Page 7 of Spread Me

The specimen is exactly where Kinsey saw it last. The edges of the exam room door are sealed with multiple layers of duct tape, and there’s a torn half sheet of printer paper taped to the window that says don’t virus open inside in Mads’s handwriting.

“Do you think it’s safe to go in there?”

Kinsey says, as if the sign isn’t clear on that question.

“Definitely,”

Domino replies. They shoot her a lopsided grin, tug at the collar of their floral button-down shirt.

“It’s just a virus, Boss. It can’t hurt you.”

Kinsey frowns. She knows that the logic of what Domino just said doesn’t follow—of course a virus can hurt her, it can hurt anyone. But it feels right, what they’ve said. It’s always felt right. Some part of her, deep down in a place that can’t access reason, believes that viruses really can’t hurt her. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that she believes viruses won’t hurt her—that the strength of her desire, the force of her love, would be enough to make them treat her differently from everybody else.

That belief is part of what made her seek out remote research postings in the first place. She needed some distance from the constant waves of viral illnesses that kept washing over all of humanity. It was too hard to make herself get the vaccines and wear the masks and bathe her hands in sanitizer—to enforce that distance between herself and the thing that made her entire body pulse with desire. She couldn’t stand the sound of her neighbor coughing on the other side of her thin apartment walls. The knowledge that if she just put her tongue into that neighbor’s mouth for a few seconds, she could have their virus inside her body.

She couldn’t keep waging the war between the part of her mind that knew she could die from something like that—and the part of her heart that was absolutely certain she wouldn’t.

She’s never heard anyone else put voice to that feeling. It’s just a virus. It can’t hurt you. She waits for Domino to laugh, to give her some sign that they’re joking, but they don’t.

Kinsey gestures to the duct-tape-sealed door.

“After you,”

she says. Once they’re inside, she pauses.

“Huh. Did Mads already do their decontamination thing in this wing?”

“Hm? Oh, probably. Why?”

“It should fucking reek in here. Wonder what gives,”

she says as she pulls a fistful of blue nitrile gloves from the wall-mounted dispenser, a hard-won concession from TQI after the first month of Mads’s campaign for basic personal protective equipment.

“Why would it reek?”

She doesn’t bother trying to hide her what’s-wrong-with-you reaction to Domino’s question.

“There’s been a corpse in here for days, is why. And you’re being weirdly casual about this whole mystery virus. Why aren’t you more worried?”

She double-layers her gloves, reaches inside the disposable gown box where she only finds a startled daddy longlegs. Debates whether it’s necessary to bother with a mask. Decides, with a flirtatious flush of rebellious impulsivity, against. What does it matter if she leaves her mouth nude, once she’s already kissed the contaminated air?

“Don’t call it that.”

“What?”

Kinsey turns to find Domino looking at her with startling vulnerability.

“Don’t call it a corpse. It was alive when we brought it inside. It might still be alive now.”

Kinsey turns to regard the specimen. It lies limp on the tarp, precisely where she left it. Its segmented body has a wasp-narrow waist, the barrel chest and wide pelvis on either side of that waist forming a stark hourglass. It’s on its side, all six of its long multi-jointed legs tangled together, its coyote-head lolling at an ecstatic angle.

It looks like a dead saint, Kinsey thinks. Operative word: dead. It’s not moving, not breathing, not turning to fix her with a hypnotizing eyeless gaze.

But if Domino doesn’t want her using the C word, so be it.

“What would you prefer me to call the specimen? A body?”

“You could call it by a name, if you wanted. You could call it anything,”

Domino says.

“It really is safe to be in here, Kinsey. You can feel that, can’t you? It wouldn’t hurt you.”

They seem serious enough that Kinsey doesn’t know how to react. She doesn’t want to go along with the joke, but now she’s not sure that it actually is a joke, and she doesn’t know how to ask.

“Did Weatherman indicate a break in the storm anytime soon? Maybe we can just take this thing back outside.”

She doesn’t want to take it back outside.

“Nah,”

Domino replies lightly.

“We should keep it in here. And we should all stay inside just in case, too. Do you need me to take notes?”

Kinsey gives herself a shake, tells herself not to worry.

“Yeah, that’d be great. Do you want a laptop or a notebook or … anything?”

Domino shakes their head.

“I’ll remember. I remember everything you do, Boss.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I pay close attention. I love watching you work,”

they add, their gaze flicking down over her body.

“What are you going to do to the specimen?”

Kinsey has spent her entire adult life ignoring her instincts. She knows better than to listen to her body when it tells her what it wants, what it needs, what it yearns for. But it’s screaming at her now, too loud to ignore. Something is happening that she doesn’t like. Something in the way Domino is looking at her, something in the way they’re talking to her.

When she asks herself if she needs to do something about it, she finds no clear answers. There’s discomfort, yes, and confusion—but also something she’s never felt toward another human before. A muted, distant sense of desire.

