The woman in the cell next to mine is still sleeping. My glen is as sparkling as ever when I enter it. I wade through the grass in full battle gear, past the willow on the hill, to my house, where my Mirror Image is begging me not to go in.
Slipping through the back door, I gently close it behind me.
The kitchen is spotless and pristine and bathed in a golden halo of light from the window over the sink. The entire house is in sepia tones, actually. Just the way I remember it. Mind you, it’s not necessarily the way it was; this is just my glorified memory of it. My parents’ renovated 1800s Victorian. No sign yet of the filthy little imposters who’ve taken up residence.
The Grunge kind of remind me of the house, as a matter of fact. One thing to look at on the façade, quite another on the inside.
Cautiously, I step through a mote-infested beam of sunlight.
“Janie!” My Mirror Image has materialized across the kitchen by the back of the staircase, and her whisper is a quiet scream. “Janie!” Plastered to the wall, she’s marching her finger through the air toward the dining room and the front of the stairs. “In there.”
I scuttle around the staircase, over the dining room carpet to her, burning my hands and knees. Slipping through the trap stair into the crawl space between the first and second landings where the staircase switches back on itself, I get one last glimpse of her in the hallway. Then I’m plunged into semidarkness and the scratching sound of her latching the wooden flap behind me momentarily fills the silence.
Just in time too. A presence flits by the vent.
My heart is thudding in my chest, but I wait. An inordinate amount of time slogs by before I finally chance a peek out the vent. Through the horizontal grates I see only the kitchen. Maybe it’s my imagination playing tricks on me. Maybe my Mirror Image was wrong. But I think not.
In ways other than appearance, My Mirror Image is very different from looking in the mirror. Usually when you see yourself, it’s a reflection, void of its own thought or substance. Immaterial. But like any person when the situation calls for it, I’ll get angry or frightened, and she’s simply a piece of me, only broken off. More than fear, when I’m a microfilament away from losing my life, I’ve come to the conclusion during my time at COP Phoenix that she’s the flesh-and-blood projection of me who can and always will direct my evasion. My conscience and soul. A completely alien person. And I’ve decided to use her—finally.
Fear being instinct, she’s me from about thirty or forty seconds into the future.
“Janie . . .” My Mirror Image has just manifested at my side. She’s pulling on my arm.
I tuck my knees to my chin in the darkness, holding my breath. I’m waiting for the tumult of feet pounding down the stairs—though why I always think the Grunge will be noisy completely eludes me. Heat-of-the-chase emotion is a human thing and these freaks are usually discordantly silent. I could turn around to find one standing in the kitchen, staring in at me through the slits in the vent. They’re so quiet.
I still don’t hear anything.
Freak! . . . I catch myself before I bang the back of my head against the crawl space in frustration.
“Janie.” My Mirror Image is pulling on my arm again, and suddenly, a shadow blots out the lines of light issuing through the vent.
I choke on my saliva.
It’s looking, it’s looking—oh freak!
My Mirror Image puts a hand over my mouth and nose. Bringing a finger to her lips, she shakes her head austerely.
I can’t breathe. I start dry heaving. Little lights are popping behind my eyes . . .
The shadow recedes. So does the hand over my mouth and nose. And just like that, my Mirror Image is nowhere to be seen.
I’m beyond ecstatic. I would have already been caught without her; this I know. I’ve never made it as far as the crawl space before, and I think, what’s that old adage? Courage isn’t the absence of fear; it’s the continuation in the presence of it?
Dead silence fills the crawl space. After a million years, I open the latch on the trap stair, and softly, inch by inch, peer out.
How about that. The Grunge must have gone back to watching TV on the sofa in the great room—I can see the blue glow of the TV flickering on the walls. Little freaks. They were doing this the last two times I entered my house. I figure it’s their version of going to sleep. Well, if you’re incorporeal, you don’t have a body to recharge . . . but apparently you still get bored, and the alpha waves produced by the TV are so hypnotic. The Grunge are totally vegging out! And I have a hunch it’s because the human body they’ve stolen—my body—needs exactly eight hours of sleep every night to operate at maximum capacity for them. Guess you have to do something while you wait.
