little alive things in your mouth. If someone pulled them out—
Ohmygod.
Blood-rush. Puke coming up. A scream trapped in my skull.
I grabbed the edge of the bed and held on. Breathed through it.
Fuck. Lesson one: You don’t want your fangs pulled out. And not—another blood-rush, barf-rising—your fingernails, either.
I put my feet on the floor. Stood.
Stupid strength.
Sick
strength. This time I did laugh. I could feel it in my shins and thighs and butt and shoulders. Crazy power.
You could pick that up with one hand. Punch through that. Pull that off like a button.
Objects told me what I could do to them now. There were a lot of things I’d be able to do, now.
As long as I didn’t mind being a murderer.
That had been in me from the second I woke up. Like a new person living inside my body who was more alive than I was, someone I had to catch up with. Now she was there I realised I’d been waiting for her ever since. Ever since all of it.
All of it
was the other thing that had been in me from the second I woke up.
I’d thought it might be gone, but it wasn’t.
I used to know this crackhead on the street, Toby Dreds. Mentally fucked, but harmless. His thing was philosophical questions. Suppose you got a car, right? Like it’s a Lexus, right? And every now and then something on it breaks and you have to replace it. You go on replacing parts as they wear out. Years, right? But at some point, if enough of its parts have been replaced, isn’t it true that it’s a different car? It can’t be the same car if all the parts have been replaced. It’s still a Lexus, but it’s not the Lexus you started with. It’s
notionally
the same car, right? But it’s not
materially
the same car. He knew big words. Notionally. That killed me. I’d never heard it before, but I got what it meant. Like a notion. Like an idea.
All of me had been replaced—except the one thing that was still there.
Her face sweaty and her eyes wide. Looking at me to show me she couldn’t see me.
You get the body restart for free. The rest you have to earn.
I put my hand gently on Stonk’s forehead. (I don’t know why I call him these things. Stonk. Fluff. Frankie. Norman. He doesn’t mind. He says he likes it.) His life came to me through my fingertips. There’s species understanding, he’d told me. Telepathy
ish.
But you have to learn to control it, to be selective. Like screening calls. It was one of the things that had always put me off. Too late now. I knew if he woke up he’d be able to see everything, go into my mind like a burglar wandering through a house and the owner has to just sit there watching, horrified. Which would mean he’d see all of it.
As soon as I had this thought I knew he’d already seen all of it. When he drank from me. Maybe I thought he’d drink it out of me for good.
It doesn’t matter. He’s always known anyway. He’s always imagined. Everyone always does. It comes off me like a smell. (One of them, the one they called “Pinch,” had said: Honey, I’m gonna make you so dirty you won’t
never
scrub clean again.)
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: So what? It’s not a big deal for anyone, apart from the ones who feel insecure and useless so theybecome social workers or therapists so they can be around fuck-ups who make them feel competent and normal. But for most people when they get the smell off me it’s just a drag they know they’ll have to deal with sooner or later because I’ll turn out to be a wacko or whatever. To most people what happened to me is just that thing that can happen, that happens. They’re right. That’s all it is. A thing that can happen, that happens. That’s all anything that happens is.
I was still in last night’s clothes, covered in blood. We both were. I lifted my t-shirt to see the place where the Cate Blanchett bitch’s sword had gone into me. Nothing. Completely healed. Not even a scar.
Fluff’s eyeballs moved behind his eyelids. REM
Ohmygod.
Blood-rush. Puke coming up. A scream trapped in my skull.
I grabbed the edge of the bed and held on. Breathed through it.
Fuck. Lesson one: You don’t want your fangs pulled out. And not—another blood-rush, barf-rising—your fingernails, either.
I put my feet on the floor. Stood.
Stupid strength.
Sick
strength. This time I did laugh. I could feel it in my shins and thighs and butt and shoulders. Crazy power.
You could pick that up with one hand. Punch through that. Pull that off like a button.
Objects told me what I could do to them now. There were a lot of things I’d be able to do, now.
As long as I didn’t mind being a murderer.
That had been in me from the second I woke up. Like a new person living inside my body who was more alive than I was, someone I had to catch up with. Now she was there I realised I’d been waiting for her ever since. Ever since all of it.
All of it
was the other thing that had been in me from the second I woke up.
I’d thought it might be gone, but it wasn’t.
I used to know this crackhead on the street, Toby Dreds. Mentally fucked, but harmless. His thing was philosophical questions. Suppose you got a car, right? Like it’s a Lexus, right? And every now and then something on it breaks and you have to replace it. You go on replacing parts as they wear out. Years, right? But at some point, if enough of its parts have been replaced, isn’t it true that it’s a different car? It can’t be the same car if all the parts have been replaced. It’s still a Lexus, but it’s not the Lexus you started with. It’s
notionally
the same car, right? But it’s not
materially
the same car. He knew big words. Notionally. That killed me. I’d never heard it before, but I got what it meant. Like a notion. Like an idea.
All of me had been replaced—except the one thing that was still there.
Her face sweaty and her eyes wide. Looking at me to show me she couldn’t see me.
You get the body restart for free. The rest you have to earn.
I put my hand gently on Stonk’s forehead. (I don’t know why I call him these things. Stonk. Fluff. Frankie. Norman. He doesn’t mind. He says he likes it.) His life came to me through my fingertips. There’s species understanding, he’d told me. Telepathy
ish.
But you have to learn to control it, to be selective. Like screening calls. It was one of the things that had always put me off. Too late now. I knew if he woke up he’d be able to see everything, go into my mind like a burglar wandering through a house and the owner has to just sit there watching, horrified. Which would mean he’d see all of it.
As soon as I had this thought I knew he’d already seen all of it. When he drank from me. Maybe I thought he’d drink it out of me for good.
It doesn’t matter. He’s always known anyway. He’s always imagined. Everyone always does. It comes off me like a smell. (One of them, the one they called “Pinch,” had said: Honey, I’m gonna make you so dirty you won’t
never
scrub clean again.)
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: So what? It’s not a big deal for anyone, apart from the ones who feel insecure and useless so theybecome social workers or therapists so they can be around fuck-ups who make them feel competent and normal. But for most people when they get the smell off me it’s just a drag they know they’ll have to deal with sooner or later because I’ll turn out to be a wacko or whatever. To most people what happened to me is just that thing that can happen, that happens. They’re right. That’s all it is. A thing that can happen, that happens. That’s all anything that happens is.
I was still in last night’s clothes, covered in blood. We both were. I lifted my t-shirt to see the place where the Cate Blanchett bitch’s sword had gone into me. Nothing. Completely healed. Not even a scar.
Fluff’s eyeballs moved behind his eyelids. REM
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