by Darien Cox
“That’s your fucking hacker?” Tim pointed toward the door. “That thing?”
“I don’t know what he is. A god. A demon. But—”
“That ain’t no fucking god, Jonathan. At least not the god I pray to.”
“Whatever he is, he wants me, not you. I’m gonna go outside and talk to him.”
“No you’re fucking not!”
“Tim, I have to! He’s not gonna go away.”
“This is insane.” Tim held his head in his hands. A mad chuckle escaped. “Fucking insane.”
I rose. “Stay here. Okay?”
Tim looked up at me. “I’m going with you.”
“You’re not. Stay here,” I said, then ran for the door.
“Jonathan, wait!”
Stepping onto the porch, I closed the door behind me. In the distance, over by the old oak tree, I spotted him—a figure standing in the dark. Leaves swirled around him, sparks of electricity forming a spiral that engulfed his body.
Tim sprang out onto the porch, stumbled, then stopped, staring out at the tree.
“Stay here,” I said.
Tim didn’t argue with me this time. He seemed in shock, staring wide-eyed at the figure in the distance.
I left the porch and walked across the grass toward the tree. As I grew closer, the swirling leaves quieted and fell to the ground. The flashes of static went still.
Then it was just Miko, watching me as I approached. He wore the same clothes he’d had on last night, his black hair ruffled from the wind. Narrowed blue eyes bore into me as I stopped ten feet from him. “Miko.”
“I never got my apology, Jonathan.”
Stomach shuddering, I forced myself to take a step closer. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?”
“For anything I did to upset you.”
I flinched when his eyes flashed with that electric white, then faded to blue again. “You cheated on me. Again.”
“I don’t belong to you, Miko.”
“HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT?” he bellowed in that chilling, bestial voice we’d heard from inside the cabin.
“Please.” I gasped a sob, covering my ears. “Please stop that.”
“Jonathan.” He reached an arm out and I stepped back. “Jonathan, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. Please, just come to me. Let me take you home.”
“I don’t want to go with you, Miko. I don’t know you, and you frighten me.”
“Don’t know me?” His usual scowl softened, and he grimaced, like he might be on the verge of tears. “How can you say that?” He beat his chest with his fist, teeth clenching. “I became for you, Jonathan!”
“Became what?” I shouted. “Became what, Miko?”
“Everything!” His lip quivered. “Everything you wanted. Everything you needed me to be.”
“And I’m grateful, Miko. I really am. But…Miko. You didn’t really start life as a web crawler, did you? You lied about that.”
He stared at me, lips trembling, silent.
“You lied, right? You’re not an artificial intelligence, are you? You’re…you’re a lifeform.”
“Define lifeform,” he said.
“You define it! Tell me what you are! How you control animals and insects and…how you do anything. Tell me, Miko!”
“Jonathan.” He took a step closer. “Just come home with me.”
“No.” I shook my head, trembling. “Tell me what you are.”
“Everything is one, Jonathan.”
“I don’t know what that means!” I shouted.
He stepped closer, blue eyes soft, something like sympathy, and maybe love in their depths. “Jonathan.”
I took a deep breath. “Tell me.”
“Everything is one. Energies working against energies, vibrating atoms and electrons, working in harmony and discord on every conceivable frequency. Intelligence can travel without limits through this infinite network. Bioelectricity manipulating flesh. How is radiation so silent, invisible and yet deadly? How does information travel from the earth to space? How can sound or light fracture granite? All living things respond to the stimuli you call instinct and desire, every cell dancing to the song orchestrated down to the most infinitesimally immeasurable scale, scales that make angstroms and picometers seem larger than planets. Every quark knows its place and role, Jonathan, and when you understand such mechanics the way I do, dancing bats and flies are but crude parlor tricks.”
“I don’t understand,” I whispered.
“It doesn’t matter. I chose you,” he said, voice choked. “I desired you. I love you, Jonathan.”
My legs trembled. “You don’t love me. This isn’t love, Miko. You scare me. You threaten me. You’re violent. That’s not love.”
“Then you don’t…” His shoulders sagged and he stared at the ground. “You don’t love me.”
“I’m sorry, Miko. Maybe if you…learn. If you learn how people relate to each other and…tone yourself down…you’ll find someone. The right someone for you. But it’s not me. I’m sorry.”
“No.” He shook his head. Looked at me. “No. I failed. It’s over. If this is the truth of things, I wish I hadn’t become. I don’t want to…be. Not without you. Not unless you love me.”
He turned his back on me.
“Miko…”
“You’ll never love me, Jonathan? Please. Give me the truth. Will you never love me?”
I swallowed hard. “No. I’ll never love you.”
He choked a sob. “Then I don’t want to be.”