She turns away from Domino so fast that she stumbles, catching herself on the edge of the exam table. The tarp crinkles under her palm.

“I’m going to examine it,”

she snaps.

“That’s what we’re here to do.”

“Do you like it?”

Domino asks. Their voice comes from just behind her left ear, their breath warm on her neck. Kinsey glances sideways to find their face just inches from hers.

“Do you like how it looks, I mean?”

“Yes,”

Kinsey answers without thinking, turning back to the specimen.

“It’s fascinating.”

She reaches one gloved hand toward it, strokes the bristly fur on its flank. Sand rains down out of its coat, falling onto the tarp with a soft patter that sounds just like the earliest wind of the sandstorm against Kinsey’s bedroom wall.

“What do you like about it?”

Kinsey still doesn’t trust this—doesn’t trust Domino’s warmth against her back or the frank seduction in their voice—but she doesn’t tell them to stop, either. She looks over the specimen, studies the shape of it.

“It’s unique,”

she says.

“It’s ours.”

“Ours,”

Domino repeats. She feels light pressure at her waist and looks down to see their hands resting on her hips.

“D,”

she says, her hand still resting on the specimen. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

they breathe, so close she can taste their teeth.

“Don’t. I mean it,”

she says, even though for the first time in her life, she’s not entirely sure that she does mean it. It must be the specimen, she tells herself, the anxiety of proximity to the thing, combined with the residual crotch-ache that comes with three days of nonstop masturbation. She tells herself that she’s confused. Of course she doesn’t want Domino.

They tug on one of her hips, spinning her slowly around to face them. They look down at her with puzzled, wounded eyes.

“You don’t, though. You don’t mean it.”

“I can and I do. Let go of me,”

she says. She tries to put force behind the words, tries to will away the bizarre frisson of desire that keeps stirring in her.

But Domino doesn’t let go.

“I know you like me,”

they insist.

“Why are you acting like you don’t?”

“I don’t like you, not … not like this.”

She raises her hands to their chest, intending to push them away—but stops. Something under their shirt is moving. “What—”

“What don’t you like? I can fix it,”

they insist.

The movement under her hands doesn’t stop. It’s a restless pulsating push, like something fighting to get out from beneath the cloth. “D,”

she breathes. She means it with concern but it comes out wrong, like the whisper of a lover, and she sees them hear it wrong, feels them press closer to her in response.

“I can fix it,”

they say again.

“You like my mouth, right? I saw you looking at it earlier. You like this.”

They flick their tongue out, run it across their bottom lip, and Kinsey realizes that she wasn’t confused or hallucinating when she noticed it earlier. It’s forked and flat, quick and flexible, reptile.

“Your tongue,”

she says, and again it comes out all wrong. She can see it on Domino’s face—they don’t hear horror. They hear lust.

They lick their lips again, slower this time. “This,”

they say.

“You like this. That’s good. I can work with that.”

The pulsing movement inside their shirt turns into a ripple of flesh. She jerks away from them, slamming the small of her back into the metal edge of the exam table. It slides away with a screech of stainless steel on linoleum. She hears a crinkle, a slide of plastic over metal, a whump as the specimen falls to the floor.

But she doesn’t turn to look. She can’t take her eyes off Domino. Their shirt is visibly moving now, something writhing beneath the fabric. Something spreading.

“Just give me a few minutes and I’ll fix it,”

they say insistently. Their tongue flicks out of their mouth again, tasting the air as they look down at their own chest. They start undoing their shirt buttons with clumsy, trembling fingers.

“You’re going to love this. I promise.”

Kinsey wants to run, but her legs won’t move. She drags herself along the edge of the exam table, willing herself to bolt for the door. You said no, and Domino isn’t listening, she thinks. Domino isn’t listening and they are taking their shirt off. They are taking their shirt off and you need to run.

But Domino isn’t pursuing her. Domino isn’t even touching her. Domino is unbuttoning their shirt and their eyes are wide with what looks for all the world like genuine hope, and something is moving under that shirt, and some part of Kinsey, some part of her that is stronger than her thinking mind, wants to stay and see it.

Three buttons in, Domino lets out a growl of impatience, then rips their way through the rest. One button flies off and hits Kinsey in the chest, but she doesn’t care. She doesn’t even feel it.

“There,”

they breathe, looking up at her with an open, earnest grin.

“That. You like that, right?”

Kinsey has no words, because she knows now what was shifting beneath her hand.

Domino’s chest has erupted into a rash of mouths. Pillowy lips and blunt white teeth. Each one opens invitingly, revealing a warm wet darkness within. As she watches, the mouth closest to Domino’s collarbone stretches wide. A raw wad of new pink flesh pinches itself up out of that darkness, stretching and writhing to form a tongue just like the one in the mouth on their face.

“Well?”

They look up at her with unadulterated hope.

“Do you like that?”

Kinsey wishes she didn’t.