He felt slippery.
That was the only way to describe it, although Gene’s thoughts in the beginning were not that fully formed. He felt weird. He felt bad. When he had the wherewithal to think about where he was, he would realize he didn’t have any clue where he was.
He was disoriented, his senses dulled. Exhausted in a way no amount of sleep could soothe or satisfy.
And he felt slippery.
“Gene?”
Oh… that was Ethan’s voice. It was amazing how, when he barely knew who he was, when he felt like there was a big part of his brain that had been carved out and the forgotten things created a shocking gap in his narrative—What day was it? What was he supposed to be doing? In that condition, he still immediately knew Ethan’s voice.
It was simply part of his being.
Gene opened his eyes.
He had done that before. The darkness was nice, but he couldn’t make out anything beyond it. This time, he saw Ethan. And beyond Ethan were wood beams, pillars, and the outline of a staircase.
Oh, okay… he was in his pod. He couldn’t see anything before because the lid had been closed. Okay. That made sense.
“Hey,” Ethan said. He was wearing a very sad smile. That didn’t make sense. Why was he sad?
Another thing he noticed was that he wasn’t wearing his normal clothes. He was wearing something like a night shirt, soft, thin, sticking to his slippery skin.
Why was he slippery?
He brought his hand up to his face. His body was wrapped in wafer-thin, whitish-beige, cracked paper. Under that, a glossy surface, pink and supple. When he pushed a piece of the covering aside, he realized that it was skin. His skin. He was shedding his skin like a snake.
“Don’t freak out,” Ethan said. “You were burned pretty badly and you’re healing.”
“Oh…” That explained the sad smile. That explained the sleepiness that no amount of sleeping could dispel. That explained everything. “What happened?”
A bouquet of emotions bloomed in Ethan’s deep blue eyes. Confusion, shock, grief, guilt.
Maybe it didn’t matter what happened.
“You don’t remember?” Ethan asked quietly.
Gene thought about this. What was the last thing he remembered? Ethan was in Finland—guess he was back now. He’d drunk some of his old blood. “Hm, there were birds. A lot of them.”
Ethan’s Adam’s apple dropped and came back up with a soundless thwap. “Yes,” he said. “Nothing else?”
His mind was pleasantly blank. He shook his head. Probably better this way. He could tell from Ethan’s expression that he thought so too.
“You’ll be back to normal soon,” Ethan assured him.
“Okay.”
He should probably be upset—maybe he would be upset later. But he wasn’t interested in being upset now and, actually, he felt a bit cheerful, truth be told.
“I’m not on drugs, am I?” Gene asked.
“Uh… no? Why? Are you in pain?”
“No…” The sound of his own voice was light, sweet like syrup, completely untroubled. He preferred it this way. He liked the sound of it. “I don’t feel good, exactly. Just warm … and a bit fuzzy.”
“Oh…” Ethan said awkwardly. “I suppose that might be the pod. The manual said mode three promoted better healing.”
“Did it?”
Despite his state of near nakedness and slathered with what he realized now was probably blood serum or something, he felt warm and safe. The pod’s ambient light pulsed to a slow, steady rhythm and after a moment, he realized it was a heartbeat.
“Oh…” he said again, reaching up and putting his hand on Ethan’s chest. “Is this yours?”
Ethan looked flushed as he turned his head away. “Not anymore.”
“That’s right, we recorded it, didn’t we?”
“Yes.”
He felt the smile pull across his face. “It’s nice, honestly. I kind of miss it.”
Ethan said nothing about that. He kept staring awkwardly off into space and fidgeting. Gene would have been perfectly content to just drift off again—with Ethan’s scent so close and a recording of his heartbeat lingering in the background—but Ethan was upset. That made it difficult to enjoy his altered state.
“Gene—”
The sound startled Gene out of his half-sleep. He tried to open his eyes twice as much, so that they wouldn’t close so easily. “Hm?”
“I’m going to find the thing that did this and kill it,” Ethan said.
That just seemed ridiculous to Gene. Ethan couldn’t kill anything. Ethan didn’t have a killer instinct. But Ethan sounded upset and Gene didn’t want to argue with him.
“Mmmmm… okay. Be careful.”
He closed his eyes again so he didn’t see how ever Ethan reacted to that statement. He took a big, useless breath and let his body relax more fully. Drifting through time like a paper boat in a rain gutter stream. He felt hopeful and optimistic, like time itself was a cradle, rocking him slowly back to sleep.
When he opened his eyes again, Ethan was still there. He was smiling. He was glowing. It seemed unlikely that he was real, but then, at that exact moment, it seemed unlikely to Gene that he himself was real either. His silence was so loud. Like all the comforting words were spoken in each soundless breath.
It’s you… He thought. The monster you’re chasing is you.
Then he went back to sleep because that thought made no sense.