She's Lost Control, Page 4

  A taxi was pulling into our driveway, and I made no move to cover myself, even though I knew the driver could probably see me. He lived in this town too. What was a little nudity between neighbors? I stopped chuckling at my joke, however, when one of the doors opened, and a . . . thing stepped out. It looked like my Richard, wore the same clothes as my Richard, even sounded like Richard from what I could hear of the thing thanking the driver as it handed him the money. The driver was so clearly unaware of the danger that I wanted to run downstairs to warn him, but I knew that it would know, and the only way I could get my day back was if it was convinced that it was getting away with it.

  I was calm, I reminded myself. I was perfectly calm, because today was my day to rest, relax, and do something good for my son’s school. Time was running a bit short, so I needed to get this over with quickly. I was going to have to skip that bath. Pity.

  I stepped back from the window a bit and began to creep downstairs. I heard the thing rattle the doorknob and swear, daring to use my husband’s voice even in a whisper. The son of a bitch.

  I crept past the door, grabbing what I needed just as the thing gave up on trying to find the spare key and began pounding on the door, calling out to me with my husband’s special names for me, in MY RICHARD’S voice. I cursed quietly, hatred welling up inside me for this thing that was trying to get inside my house to ruin MY DAY.

  “Evie, come on, open the door, please? Come on, the boss sent me home early because I was worried about you. Please just let me know that you’re—”

  I unlocked the door and pulled it open in one fluid motion, and stood blocking the entrance with my weapon hidden behind my back.

  “Evie, thank god . . . ” It trailed off, looking me up and down. The nerve.

  “Evie, why are you naked? Baby, are you okay?” Its voice was softer now, so like when Richard and I had first been dating, and he would sneak over to my house in the middle of the night to talk and cuddle and fuck like little rabbits while my parents slept in the next room over. I made a mental note to get some alone time with him later tonight.

  “Eve, what’s wrong? Is something—” It yelped and jumped back as I slashed at it, because it had made a mistake. It had stepped toward me, acting so very much like my Richard, trying to comfort me.

  How dare it come to MY HOUSE, pretending to be MY HUSBAND? Standing there in front of me, pretending to be one of the people I loved the most in the world . . .

  It looked down at its hand, cut open along one finger, then at the knife in my hand. I stepped toward it, wanting to get this over with, and it stumbled back, holding out its hands.

  “Eve, honey, what are you doing? Eve, just—just put the knife down! It’s okay, baby, just put the knife down, okay? You’ve—” its eyes, a pretty brown like Richard’s, darted here and there, looking for an escape. It hadn’t been expecting me to fight back. “You’ve got to bake the cupcakes, right? The cupcakes for the bake sale. Just put the knife down, and we can work on them together.”

  Bringing up the cupcakes. Silly thing, trying to distract me. It seemed to be crying, its voice shaking in fear and disbelief, but I knew better than to humanize it.

  “Eve, baby, please, just calm dow—”

  I slashed it again, catching it along the throat. It cried out and clutched its throat. The taxi driver was fumbling with his seatbelt. I hadn’t noticed he was still there.

  I ran at it just as the driver got out of his seatbelt and threw his door open. The stupid man knocked me out of the way just as I tried to stab it, and I caught the thing’s arm instead of its heart as the man bore me to the ground.

  “What the hell are you doing, you idiot? Get—off—of—ME!” I shouted, struggling as he tried to pin my arms to the pavement. “I almost had it! If I kill it, I won’t have to worry about it anymore!”

  “You’re crazy! You’re—You’re fucking crazy, lady! HELP! HELP! SOMEONE HELP!” he screamed, looking panicked.

  “It’s not a person! It’s—it’s a demon! Let me up!”

  The thing pretending to be my Richard had collapsed to the ground, leaning against the taxi and trying clumsily to stem the flow of blood with its jacket. Funny, I’d expected its blood to be blue or black, not red like ours. It was still looking at me with Richard’s eyes, trying to look like it was in shock. It was a bad actor. It was just trying to get in my head.

