Bodies Are Disgusting (15 page)

It takes you less than twenty minutes to get
to the hospital; it's after rush hour and you're speeding. Finding
a parking place takes another five minutes, and locating the ICU
takes a bit longer. You didn't have enough time to make yourself
presentable, but the doctor doesn't seem fazed. He tries to shake
your hand, looking worn around the edges. Probably at the tail end
of a twenty-hour shift.

"Mister–er, Miss Fitzmoriah, I'm glad you
could make it. You... well, you were the only ICE contact we could
find. I'm Alistair Rayez, I've been tending to Ms. Ebonlee since
she came in. I'm afraid the prognosis... isn't good." When you
don't take his hand, he stuffs it in the pocket of his
coat.

You ignore the bitter rush of satisfaction at
hearing that you are the only emergency contact Amanda has. "What
happened?"

"Emergency responders think it may have been a
suicide attempt. Witnesses saw her step out into the street a few
seconds before a bus passed." He schools his expression to be
contrite, a little belatedly. As if he realized he should be sorry
for mentioning the possibility of suicide. "Under normal
circumstances, we would need to move her to the psychiatric ward
for monitoring, but... I'm sorry. I don't know how long she has to
live."

"Can I see her?" Your voice is dead in your
ears.

"Of course." Dr. Rayez motions for you to
follow, which you do. Amanda's room is down the hall, and she does
not share it with anyone else. "She's as comfortable as we can make
her," he tells you as you approach Amanda's bed. When you don't
respond, he shifts from foot to foot. "I'll... let you have some
time." You don't even turn to watch him leave.

Amanda looks like shit. In your memory, she's
vivid, fiery, so painfully
alive
, even when she's
disappointed and upset with you. Now, she's wan and bruised. If the
doctor is to be believed, she doesn't even wish to be that much.
You can't reconcile the two images, no matter how hard you try. The
words "Amanda" and "suicide" feel like such immiscible things to
you. All you can do is stare.

You reach for her, your hand trembling, but
can't seem to reach far enough to bridge the space between you.
Your hand drops back to your side. It hangs there for a moment
before something brushes against it. "I am very sorry," Ori
whispers, appearing next to you

"What do you know about being sorry?" you
demand through gritted teeth.

"I know that you do not wish Amanda to die,"
he says. "I know that you wish her to not be in pain. I know that
you wish her to remain a part of your life." Like a cat, he rubs
his head against your arm and runs the tips of his fingers across
your knuckles. "I know that you are in pain and I wish you not to
be. Whatever you feel about me, do not mistake the fact that I am
fond of you.

"You can fix this." Ori's words ring in your
ears more surely than if a giant bell that had just been struck
next to them. "It doesn't need to end like this. You can fix this,
Douglas. I can help." His voice is soft and kind; it reassures you
somehow, hearing him so tender. You remember when you'd first
awoken in the hospital bed what seems like ages ago, and you
remember the soothing words he'd whispered in what you thought was
a hallucination. Whatever may have happened, you have no doubt that
he does not want you to suffer like this.

You look at Amanda lying there on the hospital
bed, skin ashen, hair limp, eyes shut. Her life is beating out of
her, one blip on the machine at a time. You don't need Ori's eerie
abilities to tell that. Her hand is listless in yours, her fingers
clammy. She's wearing the silvery band from Ori that you'd given
her what seems like centuries ago. Jesus. There's not much point to
it now.

You slide it off her finger and hold it up to
the light. As much as you think you might want to, you can't bring
yourself to look at Ori. "If... just say for a second that I wanted
to accept your offer..." You clear your throat. You are
not
going to cry. "If I wanted to accept, what would I have to
do?"

At your side, you hear Ori shift. "I can't
really tell you. That would be interference, and it wouldn't count.
Just do what you like, and if you mean it, I'll know."

Neither of you say anything for a few moments
while your brain runs through your options. You could walk away
now, let Amanda die, let Simon rot. You could try to pick up the
pieces if you stayed, help plan Amanda's funeral, make arrangements
for Simon. You could wait at Amanda's bedside for the end to come,
because you're sure it will soon, one way or another.

