Work Text:
For a lonely soul, it seems to me
That you’re having such a nice time
You’re having such a nice time
— “Nothing In My Way” by Keane
1.
The ground beneath her gives off the heat from the sun that's been warming it up all day.
Carol shifts and leans back a little, her weight supported by her arms resting with flat palms on the mostly even surface beneath her, feet stretched out and crossed at her ankles. If anyone but the presence next to her cared to look, it would seem like she’s enjoying the warm breeze dancing around them as if they were sitting on the beach, staring into the distance where the horizon kisses the blue of the sea and not in her sad and abandoned cul-de-sac that she is tired of looking at.
Zosia has yet to say a word. Quiet as a mouse, she sits with an eerie motionless posture on the curb, making it look more elegant than the sprawled-out seating position that Carol finds herself in. There is also this half smile firmly on her lips, a permanent presence on Zosia’s face that looks a little off even from the side profile.
Carol stares ahead again. Draws in a breath through her nose. Pouts. Starts to drum with the fingers of her right hand on the warm, rough asphalt. Moves her incisors over her lower lip. Draws her legs back again, dragging the heels of her white sneakers over the pavement.
This is getting ridiculous.
The breeze comes back, gently moving her hair around and greeting her with the familiarity of an old friend. How often did she sit outside, working on her latest book, the same breeze glancing over her shoulder, annoying her by moving her handwritten notes, all while Helen would—
Carol stops drumming with her fingers.
“Now what?” she asks, looking at Zosia. Forgotten is her own pride and stubbornness to try and turn her brief outburst of intense guilt, longing, and debilitating loneliness that culminated in a hug with the same air of desperation like a child hugging their parent after being abandoned in the mall for hours into something barely worth mentioning or remembering. And yet. Her shame sits deep in her bones, the acknowledged weakness in her is much harder to ignore while the trigger of it is sitting next to her, serenely smiling back at her.
“Did you have any plans for today?” As always, an endless patience colors the words, indulging her grotesque mood with quiet acceptance.
Getting blackout drunk. Fighting the urge to find some good H. Pass out, most likely hungry. “Nope.” She makes the P pop, carding her hand through her windswept hair to keep it out of her vision.
Zosia’s smile grows with something akin to amusement and with a pang Carol realizes that while seeing this facsimile of a human emotion is better than not being so mind-numbingly alone, to the point where she started to make and greet her kitchen appliances each morning before talking to them—well, mostly it was her cursing out Rodrick, her toaster—this is still not real. The face remains a blank canvas that gives nothing away. “We can give you some ideas, if you’d like?”
Always so, so helpful.
Carol can’t look at her. Her gaze strays over the other abandoned houses, and continues to wander over the roof of Zosia’s car, right to the street lamp where that forlorn, useless piece of shit of a drone is still hanging down, white trash bag keeping it suspended midair. “You people ever plan on taking this thing down?” she asks instead of giving an answer to the gentle-spoken offer. “I mean, from a safety perspective this is just really careless of you guys.”
“You are right. We can get right to it, if you want.”
Slowly but surely the illusion of giving Carol the freedom of choice said in a friendly small-talk voice is grating on her already frazzled nerves. “No, I’m asking what your plans are,” she clarifies with a huff, leaning forward and wipes her hands against each other to rid her skin of the small dirt pieces and stones. Then, she looks into Zosia’s dark eyes again, and there used to be the split-second of surprise inside of her that filled her briefly with an intense sense of horror before she ignored it, or talked over it, or drowned it in a glass or can of alcohol. Her loneliness has, if anything, only amplified that problem, haunted by the memories of seeing her in a hospital bed, remembering the feel of her blood on her hands.
Now, all she can feel is the calm thump of her even heartbeat because she was no longer alone.
Zosia tilts her head a little, smile widening. “We are here for you, Carol.”
She isn’t sure what answer she expected. We did it all on purpose, and what great fun it was to watch you break down, bit by bit, day by day, until almost nothing was left! Of course, they would never admit to it. They are much too kind to admit to their cruelty to her face like that. She could press them for answers, ask them about it, only last time she did that—
“If you want us to leave, just tell us. We can go—”
“No.” The answer is so immediate, so viscerally raw in its honesty, Carol has to clear her throat. Not just out of embarrassment, but also to swallow down the spike of anxiety. Too fresh, too cutting is the memory of being seemingly left behind for good.
Zosia’s eyes are half-lidded with contentment when her face muscles stretch her lips into an almost genuine looking smile.
It’s unbearable. “Whatever.” Feeling already a little better after sitting down for who knows how long—and judging by the sun sitting a little lower in the sky it must’ve been quite the while—Carol gets to her feet and has a short glance down at her jeans ruined with white paint streaks. She can’t find it in herself to even care a little bit about the mess.
The sound of an approaching vehicle has her turn around on her heel, only from the periphery noticing that Zosia is standing up with her ridiculously long legs in one graceful motion. A white van appears and it looks like some generic company car from some building maintenance company. The people that spill out of the car greet and wave at her when, all three of them, and most are dressed in casual clothing, but at least the body tasked to climb on the ladder wears a skateboard helmet. Their smiles show teeth, perhaps to be more visible across the distance.
“We are sorry we left it there for so long,” Zosia apologizes from the side, close enough to make her skin itch with… something. “It shouldn’t have ended up there in the first place.”
It doesn’t feel like Zosia is talking about the broken drone any longer.
“Right,” Carol scoffs and briefly quirks her brow at Zosia before she remembers how poorly the hive mind does with sarcasm. Annoyed, she turns around and walks back inside the house. The heroic drone recovery with a complimentary broken white trash bag is not what she wants to observe right now. Aimlessly, she walks through the hallway into her kitchen, before she beelines for Doreen (coffee machine) to make herself a cup. “Do you want some?” she asks without turning around. It’s like her body is getting used to the fact that there do still exist other human bodies that are warm and walk and talk and behave mostly like a human body should—if it weren’t for the horrific presence controlling it. “I mean, I’m currently all out of human protein smoothies, sorry.”
“Carol.”
“They could drone-deliver it, I guess. But in its own cooler, because that stuff is not ending up in my freezer.”
“Carol.” A hand finds its way onto her shoulder, forcing her to look up from Doreen’s water tank. “We won’t put anything into your freezer without your express permission, though it won’t be necessary.”
“Great. Did you hear that, Walt? You can remain empty and HDP-free,” she tells her double-door-fridge with freezer drawers down below, rolling her eyes to her herself. What a bunch of bullshit.
As always, it is humor that grinds the collective intellectually to a screeching halt. “Walt?” comes the confused inquiry from the side, almost hesitant to even ask.