“Miko, don’t…don’t say that. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“This is pain.”
“Yes. But pain doesn’t have to be permanent. It…it passes. Becomes something else. With time.”
“If you’ll never love me, there’s nothing left to become.”
Taking a step, Miko slumped to the ground.
At first, I thought he’d merely fallen to his knees. But then his arm slipped out of his sleeve and dropped to the ground, separating from his shoulder. His head tilted back, then separated from his neck and tumbled to the grass. His torso slumped over and fell flat to the ground.
I stared, couldn’t get enough air, though I was gasping, hyperventilating.
Miko’s body parts seemed to melt, becoming gelatinous red gore. Tiny lightning bolts flashed around his remains, static buzzing the air.
His clothing caught fire and burned.
The sharp smell of electricity hit my nostrils, followed by the foul stench of burning flesh. The gelatinous gore that had been his body began to sizzle and smoke. I stumbled back and fell into Tim.
“I’ve got you,” Tim whispered, wrapping his arms around me.
I glanced at Tim. His wide blue eyes focused on the burning mass of…whatever it was under the tree. “I didn’t do this,” I said. “Right?”
“Take it easy, Jonathan.”
I coughed a sob as tears streamed from my eyes. I doubled over, holding my gut. “I didn’t do this to him, did I?”
“No, you didn’t do this.” Tim held me as I fell to the ground. “I know you didn’t. I was watching, Jonathan. He did this to himself.”
“Did I make him do it?” I sobbed, staring at what was left of Miko—now a smoldering pile of ash. “Oh, God. Is it my fault? Did I do that to him?”
“Come on.” Tim lifted me to my feet. “Come on, Jonathan. Let’s go.”
I allowed Tim to lead me away from the tree. Trembling, I wiped my eyes. “Where are we going?”
Tim opened the car door. “The fuck out of here.”
Chapter Nine
“My father got hold of the police report.”
I stared at Tim, who stood on my front porch, sunlight shining down on hair, blue eyes cautious. “Come in.”
Tim followed me inside. “I know it’s just after noon, but do you have any alcohol? I think we’re gonna need it.”
“Sure. Have a seat. I’ll get some wine.”
I went in
to the kitchen. It had been two weeks since we left the cabin. Tim and I both took some time off of work, but had gone back this week, each of us droning through our days silently. We’d stayed friendly, gone to dinner once, but neither of us were able to talk much about what happened yet. But being together, even in uncertainty, seemed to comfort us both. Locked together in shock and disbelief.
I wasn’t sure if we could go back to where we were before. That blissful beginning where anything seemed possible, and all was new. I wasn’t sure it was possible to rekindle that now.
But I still wanted it. Regardless of all that had happened, I wanted Tim Greenfield in my life.
I carried two glasses of wine into the living room, then paused when I saw Tim sitting on the couch, in the same spot Miko sat the night he was here. Shaking it off, I handed Tim the wine, then sat down next to him.
“Thank you.” Tim took a sip, and sighed. He shifted to face me. “How are you?”
I chuckled. “I don’t know.”
“Yeah.” Tim nodded, smiling. “Same.”
“So your dad heard from the cops?”
“Yeah. Like I told you at dinner the other night, all I said was that I found something weird on the property. Under the tree. Figured it best to leave it at that. Left it to my parents to contact the police.”
I winced. “Did they…find anything there?”
“Yes. They found what was left.”
My heart thumped. “Were they able to figure out…was it…I mean…”
“It wasn’t human, Jonathan. We don’t have to worry. That they’ll think we…killed someone. It was burned remains, but not human.”
I gulped my wine, my hand shaking. “Then what was it?”
“Animal bones mostly. But the weird thing is, it wasn’t just from one animal. Dog. Cat. Raccoon.” He chuckled, a soft whisper without humor. “Bats. Some pig’s blood. And a whole lot of fruit flies.”
I shuddered. I’d had Miko’s come in my mouth. Kissed him. Let him blow me. And he wasn’t human. He’d been a thing, concocted of insects, animals, and electricity. I fought not to puke.
“The cops suggested a larger animal must have vomited up what it ate, but they didn’t have any real answers. Since there was clothing fabric in the mix, they figured someone must have set fire to it, to avoid the stink. They were skeptical when my father swore it wasn’t anyone in the family that burned it. But they had no choice but to believe him.”
“So…now what?”
Tim shrugged. “Nothing. That’s it. Query over.”
I turned away from Tim and hunched over. “So it’s done.”
Tim rubbed my back. “Yeah. It’s over.”
I nodded.
“You all right?”
“I think so. I will be.”
Sighing, Tim leaned back against the sofa. “I’m having trouble believing it was real.”