TV.
What a riot!
I don’t dare go near the living room, though, as I creep from the stairs. My sense of self-preservation is healthy, thank you very much. I’ve already seen what these freaks look like from a distance, and I don’t plan on reinforcing that image by getting close.
One of the Grunge rises from the couch—just appears on the other side without physically moving. Teleports. The other copies on the other side of the armchair. And they’re both sniffing. Alert.
God! Fear, anger and general anxiety dump into my chest like a cannonball hitting water, and I shiver against my will. Sweat is trickling in rivulets down my temples.
The Grunge. They’re childlike, innocent, with pale lavender skin. Hairless. They have no parts—you know? Phosphorescent runes scroll down their temples, terminating in softly glowing eyes the size of galaxies, their irises the shape of discs crosscutting discs and the multicolor of amethysts rotating on every possible angle under light. Similar runes helix down their arms and legs, around their chests and torsos, in code. They flush from head to toe, arcs of plasma trailing from their silhouettes when they stand perfectly still. They’re beautiful. I can’t stop staring at them.
Except that they’re monstrous.
When one opens its mouth, it’s like it’s got the whole universe down its gullet. A silent tone thunders out, so terrible I can see the sound waves ripple the air. I don’t know a better way to explain it—it sounds nonsensical, seriously—but I think they are universes. Actual physical universes. Each one simply wearing the shape it believes makes the most sense to human beings.
When you say aliens and I say demons, we both end up in the same place. I’d rather deal with the Devil. Straightforward evil at least I can understand—maybe.
Freaks.
The front door is past the great room. Disgusted, I squelch another shiver, close my eyes and make myself concentrate. Then, taking a deep breath . . . I project.
This time, when I see her, my Mirror Image isn’t at my side. She’s in the utility room, in full view of the Grunge.
And they’re off. Ugh, I hate the way they move! Zip, zip, zip, from point to point in little spurts, at the speed of thought, without moving their legs. Like birds’ heads. There’s no tracking. And they’re all over my Mirror Image.
As she screams, I move to the foyer and open the front door. I blot out the horror behind me.
Wraithlike, I slip into waking consciousness.
Janie, love, are you feeling all right?”
Mother is standing over my bed, stroking my forehead. I’m back in my nightie and the cotton sheets tangled snugly between my legs feels good.
I take my mom in, absorbing the lines of her face. She’s in her business suit, and she looks every bit herself.
I don’t answer. A wrong word, even a wrong movement, could give me away.
And without warning it comes: my anger. That irrational, turn-on-a-dime anger I haven’t felt since . . . well, since I was in my body. In three seconds, I’ve gone from zero to sixty.
Calm down, calm down, I tell myself, desperately, rationally. Just put an ice cu
be in it. The Grunge are psionic. They’ll pick up on my emotions no matter how good an actress I am, no matter how normal and casual I pretend to be on the outside. Freak!
I smile. It’s well placed and calculated.
Smiling in answer, Mom pats my legs and says, “Let’s get some breakfast.”
Wariness creeps in now. This was not what I expected. But then, I think, what did I expect? That the Grunge would be running wild down Fifth Avenue in my body? Using it to do any number of insane or unthinkable things? For a moment, I’m tempted to believe that I’ve only been dreaming.
Perfectly awake but in control, at least for the moment, I act groggy and follow my mom downstairs.
She turns on the news and makes herself some toast. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch her and hesitantly pour myself a bowl of cereal.
Everything is alarmingly normal. Even the news. It’s droning on about the usual: missing children, Hollywood scandals, political upheaval, race riots, war. Nothing about temples, ETs or Antarctica.
I’m not normal, though.
“I bet you’re excited about graduation, Janie,” Mom says, seating herself at the breakfast nook with a newspaper.