Carol glances at her before she puts ground coffee into its compartment, clicks the water tank in place and puts a mug beneath the outlet where her brewed coffee will come out once it’s done heating up the water. “My fridge,” she says with an almost rude amount of delay, but Zosia remains in her kitchen, arms crossed, waiting. “It’s an insider joke, you wouldn’t get—”
Except that the human looking monster would get it. They remember everything Helen ever remembered. They’d remember her sardonic comment about Walt Disney freezing his body post mortem from their stay at that fucking ice hotel, a joke that only sprang to her mind again recently when she held a frozen head in her hand 36 days ago. Or was it 35?
Wisely, Zosia doesn’t say anything to that.
The whirring of the coffee machine fills the oppressing silence in the kitchen. Outside, the truck’s engine comes to life again and the three worker bees merrily go on their way.
Zosia is still the quiet, motionless presence in her kitchen that has yet to answer her question. “So, coffee?”
Zosia doesn’t hesitate this time around but the smile is still a little dimmed down. “Yes. Thank you.”
Carol gives her a nod with pursed lips and grabs a second mug. It’s a boring white one because Helen’s have been banned to the far back of the cabinet, and all her other mugs are taking a soaking bath in her sink.
Helen. Helen. Helen.
*
After, Zosia parks her car in her drive way, and Carol lets it happen. She wasn’t asked, she made no attempt to protest when she was told that her new house guest would be back in a few. She is like a sleep walker, with her eyes wide open. And then she remembers something.
Swiftly and like a possessed women on the mission she goes through the drawers in her kitchen that are cluttered with all kinds of things, looking for something to write on and a pen. She finds both, a small pocket-sized notebook, a blue Bic pen—and a pack of cigarettes, Marlboro Reds, half-empty. Her fingers tremble a little when she slowly picks the squished pack out, stashing them away in her left front pocket of her jeans. Thinking of their last smoke together that felt so inconsequential and has now turned into The Very Last Moment—
“Would you like something to eat?” Zosia calls from the entrance.
Carol, still not able to move on from her thoughts, needs a moment to gather herself. She takes a few breaths through her nose, puts notebook and pen into her right back pocket and nods to herself, regaining her footing again when she slams the drawer shut again.
With even steps, she walks to Zosia hovering at the open door, the politeness almost painful after being alone for so long. “No, but uh, could someone take care of, well…” She nods past Zosia to the pavement that is still displaying her writing on the ground. She personally doesn’t care about it, or at least she tries not to, but more important than her own feelings is the fact that she needs Zosia busy for a while without raising suspicion.
The smile she receives is full of understanding. “Of course.”
Once she is gone, Carol hurries into the living room, opens the wooden panels to her white boards and starts to jot down her notes on the hive mind into her little notebook before wiping it all off. Her research into this matter has clearly run into a loneliness sized brick wall in the past few weeks, but she can pick up right where she’s left off. Easy. All she has to do is to be… a little smarter about this.
No near-death experiences for Zosia, for instance.
And no falling for the trap that so alluringly stands at the cul-de-sac, back turned towards the house, waiting for whatever other clean-up team for white paint on pavement exists within the hivemind.
Carol stops staring when she realizes where her eyes are straying and moves away from the window altogether.
2.
“We could explain the rules to you,” Zosia offers with a gracious quirk of her lips.
“Or,” Carol starts to counter, a little more well-rested today than she’s been in days, and therefore in an unexpectedly good mood, under the given circumstances, “we could just play. See what happens.” She twitches her brow at her chaperone, swinging the mallet back and forth in a show of how casual she's about this.
In reality, she’s posing the hive mind a challenge for spontaneity, one that cannot be fulfilled by a creature ruled by an amalgamated mind, a melting pot of thoughts and ideas that has lost the ability to make up rules just for fun. The constant state of contentment and lack of survival benefits in all this is probably why, but Carol likes to think it’s because they are just boring.
“It’s not a complicated game per se, but there are different sets of rules,” Zosia soothes her non-existent worry, mistaking her challenge as apprehension for not knowing the rules yet. “Actually, for a game that has been first played in 1856 in England—though its roots go back to the late medieval era—croquet has a rich history,” Zosia begins and is quickly lost to the habit of flooding Carol with a wave of information and facts she hasn’t even asked for. It reminds her very much of the night the hand grenade went off, the whole bit before that.
She has not touched the vodka again since then.
So, Carol lets her speak. After weeks of only her own voice and that answering machine recording she had to listen to each time she’d dial 0, it’s nice to listen to someone talk, even if it’s a creature made of stolen information and personalities, the warm voice and kind smiles lulling her into a sense of normalcy that can only thrive in the After of being left alone for so long.
And before she knows it, Zosia has explained the rules to her. “There are other variations, of course, but we think golf croquet seems an apt choice considering how much you enjoyed playing golf recently. Unless you wish to learn another set of rules, we are happy to explain them to you as well,” she is eager to promise her, standing a little straighter. Smiling.
Carol has no idea what had her offering her white sleeveless shirt to Zosia upon finding out how hot the weather would be today, but now she is staring at the result of her choices and feels the consequences of them nesting inside of her, here to stay. No amount of casually looking elsewhere is going to loosen the noose around her neck, each time tightening a little more at the sight of flexing arm and back muscles. It was meant to be a kind gesture, possibly, at one point, but instead she’s shot herself in the foot with it.
“One set of rules is more than I wanted, actually, thanks,” Carol finally gets out, taking a deep breath. She forces her shoulders to perform a shrug that should seem nonchalant enough. “Reaching seven points is the goal, we try to run a hoop, the balls have to be played in order, first blue, then red, black and what was it? Oh, yellow!” she says after making a show of pretend-slapping her forehead in sudden remembrance, all while staring at the yellow ball right at her feet. “It’s not rocket science.”
Her sarcasm is neither appreciated nor fully understood when she lifts her gaze again to see what her opponent is doing. Zosia gives her an uncertain smile, and all that is missing is a dark green hand grenade in her hand again, standing in front of her house. “We can start whenever you are ready,” she tells her, opting to ignore Carol’s entire bit.
Carol pretends to be interested in the shapes of the thin, flimsy clouds above their heads before she relents with a nod.
*
Carol loses the game in more ways than one.
*
“Any favorite food besides human goo?” Carol asks, before stuffing her mouth with another big bite of her Pizza Hut’s Pepperoni Lover’s pizza, ideal to be shared—if Zosia were interested in that.
As is, she only happily accompanied her into this Pizza Hut, had a duo waiting here for them that prepared just this one pizza for her before cleaning the kitchen and leaving them alone again.
