Chapter 9
chapter
nine
Atticus
By the time we’re ready for our date, I think the feeling battering against my insides is nerves. Butterflies. I think that’s what we used to call them. Just the memory of that makes me smile. Sort of. I still haven’t quite got the hang of that yet. At least without Vivian’s help.
I have memories of feeling nervous before the transition, but never like this. Never about a woman.
Even when I was fully human, no one else made me feel the way she does.
She comes out wearing jeans and a black sweater with a neckline that really highlights her tits.
I try not to stare because I considered myself a gentleman, back when I was an actual man.
But I remember what those beauties look like and feel like and taste like.
I remember the feel of them surrounding my cock. How they looked covered in my cum.
I groan.
“You keep looking at me like that and maybe we should just stay in for the night,” she says.
I take a step towards her, ready to drag her back to bed, but then she laughs and I realize she’s teasing me.
I blink in astonishment. It’s been so long since anyone teased me.
Smiling up at me, she pats my chest. “You look very handsome in this.”
I glance down because with her standing in front of me looking so fucking gorgeous, I completely forget what I put on earlier. A blue sweater, oh right. “I’d forgotten I had this,” I say. “But the minute I saw it, I put it on because it reminded me of your eyes.”
I hold my hand out to her and she takes it and we walk outside. I look around for the horrible mothman, but he seems to have vanished.
Cautiously, I lead Vivian away from the house, walking the familiar path towards town.
We walk through the woods. I’m mostly silent, but Vivian chats about the books she writes. As much as I enjoy hearing her talk, nerves prickle at the back of my neck.
Not the warm butterflies of anticipation I felt earlier, but something else. A feeling of dread. Of being watched.
As soon as I put my mental finger on the feeling, the mothman flies down from a tree and lands in front of us. He chatters at us, flapping his wings and clicking his pincers.
“Go away,” Vivian yells. “I’m not your mate.” She puts a possessive hand on my chest. “I’m his mate.”
My mate. Just like that my dick is rock hard again.
He screeches at her and takes an awkward step towards us, then his whole body starts shaking. He staggers closer, one trembling step and then another. His exoskeleton no longer looks glossy but has taken on a pasty gray tone.
With each step, he seems to be collapsing in on himself. Then he screams, a low-pitched keening. He rocks forward, crumbling to the ground.
Vivian hides behind me and fuck if that doesn’t make me happy—happy and proud—that she trusts me enough to protect her.
“What the hell?” she asks, peering out from behind my back. “Is he dead?”
“Maybe.” I hesitate, because this is Screaming Woods and nothing here is ever quite as it seems.
She creeps out from behind me and takes a single step towards him. “Did he … die of loneliness?” She glances back at me. “That’s almost sad.”
Without taking my gaze from her, I agree. “It’s the worst.”
This woman, my mate, has saved me so completely.
Perhaps my own demise wouldn’t have been this dramatic, but now that she’s here, I can see it more clearly.
This is what was happening to me. I was slowly dying.
Of loneliness. Day by day. Step by step.
I was less and less a part of the world of the living. Until she came.
“Vivian,” I begin, compelled to explain. To make her understand what I can barely comprehend myself.
But before I can get out another word, movement from the creature’s corpse catches my eye.
Unaware of my emotional quandary, she’s studying the body, her head tipped to the side. She takes a step closer to it. “What the …”
Her sentence trails off as I jerk her back to my side.
The mothman’s thorax is rocking back and forth, in a shuddering twitchy motion.
My momentary sympathy for him aside, that fucker better be dead.
There’s a faint skittering from within his thorax. Like claws scratching at a shell. Then a crack appears in his exoskeleton. Just a chip, at first, falling into the gaping cavity of his chest. Then another chip. Then a chunk.
Then a tiny claw appears on the jagged edge of shell, a tiny limb of a tiny creature, pulling itself out of the body of the dead bug.
It’s roughly the size of a dragonfly, but with none of that insect’s grace and beauty.
This new creature is a miniature version of the mothman, grotesque and horribly both human and insect.
The creature shakes itself off, stretching out shiny, slick wings.
“What. The fuck.” Vivian’s words are breathless and filled with horror. “What is that thing?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen that happen before,” I say.