  Cindy, my neighbor, came rushing out of her house, clutching a phone in her hand.

  “What happened? Oh my god!” she gasped, kneeling next to the thing, touching its arm.

  “No, it’s not human! Don’t trust it!” I yelled, and she looked at the bloody knife in my hand in shock.

  She began to dial, and I stopped struggling. I could just explain to the police, and they’d take it away. I couldn’t wait to tell Richard about this. He’d be home in just a couple hours. He’d back me up.

  ***

  The police came, with Cindy still pressing Richard’s jacket to the thing’s neck. They took one look at it, leaning against the car and bleeding, barely conscious, then at me, still with my knife clutched in my hand, pinned down by the driver, and screaming at them that it was a demon, and arrested me instead. Now what?

  I thought for the longest time that Richard would come to save me from this horrible gray place where the creatures watch me from every corner, but today I was told that he was coming to see me, with Jacob.

  I tried to tell them that Jacob shouldn’t be here, that it wasn’t right. Those things were still following me, and they’d been angry. Maybe they’d try to attach to my son, my baby boy. I couldn’t sit by and let that happen. But they insisted. I couldn’t resist. I needed to see my boys.

  They sat across from me, on the other side of that glass, faces cold and anxious. I tried to move to put my hands against the glass, but I couldn’t move my hands because of the chains they’d put me in.

  I tried to speak, to say something to Jacob. He looked so small and alone, staring at me with glazed eyes like he’d never seen me before. All that came out of my throat was a dry, dead rasp. Something with those chemicals they kept sneaking into my food, my water. They said that “the medicine” was all in the needles, but I knew better. I’d stopped eating just to spite them, but they said that I could have this if I did what they said, so I’d eaten that sickening crap. I threw it up into my toilet when they weren’t looking. I’d gotten good at vomiting quietly, but they’d brought me straight to this cramped little room after lunch.

  “Hi, Mom,” Jacob said slowly, trying to force his face into an enthusiastic expression.

  I tried to respond, but nothing came out again, so I just wrangled my mouth into a smile and inclined my head. Richard didn’t say anything. His grip on Jacob was tight. His jacket had a particularly high collar. I caught a glimpse of something white poking up from under his collar, but Jacob started talking about his school, assuring me that he had finished the chocolate cupcakes I’d been baking. He told me that our food had sold best at the bake sale. He was lying and I knew it. It never sold best, and he wouldn’t know how to bake if he’d been beaten over the head with a cookbook. Not that that would be great for teaching someone new skills anyway—but I appreciated his effort. I watched him talking, smiling like an idiot. My baby boy. It would be worth all this pain to see him safe from the creatures crawling all over the room on my side of the glass. I could take it if they didn’t get him. But then I saw one. It was a fat, flesh-colored centipede with too many legs, oozing slowly down the glass from the ceiling. I sat, focusing on Jason—Jacob—as it crawled closer and closer to the holes in the glass that allowed his voice to reach me. It found one of the holes, scrabbling through with difficulty, and flopped onto the counter on their side. I sat up a little, looking between Jacob and the centipede. Why was he still talking? Didn’t he see it?

  He’d stopped smiling and was asking me something, concern on his face. I couldn’t hear him, somehow. Richard was sitting there in silence, his hand on the coun
ter.

  The centipede raised itself up slightly, tapping at his hand with its antennae, and I rasped at him, then coughed. It crawled over his wedding band and up his sleeve, the lump of cold insectile flesh disappearing under his shirt. I jerked against my chains, trying to point and say something to warn him, but he just jumped and looked at me with those wary, cold eyes, as if I was a rabid dog behind a fence. I coughed and tried to speak again, my voice failing me as I tried to stand. I heard the faint sounds of the doctor and his orderlies coming down the hall at the behest of the one outside my door. I sat down again, settling for rattling imploringly. Richard took his hand off the counter and moved away from me slightly, the lump of the centipede winding its way around his arm and over his shoulder. He pulled at his collar slightly, and I saw the bandage on his neck—and the lump of the centipede, burrowing under it.

