WnW 4.2

Mom folded her arms and leaned against the wall, making it clear that there was no getting past her without a conversation.

“You were out late,” she said, frowning.

I unceremoniously dropped my backpack to the ground and took a seat on the floor. “Yeah.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Liar.” She smiled, but there was some sadness in her eyes.

I nodded, resting my chin on my knee.

“Okay, we can play twenty questions and see how much you feel like telling me. Did anyone get hurt?”

The lump in my throat came back. “Yeah,” I whispered.

“Was it people you know?”

“One person I know. One I don’t.”

“Did they get the help they needed?”

My eyes flicked up and Omar stood in the hallway behind my mother. He didn’t look unhappy. Just content to watch.

“I don’t know.”

Mom spoke softer, “Okay. Did you get hurt?”

Twenty different moments of blood and tearing flesh flashed against the back of my eyes. A month ago I never would have guessed that I would experience such things. Just remembering the pain made my hands shake. It felt more real now than any of those moments had felt at the moment they happened. Yet my body was unmarked, with no scars or lasting injuries. 

My heart started beating faster. My blood on Aaron’s sickle. On the Tongue’s claws. Holy shit. Holy shiiiiit…

“Hey. Hey. Shh…” Mom crouched down and brought my head to her shoulder.

“I’m fine. It’s fine,” I whispered, fighting back tears. My whole upper body was shaking and I felt cold.

“No it’s not. Clearly it’s not.”

“I’m not hurt. Other people got hurt.”

Mom’s voice vibrated through my skull, numbing the headache, “Nick, sometimes I wonder if you feel every single one of the things you see other people go through.”

“But I’m still here.” So are they. Honesty slipped through my lips, “I went to Dad’s old work.”

“Oh honey, are you still thinking about that?”

“It wasn’t about what happened. I just wanted to help people. But it ended up in disaster.”

Mom just rubbed my back.

“Are you mad at me?”

She laughed and said, “I am. Not because of any of that though. You’re an adult, you can do whatever you want and I’ll support you. No, I’ve been mad since you were a kid. You’ve always been like this. Running off to have adventures all on your own. You have always been a lone soul like that. I’m just mad that I can’t help you more. But I’ve resigned myself to it.” 

She nuzzled my head with her nose. “And I’m happy whenever you share any part of your adventure with me.”

Stretching out my fingers, I realized that my panic had subsided. I gave her a hug. “Thanks, Mom.”

“Anytime. I should tell you some stories of what I got up to at your age. It might surprise you how much trouble I got into.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” I said, struggling to my feet. “I’m going to get some rest and see if things look different in the morning.”

“That’s some sage wisdom,” Mom said, getting up and walking straight through Omar. She stopped and I wondered for a moment if she had felt something. She turned back and squinted at me. “Just to be clear, there isn’t going to be any cops knocking on that door?”

“I don’t think so,” I said weakly.

“Alright. Good night, we can talk more in the morning.”

“Good night.”

I watched her go back to her bedroom and shut the door. Omar didn’t disappear this time, he just stood there quietly.

“Thanks for not talking,” I whispered.

“She wouldn’t have heard anything,” Omar replied, tapping his temple.

I pushed my wet hair out of my face with heavy arms. “Ah. A personal tormentor?” 

Omar just smiled softly. I walked around him and stood in front of Mom’s door for a moment, listening to her breathing become rhythmic as she fell back asleep. She had always been quick to rouse and quick to slumber.

I went to my room and quietly shut the door, unsurprised to see Omar standing there when I turned around. I flicked on my ceiling fan and opened my window to introduce a bit more background noise to hopefully not wake my mother again.

“I’m a little surprised it’s you,” I said, rolling my shoulders and feeling the stiffness already setting in. “Aaron and Beth seemed more like the type to come back as a vengeful ghost.”

“You didn’t absorb them.”

I nodded and caught myself drifting.

“You’re taking this rather well.”

I smiled wryly. “I guess the bar for freaking me out has been raised. But how do you know Aaron and Beth? You weren’t there.”

Omar made a confused face. “Who do you think I am?”

The headache pulsed with my annoyance. I had little brain power to spend on this. “You said you were Omar. Was that a lie?”

“The wording was different, but what you wanted to ask was: what was the man’s name before he became the Tongue? That was the question I answered. If you want to ask who I am, well, you might have to answer that yourself.”

I frowned at him. “Can you, um, turn around?”

He obliged and I started taking off my wet clothing. “So you know Omar. But you also know what happened to me. How does that make sense?”

“Well, you did eat Omar’s brain, along with the rest of him. Perhaps you absorbed his memories.”

“And that made me go crazy and start talking to… myself? A version of myself that has the memories I stole?”

‘Omar’ considered that for a moment before nodding. “That makes sense. This is new to your brain, so it made up me to deal with it. A kind of emergency partition to protect itself.”

“I’ve… eaten parts of people before. Even just earlier tonight,” I said, thinking of Spike who I’d taken the skin off of his fingers. “But why would this happen?”

“Can’t help you there. Assimilation seems to take everything and convert it into something a Wolf can use. I suppose it’s good to use every part of the buffalo,” Omar said jokingly.

I stared at him, aghast. “That’s so fucked. I killed him and now I’m wearing his face and cracking jokes about his demise?”

