Bodies Are Disgusting (12 page)

"I won't do anything stupid," you huff. "I
gotta go. I need to take care of my roommate."

"Don't be stupid," Gavin reiterates, then the
line goes dead. You drop your phone so you can straighten out your
neck.

You pull yourself closer to the couch and rest
your forehead against your roommate's. "Come on, dude, let's get
you upstairs."

* * *

Once Simon is in bed, you return to the living
room. Other than your discarded phone and the scattered groceries,
it's almost as if nothing untoward had happened at all. It doesn't
take you long to clean up the remains of the mess now that the
whatever-it-was covering yourself and the floor has all evaporated.
It seems almost pointless to go about making your apple pie, but
what else are you going to do? How would sitting in Simon's room be
more productive? Or lying around on your own bed?

You bring your laptop down to the kitchen and
leave it on the table to continue playing the DVDs you were
watching earlier. It makes you feel better to have the white noise
in lieu of companionship while you bake.

The oven beeps when it's done preheating, so
you turn to put the pie in. When you turn back, Ori perches on the
chair in front of your laptop. You're too drained to manage any
sort of response beyond a vague grunt.

Ori is feminine again, with her skinny legs
pulled almost up to her chest to accommodate the manner in which
she sits on the edge of the chair. She stares at the computer
screen as if enthralled, shifting only to push stray locks of hair
behind one ear with delicate fingers. The memory of what happened
the last time you saw her as such drifts through your mind, but you
wave it away. You won't be intimidated by her. Not now.

"What did you do to Simon," you say. The words
sound as dull and tired as you feel.

She doesn't look away from your laptop.
"Nothing. Well,
almost
nothing." Her shoulders rise and fall
in a quick shrug. "I suppose, if you were feeling generous, you
could say that I freed him. But I didn't harm
him
." She
pauses, tilts her head to one side. "Lucien was, sadly, not so
lucky."

"What's upstairs doesn't look like not harming
him," you say.

Finally, Ori uncurls, hooks her feet on the
cross-bar of the chair, and taps the spacebar on your laptop to
pause the show. Her head swivels so she might look at you over her
shoulder, but the effect is less like that of a girl and more like
that of an owl or someone whose neck has been snapped. "I assure
you, dearest Douglas, that I had no hand in that. Much of that
damage was done before we arrived."

You take a deep breath, two, let the air out
slowly through your nose. "I don't care. I want you gone. My life
has gotten so fucked up since you came along, and I'm done. Cash me
out."

She blinks at you. "Oh, Douglas. You surely
don't mean that."

"I fucking well do." You spit the words out
like they were a bite of rotten food. "I'm done. I'm not buying
what you're selling, and I'm sick of you fucking up my life." You
pull the ring off your right index finger and shove it in her face.
"Take it back. Take it!"

Her eyes are, as always, so dark that you
can't even tell if she's focusing on you. The hand holding out the
silver band trembles, making it catch the light in ways that it
probably shouldn't. Before your eyes, her face crumbles: the
corners of her mouth tug down, her eyebrows knit together, and her
eyes narrow. "You don't know what you're saying," she says after a
moment.

"I fucking well
do
!" It takes every
ounce of self-control not to stomp your foot like a petulant child
and just throw the damn thing in her face. Something in your
hindbrain holds you back, tells you that such an action would
irrevocably cross the line you're currently toeing.

Almost hesitantly, Ori lifts her hands to
clasp yours. The ring is hidden in the tangle of your fingers. "I
do not believe you mean this. I know that I made myself perfectly
clear when I first spoke to you what is at stake here." The cadence
of her words is so soft and soothing that it comes perilously close
to making her sound concerned. Even though her eyes lack pupils,
you can tell that she is searching your face for a sign of
something
, though like Amanda before her, you have no idea
what.

Her hands slip away, taking the ring with it.
"All right," she says, sounding defeated. "I will keep hold of this
for now. It's obvious that I cannot dissuade you on my own. Should
you change your mind, I will return it."

Something about the way her shoulders slump
and her face tilts downward twists up your insides. You're still so
very angry, but Ori projects such
vulnerability
that you're
almost half-way through a shuffling step forward before you realize
it and stop yourself. "No," you say. "No, I'm not falling for it.
I'm not falling for
you
. You keep that damn ring. I'm
done."

Ori's voice quavers. "I... I understand. Just
know that, should you need me, you need only call for me and I will
return what is rightfully yours." There's nothing flashy about her
exit. One moment, she is in front of you and then, when you blink,
she is gone.

Your heart feels somehow heavier, but at least
you don't have the press of cool metal around your finger any
longer.

You tap the spacebar on your laptop to resume
the show while you wait for your pie to bake.

* * *

The first day is quiet. Simon rests, and you
work your way through his DVD collection (despite telling Ori to
remove herself from your life, you still can't sleep). Sometimes,
you hear him stir upstairs, but he never ventures down to the
living area. Your laptop follows you wherever you go, sometimes
playing videos, sometimes games, sometimes browsing the internet.
When you're certain you won't be waking him, you call JD and let
him know you'll be out a few more days; he doesn't ask why and you
do not volunteer a reason.

(In between moments, when you shuffle between
the upstairs and downstairs to attend to Simon's needs, it strikes
you how small and insulated you are. Within the space of a night,
you've lost the only people you truly consider friends. Who do you
tell about these developments now? Who will offer you
advice?)

The first night is not quiet at
all.

* * *

You don't want to count the number of hours
you've been awake by the time you finally get sick of anime, so you
don't. Instead, you check on Simon once more: he's propped against
his headboard, staring at something you guess is three hundred
miles away. His vocalizations have almost ceased.

