Bodies Are Disgusting (4 page)

"Are you done with that?" Amanda asks,
inclining her head toward your half-eaten meal.

"Oh! Uh, yeah. At least for now. I think I
maybe
do
need to sleep off the rest of that pain pill and
not take another one." You push your glasses aside with your hand
to rub at your eyes.

You can hear the way Amanda smiles when she
responds, and you feel somewhat accomplished that the awkwardness
appears to have fled your conversation. "All right. I'll put these
up for you for when you wake up again, and I'll put a note on the
fridge so Simon will know not to feed you any more
painkillers."

* * *

The next few days pass in a tedious blur of
phone calls, insurance claims, and paperwork. You refrain from
taking another pain pill, even though your chest aches like it had
been used as a percussion instrument and your joints feel like
they've been filled with shards of coral. At night, you dream about
endless reams of paper upon which you're forced to scrawl your
signature with one clawed hand. You think it's fitting.

Your insurance company approves a rental car
for a few weeks, but your follow-up appointments with the
neurologist and your general practitioner both bar you from
returning to work, and the neurologist only clears you to drive
during daylight hours. That doesn't particularly upset you. You
need to find a new vehicle to replace the Jarethmobile, and trying
to function is difficult when you aren't assisted by codeine. You
aren't sure you could fulfill your duties at the newspaper anyway.
Shifting hundreds of pounds of newsprint a night is not something
you think your ribs would take kindly to, and you're fairly certain
you shouldn't be operating heavy machinery besides.

After the first week, you've nearly forgotten
about the strange boy in the hospital.

On the sixth night after being discharged, you
break down and take another co-codamol tablet.

You do not dream of endlessly signing your
life away.

* * *

There is someone next to you in your bed. You
do not need to open your eyes to know this, because you can hear
them tittering, high and light, near your ear. It takes little
effort to twist around and prop yourself up on one
elbow.

When you open your eyes, they do not
immediately focus on the intruder in your bed. The house you rent
with Simon is deep enough in the suburbs that little light trickles
through your blinds from the outside world, but it's enough for you
to be able to make out the vague shape of things.

Your first thought, as your eyes take in the
dim silhouettes around you, is that you have not, in fact, woken
up. The dimensions of the room appear to be the same, as well as
the approximate placement of the lone window, but much of the
room's topography has subtly changed. There isn't enough light for
you to be able to discern much, but you've been living in this room
for the past five years. You can tell whenever someone
(
something
) has been rearranging your things.

The person on your bed snickers, and you can
see them lift a hand to their mouth to stifle the noise. "Oh,
Douglas, you are
so
precious." The voice is familiar and yet
different somehow. The speaker continues smothering her laughter
(you can tell it's feminine, now), while your brain slogs through
the dregs of the codeine in your system.

"Ori?" you ask. Your voice is hoarse; you must
have been snoring or maybe talking in your sleep.

"Very good, Douglas," she says. "I admit, I
was a little surprised by this development, but I can't claim to be
displeased." She pauses, and you hear the sound of rustling fabric
as she ostensibly moves. There's a click, then the room is bathed
in light.

The first thing your eyes fix on is, in fact,
Ori. Instead of a boy in a square-necked tunic and loose pants, you
find yourself facing a girl who looks to be fourteen or fifteen
years old (she looks pubescent, though perhaps only barely) with
skin that appears almost waxy and ashen. She wears a simple shift
only barely lighter than her skin tone, and two shades darker than
her hair, which looks longer and bone white. Were it not for her
large, empty eyes and her disconcertingly toothy grin, you might
begin to doubt her identity.

Having taken in her appearance, your eyes
drift away.

You expect the distortions this time: you took
the painkiller before bed, and you noticed how the shadows of
things in your room had changed since before you fell asleep. You
can no longer see the walls of your room, covered as they are by a
thick coating of pink stuff that seems to be caught between the
consistencies of Jell-O and curdled milk. It's streaked through red
in some places, and in others you can see thick fibers almost as
wide around as your fingers squirming their way through the
substance.

Your furniture is gone (with the exception of
your bed), and in its places are strange scabrous things that
remind you of some uncomfortably close-up photographs of warts,
though they look–for lack of a better word–
juicier
than any
warts you've ever seen. The one that has replaced your bedside
table sprouts a protuberance that looks like the fiber on the
walls, but it is tipped in a bulbous object that's the source of
the light.

Your stomach rolls. You close your eyes. Ori
resumes her giggling. "Do your surroundings displease
you?"

"I'm hallucinating. I am having a bad trip on
the codeine, and I need to contact my doctor or something."
Somehow, the words sound calm as they leave your mouth, and you're
not sure how they manage it. You can tell that most of the drug has
worked its way out of your system by now, enough so that you can
feel the panic your last hallucinations lacked starting to clench
in your chest. And yet, your voice refuses to tremble while you
make excuses for what's happening.

You feel delicate fingers on your cheek. They
rest under your right eye and do not move. For a handful of
dreadfully long seconds, neither you nor Ori make a
sound.

Finally she says, "Douglas, I cannot emphasize
to you enough how important it is for you to recognize what is
happening. I warned you that your life is in danger, and the key to
maintaining your ability to exist without a perforated body cavity
depends on your ability to accept things as they are and move
with
them." Her fingertips trace your eyelid, light as the
beating of butterfly wings against your eyelashes.

"I suffered brain damage when that fuckwit hit
me, didn't I," you say at length, not really posing it as a
question.