Carol is dimly aware that Albuquerque seems more barren than before the hive mind’s mass exodus, but she is not going to ask about that because it feels like a Big Question, one that she assumes the collective of stolen minds is not going to be happy to answer. Nor will she be happy to be made to stomach another flavor of ‘Carol is annoying to be around, Hive Mind Edition’.
So, she asks about food. Much, much safer topic, especially with someone kept alive by smoothies made out of humans. Yummy.
That thought slows down her chewing and she barely gets the bite down.
Zosia seems oblivious to how she’s ruined her appetite with a single thought. “We have no taste preference, our imperative dictates only the efficient intake and correct amount of nutrients and other important components a human body needs to be sustained. Vitamins, minerals, and such,” the hive mind explains to her, using squeaky-clean terms for what is just plain cannibalism dressed up as milk.
“Why the packaging with different flavors then?”
“The human body prefers variation in how the food is supposed to taste, so we adapted to that.”
Carol stops picking at the cheese of the last remaining slice she can’t bring herself to eat now and looks up. Thinks of the half-empty trash container filled with small “milk” cartons in different colors. Blinks. “Your bodies prefer to taste different things?” she asks with a tilted head. It’s not exactly a surprise only—well, she’s assumed one shared mind means it overrides anything else, even bodily desires. It’s mind over body, right?
But if not, then this means some degree of individuality is retained, natural inclinations and instinct triumphing over cognitive control. Hearing something as trivial as preferring strawberry milk taste over chocolate makes her heart beat faster.
“In certain aspects, yes.” Zosia’s smile grows when she leans forward. “For instance, this body seems to not like this particular kind of pizza.” It is said like it’s an indulgence, a secret shared in exchange for good behavior.
Carol reaches for her coke and slurps noisily her drink through the straw, observing Zosia with a calculating look. “Guess you don’t get a top model physique with that kind of food,” she murmurs, removing bits of food between her teeth with the tip of her tongue, before using the short nail of her small finger to get it out. This is an inside thought slipping out of her and she doesn’t lift her gaze until it feels odd not to look up.
Zosia keeps observing her as if this was not the worst display of poor table manners. “Are you still hungry? Do you wish to eat a dessert? We could have it delivered to your house if you don’t want to stay here,” she says when she notices Carol glancing out through the window where her Rolls-Royce is parked while finishing her coke.
“What the hell, sure,” Carol says, a little breathless from drinking so fast. It almost gave her a brain freeze. Contrary to her words, she sits back and wonders, “If I asked to drink the stuff you guys have to slurp down according to your little John Cena informercial, would you let me have it?”
There is a heavy moment of silence, where the hive mind sitting behind Zosia’s dark eyes is trying to gauge the seriousness of her question and how to reply to it. The momentarily speechlessness thrills Carol, making her lips twitch.
“Would you ask us to drink it?” Zosia eventually asks back, cleverly avoiding a direct answer.
It’s like playing poker with a dog and still losing.
Her stomach turns at the thought of even sniffing the stuff, let alone—
Carol rolls her eyes and gets up. She carries over the tablet with the last uneaten slice on it and the empty glass, and puts it down on the counter. When she walks outside, she does not wait to see if Zosia will follow her. She knows she will, she’s not left her side since her appearance yesterday. The guest room has been invaded by her under nor protest from Carol, who is still telling herself that having her around so much just makes it easier to figure out the quirks and ticks that give away how maybe the hive mind is not completely in control.
The irony of giving up some of her control is not lost on her.
*
As comfortable as driving the Rolls-Royce is—and damn, what a difference to the cop car, or even her own now burned down truck—the constant need to visit very regularly a gas station is a downside she did not consider when picking it out from a row of probably equally inefficient sportscars. The only upside is that with Zosia sitting in her passenger seat, the gas station is already manned and active when she pulls up.
“To ensure its best performance, this car should be only filled up with premium gasoline,” Zosia pipes up when Carol’s hand is already on the handle and she’s about to get out. “93,” she adds, as if that number means anything to her.
Carol hesitates, stares through the window at the gas pump and with a small sigh she turns around in her seat, the leather squeaking beneath her. Wordlessly, she raises her brows at her companion in a silent question.
Zosia doesn’t disappoint. “This is a 2012 Rolls-Royce ‘Ghost’, which is equipped with a 6.6 liters twin-turbocharged V 12 engine, with 575 hp that requires for its optimal functionality a higher octane number than regular cars. The premium gasoline here is a blend that contains around 93% of isooctane, which makes it a so-called stable fuel and it is made for an engine like this.”
Carol just stares at her.
“We just want to make sure you will be able to enjoy this car for as long as you want it,” Zosia adds, as if someone has asked. “Though, we can repair it, should something break.”
Maybe she has asked with her deadpan glare that somehow flew right over Zosia’s head, still as immune to humor as Carol is immune to joining them. “Fascinating.” She gets out of the car before she can make a joke about Zosia briefly having been possessed by a car salesman or mechanic because it isn’t actually a joke and Zosia isn’t real.
She still presses the yellow “93” button after putting the gas pump nozzle in and crosses her arms, softly leaning against the dusty back of her Rolls-Royce. Helen would have either hated or loved that car, and her short nails start to bite into her skin when she considers, briefly, to ask Zosia about it. Helen is dead and no matter how many absorbed memories and feelings are stored within the hive mind can unmake this simple, fatal fact. She scuffs the tip of her sneaker on the ground at her feet, breathes in the fumes of gasoline, and pretends not to be annoyed by that one flickering light over her head.
Somewhere, in the far distance, a chopper flies over the city and cuts through the quiet she’s gotten all too used by now. With interest, Carol cranes her neck and tries to spot it on the darkening sky, the sun almost completely gone. Her curiosity wanes when she can’t see it.
The clicking of the gas pump shutting down rips her from her reverie and by the time she climbs behind the wheel again, she’s forgotten all about it.
3.
Zosia is outside, accepting a delivery of what Carol assumes is some clothes and other things, which gives her just enough time to add some new notes to her little pocket-sized notebook that is carries on her person everywhere she goes. At night, it rests safely beneath her pillow.
Bodies still have preferences.
*
“Is this even fun for you? Watching Golden Girls?”
“We don’t mind.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“But we love spending time with you.”
“Still not answering my question. Do you enjoy watching a show that contains dialogue lines which are only funny to people who understand jokes?”
“You like to watch it and so we like to watch it. After all, it’s a critically acclaimed show that—”
“I didn’t ask you to spit out what is no doubt going to be the awards and nominations section of this show’s IMDb page, I asked you if you freaks even like sitting here on my damn couch, watching this for hours.” She’s expected some suggestions to do something else by now, any sign of boredom with what is an experiment first and foremost. It’s just more fun while Dorothy Zbornak keeps throwing around sarcastic zingers on screen.