“What’s done is done,” Omar said solemnly. “If anything, I get the feeling that Omar is happy that he gets to live on in some way. Even humour is a way of honoring the dead.”

“Why am I disagreeing with myself?” I said, shaking my head. “Shouldn’t we have the same opinion?”

“We aren’t the same,” Omar said. “I have Omar’s memories.”

Guilt hit me like a truck. I wanted to apologize, but that would only be apologizing to myself.

“Fuck,” I said and went to my closet. I grabbed a towel, squeezing it tightly. “Did he suffer?”

“Yes. But it was like a nightmare. It didn’t feel real to him. Much of his personality was already gone the moment he got injected.”

“Was he afraid to die?”

“For a moment. But it didn’t define him.”

My stomach flipped. “How can you be sure?”

“I just am. I remember how it felt. Do you want to remember too?”

I thought about it as I wiped myself down with the towel. When I was dry, I put on some loose clothes. The shirt was difficult to put on, I was shaking again.

“You’re scared to remember,” he said.

“Yes,” I admitted. “What if I change? What if I’m not myself?”

“You will change. There’s no question. Everything that happens changes you, whether you like it or not.”

“I just wish I could talk to him,” I mused, going over to sit on the bed. “Could you pretend? You have his memories, right? All of them?”

Omar looked thoughtful. “I have no idea if it’s all of them. But yeah, that could work. Let’s try.”

He closed his eyes. A moment later, I wasn’t looking at the same person. His feet spread further apart. His shoulders moved forward and he immediately reached up to ruffle his hair. The relaxed expression became one of easy confidence.

“Omar.”

“Nick,” he said, sounding different. 

“I…” The guilt was so heavy. “I’m sorry.”

“For?”

My mouth was dry. I lowered my head. “For killing you. For not stopping the people that turned you into a monster. I was so caught up in my own problems.”

Omar waved a hand. “Bro. You don’t know me. Why would you stick your neck out for a stranger? Makes no goddamn sense.”

“Then why is this so hard?” I asked, face burning.

Omar said nothing. He sighed and threw himself onto the bed next to me. The bed didn’t shake and the blankets didn’t move.

“Do you read books, Nick? Stories?”

“Not much recently.” I mumbled.

“I read bedtime stories to my gran every night before she passed. You know what every story has? An ending. Even if it’s a thirty book series there’s always an ending. Wouldn’t be satisfying without one, y’know? That’s all this was. My ending.”

“But… you didn’t want to die, right?”

“Yeah, well. We don’t always get what we want. The trick is to enjoy what you get, regardless. You think I aspired to be a dealer? Nah, man. But life went on, and it was still a life. A story.”

I stared at my hands and made tiny shapes of bone between my palms.

“Why are you doing all this, Nick?”

“People keep forcing me to be something I hate.”

“Bullshit.”

I looked at him, confused.

He tapped his head. “They can’t force you to be anything. You of all people should know this. People can force you to do all kinds of things, but you are you. Just be.”

I stared at Omar’s vibrantly green sneakers. What did I even want? Even all the way back at the beginning, I hadn’t thought about why I helped Chase in that alleyway. It was easier to just go with the flow than to think about what I wanted to be.

But maybe… if I kept changing, I would find what I was looking for.

“Okay,” I breathed. “I’m ready. Give me the memories.”

“Shit. You sure? You don’t owe me anything.”

“I want to. I think it’s important to honor you in some way. To carry a piece of you with me.”

Omar shook his head. “Alright then, here goes nothing.” He reached out and time seemed to slow down. His finger grew closer and closer, the painful tension building in my head, threatening to split my skull. Then he made contact and whatever gate that had been holding the memories back broke, letting it all pour in.

In an instant I was no longer in my room. I was flung across a thousand different times and places.

An old lady rested in bed. “Omar, are you going out again?”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t believe it. My own flesh and blood, a criminal.”

“Shut up, gran. You ain’t bringing in any dough. I gotta do what I gotta do.”

The lady’s face softened and I knew she loved him. “Damn straight. Sort out your life, Omar. Don’t worry about me.”

My heart flooded with fondness. “Love you gran.”

I pulled out of the memory, reeling. Then I dove in again.

A man lay in Omar’s arms. Blood seeped from his chest.

“Close one, eh, Omar?”

I remembered the tears spilling down his cheeks.

“Ahh, don’t be doing that bro. This is just a goodbye. You can handle that, can’t you?”

Omar sniffed. “I ca- Yeah.”

I felt these moments. I treasured them. How could I not? I entered another.

Omar walked down the street. He didn’t care where he was going. Stylish green kicks adorned his feet and he bopped with every step. It was the small things that kept him going.

How many memories had I entered? I searched and searched but I’d already seen them all. That was it. It wasn’t the full picture. Some had been lost. But I remembered Omar.

Omar closed the book, placing it on his gran’s sleeping chest. The heartbeat monitor pinged loudly as he held her hand.

I think I get it.

I was back in my room, gazing at the ceiling. Omar was gone, he no longer lay next to me on the bed.

I held a hand up to the ceiling. “I’ll remember all of them. That’s what I’ll do. Until I can find out what I want. I’ll stop the monsters and remember them how they were. That’s how I’ll be me.”