  The lump reappeared under his skin.

  “Get away from my son!” I finally screamed, standing up and thrashing against the chains. “You get away from him!”

  Both Jacob and the thing stumbled back from the glass, standing from where they had sat and staring at me, the thing having the gall—the audacity—to steer my son against his chest like he was protecting him, and Jacob stared at me in terror.

  “Jacob, get away from him! He’s not your father! Run, Jacob!”

  The doctor and orderlies burst through the door, hands grabbing, restraining, and I fought against them as best I could, trying anything to get to my son. Blood was running down my arms from where the chains on my wrists were cutting into my skin. I heard the doctor getting the syringe before I saw him, the soft sound of the needle breaking the seal of the sedative bottle reaching my ears, and I thrashed harder, screaming for Jacob to run again. He just kept standing there, staring at me with big eyes.

  The doctor came with the needle then, and I pulled at the hands restraining me but they were too tight, and I was too weak. The needle found my arm, and I felt the cold, cold liquid seep into my veins, up my arm, through my neck, into my brain, the back of my eyes, carrying with it eggs, so many eggs. I stared at Jason—Jacob—and he stared back, uncomprehending. What had they done to my boy?

  I collapsed, shuddering, in the arms of the orderlies, and they lifted me easily, releasing me from the chains as my vision began to fade. My feet hit the floor and they dragged me from the room, further into the nest.

  ***

  Jacob moved away from his father as the unconscious body was dragged out of the room, watching as her feet, still twitching, disappeared from sight. Richard kept a hand on his shoulder, though his grip was light now.

  “Do you think she’s figured it out yet, Dad?” Jacob asked, watching as the door beyond the glass closed.

  “Of course she has, Jacob,” Richard replied, watching a spider, the same one that Eve had swept off him days before, scuttle across his arm and into Jacob’s hair. “Your mother is a smart woman.”

  THE WITCHES

  Madeline Ticknor

  The women in my building all stop sleeping.

  We become at once

  exhausted and telepathic.

  Some of us blame the moon

  while others just blame the mold, the draft

  or the building’s rusted pipes.

  We begin to notice synchronicity

  first in our hygiene—bathing all at once—

  then in our breath.

  We stop closing our doors

  and going to work.

  It happens without a word or warning

  and with complete understanding.

  We walk around in house shoes,

  us women of the building, and begin to meet

  on Sundays. We never say much,

  just hum and read.

  The men wander away and slowly dissolve

  but for the few who feel comfortable with

  constant candlelight. They huddle on

  the first floor, bring the trash to the street.

  It becomes routine.

  We finally have time to drink tea, hold the mug with both hands.

  We let ourselves dry out and sigh.

  We play chess

  and nurture our plants, watching as water sinks into the soil.

  In time, we fall in love—with each other,

  but mostly with ourselves.

  We let each other feel exquisite and quiet

  and unseen

  like the whistle from a tea kettle

  or the steady drip of a faucet.

  A PATHOGEN’S PERCEPTION

  Jessica McHugh

  SHE KNEW WHICH lab doors to prop open to ensure the others wouldn’t budge.

  Good Manufacturing Practice required sterile lab spaces to be equipped with airflow tracking to prevent contamination, so when certain doors were ajar the pressure differential kicked in to maintain the laboratory integrity, even while occupied. However, the volumetric airflow system experienced occasional glitches that allowed for more than one door to open in the lab space. Since the GMP group didn’t formulate any products above class two, and the labs passed OSHA re-certification after the previous year’s merger, no one kicked up a fuss about the glitches. It was understood that one risked brief imprisonment if vialing alone in the clean-room, but the temp hired to fill out the GMP team at Invitrotech wasn’t allowed to work on weekends anyway. Mandy certainly wasn’t going to be held accountable for the girl’s rebellion or the notoriously faulty sensors that trapped her inside.