“We just told you. We don’t mind spending time with you.” Zosia widens her smile as if to reassure her. “Now, we are wondering if you are having fun. You have yet to laugh and you’ve watched the show for 187 minutes already.”
Carol deflates in her seat, feeling like she’s just been found out. The factual, sober delivery doesn’t lessen the surgical precision with which she’s been clocked. She keeps staring at the screen, barely stopping herself from comparing Zosia to Rose Nylund before she turns off the TV completely by reaching with a jerky movement for the remote and hitting the off-button. It’s late anyway. “You know I appreciate the continued… company, but you don’t actually have to just go along with everything I do.” It’s the harmless edition of asking what the fuck are you actually still constantly doing here if not to spy on me?
“We know that and we appreciate the thought, Carol.”
“But?”
“We also understand that after our… still somewhat recent disagreement, this is still a fragile truce. We don’t mean to be overbearing, we just assumed that it would be better to stay, unless we were wrong to assume that? Should we leave, Carol?”
Yes. No. Maybe. “I don’t care,” she lies, stubbornly staring at the black TV screen, the reflection of them sitting on the couch together staring right back at her. Mocking her. It makes her want to run away, but she’s undecided where to escape to: the open kitchen or her bedroom with a door. She remains seated, almost like she’s glued to her spot on the couch. Only her fingers curl into the upholstery, betraying her inner turmoil. “Why should I care?” Her accelerating heartbeat at the thought of being yet again abandoned indefinitely has her swallow hard.
Zosia shifts next to her and it’s the physical reaction to her shoulder bumping against hers as if by accident that startles her; it’s like someone spilled ice water over her head. Haven’t they sat down on the two opposite ends of the couch? “We think you may feel like we don’t trust you and want to keep constant watch on you. We assure you that is not what we are doing. We simply wish to be here for you. In whatever way you will find helpful, of course.”
Her skin crawls at those words. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Carol challenges with a hoarse croak, reaching for her drink. Bravely or stupidly, she meets Zosia’s eyes while taking a sip.
Zosia considers her with a long look that she doesn’t like because it makes her feel funny. It’s the drink, she tells herself. “We want you to be happy, Carol.”
“Why wouldn’t I be happy now that you came back?”
“We are positive that was a sarcastic, rhetorical question again,” Zosia notes after a few moments of deliberative silence. “Were you being sarcastic again?”
The moment, this weird, slick-sickening feeling that has started to lay over her skin, has been broken and she is free from whatever spell she’s been briefly put under. “You’re really fast learners, I’m so proud of you guys.”
Zosia knits her brows together, the smile finally dying a slow, confusing death on her full lips that look so soft and—
Carol swirls the pitiful rest of her drink in her glass. “That, too, was sarcasm, just for your information.”
“Ah.”
“Do what you want. Stay here, go to wherever it is you guys even live now, I just—you are not forced to stay here, I never asked you to,” she reminds her, skillfully evading thinking about the fact that she has also not asked her—them to leave. She has simply watched Zosia move in, more or less.
Zosia holds her own wrist, index and middle finger softly drumming over the joint there. “Are you asking us to leave without hurting our feelings, Carol? We can assure you, none will be hurt,” she finally says.
Can’t hurt what’s not there, Carol thinks and finishes her drink in one gulp. After she’s done making a face about it, she stares at Zosia again, echoes of we want you to be happy, Carol tap-dancing on her mind. Then, with the fatalistic certainty of someone who is about to say something stupid, she crosses her arms and holds the quiet, patient gaze still just looking back at her. “Before. When I—I didn’t ask you to leave ‘for good’ last time, you did that all on your own. I mean, yeah, what I did was—I shouldn’t have done it, whatever, but the point is, you could decide that again. I mean, I recently learned no one really wants to be around me, so there ya go.”
“We are sorry, Carol.”
“Stop saying my name.”
“Carol—”
“I said stop.” She is on her feet as if stung and finally brings some distance between them. Her heart is beating so fast from that drink and from getting up so fast, she feels light headed and it’s because of those things and not because of this creature sitting on her couch, waiting for her to break completely. She refuses to look Zosia in the eyes, it’s because she is tired of everything, mostly of herself. She thinks of Helen. She’s always thinking of Helen. Only Helen isn’t here, there is no one else here and—
She licks her lips. “Let me know if you need new bedding for your bed in the guest room. Or just take it out yourself. It’s in the—”
“Third closet to the right.”
Carol pretends for her own sanity that they have obtained knowledge from the maid that was here to clean the house before disaster struck and ended the world, but deep down she knows why the hive mind knows it. She knows who decided to put the spare bedclothes for guests into that cheap IKEA wardrobe that pretends to be made out of wood just like the hive mind is pretending to be human. Thinking of Helen again burns in her stomach like the alcohol she’s just drank, and with some luck maybe the heartburn that awaits her will swallow her dead heart whole tonight and finally free her of this prison, partially self-constructed by her lack of fight left in her.
Without another word she disappears into her bedroom, slamming the door shut after herself.
4.
The next day, she tells Zosia to leave for the day because of a headache that doesn’t exist. When she enters the kitchen, she finds a glass of water and a Tylenol pill waiting for her. Of course.
She goes back to bed.
5.
The soft hum of the library’s air conditioning is the only noise aside from her turning a page from time to time, when Zosia decides to break the silence.
“Would you like to be left alone for this?”
“What, you got somewhere to be? Is there a hive mind meeting scheduled I’m not invited to?”
“No,” Zosia slowly says, holding her bitter gaze with the ease of a patient parent that is about to spell something out in painful clarity, “why would we not want you there, were such a meeting to exist? We are happy to have you around, Carol.”
Carol angrily flips over the page of her book and scoffs at herself. Walked right into that one. It would almost be a funny comeback from them, these little mindfuckers, if Zosia’s voice hadn’t sounded so damn earnest when asking that question. A sick burn, pampered in kindness. She flips another page. “Why do you keep asking me that, then?” There is something there, the constant questions that seem to aim at testing her patience—or to see how often Carol will refuse to send the hive mind packing.
“You often seem like you want to be alone. We realize that perhaps spending so much time together after such a long period of being on your own could be a bit much, all things considered.” The tone is a friendly, neutral tone, but the words cut deep while pulling at her memories, forcing her to briefly feel the flash of emotion over what being “alone” truly means.
“You realized that now after six days?”
“Five. After you sent us away for one day, we started to wonder if you are just being polite to us.”
“Me? Polite? Now, I’m insulted.”
