Melinda leaned her head close to his chest. Rainwater streamed down her face, and she blinked periodically to clear it from her eyes.
“Hello in there, little friends.” She spoke in a raised voice, as if she wanted to make sure the cancer heard her. “Ready to come out and play?”
He looked down at his chest, almost as if he expected the malignant cells to answer, their tiny voices speaking in unison from inside his lungs. He heard nothing, of course, but that didn’t mean there was no reaction to Melinda’s question. Fire erupted in his chest, and he gasped and doubled over. He tried to breathe, but he couldn’t draw in any air. It was as if his lungs had ceased working.
I’m going to die, he thought frantically. I’m going to suffocate right here because my goddamned lungs have betrayed me.
The pain intensified. Now it felt as if dozens of worms were trying to chew their way out of him, burrowing through muscle and skin. So great was his agony that he would’ve screamed and screamed…. Screamed until his vocal cords tore apart and blood bubbled past his lips. But his lungs still refused to take in air, and the only screaming he could do was in his mind.
When the pain reached its zenith, he expected his chest to explode outward in a spray of splintered bone, shredded lung tissue, and bright red blood. Sparkles danced in his vision, and his ears were filled with a roaring sound. He swayed on his feet, dizzy, and he knew he was close to passing out. But the pain stopped then, and his lungs began working once more. He drew in a deep, gasping breath. His vision cleared and his dizziness began to recede. He took several more breaths, and when he felt strong enough, he intended to pull away from Katie – to hell with the damage he’d do to his arm by yanking it free of her claws – and run back into the bar for help. But when he tried, his body refused to obey him. His chest felt strange, the skin thick and tight. Even before Melinda’s braid whipped around and lashed open the front of his shirt, he knew what he would see. His chest was covered by a mass of swollen dark-red tumors. His cancer had come out to play.
Words came out of his mouth then, but they weren’t his.
“Rain feels good. Cool. Wet. We like.”
Katie retracted her claws and removed her hand from his arm. The wounds she’d created hurt like hell, the pain made worse by the rain striking them, but these injuries were of no concern to him now.
Melinda spoke, but not to him. Her gaze was fixed on the swollen crop of tumors spread across his chest. “Would you like to go for a ride with us?” she asked.
“We’re going to see Lori,” Katie said, baring her sharp feline teeth.
“We like much,” the tumors said with his voice. “Much-much.”
“Then let’s go.”
Melinda turned and walked back to the SUV, her braid wagging like a happy puppy dog’s tail. Katie headed for the vehicle’s passenger door, and Justin’s body began following her, limbs moving stiffly, the tumors unaccustomed to operating him yet. He tried to exert control, force his body to stop moving. But when he tried, his lungs seized up and he was once more unable to draw in air. The message was clear. He did as the tumors wanted, or they would cut off his breath. And if they cut it off long enough, he would die. He stopped resisting, his lungs relaxed, and he was able to breathe normally again. His consciousness was now merely a passenger in his body, an ineffectual observer, and he was surprised by how little this alarmed him. In many ways, it wasn’t all that different from how he’d walked through the world all his life.
Once the two women were in the vehicle, Justin – or rather his body – climbed into the back seat. The tumors didn’t put a seat belt on. Perhaps they didn’t want to feel restricted by it, or maybe they didn’t know what it was. An image passed through Justin’s mind, the SUV colliding with something – another vehicle, a tree, a light pole – the force of the impact slamming him into the back of the seat in front of him.
His body reached for the seat belt, pulled it across his chest, and clicked it into place.
Maybe he and the tumors didn’t have to be enemies after all. Maybe they could work together. After all, they were part of him – and he part of them. Instead of adversaries, they could be a team.
He heard many voices in his mind then, speaking as one.
Team. Yes.
Justin smiled and settled in for the ride.
* * *
How are you doing? Let me know soon as you can.