Or, as Ori says, you can fix this.

Like there's any point in pretending that you
actually
have a choice.

You pull the ring off your index finger and
hold it in your palm with the one from Amanda. They're both
unreasonably warm and heavy in your hand, uncomfortable reminders
of how you both got here. After a few breaths, you pick up both
rings between your thumb and index finger of your left hand; the
rings fit together almost perfectly.

"I'm going to give these back to you," you say
slowly. "I don't need them anymore." You hold them out to Ori, who
nods approvingly. Rather than extending his hands to take them from
you, though, he merely stands placidly, waiting. It's not unlike
watching a shark circling a kill.

That thought no longer unnerves
you.

A few moments slip by with neither of you
moving beyond the beating of your heart and your breathing. Ori
doesn't even blink, he simply stares at you with his wide black
eyes. You realize that, if anything is to happen, it will only be
because you make the first move. So, finally, with Amanda's tenuous
heartbeat mapped by the machines, ticking away, you do
it.

You reach out with the hand not holding the
rings, grab Ori's jaw, and apply a bit of pressure near the joint
to force it open. He makes no move to resist, doesn't even try to
clench his teeth against your intrusion, but his eyes glitter with
the ghost of some alien emotion. You put the rings in his mouth,
setting them on the center of his tongue.

In pulling your hand away, you catch the tip
of your index finger on one of his pointed teeth, slicing it open
so neatly that you only feel it after you've bled freely into his
mouth. Before you can even register the pain or try to jerk away,
both of Ori's hands grip your wrist, and his lips close around your
finger. You feel his tongue move against your skin, hot and wet and
rough, and the corners of his mouth quirk up.

The air between you crackles with something
almost like static electricity. All of the hair on your body stands
on end, your skin prickling up into gooseflesh. Everything seems to
grow sharper, more defined, and time seems to stretch out around
the both of you. The ambient noises (Amanda's breathing, the
electronic monitors, chatter in the hallway) slow into nothingness
and everything becomes weighty. When you close your eyes to blink,
you find you can't open them again. You feel a wave of some
intangible
something
wash over you, through you, and Ori's
voice slips into your mind, saying,
I accept what is freely
given.

There's a shift in your perception as the
words tumble around your brain, and it is not subtle. The world is
ripped away around you with a great sundering feeling that shakes
you all the way down to your bones. Ori pulls your finger from his
mouth, runs his tongue over your palm, grazes the flesh with his
teeth. You shiver, but don't shy away. His grip on your wrist
changes, fingers replaced by his tongue's hot rasp; an inchoate
feeling curls in the pit of your stomach like a hissing viper in
response, too primal for you to even identify and name.

Open your eyes, Douglas,
he says. The
sentiment thrums through you as though someone plucked a low E
string that was buried in your ribcage. The order would be
impossible to resist, even if you'd wanted to (you don't; not
anymore).

When your eyes flutter open, your mind is torn
by the bizarre sensations of both feeling as if you can see forever
and fearing that you have been struck blind. Everything around you
is darker than pitch, darker than night, more than just the mere
absence of light. The darkness is a thing unto itself that writhes
around you with sick twisting undulations that, were you not
currently anchored by Ori's presence, would surely make you
violently ill.

Ori, for his part, looks strange against the
blackness. Previously, he'd seemed mostly normal both in form and
coloration, but now he looks ethereal, translucent, and stripped of
many trappings of humanity. If you look carefully, you think you
can see some of his bones through his skin, like a fish from the
darkest depths of the ocean. He's nuzzling your wrist with the most
satisfied expression upon his face. For the first time, you notice
that he has two sets of eyelids: a humanoid set and a
mostly-transparent membrane, which he has closed over his eyes. You
can't call them black or empty anymore, surrounded as you are by
primal tenebrous forces. Instead, you appreciate now how they
resemble the space between stars on a clear night.