Zosia gets tense, eager to apologize. “If we offended you—”
“Stop talking. This is a library, by the way,” she adds, flipping those two pages back. There is no one here to shush them and there is also no one to appreciate her little dry comment. It’s just Carol and the world, sitting across each other and bickering about the nonsense situation that is born out of the fact that Zosia essentially moved in with her after ending the punishment of being left to her own devices for almost killing said body in front of her on her quest to get answers.
Silence.
Carol sneaks a peek over the rim of her open book, looks across the low coffee table in front of the leather couch she is sprawled on, back resting against a pillow, feet propped up on said table. A picture of feigned relaxation.
Zosia, sitting upright, but with her legs crossed and one arm resting on the back of her own couch, smiles at her, lifting her chin a little. A quiet, wordless question or challenge. Or both. It didn’t use to feel like that, and now—
The one thing she is not immune to is—
She looks down at the printed text in her hands again and tries to focus on what it has to say on non-verbal communication and cues while pointedly ignoring the inclination to look over at Zosia again, who in her stupid dark blue slacks and white shirt looks like she’s about to hold a class on how to manipulate someone out of their convictions with nothing but well-tailored clothing and suggestive body language.
Like a fly to honey.
6.
“What was…” Carol stops herself, hesitates, and keeps folding her laundry.
Zosia, who’s been looking out of the window, turns around and steps closer. “What was…?” she repeats, an encouraging smile in place. At least she’s not offering to help her with her laundry again.
“Zosia. What was… what did her life look like before she… you know?” Carol dares to lift her head, her hands still again.
Zosia doesn’t hesitate at all. “Oh. Well, Zosia’s originally from Poland. She was born in Wrocław and grew up in a small town called Żórawina, 14.8 kilometers away from the city, but she moved to Kraków to study History of Arts at the Jagiellonian University there, before going to the ASP in Gdańsk. She’d been to many different cities and countries since then, and worked as a freelance photographer for renowned magazines and publications.”
It explains the accent, it explains the name, and it confirms something without spelling it out; if accents don’t disappear after the Joining, the physical differences of the stolen bodies remain intact. Seems obvious enough, except… Well, the hive mind clearly followed an underhanded purpose by picking Zosia in particular to stick at her side, then and now.
She’s noticed more and more quirks in Zosia’s physical behavior, things that seem to happen outside of the conscious thoughts that fuels the hive mind. The only individuality that exists within the Joined are truly only found in their bodies it seems, even long after the Joining. It’s been weeks, and Zosia still has the charming lilt in her words that sounds foreign, she still likes to hold her wrist with her hand, rubbing her thumb over her wrist bone or back of her hand. It’s a movement hard wired into this body because it existed for far longer than the invasive species running that body now.
“I’ve been saying her name wrong all this time, huh?” Carol says when she is done mulling over the information.
“We don’t mind.”
But maybe Zosia would have.
7.
Fully committed to the chase for information and clues, Carol pushes and tugs and asks. “If someone couldn’t swim, or ride a bike, would that someone be able to do it right away after, you know, joining you guys, or would that body still need to learn it?” she asks her one week after Zosia showed up in front of her house again.
Zosia, watching her devour her scrambled eggs shows her teeth when she smiles. “It would need to train and get used to the movements, but it wouldn’t take long since we know how it works.”
Carol nods along, as if half-bored by the answer, when in truth she is greedily storing away the information, gathering each tidbit like it’s a rare treasure only she knows now to appreciate. “So,” she goes on, licking her fork clean, “let’s say someone was a boxer, right, just a guy trained to do one thing very well, and let’s say he for some reason never learned how to swim before you guys took over his body—you could turn him into a swimmer just like that?” She snips her fingers, lifting her brows in question.
Zosia finds the line of questioning delightful, if her little chuckle is to be believed. “The physicality of a boxer would not be in the way of teaching that body how to swim, if that is what you wanted to know. The only hindrance is if the body is disabled, or otherwise unable to enter water.”
“What… what other reasons could there be?”
“Allergies, a strong fear of drowning, past trauma—we try not to distress the bodies. A person afraid of heights would not climb onto a roof, correct?”
“I guess.”
“We are working within the parameters given to us.”
“So, you guys have limits.”
“We cannot ignore the realities of physical limits or other deficiencies, but we do not value one above the other.”
“Right, right, just like you don’t care about sexualities and race and all that stuff now.”
Zosia hesitates. “We do not think in those terms, no,” is the eventual reply. Then, she reaches for her thermos bottle that both pretend for Carol’s sanity is filled with coffee and not something else. “There is no point in such classifications anymore. We are us, after all.”
“Except for the physical reactions of the bodies you guys can’t control, right?”
Zosia swallows her sip and forms a thin line with her lips. Not exactly unhappy, not exactly pleased. “We learned a lot in the short time we’ve been here, but you are right. There was a learning curve, and no doubt there is still much more we have to learn to understand and master.” It is said without the intent of making it sound like a threat, but Carol can see the uncertainty glistening briefly in her dark eyes when the hive mind reacts to Carol’s words.
Carol leans back in her chair with a hum. Got you bitch. “Do you ever ignore reactions of a body?” she asks next, no longer able to contain her glee having stumbled over this. If anything, this is as close as making fun of the hive mind as she might get.
Zosia tilts her head. “Is that a topic you truly wish to discuss? With your past as a drug addict—”
Ouch. “That’s not what I was talking about. And I think you know it.”
“We… do not.”
It has to be a white lie at this point. “Well, okay, let me spell it out, then. I’m dying to know if those limitations ever occurred to you when you picked this body to find me with,” she says with a shit eating grin, no longer hiding what this is about. “I mean, sucks to be you for not understanding grief, but if something like that slipped your hive mind then, well…”
Zosia is still in her seat. The look on her face is still the same blank kindness as ever, but her dark eyes— “We are still not sure, what you are trying to ask here, Carol.”
Carol stops grinning. “You obviously picked out this body with a fucked-up, ulterior goal, and I just want to know if it ever occurred to you that perhaps this body is not right for whatever sick and twisted purpose—”
“It is.”
Well. That was a fast answer.
Carol stares at the unsmiling but still polite looking face of Zosia and slowly reaches for her orange juice that tragically doesn’t contain a drop of champagne. When she’s done taking a few small sips, she puts the glass down again, wiping the condensation that built up on the glass and is now on her palm on her PJ pants, accepting the doom that is staring at her from across her dining table. It feels like looking down the barrel of a loaded gun, or at least that’s what she assumes that would feel like.
“At least you are consistent with your body horror tropes,” she mumbles, disturbed and intrigued for the wrong reasons all at once. If she lingers any longer on that matter, she might have to wipe off her just eaten breakfast from the kitchen floor.
Zosia says nothing to that. Why would the Venus flytrap be concerned with the fly it has already successfully trapped?
