Page 69 of Odder Still
Tavish presses his hand to mine. “I’m sorry.”
“So, you want me to remove it?” Elspeth asks. “An asshole in your headwouldbe annoying.”
“I might be able to handle an asshole, but it’s taking over my body.” My voice sounds distant, as though I’ve already lost myself. “Having my memories tugged up is one thing. No longer being the person who makes them is another.”
“And if it can’t be done?” Elspeth speaks with Lachlan’s straightforward candor, but where he held only an unfeeling curiosity, Elspeth watches me with a gentler gaze, impulsive maybe, but not calloused. “I’m no surgeon, but something that’s integrated itself so thoroughly into your body should be impossible to extract without killing the patient. What will you do if disengaging it proves too much?”
I fold my free hand into my lap, trying to ignore the way the black gashes that crisscross the skin mimic my fishnets so well. “I won’t exist as background noise for its life. I’ve already felt left out of my own far too often.”
The blare of a horn makes me flinch. A car scoots around us, filling the truck with steam as it passes.
Elspeth taps their nails against the steering wheel. “I assume it has control of parts of you already?”
I bundle up my swelling emotions, tying a bow around them for later. “I know for sure that it’s buried into my right arm and down my back, as well as through my lungs.”
Elspeth nods. They pull free one of their many water bottles and take a sip. A few drops of water trickle from delicate gill slits in their neck. “But you’re still commanding those areas at the moment? When you wrap your arm around Tavish, it’s your action, not the aurora’s?”
“That was, yes. It only bothers taking control when it doesn’t like something, or to amplify what I’m already doing—make my own actions faster or smoother—or when my body might die otherwise.”
“So, itcancontrol you, but it chooses not to most of the time.”
The phrase presses against my chest.Choosesnot to take control. As though it’s doing me a favor, letting me use the arm it wove itself through against my will. I grunt. “I figure the effort isn’t worth its trouble yet, since it doesn’t have all of me.”
Elspeth’s brow lifts. “Have you asked it?”
“It might just lie.” It’s an excuse and I know it, cringing before Elspeth even continues their prodding.
“Or mayhaps it won’t. I always think it’s better to ask the question even if you can’t trust the answer than to hold it inside and not trust yourself instead.”
I nearly object—I’m a bit more trustworthy than Elspeth’s giving me credit for—but Tavish rubs his palm along my arm. “What if this is how you remove it?” he asks. “If there’s something more that it needs from you, something that isn’t your actions or your memories, perhaps we can convince it to leave by finding it another way to obtain that goal?”
However dastardly I know my parasite is, and however much I don’t believe we can persuade it to let me go, I have too much at stake here to object. “All right. I’ll ask it.”
I press my lips gently to Tavish’s, and when I straighten, I turn my attention to my parasite. It takes no effort, the motion far too much like sliding into a secondary part of myself, as though the creature inside me is merely the back of my mind. The back of my mind waiting patiently to make me the back of its own.
Well, silt-breather? What have you to say for yourself?
Its presence yawns and stares, but I have the feeling it’s been paying very keen attention to this entire conversation.‘Who doesn’t always make sense,’it says, toneless.
I don’t know why I even try with you.“The damn thing’s laughing at me.”
Elspeth notes it down. “In what way? Do you feel the humor, or is it drawing on memories?”
I look for both, only to realize it’s offering me neither. Whatever unknowable sentiment tumbles beneath its emotions contains no humor after all. “I suppose it’s just being a sass.”
My parasite repeats itself with more vigor, hints of its frustration leaking into me:‘Who doesn’t always make sense.’
Youdon’tmake sense, you’re right about that.
‘Communication.’It growls as though that will make its obvious insult more clairvoyant.
I can see that, you fucking—and then it hits me. I groan.Well, you could have been less of a butt.
‘You wee scunner,’it replies.
I sigh and pick a piece of slim metal off the floor so I can dance it between my fingers. “It couldn’t tell me the answer even if it wanted to. It just doesn’t have enough vocabulary using my memories. It can only draw from so many at once, and the unusually small number of conversations I’ve had over the years probably doesn’t help.”
I feel the influence of my parasite on my right hand every time I flick the piece of metal toward it, the way it slips beneath my actions, propping them up, making me faster and more accurate. I hate it. I hate it because it’s not actually cruel. However despicable and intrusive my parasite is, a lot of what I blame it for might be… inaccurate?