Ori's fingertips leave your eyelid and
reappear on your scalp, just above your hairline. "You did very
nearly die, though no one gave you nearly enough credit. Not the
least of them being the individual who blundered into trying to
kill you. But, I can safely tell you that your delicious gray
matter is quite undamaged." She sighs, letting her touch fall away.
"It was not unexpected, perhaps, but it did put in motion some
things I had been hoping to delay out of respect to your mental
state."

"If you're trying to reassure me that I'm not
going crazy, you're barking up the wrong damn tree here." You don't
open your eyes, but you pull your brow down as if you were glaring
at where you estimate Ori is sitting. "This is ridiculous. I just
got out of the hospital after suffering a massive concussion and
nearly
dying
, and now I'm seeing disgusting things whenever
I pop pain pills, and this is on top of having an imaginary
'friend'–" you use your fingers to form the appropriate air quotes,
"–who shows up at random and talks about nonsense as if it fucking
matters
."

Your right hand is shaking. You've clenched it
into a fist on top of your blankets.

Ori takes your fist into her hands, uses her
tiny little fingers to pry it open and smooth it flat. Her skin is
smooth and cool, as if she did not maintain a humanoid body
temperature. She moves your arm, rests your open palm against her
cheek, nuzzles against it. Her hands grip your wrist, and you can
feel the skin beneath your palm twitch as her expression
changes.

The first time you felt Ori's tongue on your
hand, it was startling and brief, and the primary impression you
retained from the experience was one of revulsion at the cat-like
quality of its texture. This time is every bit as startling, and
her tongue still scratches like that of a cat, but that is where
the similarity ends. She drags the flat of it in a broad swipe from
the heel of your palm, up and across to the base of your index
finger. It's almost searingly hot on your skin and in the moment
before your eyes fly open and you try to jerk your hand away, you
wonder if your estimation of her body temperature had been
incorrect.

Her grip on your wrist is implacable and cold
like a steel cuff. Your initial attempt to pull your hand away does
nothing, so you throw your entire body away from her. For all that
she seems to care, you may as well be an insect on a string. She
locks eyes with you, her tongue frozen with the tip of it resting
on the ring she left for you that first night in the hospital. The
weight of her regard pins you to your bed, renders you unable to
form words.

She withdraws her tongue from your skin and
frowns at you. "Dearest Douglas, I have been so patient with you. I
have watched you grow from a tiny babe into the person you are
today, and I have indulged you in so many things. Don't make me
regret my choices. I can't afford to indulge you much
longer."

Using her hold on you, she pulls you into an
upright sitting position such that your face is inches from hers.
Most of what you can see is the jewel-like glinting of her inky
black eyes. One of her hands shifts, fingers questing for
something, latching on to the silvery ring. Before you realize
what's happening, she jerks the ring, twists, and you howl with
pain as the joint tries to bend in a direction it was never meant
to go. You feel it pop, pull apart, and you can't see through the
tears that the pain brings to your eyes. Your heart beats
rabbit-fast as adrenaline floods your veins and try to thrash
away.

Ori holds you there for a moment, face eerily
blank even as you let out a strangled noise. "Douglas Fitzmoriah, I
will give you three days only because I have grown fond of you. I
doubt that others will be so gracious." She lets go of your finger
and your wrist at the same time, allowing you to pull your hand in
to your chest and cradle it there, whimpering. "Should you desire
my presence, or–more likely–require it, bleed on that metal around
your finger and I will come for you."

The void expression gives way to one of
concern: the corners of her mouth turn down, her brows draw
together, her eyes shine as though she might cry. Her hands flutter
like wounded birds between you before they settle lightly on your
shoulders. "Oh, Douglas, what will I do with you?" She presses you
gently back onto your bed. You don't bother fighting. Even if you
didn't feel so drained, there's no point to it now that she's
demonstrated her superior strength.

"This is so fucked up," you croak. Her hands
move along your collar bones, up the tendons of your neck, settle
on your cheeks. She strokes your face with her thumbs. You
shiver.

"You have no idea," Ori whispers, and it's
almost like she's purring. She leans down, rubs her cheek against
your chin, lets her thumbs brush your eyelids. "Go back to sleep,
Douglas. I'll do my best to make sure no other bogeyman gets to eat
your flesh but me."

She digs her thumbs into your eye sockets, but
her nails are blunt and her angle just right that she manages not
to rupture your eyeballs. Instead, her thumbs slide under them, pop
them out with a sickening slurping sound, and you can
see the
imperfections of her hands as your eyes come to rest against her
skin
.

You scream. She giggles.

* * *

You wake with one of Simon's hands on your
shoulder, shaking you. Your room is still mostly dark. Through your
sleep-gunked eyes, you can see that his hair sticks up at odd
angles on one side, and he's wearing only his plugs, a thin silver
necklace, and a pair of plaid pajama pants.

You swat his hand away, pushing yourself
upright and grabbing your glasses off your nightstand. "M'up,
m'up," you grumble. "Th'fuck d'you want?"

He crosses his arms, and your eyes (
oh
thank god they are still in your head it was just a dream
)
follow the motion. Distantly, you note that he's changed the hoops
in his nipples, and you wonder when he'd finally gotten the rest of
the color on the hawk over his heart done. "I hate to break it to
you, Dougie, but you were shrieking like the blonde slut who's
gonna be the first to die in a slasher flick. I thought I was gonna
have to get a steam cleaner to get the blood out of the carpet so I
could rent your room out again."

"I just had a shitty dream about someone
breaking my finger and popping my eyes out of their sockets.
Shouldn't have taken that co-codamol before bed. Gonna have to call
the doc tomorrow and tell 'em I can't handle the codeine and ask
for something else." You rub at your eyes to knock some of the
crust from them.

"Well, I'm not going to be able to get back to
sleep
now
," Simon says, trying to make a show of looking
grumpy, but failing.