*
Carol is aware, albeit far in the back of her mind, that sitting on her rooftop while not exactly sober is not the smartest idea. She isn’t even sure why she’s clamored her way up here, except that maybe her horrifying roommate hates heights and won’t follow her up here. It’s not like she has any plans on stargazing. The sky is dark and fully overcast anyway, and with a little luck there might be that thunderstorm approaching that Zosia has made a point of telling her about during dinner, sipping from her thermos bottle. As if she’s asked. As if she cared.
Carol left her in the living room a while ago and didn’t really tell her where she was going, didn’t even check what she was doing. But maybe some invisible drone was floating far up in the sky, keeping watch, she thought darkly, slowly sliding down from her seated position to one where her back was resting against the still warm roof tiles. Stargazing would be actually fun from up here, she thinks, and wonders next if Helen would’ve agreed and that makes her reach for Marlboro Red cigarettes inside her pocket that she’s found in the drawer a few days ago. She’s even remembered to bring a lighter with her, a cheap plastic thing in blue she got on her latest grocery run.
She takes one between her lips but hesitates to light it. She can hear Helen’s voice in her head, admonishing for lighting her own first instead of—
Before she can reconsider, she thumbs down the press button of the lighter and holds it down to keep the flame alive. With a click she kills the flame again when the tip of her cig glimmers in a promising orange at the first drag.
And then, she simply remains where she is. Staring up at the clouds. Wondering if she will ever stop feeling less of what she feels now. Humming to herself when the inhaled smoke warms and burns inside her chest alongside her ancient grief that will never ever leave her system no matter how many cleansings from within with alcohol she attempts.
She closes her eyes and refuses to cry while she exhales again. The air smells of cigarettes and rain now.
Her cigarette is half burned down when she stops being the only living presence on this rooftop. Her chaperone, persistent like black mold sitting between bathroom tiles of a cheap motel used for illicit meetings, sits down next to her, close enough for her body to feel and thrum at the warmth next to her.
Zosia smiles down at her when Carol cracks one eye open.
“Were you worried I had disappeared on you?” she can’t help but ask. It’s not even an accusation, her voice is too low and pensive for that.
“Your car is still here. We also heard you climb up, we knew where you went.”
Carol thinks of how often she’s cursed the loose wooden ledger protruding from the front wall of her house, almost breaking her neck when she’s used it to prop herself up. A ladder, looking back, might have been the easier way up here. But that would've meant to go into the garage, past Helen’s gardening tools to get it and she just didn’t feel like facing any of that.
“I could’ve wandered away. Right into the wilderness, never to be seen again.” She briefly ponders over that. Would the hive mind stop her if she’d decided to undertake such a foolish yet alluring trip? Dying in an unmarked location holds some promise, provided her body is never recovered and turned into a protein shake by these assholes.
“We would advise against it tonight, as the weather is about to turn. But in general, you are free to do whatever you’d like.” Zosia leans back on her hands, relaxed. It reminds her of a cat. A very athletic cat, with lean limbs, too long legs and dark eyes that seem to draw her in like the trap that they are. “We would not stop you if you decided to leave. Your life is—”
“—my own, yes, I got it the first time,” she cuts in with a snarky tone, inhaling another serving of smoke.
“Would you like to be left alone again? On this roof?” The clarification is as kind as it is insidious. Just when she’s thought to accuse them of testing her with these questions, they turn it into something innocent, something trivial.
“I’m always alone,” she says to no one in particular, no longer even really tipsy enough to blame the drink she had before getting up here. She takes another drag from her cigarette and closes her eyes again.
Nimble fingers steal the cigarette from her without asking and when her eyes fly open again, her mouth opening to angrily ask what the fuck this is, she watches full lips close around the butt, the orange glimmer lighting the dark between them like a red light at a busy cross section. She remains frozen with her upper body raised and supported by her uncovered elbows that painfully dig into the roof beneath her. She stares at it, at the face that refuses to look away but eventually does so to breathe out the stolen smoke sideways to avoid hitting her directly with it.
So considerate while seducing her with nothing but gestures and looks. Or did Zosia, the real Zosia, smoke? Was the promise of a nicotine hit overruling the hive mind?
Carol sits up, no longer relaxed enough to stay on her back. Her muscles are tense with something that she doesn’t like, something that’s been sitting inside of her for a long time now, ever since their first meeting, as shameful and horrid as it was, and which has since then even been spelled out loud to herself on a recording. She takes back her cigarette when it’s offered to her and puts it between her own lips again, her neck hairs rising at the implications, and looks stubbornly ahead, ignoring how close Zosia’s decided to position herself, just the ideal distance to—
“It will rain soon,” Zosia says from the side, not unkindly and in such a low voice that it only worsens everything.
Carol feels like she’s trembling with how hard she’s trying to sit still and not give in. “Bummer,” she gets out, cig still in the corner of her mouth. The next drag leaves her body through her nostrils, hands busy kneading each other. If she takes her cigarette out she will betray her trembling fingers and if she does that she might as well admit defeat.
Which she won’t.
Suddenly, something warm and soft is placed around her shoulders. Zosia’s rough-spun cardigan in dark blue smells sweet like honey. “You seemed cold,” is the explanation delivered with the gesture, hands lingering too long on her shoulders.
Just one hit, Carol, how bad can it be? It’s just heroin. Just one hit, just to know what it’s like. And then you will stop and never try it again. Easy.
Carol ignores the ghost of her past warning her. “Did I?” she whispers, hugging the material closer to herself against all reason, still not looking at the generous lender.
“Carol,” murmurs the snake into her ear, holding a forbidden promise in its hands, freshly plucked from Carol’s most sinful thoughts, presented to her in a rough timbre that has Carol shift in her seat and that pulls at her already taut ab muscles, goosebumps breaking out. It slithers into her mind like poison, it makes her press out the almost completely burned down cigarette and then she turns her face and she closes the distance between them in one swift move, all before the alarms ringing in her ears can drown out the desire to find out how limited the hive mind’s control over their stolen bodies really is. It’s a beautiful excuse for someone so clearly drowning in guilt once their mouths touch, chapped lips slanting against soft lips, barely moving. It could move away, this body that is no longer its own but belongs to all—except 13 exceptions—but it doesn’t. For a single drawn-out horrible second, she thinks of what the hive mind will do, what memories it might tap into to complete the slow-cooked torture it decided to impose on Carol as the finishing touch for her punishment. Perhaps on the very same day it came back to her, upon her own request no less.
Instead, when a short second later the lips start to move against hers, when her nose bumps softly against hers, when two warm hands find their way on each side of her face, drawing her closer she realizes her foolish mistake of assuming. She’s expected at best a kiss that stumbles like a newborn fowl trying to walk for the first time, unfamiliar and helpless, or at worst a carbon copy of kisses that lie dead and buried in her backyard.