Graduation? A discrepancy? If this is real, I must have been lost in myself for over a year. Then I think, why isn’t my mom reading my mind? If there are Grunge inside her, why can’t they see that it’s me, Janie, and not their buddies looking out through my eyes?
My mom smiles at me over her newspaper. It’s genuine and warm. Full of love.
Feeling that knot in my stomach and the butterflies crowding into my chest again, I eat my cereal and it tastes good. There is nothing malevolent in my mother’s eyes. Whatever’s using her body truly does love me—or at least, it loves the experience of loving me. Maybe, I let myself think for a moment, it really is her. Maybe . . .
“I love you, Janie,” my mom says.
It returns; I suddenly feel so angry, I can’t think! I have to stop myself from smashing my bowl on the floor.
Calm down. It’s not really her, I try to reason with myself. Sing, that’s what I always do in the Honeycomb. I feel calm there, and song is the product of that calm.
I try to sing now, to calm myself.
But it just comes out as shouting. “You don’t love me!” I accuse her. “You’re just trying to make me into you! Trying to make me fit in with everyone else! But I’m me, and I’m different, and that means something!” I’m thinking of the team at COP Phoenix, and I know that’s where I belong.
The Grunge came for the experience. Lt.’s briefing flicks me between the eyes. They wear human bodies like clothing, like skin, in order to experience the physical world. To taste food and drink. To listen to music in waveform instead of through math. To smell nature, progress and pollution. To enjoy sex. To see through human eyes.
The Grunge are an explorer race; that is suddenly crystal clear to me like it never was before. They either don’t know or don’t care that they’re enslaving human beings. They’re here to experience precisely what humans experience, in the way that we experience it, and they’re unmindful of the fact that they’ve put us all in a stasis while they observe and explore our world. It’s not maliciously intended. It just is.
But unlike the Grunge, human beings have more than minds. We have souls.
The Grunge have to be stopped.
“Hi, Janie.”
This time there’s something different in Mom’s voice. Something . . . hypnotic. “You have such lovely eyes. Can I look at them up close?”
Ugh! I squeeze my eyes shut and feel like I’m going to vomit. All the air rushes out of my lungs in a punch, and without warning, I’m toppling into the sepia-tone version of my house again, in my battle gear. I’ve just tripped backwards through the threshold and hit my elbows on the wooden bamboo floor. My Mirror Image, I notice, is looking well—at least for her. She’s perched by the stairwell and appears truly horrified. She claws her cheeks.
It’s the anger. Why do I always get so angry? They’ve caught me. And it’s because I always lose control and it ruins everything!
Of course, the two Grunge inside my mind are peering from the utility room like curious children.
I crawl to the window.
No. Outside, another Grunge is flitting like an apparition up the walkway. No. I can’t believe it. No, no, no. It’s the one from inside my mother. Zip, zip, zip, it’s approaching the front porch, coming into my mind with the others, and I’m scraping to get to my feet. Clawing the floor.
There’s nothing I can think to do but run. What did Lt. say about Prize Raiment? Once they’re caught, they’re either broken—as in permanent vegetation—or terminated?
I flee to the back door and bolt through, stopping only to close it quietly from the other side—as if the Grunge haven’t just witnessed me exit stage right like a blinking Vegas neon light.
For an irrational moment I think, maybe they can’t come in here. The glen is my safe place. I’ve escaped the house. And my mind is strong. I’ve fooled them for this long into thinking I’ve been in a stasis with the rest of the human race, perfectly contained and out of the way. They can’t follow me. I’ll lose them.
One foot, then the other, I step backwards through the grass. My eyes are glued to the back door, and it fades slowly into the mist.
Slowly, with a creak, the door opens.
Freak! Little moles, they have their eyes shut! Or. . . I can’t tell through the mist. No, they do! They’re here. Sniffing for me.
Their eyes open.
My stomach bottoms out, and I turn and run.