Behind Ori, stretching taller and wider than
your brain can comfortably comprehend, lays this great massive
thing
. The first impression your mind receives of it is of a
sprawling cephalopod with a bulbous head that holds a seemingly
infinite number of unblinking eyes just like Ori's. Its tentacles
number far more than that of any octopus or cuttlefish you've ever
seen, and they swat lazily at the unquiet darkness as if batting
away vaguely troublesome insects. Some of them brush near you and
some of them wind around Ori's slender arms and legs. They, unlike
Ori, are not translucent. If impossible beings can be said to have
skin, the skin of this creature is supple, rubbery, and white like
bones scoured to within an inch of their lives or cave-dwelling
creatures that have never seen the sun.

Ori drifts closer to you, releases your wrist,
wraps his arms around your neck. He nuzzles your cheek.
Dearest
Douglas,
he says,
I never dreamed I would see this
moment.
The words flow through you like something warm and
liquid that pools behind your eyes, in your fingertips, at the base
of your spine, in your toes. It's... pleasant. A part of you feels
as if it should be disconcertingly so, but you cannot bring
yourself to care. Ori's body is cool to the touch pressed up
against you, his lips surprisingly soft as he nips at your neck. He
is so beautiful and pliant and willing that you cannot help but
appreciate the form he chose for you.

You should be frightened, you realize, but you
aren't. All you can do is move your hands up so that one is buried
in the hair at the nape of his neck and the other traces the
sharply bony bumps of his vertebrae. His teeth like needles
puncture the skin where your neck meets your shoulder, but instead
of pain, you feel only a pleasurable pressure that elicits an
appreciative hum in the back of your throat.

Without removing his lips from your skin, Ori
says,
It is time.
And you know he's right. In some ways, you
feel as if you've always known, as if you were groomed for this
specific point in time since you were born. Which you suppose is
true; Ori said as much, the second time you spoke to
him.

You nod. "Yeah. Let's get this done. We've got
things to be and places to do."

Ori's laughter trickles through you, sending a
thrill of pleasure up your spine.
You're absolutely correct,
cherished one,
he says.
Come. Join Us.

The great beast had slipped your attention as
soon as Ori had pulled himself close to you, but it makes its
presence known now. The tentacles that had wrapped themselves
around Ori's appendages twitch and squirm against your skin, their
texture queerly velvety where they touch your flesh. You think that
an octopus wouldn't feel like this, followed immediately by the
delirious thought that this is most certainly not an
octopus.

One of the tentacles winds around your left
bicep; another tangles in the fingers splayed across Ori's back;
still another starts near your ankle, climbs your leg, brushes your
thigh. You try to squirm away, not because you are particularly
afraid or because the sensation is unpleasant, but out of some
feeling that it's what you
should
be doing.

It doesn't matter, though. Ori holds you fast,
laughing all the while.
Relax,
he says. He clenches his jaw,
digs his needle-teeth deeper into your flesh, and you shudder
against him because–against all reason–it feels so good and right.
Without any conscious thought on your part, your muscles go slack
and you slump against him like a rag doll.

More of the great beast's limbs wrap around
you and hold you up. Some of them curl around Ori as well, holding
the both of you together with their sinewy strength. One of them
strokes your cheek as lazily as it had been swatting at the
elemental darkness, the barest tip of it flicking across your lips.
As unsettling and surreal as you feel like the situation should be,
you can't help but smile and laugh just a little, too. "God," you
say, "I've seen enough hentai to know where this is
going."

Ori simply hums as he pulls away, licks the
wounds he left in your shoulder, leans down, latches onto the flesh
at the top of your breast.
I can safely say that I don't know
what you're talking about,
he replies. One of his hands tangles
in your hair and pulls your head back so that your back arches and
he has better leverage to take more of your breast between his
teeth.
You and I see this experience very differently. This is
not something that takes place in a literal sense, and how we
perceive each others' actions depends on how our minds interpret
this joining. There's no way for me to see what you see, but it
seems to me as if I am tearing the flesh from your bones and
devouring you as you feed your entrails to me.