Chapter Three: Nathan's Change of Heart

After a fair night's sleep, Nathan's shock has worn off.

Chapter 3: Nathan’s Change of Heart

Nathan awoke so cold he thought he’d left his bedroom window open in a drunken stupor last night. Gawd what a night! He must have been wasted beyond belief to have left his window open, and the dreams he’d had were f*****g weird. Luckily nothing as fucked up as his drunken dreams could really happen.

He stretched, eyes still closed, trying to rub some heat back into his arms when his hand fell on another body in the bed. He froze, the coldness of the skin he felt brought to mind the image of a dead body laying in bed with him. Edging away from the form under the blankets, he pulled back the edge to look in, and felt his heart drop down to his feet.

No dreams. Nathan hadn’t been dreaming at all. So terrified he could hardly breath, Nathan scrambled silently out of the room. He went into the bathroom and locked the door. A shower! A really hot shower would make everything perfectly okay again. Okay, well… it would at least warm his hypothermic body up enough to think strait. Last night’s shock had totally worn off, but now he desperately wished he could have it back.

In the bedroom, Siveka was sitting up in the center of the bed wrapped in the big fluffy blanket. Most of the day had been passed asleep, but by no means was her time wasted. Every thought of the citizens in the city had gone through her mind, tucked away in her picture memory. She’d learned the language of the area, human habits, routines, their sorrow, fear, and anger about the events of the night before. She didn’t yet understand the emotional upset, but knew that it was connected to her since she had knowingly set the storm upon them. She hadn’t been able to close her ears and they were too loud to her newborn ears. So she had made the noise stop.

Now she merely looked through the window, her extra hearing turned off. 

She knew Nathan was awake from all the moving he’d done when he gotten out of bed, but she didn’t much care to find out what he was doing at the moment. Instead she got out of the bed and went into Melinda’s room to rummage through the deceased woman’s clothing to dress herself in a long white ruffled shirt and black pinstriped shorts.

Unsure what she should do, Siveka went back to the room she’d slept in. Nathan had finished his shower from what she could hear, and was now in the kitchen, which brought up a feeling of thirst…

A ping went off in Nathan’s conscious, telling him that she was thirsty; however, he didn’t feel the same unstoppable desire to fulfill her needs as he had the night before. In fact, he was thinking of something that had nothing to do with keeping her happy and healthy: he wanted her dead. The growing sense of danger was becoming nearly unbearable as more and more shock wore off him in ripples. If he couldn’t kill her he felt sure that she would kill him.

Another ping occurred, but this one was one of his own making. The idea that blossomed over him was like a God-send, something that may also be just as dangerous as letting her live.

Combining their needs, Nathan filled a large glass with soda, hoping that the fizzing and flavor would mask the taste of rat poison and a host of cleaners. He was banking on her being too ignorant yet to know about poisons, or that she wasn’t listening to him thinking. This was his only chance though. If this didn’t work, neither would he.

Siveka sat at the window seat watching a badly burned crow stubble around the yard just a few feet away, her ears tuned solely on its thoughts. She didn’t acknowledge Nathan when he came into the room but absentmindedly took the glass of soda and raised it to her lips. For a few seconds she was so distracted by the bird’s dying moments that she didn’t notice the drink tasting terrible or that it hurt going down, but the realization was immediate, as well as the reaction. The mostly-full glass dropped to the carpet as Siveka retched its poisonous contents all over the floor in a great, gritty black wash of fluid, her eyes streaming blue liquid from the force.

Fear froze in Nathan’s chest as he watched tendrils stretch from her shadow. Try as he may to flee in absolute terror Nathan was stuck fast in place, forced to watch the slithering black things  overtake the windows and door, the snakehead-like ends searching for something. Revulsion bubbled in his stomach when they finally found him and wound up his legs like angry, sightless cobras. Panic overtook him as the things lifted him from the floor. They bound his legs and arms, wrapped tightly around his torso, snaked up his pants legs and the back of his shirt. A very thick tendril came up to his face, touching its end to his forehead as if in a kiss. For just a moment Nathan thought it was going to be harmless, like a puppy, but then it wiggled its tip into his mouth and shot down his throat as the other ends bounded into him.

He gagged and vomited, only to choke on it. His eyes widened and popped out with two smaller tendril heads pushing them out . The large tendril inside his windpipe and all the way down through his intestines exploded with spines and spun, grinding him from the inside while the fat tendrils on the outside constricted with a sick crunch of bone.

And then it was over. The black things retreated to Siveka’s side, trying to comfort her, but Nathan’s body remained airborne despite the lack of hold-up. With nothing to plug the holes his churned remains spilled out. Mucus dripped from his ruptured sinuses, waste and bile pouring from everywhere else. Gleaming splinters of bone stuck out from his legs and arms in a porcupine fashion. Broken ribs stuck out of his chest disgustingly.

Siveka lay on the carpet unable to move, exhausted from vomiting, her body weak. The cold that rolled off her skin soothed her as well as solidified the bodily fluids into congealed masses. Nathan had tried to make her stop… What was so terrible about her that others wanted her to be gone? She didn’t understand.

Thirst soon drove her to find water, but she was still too weakened to walk. The black tendrils massed together into a ghostly shape, lifting her in misshapen arms like a child to carry her to the kitchen where water would bring her back to health.

Author's Note

This one was a little gory, but what did you think?