Chapter 32 – Jack
Chapter Thirty-Two
Jack
Hello, Jack.
The voice was definitely coming from inside myself, which made it creepy.
“Go away,” I told it.
I can’t. I’m in you now.
“And that is the least sexy way anyone’s ever said that to me.”
I realized I was just thinking the words instead of saying them. That all of my body was separate from my mind and what was happening with it.
But I was awake, and this was happening.
I made myself open my eyes—my mind’s-eye, I guessed—and it looked like I was in an empty black space. I groaned.
“It’s been a really long time since I’ve done drugs—just tell me what you want already.”
What I want is what I already have.
“Nope. Fuck it. I am not dealing with this—”
You, Jack.
The words echoed, coming from both inside and outside of me, all at once, in all directions.
“Wow. Aren’t you shopping from the bargain bin. Look, I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m about a kinked pube away from death out there . . . thing.” I took a step forward and looked around. All of the blackness stayed the same. “Don’t suppose you’re going to tell me your name?”
It does not matter—and you could not say it, besides.
“Which begs the question—what do you want from me?”
I want to become you.
From the inside out.
To align myself inside your body in such a way that your frail skin harbors my tough chitin.
“Your tough what?” I repeated.
But then a form started gathering in front of me, flickering just like all the memories I’d been forced to watch had, only this time what was being shown to me were like the world’s most hideous drawings animated on the corner of a quickly flipped book, a hideous carnival of too many legs and proboscis and beady, unblinking eyes, revealed over and over on each new page.
“Oh, fuck, no,” I said, stepping back, as a thing that would give my nightmares nightmares pressed near.
Yes.
You will let it happen.
I swallowed. “‘Let’ implies I have a choice.”
You do. But it is not much of one. You have nothing, Jack.
And now that I’d seen the thing’s true form, it was easy to hear the insectile nature of its voice, in undertones.
Surely, you realize that. All your friends have abandoned you—or they let you push them away.
“I am surprisingly used to being miserable, Mr. Bug-Thing.”
And what if I told you I could make anyone love you?
That once you and I were one, you need never be denied again?
Of course I was tempted.
Who wouldn’t be?
It just sucked that the fucking-cheating-thing was inside me and knew it—so I got to hear it laugh as it mocked me.
All I need from you is just one small moment of permission, Jack—and then the fierce woman’s blood, to seal our pact.
My dream-self stiffened with horror. “No way, no how.”
You would rather have a life of endless misery, knowing the sweetness you once had is ash?
Its voice was coming at me from all angles now, swirling around me like a swarm of flies.
I could help you be normal, Jack. Together, we could walk during the day.
Men and women would fight to be at our side—and then fight for us. You and I could raise up armies.
I had a sudden and frightful vision of an entire alternate reality, where somehow we—this evil thing and I—were in control, and the world was at our feet.
I knew I wanted no part of it.
“Not interested.”
Your small mind cannot even comprehend what you’re denying.
“Oh yeah, it can. You—you want to be worshipped. Like some kind of god.”
It is what everyone secretly longs for.
“Not me.” All I wanted was the love of a few people who were important to me. But I could handle that on my own—or not. It was still better than what this thing was asking for.
Jack, the creature said slowly, and I felt the weight of its infinite disappointment. This is a limited-time opportunity.
“Well—I don’t want any, like I said. So just go away.”
Either you relinquish control of your body to me, and I do as I please with the woman—and it gave me a crisp and revolting image of what it would do to Sam the second I let it feed, turning her practically inside out—or you lie here and she kills you, because of her principles.
I could tell by the way he said it, even with his weird-as-shit-bug voice, that he was amused with the premise.
And do you know what will happen then, Jack?
I didn’t, so I kept my mouth shut.
The second before she kills you, I’ll just flow into her. She’s a human; controlling her will be easy. Blood is blood, and a pact’s a pact.
I’ll have to suffer living in a slightly less strong vessel, but her magics are still powerful, and the end result will be the same.
Her life will still be destroyed, and you’ll be dead.
I tensed in horror. Sphincters I didn’t even know I had tightened.
That’s right, Jack.
No matter what you do, I’ll win.
You have no way out.
She’s on her way over now.
So you’d better make your choice.
I’ll even let you listen, it said, and then I heard the nervous sound of Sam’s rough breathing, along with her soft footsteps.
I knew she’d reached the door between us when I heard the rusty squeak of her undoing the gate’s latch.
And then after that, she had to be on my side of the cage, with me, and it was like I was trapped, paralyzed in my own body, like those horrible times when you’re awake but you can’t make yourself move in bed, no matter how much you want to.
She’s got the latch in her hand, Jack.
She’s going to stake you with it.
It was like being in a horror movie and screaming at myself to do something.
I had to stop her, before she made a terrible mistake, but it was like all the best tropes wrapped into one: like the hallway was I was running down was endless, or the thunder was too loud for her to hear me shout.
It didn’t matter what I did or how hard I thought—it was like I was in a goddamned Edgar Allan Poe story being bricked into a wall and—
I heard her gasp.
What had happened?
Did she step on a rock?
Then I heard her whisper, so quietly I would’ve never heard it, except for the fact that we were underground:
“Jack loves Paco.”
It was the extra bit I’d etched into the ground beside me.
I’d done it in cursive tattoo font, only instead of the word “loves” I’d carved a tiny heart, like I was marking us on a schoolyard tree.
I didn’t think Paco would ever get the chance to see it. I assumed when I’d done it my body was going to be down here for good.
I’d given Sam a message from a dead man once—I just hoped she would give Paco mine, from me.
She is about to stab you, foolish vampire.
Take these last few seconds to despair.
But as much as I was wracked with the need to cry and couldn’t—the thing that’d taken me over didn’t really know me at all.
Why would I waste the last few shreds of my life being frightened? When I had so many better things to think about?
I summoned up every good memory I had instead, and they answered me.
Me, finding Thea again on a stage after all those years, getting to live out every teenaged boy’s fantasy.
Bumping into Angela in that bar and somehow not only getting a boss, but a true love, and a friend for life.
Running into Zach in my apartment complex’s silly little laundry center and holding the sweetness he’d let blossom.
And then Paco, my beloved Paco, who was always my shore when I was out at sea.
My throat choked at the thought of losing him, how sorry he’d be at my dying—maybe not for a while, but I knew the echoes of the love we’d shared would come back and he would feel them.
Nothing about the manner of my death here would change it.
Just like goodness didn’t exist in a vacuum, like Sam had said—love didn’t either—and his love had tethered me.
Far before our current bonds of blood, and not in the least like a leash.
No, our love had been like a silver string, running taut between our hearts, creating an instrument that only the two of us knew how to strum.
I might die—for all I knew of my physical form I was dying, already—but it would neither erase the past, nor change the song.
Everything that I had had with him was real, even if it wasn’t permanent.
But what in life ever was?
I was suffused by a gentle heat.
Like a soft caress, and then a hug.
Like maybe Paco was there.
“Bring it, you fucking monster,” I taunted the creature. “You can kill me, and for all I know, you can destroy the future. But you can’t take what I’ve had away from me.”