He pulled a small black pistol from the back of his pants. He used the gun to scratch the underside of his chin.
“I didn’t eat any of it,” I said.
“No, but I suppose those bees must have communed with it before stinging you. The crow put something different in your fellow traveler though. He isn’t like you and me. Feather and I don’t even know exactly what he will birth, but I think you can understand why we couldn’t let you leave.”
He pressed the side of the gun into his cheek, as if he was making a motion to fall asleep. “Well, I abhor guns, but I have to keep the forces in balance.” He lowered the gun and fired. The new creature trembled once, and then was still.
The first creature’s eyes turned dark. The spikes drooped downward, and a cloud of rank gas whiffed out of its wrinkly hole.
George scratched his beard with the barrel again. It must have still been hot, because I smelled a bit of singed hair. He smiled and put the gun back in his pants.
“Can’t you feel how connected we are? I wasn’t sure at first, but after you spoke at dinner I knew. This wonderful being has touched both of us and joined our chis.”
He leaned his head back so he was facing the stars and let out a whoop.
I didn’t even see Iris coming, but she whacked George pretty good in the back of the head. When he fell forward, his chin hit the cage, and his teeth smacked together with a wet crunch.
“You sick hippie hick!” She was on top of him now and gashing his back with a hatchet she’d found god knows where. His blood turned the dirt under him into mud. The mixture was dotted with broken bits of teeth. “You aren’t nice people! You’re sicko pervert assholes!”
Finally she stopped and stood over him, breathing rapidly. When she looked at me, I saw her face was splattered with blood. Some had gotten in her left eye, making her wink.
“Where did you learn to do that?” I said.
“It’s not hard, you just swing,” she said. “Are you okay?”
I said I thought I was and she smiled.
“Then let’s get Dolan and get the hell back to the city.”
“What about that thing? I don’t want to leave it like that.”
Iris looked in the cage and groaned.
“What kind of shit is that? A diseased walrus? I can’t deal with this right now. I’m getting Dolan, and you’re coming with me, and we’re never coming out to this shit hole again.”
Feather broke down in tears when she saw us walk by splattered in blood.
“Run, run to your room!” she said to Clover, shielding her with her body. She moaned George’s name and started chanting in a language I didn’t understand.
Iris walked right past her though, and I followed.
“Dolan,” Iris said quietly. The thing she was talking to didn’t look like Dolan to me. His flesh had sloughed off. His face was bunched up like a rubber mask on the floor.
In the cavity of Dolan, a thick black orb was expanding. It was half in, half out of Dolan. Bits of him clung to its curved sides. The stench of the room made me pinch my nose shut. A few dark strands extended out of the orb, writhing on the floor. Another strand had made its way out of Dolan’s ear and slithered into the wall socket.
Iris was throbbing with tears. I pulled her away and hugged her. “Hey, it’ll be all right. We’re gonna be all right.”
Iris pushed her hands up my chest in what I took to be a tender way. But when her hands reached my neck, she shoved me back violently.
“My fucking best friend is dead! It’s not going to be all right, you dick! How did I ever even date you? What is wrong with your fucking brain?”
She tore at her hair and looked around the room with wild eyes. She ran a few feet toward one door, then turned and ran back toward the couch. She didn’t seem to know what to do, but eventually she threw the axe at the orb. “This is bullshit!” she screamed.
I barely heard Feather yell, “It’s not safe out of the cage, go back!” When I turned around, she was trying to shove the creature back out the door.
I’d left the cage door open before we came inside. I’d tried to project a message of peace and forgiveness.
The pink creature was moving toward the Dolan-orb, inching along like a worm. It stopped and turned to Feather. She was chanting her prayer and pushing with all her might. Then the top of the creature, where the rows of spikes converged on the sphincter, expanded open. The creature bunched up and, I guess, inhaled.
Feather’s leg got sucked right in up to the knee. She screamed, hopping on her other leg. Her right leg was inside the creature for about three seconds, then the creature spat what was left back out. Fleshless bones hung from her kneecap. She tried to stand on both legs, but the bare bones collapsed with her weight, and she tumbled to the floor. She looked completely confused, and her eyes darted around. Blood poured over the white bones.
The creature did the same thing to her left leg. It sucked it in as she screamed, then spat it out as neat, white bones. The creature rolled a little to the left and regurgitated a pile of tendons, muscle, and blood. Feather was barely moving now. The creature shifted itself to face her twitching arm.
When Iris saw the creature continuing toward us, she shouted, “You aren’t coming near Dolan, pus bag!”
I pulled her out of the way just as the thing was opening its hole. Iris struggled against me, but I held on.
Go on, we won’t stop you, I tried to say to the creature. I concentrated as hard as I could. I am sorry for what the man and woman did to you. We killed the bearded one for you.
The creature’s opening was facing us. I could see a strange yellow light inside. It stayed there for a few seconds, then clenched back up. It turned toward the black orb.
By this point, the orb had expanded to the size of the couch. The bottom was still expanding out of the cavity of Dolan. It didn’t seem fully formed. A half-dozen thin threads were wrapped around the appliances in the room. You could hear the hum of the electricity moving through them.
The creature emitted a low rumble, and a part of the orb opened up, like a slit in a curtain.
I saw Clover standing in the other entranceway. She was sniffling but watching intently.
Dad, Dad, she said in my mind.
Don’t worry, I said. Stay still and close your eyes.
The creature started to crawl into the opening of the orb. The swarm in my head was intercepting something. It wasn’t quite words, but I could tell the orb was its ship, and that the creature was going to return home.
“We have to get outside,” I yelled. “It’s going to break through the roof!”
That didn’t happen though.
Instead, a jolt of blue electricity surged up the orb thread from the wall socket. The lights started flickering. Clover and Iris screamed and ran outside. I started to follow them, but before we could make it out, there was a loud pop and all the lights shut off. Everything turned black.
I could sense something, either panic or resignation, coming from the creature. I opened a long cut on my calf scrambling out of the house. Iris and Clover were already in the yard.