by Steven Novak
The voice again, “It’ll get better. Give it a moment. Just a minute more.”
As promised, the agony dulled, a dull throb. Maybe I just became accustomed to it. That’s when I saw him, the holder of my arms and the keeper of the voice. It was Andrew. Behind him, the walls looked more like walls, different but recognizable. I was adjusting, beginning to make sense of things. I’d seen the room before, or one like it.
Andrew smiled a strange biter smile that had no place alongside his distorted features. “There. That’s better, isn’t it?”
He let go of my hands and I noticed them. Not mine exactly. The fingers were longer, distorted, stretched obscenely, boney knuckles and graying skin. They were gaudy things, revolting. They couldn’t be mine.
Please don’t let them be mine.
When I tried to move them, they responded, hints of muscle visible below the skin, nails already stretching, curling to a point. They were my hands. They were also hers. She coiled the disgusting things into fists. She punched Andrew in his ugly face. I rolled from the half-broken cot with her to the floor, freakish arms flailing, lanky and awkward. When we screamed, we screamed together, voice like thunder, the wail of a thing, of a beast. Andrew fell on top of us, wrestling us to the ground, screaming for us to relax with his disgusting mouth and horrible teeth. Two more biters entered the room. A bony knee fell to our chest, another to our neck. Foul hands grabbed our ankles, pinning them to the stone.
Andrew wailed, pleading. “Stop it! Stop!”
To our left was a door; biter heads peeked in, eyes wide, each uglier than the last. We wanted them to leave. We wanted them to go away, crawl back to their hole in the ground and stay there, where they belonged. I wanted to cry. I wanted to sob uncontrollably until there was nothing left, until the world folded in again and went away. She wasn’t capable of crying, of making tears.
We would never cry again.
Days passed. In that time my body continued to change. My limbs narrowed and stretched and my back began to twist: the beginnings of a hunch. So many teeth emerged. In no time at all there were rows of them, new ones sprouting by the hour, stretching further into the recesses of my mouth. The color in my eyes turned to soup, milky and vague. I didn’t sleep, not any more. Everything felt different. Everything took longer, time elongating like my body, distorting. I felt lighter, faster. When I walked, I crept on silent feet, always listening, hearing it all. Often I found myself fighting the urge to drop to all fours, move like something decidedly inhuman. I wasn’t human anymore. I was her. She was me. We were a monster.
We were a biter.
I learned to live among them in the ruins of our underground shelter, always hungry, always hurting. I had no choice. I kept to myself, away from the group, found the closest thing to a closet, and moved inside. I liked it there; it was the only thing that felt familiar. Occasionally, Andrew would try to talk to me. Sitting outside my door, he’d tell me things I’d need to know, about what I’d become and what I’d have to do.
“It’s not easy, Megan. It will never be easy again.”
I almost thought he was joking. It had never been easy.
When he said I’d have to eat, I shuddered. “Go away.”
I didn’t recognize my voice.
Every day Andrew returned and talked as I listened. He told me about his family, about his life before he changed and the things he’d left behind. He was more open about those days than anyone I’d met. He’d been a biter for a decade, from the onset of the fire, since the day everything changed. He’d accepted what he’d become. At the same time he refused to forget what he’d been.
I asked him the one question I needed answered. “What happened to Blueeyes?”
Andrew was confused; it took him a moment to realize who I was talking about. “Oh. He…he just left.”
For the second time in weeks, I died. My chin fell to my chest and my already cracked voice cracked again. “I-I…why?”
It was a while before Andrew responded. “He didn’t say…just told me to tell you no more, Megans.”
Blueeyes had watched two of us die, Megans. He failed us and it was more than he could bear. When I inhaled, I could still smell him, could almost see him when I closed my eyes. I’d smelled him when I went to sleep and woke again: an aftertaste, a lingering memory of something I used to be. Despite everything she took from me, she never took that. Andrew would later explain that it was normal, that we all remembered the last thing we smelled before dying. He said it would never go away. For years he’d smelled nothing but raspberries; he sounded broken when he told me. I didn’t know what they were. I felt sorry for him.
Andrew put his hand to the door. I could hear his fingers, twisted nails dragging against wood. “I’m sorry, Megan.”
“So am I.”
More time passed; not sure how much, and I can’t say I cared. The day came when I left my closet and began to move among them. They terrified me, the way they moved, the blank eyes staring. When I looked at them I saw monsters. When they looked at me they saw one of their own. The strange way they spoke began to make sense: whispers and blurry words, everything stretched. I didn’t want to understand them, to speak or move like them. I didn’t want to be there anymore. I needed to leave.
It was night when I snuck through Andrew’s laboratory and into the well Blueeyes and I had used to escape. I climbed the broken ladder, lifted the grate, and returned to the outside world for the first time. I had no plan, nowhere to go. I just wanted to run and keep running until I knew they wouldn’t find me. The world outside looked different, felt different. The night was so bright, so incredibly clear. Everything seemed transparent, ghostly. I could see through the trees and for miles in every direction. When I looked at the sky, I looked past the clouds. I saw stars, so many stars, so beautiful: hints of colors I didn’t know existed. I could hear everything. The wind was clear, smooth, like the surface of a frozen lake. My senses shimmered.
“What are you doing, Megan?” It was Andrew. “You shouldn’t be out here, not yet.”
At that moment I could have run. He might not have followed. If he had, I could have fought back. I might have escaped.
I didn’t run, didn’t move.
When I inhaled, I smelled Blueeyes. His scent hung from the trees, saturated the earth, rolled with the winds. My friend was right when he said this was my world. I wasn’t Andrew, didn’t have stories of better days. There were no fond remembrances. There was no point in running. Life had always been hard and always would be. I could adapt. I was born in this place, twice.
Andrew extended his hand. “Come back inside.”
This was my world and I needed to start acting like it.
If Blueeyes was out there, I would find him; wouldn’t stop until I did. I needed him to know he hadn’t failed me, and was one of the few I’d ever trusted. I needed him to know how much he meant. I had his scent. It wasn’t much, a crumb.
It would have to be enough.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steven Novak is a writer, illustrator, graphic designer and lover of all things full-blown nerdy and vaguely nerd-related. He has designed over two hundred covers for independent authors across the globe and currently resides in southern California with his wife. Megan is the first novel in the Breadcrumbs For The Nasties series. More of his work can be found at www.novakillustration.com
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Table of Contents
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