Before I can voice the theory that’s beginning to take shape in my mind, another of the tiny bugs claws its way free from the carcass. And then another. The thorax collapses with an ominous crack and suddenly there are dozens of them. Then hundreds.
They take to the air, swarming into a mass.
I drag Vivian behind me, backing up a step. Slowly, hoping to avoid their attention.
But I can feel her breath on the back of my neck. A long, panicked exhale.
Shit. Some bugs are attracted to carbon dioxide.
Almost as one, like the murmuration of a flock of birds, the tiny mothmen swerve in midair, turning toward Vivian.
They just hang there in the air, like they’re trying to find her scent in the woods.
“There are hundreds of them,” she whispers.
I squeeze her hand. “Come with me.”
“That’s so weird,” she says.
“Screaming Woods. Weird is what we do here.”
I walk her backwards, keeping her behind me, as an idea occurs to me. This many bugs are beyond my ability to fight all at once. We’re too far from my house and I have no idea what they might do to her before I can kill them all. But the road is nearby. I just hope there’s a car on it.
The tiny bugs are definitely following us as I lead us toward the main road. Thank God I can hear the rumble of car on the road.
I yank Vivian across the road to stand on the far side. The swarm follows, coalescing in a mass in front of us.
Then there are car lights coming over the hill. Vivian looks from the swarm to the oncoming car and then to me. She seems to read my mind, giving a slow nod, as the car catches us in the headlights and swerves to the left. I pull Vivian into my body and we roll into the ditch at the last minute.
Splat, splat, splat. The sound is gruesome and seems endless.
The car slams on its brakes. Vivian sits up and gasps.
She scrambles to her feet. “That’s Harry’s car.”
The driver’s door opens and a woman gets out. “You will not believe what I saw driving into this town.”
“Harry!”
Vivian runs into her friend’s embrace. A stray moth or two flutter around. I slap each of them to the ground and step on them. By the time the women step apart, the last of the creatures are dead. Then we all inspect the remains of the bugs on her car.
“That’s super gross,” Harry says.
Vivian shakes her head. “You have no idea.” Then she looks at me, cringing and nearly gagging. “Clearly those were his young. Those weren’t…”
She can’t bring herself to say it out loud. I don’t blame her.
“I suspect that creature reproduced asexually through parthenogenesis. Some insects do. But the part of him that was still human retained the urge to mate with another.” I shake my head. “So, no. Those bugs were all his.”
Vivian shudders in relief and wraps her arms around me.
Harriet just grins, watching us. “Heard a lot about you, Atticus.” Then she cups her hand to talk to Vivian but doesn’t even pretend to whisper. “You were right, he’s totally hot.”
I burst out laughing, then my hand covers my mouth.
“Oh my God,” Vivian says. “You laughed. Like a full laugh. And Harry made you do it, not me,” she says with a feigned pout.
“Heartbeat,” I say. Then I pull her into my arms. “You have brought life back into my soul and love into my heart; you own every part of me, my laughs too.”
“I love you, Atticus.”
“Ask her to stay,” Harry fake whispers.
“What?” I ask, confused.
“She won’t do it on her own; ask her to stay with you.”
“I told you yesterday when we were making love that I wanted you to stay with me forever. I meant it. Stay with me, Vivian. Be my heartbeat forever.”
“Yes, I will.”
“Gross, look I think I found some tiny legs,” Harry says holding something up between her fingers.
“Maybe we should take her to town with us and see if we can find her a boyfriend too,” Vivian says, putting her arm around my waist. She makes a face at Harry’s car and all the tiny mothman body parts.
“That’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen.
And I write horror novels, so I know what I’m talking about. ”
“Wait, what kind of books do you write again?"
Vivian and Harry exchange looks.
Harry cackles.
Vivian tilts her head. “Would you believe, zombie books?”
I laugh again for the second time tonight. My stomach muscles ache a bit from not being used in such a way.
“But I think it might be time for me to change to what I’ve been wanting to write, and now that I know what love feels like, I can,” Vivian says.
My heart stutters when her words hit me. It's me she loves, which still feels impossible, but I only need to look into her beautiful face to see the truth. Her love shines up from her eyes and she looks at me like I’m the only man she’s ever seen. “What is it you’ve been wanting to write?” I ask.
“Romance novels. Zombie romance novels. Oh, I’ll call them rom-zoms.”
Then she kisses me.