughts are clamoring
for your attention for any of them to be entertained for more than
a single synapse's firing. Ori did this. You don't know how, but
now you know they did it.

"Douglas? Doug? Earth to Douglas?" Gavin's
voice sounds tinny and distant to your ears.

"I'm here," you say. "Just
thinking."

"That... doesn't sound encouraging," says
Gavin after a moment.

"You're always talking about 'Alena' this and
'Alena' that, like she's always right next to you." It's not a
question, so you don't wait for Gavin's response. "Ori's not like
that, thank god, but what if I need to talk to them and they're not
around?"

"It's
always
around, and don't let its
seeming lack of a presence fool you. Players are never far from
their game pieces." Gavin clears his throat. "You aren't planning
on doing anything stupid, are you?"

"Listen, since Ori came into my life, it's
been nothing but shit. I'm fucking tired of it. When it was just
me, I could deal because I guess I'm kind of a fuck-up. But now
they're interfering with my friends." You give Simon's fingers a
reassuring squeeze, which he seems to return. You take that as a
good sign.

"Don't get cocky, son," says Gavin, pitching
his voice low as if to keep Alena from overhearing. "You think you
can just talk to it and make it go away, but you're wrong. They'll
do anything, and I mean
anything
to get you to agree to
their terms, and Ori is no different. Don't do anything stupid.
Don't agree to shit. Whatever you do, do
not
let it talk you
into a deal."