Larry sent the text, and although he knew Lori was likely too busy with a client to text him back right away, he held his phone for several moments, hoping a message from her would appear. It didn’t, and he put the phone down on the table.
After his interpreting gig had finished, he’d decided to stop in at a funky little coffee shop called Grinders. It was too late for lunch and too early for dinner, so he just got a large latte and a blueberry muffin. Back when they’d been dating, Lori used to get after him about his irregular eating habits. He didn’t keep to a regular meal schedule. He ate whenever he was hungry, and he ate whatever he felt like at the time. He listened to what his body told him, and today it had told him blueberry muffin. It had been a long time since he’d visited a doctor, but he felt healthy and he kept his weight down, so he figured he was doing something right.
Grinders was a small place located in a strip mall only a couple miles from the clinic where Lori worked. There were six tables, each large enough to accommodate four customers, and an old couch with red velour upholstery was positioned near the front window. Only half of the seats were filled. A couple of people wore suits and worked on laptops, while the remaining customers were dressed more casually. They also had laptops, along with open textbooks and notebooks. College students, Larry guessed. He looked like one of the business types in his gray suit, wine-colored shirt, and gray-and-red-striped tie, but he felt he had more in common with the college kids. He was in his thirties, though, and he doubted the students saw any difference between him and the other ‘older’ customers. The thought depressed him.
He took a bite of his muffin – it was a little dry but it tasted all right – and as he chewed, he thought about the interpreting job he’d just completed. He’d been so concerned about Lori that he hadn’t been able to focus on his work, and he’d made mistakes that he hadn’t since his first signing class in college. He’d felt like a fucking idiot, and his embarrassment and frustration had only caused him to screw up even more. He’d managed to muddle through, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if the event organizers had decided not to pay him. As it was, he was half-seriously contemplating not cashing the check they’d given him.
Only two baristas were on duty at the moment, a man and woman the same age as the students. They were probably students themselves, he thought, working to help pay for college. He’d worked as a waiter during his own college years, and he knew what it was like to have to serve irritating, rude customers with a smile and a pleasant tone, and he appreciated anyone in a service position that was able to remain positive during an interaction with a customer, whether that came to them naturally or they had to fake it.
The young man who’d taken his order was a hair under six feet, with light reddish hair cut close to his scalp and a well-trimmed mustache and goatee. A lot of men that age affected a scruffy lumberjack look, but Larry wasn’t a fan. It was hard to kiss a man when you had to battle your way past facial hair so thick that you needed a machete to cut a path to the lips. The barista wore black-framed glasses that made him look intelligent, and he wore a black T-shirt beneath a green apron with the Grinders logo on it. He’d seemed genuinely friendly when taking Larry’s order, and Larry had enjoyed talking to him. Sometimes Larry could get a vibe when a man or woman was interested in him, but he’d picked up nothing like that from the barista. It was a shame. He was really cute. Then again, he was probably ten years younger than Larry, maybe more. Not an insurmountable age difference by any means, but he knew if he attempted to chat up the boy, he’d only fuck it up, worried as he was about Lori.
No cock for me tonight, he thought.
He didn’t feel especially bad about this. He fucked the same way he ate – whenever his body told him to. And he had others things besides sex on his mind right now.
When he’d woken this morning, he’d almost called and cancelled his gig. He didn’t feel comfortable leaving Lori alone after last night. But he was also afraid that if he stayed home to be with her, he’d be feeding into her…what? Delusion? Fantasy? He wasn’t sure what to call it. Despite what the police and the crime tech had said, he wasn’t certain that someone had broken into the apartment last night. Why would someone go to the trouble of forcing open the patio door and entering the apartment, only not to take anything? And if whoever it was had really wanted to get to Lori, it wasn’t as if the door to the master bathroom was made of thick, solid oak. It was a cheap, flimsy thing, easy enough to break open if you put your back into it. And why had this theoretical invader departed before he’d gotten home? If he, she, or they had been pounding on the bathroom door the way Lori had described, they wouldn’t have heard him coming up the stairs and opening the door. But he sure as hell would’ve heard them. But he’d heard nothing at all. If Lori’s car hadn’t been in the parking lot, he might’ve thought she hadn’t gotten home yet, it was so quiet.
