Chapter Five
A Midsummer Night's Memory
Other Titles
The Beast Within
20 Questions and 3 Words
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Sasha slammed a stack of papers down with a groan. "There done. Finally," she sighed. "They could've turned all this stuff electronic what, five years ago?"
The coffee table was covered in papers, pens, and a couple of crushed coffee cups. The sky outside was dark and moonless, exactly as it had been the night before.
Jani lay back on the couch and stared at the ceiling fan, which looked like it hadn't been turned on since the end of summer. "The iPad come out in 2010, right? That's 13 years. Just think, it probably would have saved a whole meranti just with this meeting."
"Meranti?"
"Yeah, a type of really tall tree. They kind of look like birches."
"... Right. Did you live around a forest or something before–?"
"Chicago?" Jani sat up. "Yeah, in a little town closer to the middle of the state, but they only had oaks and maples and stuff, nothing too special. I just learned about a bunch of trees years back and just sort of got it stuck in my head, I guess. I do stuff like that a lot. You?"
"Do I do that? Um, no, not really."
"No, no, where did you live?"
"Oh, I lived in a small place, too, actually. Up in northern Wisconsin."
"Huh. I wouldn't have guessed it."
Sasha took the stack of papers and put them in a box under the coffee table.
"I'll send these downstairs tomorrow morning. Hopefully, that'll be the end of the this whole keeping the alien in check business."
"Hey, how did you find out about that?"
"Huh?"
"How'd you figure out I was an alien?"
"Well, I'd sort of guessed Shard and Spindle were. There's nothing on Earth like them. Also, Spindle had said something about it during the whole Millennium Park incident. When you showed up about a month back, I figured you were the same." Sasha looked up at Jani and smiled. "I'm glad to see I wasn't entirely right."
Jani returned the smile. "Thanks."
"Those spikes, the ones that were covering your arms and your back right before you fought Spindle that one time, you know those? They're on your arms now. Do they mean something?"
Jani looked at her arms and watched the spikes melt away. "I don't know," she replied after a moment. "They just pop up sometimes. Doesn't seem to be a pattern."
Sasha watched her quietly. She seemed scared, or at least nervous. But of what? The alien part, as Jani had called it, was a possibility, as was Sasha herself.
"What is it like? An alien sharing a person's body, I mean. It just sounds so... weird. Gives me shakes just imagining it."
Jani looked at Sasha with the same nervous look she had worn while looking at her spikes. "I'm not... I dunno. It's a pretty long story."
"I've got time to spare."
"Well, alright. Um, I tried explaining it to Dia earlier, when she asked about it this morning, but there's still a lot I don't know about, well, us, myself. When Catastrophe first mel– er, ed with me, I saw her touch me and then just disappear. It was a couple weeks until she started talking to me, like, in my head. It was just little stuff, nothing stuff. I'd hold off getting water when I was thirsty or I'd stay in bed when I knew I had to get up, and she would say something like "water" or "awake". It was pretty creepy, but not as creepy as– eugh." Jani shivered.
"Not as creepy as what?"
"What started happening soon after. Weird stuff, like hallucinations or visions. I'd touch a knife and all of a sudden, I'd be seeing myself killing everyone around me. Or I'd start my car and imagine driving into the kids playing in my neighbor's yard." Jani shivered again. "And I'd get all these weird urges to jump at people, chase them down for no reason. One night, I just couldn't take it. I just broke down, stayed at home and cried all day long. I mean, who wouldn't? But then, it just stopped. Well, I'd still hearing the little words sometimes and the vision-hallucination things didn't stop, but they changed. One time, I saw the house going up in flames and realized I had left the stove on. Stuff like that. Warnings instead of whatever those other things were. Some time after that, I was clearing out some old junk and..."
"And?" Sasha prompted.
Jani opened her mouth to speak but quickly closed it. She sighed and laid back on the couch. "Forget that. Just, Catastrophe finally told me who she was. What she was, I suppose. She brought me to Chicago, told me about how she needed a host to live, about how her home planet was destroyed after a moon crashed into it. Shard, Spindle, and her were a sort of family. Like sisters, or as close to sisters as alien goo gets. No offense, pal," she said, patting a patch of gold covering her arm. "Turns out symbiotes don't feel because none of their hosts can, but once they bonded with humans, things changed. Can you even imagine? Killing every day without any sort of remorse, years and years without emotion, watching your home go up in flames in total apathy just to meet some alien and all of a sudden, be able to feel? Absolutely insane. So we, as in me and Catastrophe, we went to find Shard and Spindle. Turns out they weren't as sensitive to their hosts feelings as she was. They didn't understand their sentience, their soul, you know, all that stuff in people that makes them people. They didn't get that. We had to run. After Catastrophe, I couldn't go back to my family, and Catastrophe couldn't go back to her team, that's Spindle and Shard, she couldn't go back to them after me. That's when we got to understanding each other. We both realized how truly equal we were. We tried to stay low, keep out of trouble, and it actually worked until you found us last month at Spindle's place, and you pretty much know what happened from there."
Sasha nodded. "Thank you. There's one more thing. Kind of a big thing. My powers include a past vision where I can look at people and I see the last thing to happen to them that they considered important. It was a big part of why the agency hired me, actually."
Jani stared back at Sasha through narrowed eyes. "Alright."
"I looked at you, in both of the apartments, and I had visions of you killing people. You ate them. You..." Sasha shuddered. "Why? How could you do something so horrible if what you have just told me is all true?"
Sasha looked at Jani, and she saw something broken. Something scared and guilty and impossibly sad. It was like watching someone after they just heard that their parents had died.