His desk chair sits in the middle of his room,
kicked away from the cheap IKEA desk. Unlike its companion, the
chair is expensive and comfortable, so you plant yourself in it and
drag it next to his bed. You aren't sure what you hope to
accomplish with your vigil, but you're sure that it's bound to be
better than trying to slog through another episode of whatever show
you'd happened to grab. You wrap your fingers around his, which
have gone chill and clammy since last night. He does not
react.

"I'm sorry," you whisper. "Sorry for being a
shitty friend, sorry for getting you dragged onto this somehow,
sorry for everything." You take a deep breath through your nose.
His room smells much like he generally does: masculine with a hint
of musk. "Was Amanda right? Did you think that we could have a
thing if I was a dude? Is this how you opt out of the convo you
didn't even know we were about to have?"

You sigh. "Come on, throw me a bone here. I am
not gonna be able to make my life work without you in it. Just give
me some sort of sign. Tell me what I have to do to make this shit
right." But Simon remains unresponsive, not that you expected
differently.

Leaning back in the chair and kicking your
heels up onto his bed, you let his fingers go. It seems like
there's so little point to anything now. Maybe, if you try very
hard, you can will the past few weeks into being a fever dream.
Perhaps the neurologist was wrong. Perhaps your brain is scarred
and this is all just a hallucination. Perhaps none of this is real.
It sounds unconvincing, even in your own mind, but entertaining the
thought helps just a little.

Your head tips back, and you find yourself
staring at the ceiling. It's textured, and the plaster is starting
to flake in places. An intrepid spider (most likely slain with a
shoe) has left some impressive cobwebs tucked away in the corners
and near the far bookshelf. You're surprised that Simon hasn't
taken the time to remove them, given his visceral fear of all
things both creepy and crawly.

As you watch, the spider in question skitters
from behind the bookcase. It's giant from this vantage point:
spindly legs, fat abdomen and thorax, covered in gray hairs. You've
seen spiders like these, when you and your parents lived in
run-down trailers a little further north. They would spin giant
webs between the trailer wall and the air conditioning unit and
then perch there for days, it seemed.

The arachnid on the wall is not nearly so
complacent, however. It dips and swerves along the crown moulding,
moving so quickly that you almost have a difficult time tracking
it. Finally, the creature ducks into Simon's closet. "Probably for
the best," you mutter in the spider's general direction. "Don't get
yourself squished, kiddo." Not that he's in a position to do any
squishing, but you don't say it aloud.

Your mind wanders and you let your eyes drift
shut for a while. It isn't like sleeping because you're still aware
of your surroundings and the passage of time, but you aren't quite
awake
, either. Your head feels somehow gummy while your
limbs are like lead. It feels like a heavy weight has settled on
your chest, perched just below your sternum in such a way as to
make breathing difficult.

When you finally peel your eyes open (and it
does feel like peeling, as if they're overripe fruit in your head),
you see the spider from behind the bookcase resting casually on
your abdomen. Your estimate of its size was off, it seems. The
creature is about as large as your fist, and you can see the way
its compound eyes glitter blue-black in the light cast by Simon's
bedside lamp. The hairs on its pedipalps quiver as though it were
breathing heavily, though you're not sure exactly how spiders
respire. You try to bring your hand up to shoo the thing away, but
your arm barely twitches. The spider doesn't flinch.

The bed creaks. Simon rolls so his back is to
you, but the bed creaks again even after he's settled. From behind
the headboard, two spindly legs peek out before curling over the
edge of it. Another fist-sized spider heaves itself up, causing the
bed to groan again. It scrambles down, over Simon's pillow, and
comes to rest next to your feet. The drawer of Simon's nightstand
scrapes open, and another arachnid hefts itself out. It's joined by
several smaller specimens, which clamber onto the larger one's back
before it leaps onto the bed with the other.

More spiders crawl out of the nooks and
crannies in Simon's room, and for the first time in your life you
feel like you have a decent grasp of the term "coming out of the
woodwork." That's exactly what these things are doing; large,
small, alone, or in groups, there seems to be no piece of furniture
in the room that hasn't been harboring the wretched things. They
arrange themselves around you, some even going so far as to prod
your feet and ankles as they jostle each other. No more of them
climb onto you.

The original spider inches forward, crawling
up your ribcage as you sit petrified by panic. It's heavy, like a
hunk of hyper-dense metal on needle-like appendages. The hairs on
its legs catch the fabric of your sweater as they move, snagging
the fibers and making a noise not unlike tearing apart sheet of
cheap felt, rendered in miniature.

Despite the fact that it's no longer camped on
your diaphragm, you still can't catch your breath. Your throat
starts to burn with the need to get oxygen in. The spider creeps up
your neck, rests its prickly legs on your chin. You don't try to
look at it, preferring not to make yourself go
cross-eyed.

The pain in your throat is nearly unbearable.
You can't breathe, which throws your body into a blind panic. With
your limbs frozen, there is little you can actually
do
, but
your autonomic nervous system takes what it can get. It feels like
your throat is on fire, like you swallowed crushed glass, like
there's something inside you trying to claw its way out and you
realize
that is exactly what is happening oh god
and you
heave yourself forward just as you feel something spined and
spindly forcing its way up and it's followed by thorax, abdomen, an
entire spider just spilling out of your mouth. It falls on your
chest with a gooey plop.

The spiders around you scatter as you finally
get your limbs to respond. Another arachnid emerges from your
throat and falls to the carpet, where you crush it beneath your
toes as you bolt for the bathroom. You keep both hands clapped
tight over your mouth to keep anything else from dropping out of it
until you're hunched over the toilet, but something warm and slick
leaks from between your fingers and dribbles down your front all
the same.