Even if someone had sneaked into the apartment last night, no way did he believe it was a group of fucking shadow monsters. And he didn’t think the weird dream she’d had of a tower filled with otherworldly beings held any special significance. As for the goat-eyed woman Lori had encountered at FoodSaver, she’d probably been suffering from some sort of mental illness, maybe a physical deformity too, which accounted for the weird shape of her pupils. Then again, it was possible Lori had hallucinated that encounter as well. He knew she had some memory problems, at least when it came to the subject of Aashrita Dhawan and the girl’s death. She’d told him of the incident on several occasions, only to completely forget she’d spoken to him about it. Hell, it seemed like she sometimes forgot about Aashrita altogether. The first time this happened, he’d tried to repeat what she’d said to him, but she quickly became drowsy and fell asleep. She hadn’t quite passed out, but it had been close to that. Afterward, he’d decided not to push her on the matter. Maybe one day she’d come to terms with her guilt and be able to remember permanently. Maybe she wouldn’t. Everyone dealt with trauma in their own way.
But because he had experienced her remembering about Aashrita only to almost instantly forget again, it wasn’t a big leap to imagine that she might have other psychological issues – like believing she was being persecuted by some bizarre group of mystics that called themselves the Cabal. He’d listened to and supported her last night without judgment because she’d been so freaked out. But if he kept up the pretense of believing her story, he feared he’d only strengthen her delusion, which in turn would only make it harder for her to break free from. So he hadn’t woken her this morning, had left a note for her in the kitchen. Now he was beginning to wonder if he’d done that more for his own sake than hers. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to deal with an ex-girlfriend who was beginning to go crazy. They might not be lovers anymore, but they were friends. He shouldn’t have abandoned her like that. Who knew where she might be right now or what state she might be in?
He picked up his phone and tried to call her, but he only got her voicemail.
“It’s me. I’m just calling to see how you’re doing. I’m worried about you. Please call me as soon as you get this.”
After he disconnected, he checked his texts and saw she hadn’t replied to the message he’d sent. He then slipped the phone into his pants pocket. He was beginning to have a bad feeling now, and yeah, maybe he was overreacting, but he didn’t care. He needed to see Lori, to speak to her, to reassure himself that she was okay.
He’d only eaten a couple of bites of his muffin and had a few sips of his latte, but he was too anxious to want more of either. He reached for them, intending to throw them both away as he left the shop. But before he could take hold of either, someone walked over to his table, pulled out the chair opposite his, and sat down. It was a woman. And she had eyes like a goat’s.
Larry had read about people whose mouths fell open in surprise. He’d never experienced this reaction before, nor had he ever witnessed anyone else having it happen, so he’d always figured it was bullshit. But his mouth fell open now and he thought, I’ll be damned. It really does happen.
He couldn’t believe how much her eyes resembled those of a goat. No, not resembled. They were goat’s eyes, large and watery, and they examined him with a detached, cold, and altogether alien intelligence. Like the woman Lori saw in the grocery store, he thought. No, not like. The same woman. He was getting over his initial shock at seeing the woman, and he now noticed that the skin around her weird eyes was soft and doughy. She exuded a strong body odor too, the stink so intense that it made him gag, and for a moment he thought he was going to spew latte and bits of chewed-up muffin onto the table. The blue sweatshirt she wore was almost disappointingly bland. A…being like this should be garbed in clothes that presented a sense of dark glamour – a black leather bustier with a high-collared cape, maybe.
“I’m disappointed in you, Larry.” Her voice sounded normal, conversational even, as if they were two friends having an intimate personal conversation. “I thought you were Lori’s friend. Her best friend. Best friends believe each other, support each other. They listen. That’s your problem. You don’t truly listen.”