What she gets instead is a head tilt and thumbs moving over her cheeks, before she’s drawn in even closer, shifting and sitting hip to hip, knee bumping against knee, the tilted seating position suddenly an asset not an obstacle. The height difference between doesn’t matter like this. The first stray rain drops finding their way down onto her skin don’t matter. And thinking? Thinking certainly becomes optional when the warm mouth beneath hers opens to draw her further in, dragging her down into the promising darkness of physical affection given to her by what remains of the real Zosia, or perhaps it’s been an act this whole time, or a combination of both. Her body feels not particularly attached to her very self anymore once she takes the plunge and gives in, accepts the invitation wordlessly when her body leans in and she starts exploring the taste of a fruit so forbidden, she’d want to hurl herself off this roof, head first, if she had only the time to really think. As it stands, or rather falls, her mind is wiped clean, coherency and intelligence sucked out by a tongue curling against hers, one hand wandering to her throat and tracing the line where her pulse is valiantly keeping up with her heart, before briefly pressing down against it, making her gasp and her lower lip catch against teeth. Even the brief sting isn’t enough to wake her up, to rattle her, to warn her. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, all meaning has been lost when the world ended and reshaped itself into what is now trying to get to her soul with wandering fingers to her sides, the palm belonging to those fingers now splayed flat on her stomach, with curious lips tasting faintly like her cigarette.
The uneven pitter-patter of scattered rain drops turns into an even rainfall, the growl of an approaching thunderstorm rolling closer. That’s what has her rip her head back, what has her scoot away from the being that is allowing the body to lick its lower lip with so much convincing want, Carol feels filthy.
Not even a biblical flood would be enough to wash off stain of shame crushing into her over what she’s just let happen. What she’s done.
She flees.
*
One moment she is on the roof, the next she is in the car, miles and miles away from her home, somewhere at the outskirts of the city. The car is standing still on the side of the road with the engine idling, ever since the brief but intense thunderstorm that passed over the city had become too much to drive through. Now, it’s simple rain coming down, soothingly drumming down on the roof of her car.
Carol is still wearing the clammy cardigan, and she decides to not go home tonight when she turns off the car.
8.
She slept on the backseat, replacing the cardigan with a soft blanket. It took her a long time to find rest. At one point she’d been retching at the side of the road, dry heaving over the thought of what she has kissed on her rooftop. Now, hours later, her hands still start to feel unsteady when she thinks back to her stupid conviction of being in control of her unrelenting quest to research when this push-and-pull is played by more than just one player; it’s her against the entire world. An analog player against a whole system.
She shakes her head and an involuntarily shiver runs through her body, making her flinch against the driver seat. The weather is sunny again, the sky not showing one cloud. As if the thunderstorm had never happened last night.
After a moment of staring out of the window without looking at anything in particular, she reaches for her little notebook and writes down: physical reactions not entirely controlled by the HM (see: thumb-tick).
She chews on the cap of her pen and almost creates a hole in the paper with how hard she presses down the tip of her pen a line below that: no more testing. The writing must’ve left an imprint on the next two pages with how much force she’s use to make that line.
One deep sigh later, she puts both items away again, starts the car and wants groans when the low gas warning flashes with the single most annoying warning sound this car has. “Fuck me,” she grumbles, hungry, tired, and so, so angry at herself.
She decides to go to a gas station some other time because running into anyone this morning is not something she can stomach to do.
*
(And beneath it all, guilt. An avalanche of guilt, enough that she must have borrowed future iterations of that guilt to feel it all just on this morning. It’s all concentrated on her chest area, like a heavy boulder has been placed there, making breathing feel like an endurance exercise.)
*
Zosia’s blue car is still in her drive way when she pulls up to her house, parking right next to it. And while the sight makes her stomach sink it also means that her roommate slash jailor slash curse is still here and didn’t abandon her after a point proven. Probably sitting inside. Waiting. Considering. Scheming.
She gets out of the car, grabs the cardigan and decides to face the bastards that are probably all busy laughing at her hidden away behind a beautiful facade. On her way here, she’s pictured the looks of the Joined and their knowing smiles, and her skin started to crawl. She’s since decided not to dwell on the fact that everyone just knows or she will have to scratch her own face off.
The door is open because of course it is. The dog returns to its doghouse, dutifully fetching the object of its owner and placing it gently on the floor by dropping it with a hard mask of distaste on her face. She kicks her sneakers off and listens for any noises inside her home without bothering to hide the fact that she is back. Her car is not exactly quiet. The kitchen is empty, so is the living room and the area around the guest room. She catches sight of some movement outside in the backyard and finds Zosia crouching at the grave—
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Zosia only stands up when she is done raising the gravestone she made. “It fell over last night during the storm, we just put it back how it was,” is the explanation, like she’s intellectually impaired, and maybe she is, because after all she did—
Carol cuts off her own thought. She will not think about it while looking at Helen’s grave. Without another word she marches back inside, furious.
*
“We decided to give you some space,” Zosia tells her an hour later. It sounds like a formal announcement, and it briefly reminds her of that fucking answering machine message.
“Oh yeah? Did you guys discuss it on the marketplace of ideas and then put it up to a vote?” Maybe if she will ridicule what Zosia is, maybe then all of this will just turn into a funny joke. She doesn’t turn around from her seat at the kitchen table, nor does she stop what she’s doing: blacking out any mention of the name ‘Raban’ in her latest book, just one of many copies hidden away in the dark wooden cabinet. It’s a mind-numbing task, pointless and yet soothing.
“We know that you are troubled by what happened and so we will give you some time to yourself. Should you need anything, dial 0 as always. We will answer the phone—it won’t be a recording this time.”
This almost counts as a joke, Carol thinks unhappily, if she were to ignore the patient, caring tone. She puts the black marker down and turns around in her seat, glaring at the intruder. “And then what? We will pretend nothing happened after a day or two? Just, go on with this fucked up farce of whatever the fuck this is?”
“You are angry,” Zosia notes, a worried edge to her tone, the right thumb rubbing the pad of her index finger and Carol wants to run into a wall when she spots it. “We will honor your decision, whichever it may be.”
Decision. “You have invaded successfully every part of my life aside from my body—and I won’t let you get there, if I still have a say in that,” Carol starts in a low, warning tone. “This is all pointless now anyway.” Fuck her research, fuck her belief to maybe be able to figure this out and reverse what has been done, and fuck the hive mind for ever sending this person’s body to her house.