"Two people," she said shakily. "I killed two people. Or Catastrophe did. She needs blood to live. She's still an alien. A predator who has never had to answer to anyone or anything except her friends. She... I don't know. She knew she needed to kill to live, and she knew I wouldn't let her unless I felt like it was absolutely necessary. She used me and manipulated me until I gave in. She convinced me they were scum and would destroy other people if I didn't destroy them first. She is incredibly sorry now. I feel her feelings just as she thinks my thoughts. She's going through my memories right now. It's why she isn't talking."
"But the two people you killed?"
"She's sorry, like I said. I figured out how to help her, give her the stuff she needs to live with chicken and chocolate. I've got this figured out. I'm teaching her about how people are supposed to act so she won't do anything close to killing people ever again."
"But the people you killed," Sasha pressed. "In my visions, I saw them. Two boys. I saw hated both of them. I know the name of the first one. YOU know his name. Tell me."
"But you know."
"Jani, I need you to tell me."
"John Hawkins," she snapped after some hesitation. "His name was John Hawkins, and I never ever want to hear it again, you understand?!"
Sasha frowned. "No. No, I don't, Jani. I don't understand why it was so easy for Catastrophe to convince you to kill him. I saw it happen."
Jani sat on the couch and stared at her Sasha with cold, gray eyes. Dead eyes. Tired eyes. Sad and broken eyes.
"I'm done. I'm sorry. I thought this would be easy, telling someone about what I've been going through. But it's not. I just," Jani sighed. "I just want to go to bed."
She stood up, tugged at her jacket, and walked away. She was done.
But Sasha wasn't. She stood up, too, but she didn't walk away. She didn't need to. She just took off her glasses.
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Papers, papers, papers. I don't why I keep all of them. Memories, I guess. Memories are nice. Memories all over my bed. Memories in stacks and folders and bound by paperclips and spare bits of string. I'll sort them out. I've got time.
My room is cold. I like it. Mom never did. Mom would always ask if I need a heater or extra blankets. Always making a fuss.
I shook my head. My head with the weird goop in it. Mom is dead. She had goop in her head but the goop hid in me so the doctors called it a heart attack. But it wasn't. It was an alien invasion. I was the only one who knew. The only one who would ever know, maybe.
[Look out.]
My head was filled with blood and paper. Paper cutting my skin and my eyes. So much blood. I never could have imagined paper causing so much blood, but it can.
[Host, I am a she.]
"What does that mean?" I whispered, sorting through decade-old birthday cards, trying to decide which ones were unimportant enough to throw out. ""I am a she."? You said you were an alien."
[I am.]
"Get out of my head."
[I can't do that.]
"Please."
[I like it here.]
It spoke in pictures, images, feelings. I should hate it. I don't. I just want it to stop.
[Call me "she", Host, and maybe it will.]
"Stop calling me Host like I'm some sort of bug or something."
[But you don't want me to call you Jani.]
"Then don't call me anything."
[Who is that?]
"Who is who?"
[The person who wrote in the card that's in front of you.]
I looked at the card. It's green and handmade with little paper stars glued all over it. It's got a name inside written in curvy red writing.
[Sandi. Sandi Fisher.]
"Just stop."
[You loved her.]
"No."
But the creature knows. It always knows.
"Yes. Yes, of course I loved her. How could anyone not love someone like her?"
[You're crying.]
"Everyone I love is dead. Give me a break."
[And yet your father comforts your weeping grandparents upstairs.]
"Everyone I love is dead."
There are papers crinkling up underneath me, and the weight of my own words sinks in. I can't change it. I can't fix it. I can't do anything. I'm just useless.
[Don't say that, Wilson. Don't even think it, because you have what no one else does.]
"And what's that?"
[The truth.]
And by grace, she speaks it. I've got to be the only person alive who knows what killed Sandy. Everyone saw a rope in a barn and called it suicide. I'm not stupid, though. I actually listened to the girl who knew she was going to die.
[Then find him. Find him and I will end him. WE will end him. Together.]
"An eye for an eye, you know."
[You want him dead. WE want him dead.]
I can't come up with any excuses. The law wouldn't get John even if I had video evidence of what he had done to my friend. To my Sandy.
[Bruises all over her face and back.]
I can't stop crying.
[She locked herself in her room for two weeks.]
I have to give in.
[What kind of creature would do that?]
He has to die.
[Only scum beats girls so bad that they kill themselves on their birthdays.]
Her name is Catastrophe. Our name is Catastrophe.
[He will know our name.]
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Sasha stumbled back on to the chair she had been sitting on. Her glasses were on the ground. She hadn't even heard them fall.
Neither of them had.
"Couldn't you just stop?" Jani shouted. "Please? Haven't I told you enough? You don't need to dig through my head."
Sasha stood back up and ran over to Jani. She was on the floor, on her knees, crying.
"I don't, I didn't think you were a t-telepath," Sasha stammered. "Only telepaths can see my visions while I'm having them."
"Telepaths and aliens, it seems," Jani replied. "Two people in my head is enough, alright? Just stop."
"Jani, I'm–"
"Please. Please, just stop. I'm so tired. Physically and emotionally and however else-ally. So stop."
Sasha watched Jani stagger off to her room, rubbing her eyes along the way. The moment the door was closed, Sasha reached down towards the coffee table for a pen and her notepad. She walked in the kitchen, pressed the pedal by the garbage pan, and dropped the top page with writing. On the new page, she wrote, in thick blue writing, three words.
Chicken
Chocolate
Cold
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