What was I thinking? My confidence melts into sludge. My exit plan was so transparent: just “tap in” for a while, then retreat by falling back to sleep, totally bypassing my house, then bring the information to the COP in the Honeycomb. Instead, I’ve gone and sabotaged things. My mom, she’s the only person who has a clue as to what I am. Why did it have to be my mom? Why didn’t I just assume it would be her?
There’s nowhere to go. The Grunge are in my glen now. How could I let this happen? My first time out of the house and it’s curtains, just like Avril said.
Okay, I’m usually good at thinking on my feet. So? I tell myself. Improvise.
“Janie.” My Mirror Image manifests by my side and runs fleet-footed through the grass with me. She’s in a nightie and I’m in my battle gear, but she’s fizzling out, like a bad cable connection. “You’re always so impulsive, aren’t you?” she says, before blinking out completely at the threshold of the hill. She has little to no power in my glen, and none whatsoever in the Honeycomb. I’m on my own now.
Down the hill, through the grass, I flee, into the mist perimeter. I can lose the Grunge in here, I think desperately. They’re zipping after me, looking for all the world like curious sojourners as they go. As if this is a game.
Sadistic!
I circle wide, coming around to the house again. The wind is in my hair and I think, was God fractured when he made us? I don’t know, but I’m starting to believe it.
Here we go, come get me. I open the back door, if only to make it appear as if I’ve gone back inside. Quickly, I then steal around the other side of the glen, wary of where I’m stepping in the mist, and make my way to the prominence. If I’m lucky, they’ll just get lost in the mist.
Hours go by. Days. There’s only one good place for me to hide. I don’t see the Grunge anywhere. In light of what I’m about to do, the blood rushes in my ears. Cautiously, I duck into the Honeycomb. I’m a ghost in the darkness.
Zip, zip, zip.
Despair is a tidal force that follows them in, a slow-moving breaker of inky darkness, the capstone on my pyramid of failure, a whirlpool I’m suddenly drowning in. Every finger, every toe, my temples, throat and glands, my taut heart—my whole existence—suddenly registers a deep-sinking pain. Even the Honeyco
mb can’t stave it off now. Despair is the ultimate me. The crushing force just behind the anger (the bitter rage!) and it’s finally, after all this time, caught up with me in here.
I’ve just led the Grunge into the Honeycomb. Me. I’ve compromised the entire human race.
Like phosphorescent fish hunting prey, they come with their pretty lights. Three of them: the two from inside my Preconscious Mind and the one from inside my mother’s.
There’s only one way into the Honeycomb from my glen, and one way out. And now they’re here. Seriously, I should have just let them catch me. Torture me. Murder me. I’m selfish. I need to survive. But I’ve always been “just surviving.” Survival is everything life has ever been about for me, no matter how hard I’ve tried to will it otherwise. No matter how hard I’ve tried to reason with myself.
The black cloud of despair envelops me. Then it shrugs off my back like a cloak and presses me callously against the wall inside my cell. My despair is so profound, I don’t care. I’m a rag doll in its grip. I ball my hands into fists, throw my head back.
And realize I’m singing.
Deep and far, the song I’m crying is of utter longing—and I simply release it. Coils of shimmering music, my very essence, pour from my lips in flowering colors: indigo, blue, violet, crimson, blush. I bring my hands to my face—then move them away, as if pushing off to fly, as if pushing away all regret. My tears are glistening descants. Visible song replaces my battle gear until I’m flowing with harmonies, my hair a buoyant shock of chords. And the music is gushing out of me like a power.
A single tone answers. A silent, powerful shock-wave. Two more follow. It’s the Grunge.
Zip, zip, zip.
Darkness and color, music and despair, lure them closer. I’ve backed all the way to the edge of my ledge. The void is waiting to claim me. They’re coming. I look behind me into that black nonexistence. Closer.
I’m singing!
From out of the tangled mass of color, music, darkness and noise, the closest Grunge reaches a hand for me.
And then they’ve passed, as I faint dead away over a rock in my prominence, bits of song falling like hissing diamonds all around me.
Writers of the Future Volume 28: The Best New Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Page 16