“I know. Me too.” I sat up straight and leaned back. Then turned to Tim. “Are you all right?”
He reached over and took my hand in his. “I feel like we should talk about it. That there’s so much to talk about. But I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“We will,” I said. “Talk about it. Think about it. Speculate, I guess. But…I don’t think I can yet.”
“I know.” He squeezed my hand. “Me either.”
I hunched over again, holding my head in my hands.
“Hey.” Tim rubbed my back. “You think maybe we can plan a trip or something? Go away together? Set aside a time when we’re ready to do that?”
I sat up and looked at him. My heart lightened. He wasn’t turning me away. “Yeah. But not your cabin.”
Tim laughed, shaking his head. “Definitely not my cabin.”
“Then yeah. Let’s do that. Let’s just…put it off until then. For our own sanity.”
“Deal.” Tim touched my face. He kissed me gently, then pulled back. “Does this mean you feel like I do?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “How do you feel?”
“I feel like regardless of what we went through, I want to get back to…this.” He kissed me again.
I melted into the kiss, then pulled back with a breath. Took my glasses off and set them aside. “You mean you still want to…give it a go with me?”
“Of course I do. If you still want that.”
“I do.” I laughed, relieved. “I just figured maybe you’d want to stay away from me now. Because of the…weirdness.”
Smiling, Tim stroked my cheek. “Well, I can’t compete with an artificial intelligence or whatever it was…that took its own life because it couldn’t have you. But I’ll do my best to make you happy.”
“You do make me happy, Tim.”
“Jonathan. Are you sure you’re ready for this? To be…with me?”
“Ready for this, huh?” I grinned. “You mean privately, publicly, and in every other way?”
He nodded. “Yeah. That’s what I mean.”
“I’m ready. So ready, Tim. I’m beyond ready.” I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him close. “If I can be with you, I’ll feel like the luckiest prick on the planet.”
Tim’s wide smile appeared, and I never got tired of seeing it. “Well then,” he said. “I guess you’re the luckiest prick on the planet.”
I kissed him, and it was as sweet as the first time. Something I wanted to do until it became familiar. Until he told me I couldn’t anymore. I hoped that day would never come. Ever. Because this was what I wanted.
In the kitchen, my oven alarm started beeping. Tim and I disengaged. “You cooking something?”
I scowled, looking toward the kitchen. “No.”
“Then what is that?”
I got up and walked into the kitchen. The timer was going off, but the oven wasn’t on. I shut it off and waited. It stayed off.
“Everything okay?” Tim stepped up behind me.
I shivered. Electrical anomalies made me nervous now. But I refused to let fear of the unknown run my life. I turned to Tim and forced a smile. “Everything’s fine.”
“You sure?” Tim frowned. “I want you to be okay. Jonathan…I’m already falling in love with you. I want you to be okay.”
I laughed, a deep, happy sound. “I’m okay, Tim. And I’m already falling in love with you.”
His frown turned to a smile. “You mean it?”
“I mean it. Now give me more of your mouth. I can’t get enough.”
Tim laughed and wrapped his arms around me. “You really like the kisses, huh?”
“Making up for lost time. Kiss me.”
He did, and I never wanted it to end. This was my truth now.
I’ve always kept secrets. But I suppose everyone does. I used to be afraid to approach a man in real life. Then real life became unreal, and I was forced out of my falsehood like a baby bird shoved from the nest.
Whatever else Miko put me through, whatever his motivations, I couldn’t deny that he helped me in a way. Made me bold. Forced me to take risks. Comfortable enough in my own skin to walk into an alley with a stranger, and in the dirty, secret confines of that space we shared, become myself.
Miko had become something new as well. But what he became was unsustainable. Miko needed me to complete his transition. I was to be part of his symbiosis, but I’d turned him down as I discovered who I really was. Betrayed his hopes, and left him to himself. But Miko couldn’t be himself. Left standing alone, he shattered.
Miko couldn’t do it on his own—be who he wanted to be.
But then, maybe none of us can.
THE END
Darien Cox lives in New England, and enjoys using romantic fiction to explore the intensity, insanity, humor, and chaos that accompanies Cupid's arrow.
Author site: DarienCox.com
Books by Darien Cox
Safe in Your Fire: The Village – Book One
Deep in Your Shadows: The Village – Book Two
Trapped in Your Storm: The Village – Book Three
S
tirring Creatures: The Village 3.5 – Holiday Special
Victim of Love
Fit For the Job
Guys on Top – Guys Book One
Guys on the Side – Guys Book Two
Guys on the Bottom – Guys Book Three
Criminal Pleasures
Seducing Professor Coyle
Static
Table of Contents
Title page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Books by Darien Cox