“Remember, your life is your—”
“What life!” The table moves when she jumps up, book and black marker flying off the table. She doesn’t even spare a glance at that. “This isn’t a life! I don’t live, and neither do you! We are all just co-existing in this endless, fucked up horror flick you guys unleashed onto the world, where cannibalism is an innocent little acronym and comes in cute little milk cartons, where autonomy and independence are just words without meaning and where, pardon my French, you stupid cunts have lost respect for any kind of boundaries because you removed them all! You’re all melted together into one giant meaningless blob of nothingness, swimming in your contentment of your nothingness.” She’s breathing hard when she’s done, her own body betraying her with a terrible shift when Zosia tilts her head and gives her a pleading look, both hands lifted as if to calm her.
The blame and guilt over her own part in this, particularly what happened on the rooftop, but even in the days leading up to it, churns in her empty stomach. Not all of it meets her unfettered disgust, touch starved as she still is. And that only angers her more.
The veil of fury is not enough to blind her to what happens in a split-second when Zosia’s body starts to convulse and drop backwards and she reacts before she can think about it, because that is her body betraying her and this is her hell she’s walked into with nothing but a lit cigarette and a flimsy excuse to keep prodding and poking.
*
She is still holding Zosia’s hand when she blinks at her, a forgiving smile forming on her lips when she comes to it. “We should’ve anticipated this,” is the first thing that comes out of that now too familiar mouth and Carol tears her gaze away, looking at Walt, at Doreen, at the normalcy of her kitchen suddenly turned upside down.
It’s not entirely clear if that ‘we’ includes Carol, or not.
Her hand remains where it is. Zosia’s thumb dancing over the skin of her knuckles feels like both like encouragement and like another admission of guilt for letting it happen in the first place. “Still haven’t figured out how to stop that, huh?” she whispers, voice devoid of any feeling.
The quiet that spreads in what little distance there is between them is pregnant with meaning and Carol steals a glance at her chaperone. “You did not agree to let us stop it, and we respect your wish.”
You refuse to join us, so this is still happening, is what Carol hears in that. She has nothing to say to that.
Zosia slowly sits up, sighing. Her free hand moves to push her hair behind her ear, a movement so human it hurts to witness it when so little else is human anymore.
That same hand finds its way onto her face and wipes a tear off her cheek that she hasn’t even noticed to be there. “Carol, nothing bad happened this time,” Zosia soothes her, not removing her hand.
Well, isn’t that a relief? Rejoice, for you have not killed anyone this time!
With her anger gone, there is not much left but to capitulate. She gets to her feet with slumped shoulders and pulls Zosia to her feet while she’s at it.
It’s the kind thing to do.
9.
The beer can flies backwards upon being hit by a golf ball off the makeshift target stand and rolls with a dent towards the street leading up to this suburban dead-end. The dark pavement looks almost pristine, her message has been removed almost completely. It’s the first time she’s actually looked at the work the hive mind has done and she is quietly impressed. Only the faint white circle around the round manhole of the cul-de-sac remains, betraying to knowing eyes what has been removed.
Carol draws in a breath between parted lips and then blows some stray hair strands out of her face, her hands busy holding her golf club. The sun is low on the sky and warms her neck. There is no other reason why her skin burns there.
“We have to leave for a bit,” Zosia suddenly says from behind her, so far not having grown tired of watching Carol do trick shots to hit the empty beer cans with golf balls in her cul-de-sac, although some stray shots have broken a window or two of the houses that formerly belonged to her neighbors and now look like empty requisites of an unused film set. Neither of them cared.
Carol thinks that this is a healthier way to get some residue frustration out of her system than any of the other options her traitor of a brain can come up with. When Zosia’s words register with her, she stops aiming at her next target and looks back. “Huh?”
Zosia rises from her foldable chair, the light blue shirt put into her dark slacks as if to unnecessarily tease her with what might be beneath it by how tight the material is. “We think this is for the best.”
Carol narrows her eyes. “What? Why? Trouble in paradise?” she jokes, darkly, humorlessly, bitterly. As if.
Zosia shakes her head, never growing annoyed at her abrasive little comments and snide observations. Helen would’ve— “You have a guest approaching that does not like us.”
Carol stops swinging the golf club around and stares at her. “A guest that…?” This sounds almost like one of the 12 other Unjoined has decided to visit her, but of the few she’s met that could speak English, she’s confident to say that none of them will visit her. The only one that would maybe seem willing to see her is Koumba, but he definitely doesn’t dislike the hive mind, or rather the bodies it stole. Quite the opposite.
Somehow, it’s impossible to sneer at the guy for that when she still remembers and catches herself thinking back with embarrassing clarity to the kiss shared on her damn rooftop two days ago.
“You could come with us,” Zosia suggests, approaching her with the calm and ease of someone that knows she will not be rejected and that Carol won’t find it in herself to inch away. They are almost nose to nose when she comes to a halt, the height difference more pronounced with her wearing her heeled boots and Carol standing in her sneakers.
“Why would I do that?” Carol thinks to ask, her clammy hands pushing the club head into the pavement by pressing down on the warm, sticky handle in her white-knuckled grip. It gives her an excuse to look down, heart beating up to the back of her throat.
Zosia never answers. Instead, she briefly touches her chin to lift it up and gently forces her to meet her soft, intense, dark gaze that makes her breath catch in her throat. She sees it coming before she actually feels it, the brief contact of her lips to the corner of her mouth. It’s over before but not soon enough before her body almost moves as if to lean in further, lurching forward with a minuscule tilt that is noticed and accepted with a small grin.
“What the—”
“We’ll be back, Carol.” Zosia gives her one last smile, and then she walks away in that annoyingly attractive stride of hers. She shakes her head at herself, aghast with how she knows she’s being played, dazed with how easy it is to let herself fall for it. She should’ve asked more about that guest, she should’ve asked if he was dangerous, if he was here to—
“Carol Sturka?”
Her head whips to the side to where a deep male voice has just called her name and sees a tall man with dark hair, brown skin and wearing dark clothes standing uncertainly where the street opens up to the circle of paved asphalt. He is shouldering a backpack and his posture seems odd, a little stiff as if he was in pain or simply tired from whatever long trek he’s put behind himself. Somewhere near his feet is one of her crumpled empty cans.
Judging by his horrified and disgusted face it's not hard to guess that he’s just witnessed Zosia’s parting gesture which had been purposefully timed the way it was. It was a warning. A declaration. A hand grenade placed between two Unjoined that have to face each other now.
You bunch of little mindfuckers. Carol tears her eyes away from the stranger and stares at the bane of her existence reaching her stupid blue car, and just when she thinks she won’t look back at her again, she does. A brief glance over her shoulder with the same serene smile as always. But her eyes. Her dark, promising eyes.
Carol feels sick.
They seem to say, Mine.