  It wasn’t something she planned. She wanted it clarified and underlined and written in blood on the police report that when she, Mandy Miller, came in early Saturday to vial, cap, and label the last-minute order for three thousand tubes of DNase-free water, she didn’t expect nor intend for anyone to die. Although, the notion of a freak accident intercepting the temp’s junky car before it breached the dense fog on the road to Invitrotech that morning did flash through her mind. But lots of silly things flashed through Mandy’s mind, and she didn’t have the energy to feel bad about all of them, so she kept that information to herself.

  ***

  Vehicles dotted the lot on the north end of the building where the cell biology research and development team spent half their lives, but the rest of the lot was barren. Mandy’s husband dropped her off before his four a.m. shift in the warehouse across campus, so when the temp approached the seemingly empty building, she must have relished the freedom her ambition granted. Alone in the south wing, lighting each quadrant with her presence as she strode past cubicles and offices, she must’ve felt like she ran the place. Like she didn’t luck into being there. Like she actually went to school and earned a degree half as expensive as Mandy’s to wind up only a few rankings below a woman with a college education.

  As expected, Jackson said his wife was jealous when she complained about the girl. The temp was younger and sprier. She didn’t have children or a mortgage or the kind of debt that followed people to their graves. The girl could flit about writing novels and poetry to her heart’s content while her fiance lavished her with cutesy texts she shared ad nauseum with her coworkers. She laid out a dozen perfectly logical reasons to dislike her, but Jackson’s response always came—in the form of a Gin Blossoms song she loved in college but could no longer hear without cringing. It belonged to the temp now.

  Jealousy was the laziest diagnosis of one female’s distaste for another. It was also, if true, a single shriveled bloom in the bouquet of hatred she harbored for the cheerful temp. The rest, Mandy believed, were anthropological aversions, quite beyond her control, which unequivocally confirmed that something was off about the girl. She sensed it like Neolithic women sensed predators eyeing up their young.

  The girl had a strange smell, like she screwed three musky men at the start of each day, and her laughter possessed a phlegmy rattle that never loosened. It didn’t appear to annoy anyone else on the team, but the wet braying sometimes caused Mandy to drift into fantasies of clearing the mucus herself. The process wouldn’t
take long if she used their vacuum pump. It was an ancient juddering thing but effective as hell. Intubation would be tricky, but she doubted she’d have to use much tubing to clear the blockage. She wouldn’t even have to expense the materials if she called it a team-building exercise.

  It would take more than that to loosen the temp’s silly grin. Mandy pitied the girl’s happiness like she pitied her simplicity. If the child were aware of how immensely her superior disliked her, she didn’t show it. She remained pleasant and helpful and asked Mandy about her children like she wasn’t using the job as research for the trash novel she’d write in a month and publish herself. She also didn’t recognize that Invitrotech’s offer to bring her on full-time was motivated by frugality, not her worth to the company. People without degrees were cheaper. They took more abuse and held on tighter to the gifts the middle class bestowed on them. The girl wasn’t unique. She was entry level trash that hung on longer than her counterparts and should be proud for her longevity. For Christ’s sake, the girl’s last job was in a cabinet store, and now she was resuspending PCR primers at one of the top GMP-certified molecular diagnostics facilities in the state. However frightening for the scientific community at large, it only made sense when Mandy decided the girl had to be simple. How else could she think she belonged there? How could she look past her superior’s persistent glower and continue writing verses on clean-room paper while waiting for potassium chloride to dissolve? How much longer could she go on editing her stories during bathroom breaks, taking long lunches at diners, and streaming episodes of America’s Next Top Model at her desk instead of composing formulation documents without the other team members knowing?