My breathing hitched as I saw the first flake of Kay’s dark skin on her forearm rise, curl, and fall off, leaving behind a pitch black mark, like a chipped painting revealing the blank canvas beneath. No, no, no, no. My heart felt like it was shriveling up.
Another patch of skin gently peeled off and fluttered to the floor. The Tree influence injected itself into my panicked mind and I grabbed her arm. This only served to speed up the process, two more spots fell away like dying leaves, revealing symmetrical black shapes on her arm. The change spread like a disease, moving down her arm, skin mottling in random places.
Kay reacted, fingers spasming and clenching as the skin on one of her knuckles parted ways. After a moment of paralyzing anxiety, I fell back to stroking her head. There was nothing else I could do for her.
The flakes of black piled onto the cold concrete floor, twisting and fluttering at the slightest air current. There were streaks of dark purple on the gathered remnants of Kay’s discarded flesh. I finally had the wherewithal to check her breathing. To my relief, she was no longer coughing blood and while her breathing was unsteady with pain, she was able to draw full breaths instead of the short ones that made me fear she was drowning with blood in her lungs.
The molting didn’t stop at the surface. As Kay’s arm reached the point of being as black as a starless city night, more fluttering shapes fell. And they were falling off faster, in larger clumps. Like a house of cards, Kay’s arm began to collapse, the integrity being robbed as it disintegrated. In a final sickening movement, her upper arm became too thin and detached entirely. I watched it fall to the ground and disperse as if it were made of black snow.
Kay was left huddled in the black leaves of her body, only a blackened stump left of her arm. Her pained breathing settled and she began to move her head in small movements, as if waking up. I dropped my hand from her head as her eyes began to shift against their eyelids and then she opened them. Her eyes were only hazy for a moment before it became painfully evident in her expression that she felt the wrongness in her body.
She mouthed a word, “What?”
I flinched as my arm stung from something. Looking down, I saw that one of her ‘leaves’ had fallen on me. The subtle patterns of iridescent purple ran across the surface, catching the little light we had from the doorway, showing that the leaf had bent into a V shape with the bottom point resting on my arm. I brushed it off and flinched again as the leaf moved. It fluttered like an animal. The little black creature moved and it became apparent that the two sides of the V were wings. It was a butterfly.
Kay’s gaze settled on me and the butterflies moved as one. Hundreds of pricks of pain hit me as the butterflies swarmed over me, settling on me for painful slivers of time. I didn’t try to brush them off this time. Kay’s face, obscured by the black Shapes that moved around us, was my only concern. In her gaze I saw something that made it easy to endure the needles of pain. She was still human. A hurting human, glaring through the wrongness she felt in the world and herself, but still she was herself. This was not the animalistic, almost alien hate that I had seen in the Aberrants.
Tom was getting a similar treatment by the butterflies and to his credit he was trying desperately to remain still. He hugged himself to reduce the surface area for the butterflies to land on. Other than the look of distress on his face, he didn’t seem to be reacting to his own dose of Dice. That concerned me too, but for now it was a relief. Perhaps it was the same Dice that Graham had used, with no outward physical alterations.
Kay’s eyes moved away as she seemed to realize the discomfort she was causing and the butterflies followed her sight, covering the surface of whatever she viewed.
“Sorry,” I read the word from Kay’s lips. I judged from her expression that she had said this somewhat absently.
“It’s a lot to take in,” I said slowly, making sure I didn’t misspeak the words since I couldn’t hear them. “Take your time.”
Tom said something that Kay reacted to. I turned to him. “I’m sorry… wasn’t…couldn’t think of any…” His mouth moved too fast for me to parse. I got the gist of what he was saying.
Kay glanced upwards at his face before lowering her gaze to his feet. The butterflies covered Tom’s shoes. “I don’t like this,” she said, at the edge of tears.
Tom moved to hug her and she leaned away from him. “Not yet,” she said. “It feels like I could fall apart. I need to… handle this.”
I shook at the thought of Tom hugging Kay and her entire body collapsing into butterflies. What would that mean? Would it be that she would never reform, stuck with a tiny part of her being inside each individual butterfly? Questions with no real purpose other than to drive my heart into a dark corner.
I needed to move. This was poison. The changes, the guilt, it made me want to curl up and never move again. But Nell was counting on me.
Tom was saying something to Kay. I put a hand on his shoulder and he stopped and turned to me. There was a pause as the Tree beat against the school walls. Strangely, I could hear the waves now, even though I wasn’t sure if it was just my brain making up sounds. There was a static to it, like a radio crackling between channels.
“I need to leave,” I said. “This won’t stop if I don’t reach Nell.”
Tom’s face was aghast. “You’re leaving us?”
“I’m sorry.” I looked at Kay who kept her eyes on the ground. She was trembling and holding her remaining hand to her stump. “I will find you again when I’m done. I’ll do whatever I can for you then, but for now find somewhere safe and sit tight. Try to get a handle on whatever your Shape is.” I meant this for both of them but I looked pointedly at Tom. “Try to stay calm. I promise you’ll be okay.”
I felt both their gazes on me as I walked over to the husk of Alek who was still breathing. His eyes no longer seemed crazed with fear. I noted the phone lying next to him, the headphones tangled around his fingers. I reached for it and Alek’s brittle fingers grabbed me with surprising strength.
His lips parted and he spoke with glacial slowness, “I saw it. Her death. Blood on our hands.” He paused and a strange expression crossed his face. “It’s funny. The world is filled with me, yet I feel so alone.”
I hadn’t wanted to understand him but it happened anyway. My hand closed around his and my words surprised me. “You aren’t alone. I saw your memories. The Ring is your family. Helen said you became consumed by your duties but I don’t think that’s true. You were trying hard because you cared about your friends and you wanted the best for them. Helen was just jealous.”
Each word came slower than the last as if Alek was burning the last of his strength to speak, “I think I’m happy that you were stronger. It feels nice to lie here, unable to lift a finger.” Alek’s grip eased up and I lifted it off of my arm and placed it on his chest. His eyelids closed and he looked relaxed.
One down, how many more to go?
I stood and tapped the phone. Song names scrolled by in a playlist titled Tuning. I pocketed it without really knowing why. It seemed important somehow.
Giving Tom and Kay one final wave goodbye, I headed to the door. Kay’s butterflies moved around me as I stepped outside.
A hand gripped my shoulder and spun me around. Tom wrapped me up in a bear hug, his hair brushing my cheek as he squeezed me tightly. Then he pulled away and looked at me seriously, speaking slowly so I could read his lips. “Be cautious leaving. Help is here, but they won’t let you go off on your own if they see you.”
I looked at him strangely. “How do you know that?”
He frowned and shrugged. “I don’t know. Just a feeling, I guess. Be careful.”
I nodded and clapped him on the shoulder. Giving him a grin, I said, “I suppose I owe you a basketball game sometime.”
“Definitely,” he stated flatly, his expression resuming its standard position, pretending to be serious rather than actually being.
I turned and left, feeling the last of Kay’s butterflies leave me shoulder.