Page 9 of The Bleeding Woods

Well, well, well . . . what have we here?

Hidden behind the passenger window of an obnoxiously boxy vehicle sits a woman too divine to be real. With eyes like the earth and pupils as dark as midnight, she is a caged bird who’s grown too accustomed to bars. She is a lovely, frowning thing, desperate to disappear.

Three other humans indulge in her presence, though they are clearly unworthy of it.

The youngest of them races from their vehicle on footsteps made clumsy by impatience.

My little bird follows him, too graceful for this mediocre plane, her form elegantly failing to fit the mold assigned to it.

What a pleasure it is to observe her. Her hair sits in gentle tangles from scalp to waist, like chocolate melting down the edge of a strawberry.

I’m certain those plush pink lips are far sweeter.

I’d like to see them smeared bare and parted breathlessly. I’d like to kiss her.

However, I have much to learn, starting with the title tasked with encapsulating her otherworldly essence.

I’d compare it to that of an angel. Dr. Hemlock made sure I learned a great deal about angels.

They are said to be spun by virtuous hands, clothed in lace and light.

Unlike them, my little bird isn’t tied down by the weight of transient goodness.

Something dark exists in her. Something diabolic.

Something like the shadows dwelling inside me.

No.

I can’t possibly think such nonsense, not about a human being.

I have a higher purpose here, and that purpose does not include the frivolities of the flesh.

Skin-to-skin connection would be a welcome reprieve from my solitude, but I wasn’t designed to deal out affection.

I wasn’t created for fleeting caresses and idle petting. I can’t want it; I don’t want it.

Besides, perfect as she is, she’s on the wrong side of the war.

She’s one of them. She’s one with Earth’s greatest affliction, a nanocyte in service of the infection.

Just as the siren song of human normalcy once lured me into submission, she’s singing a ballad with her batting lashes.

I won’t succumb. I won’t want for a life that can never be mine.

I have a higher purpose, a much higher purpose, and it is superior to longing gazes and nonlethal touch.

It . . . wouldn’t hurt to get a closer look at her, though.

My cells alchemize into their frailest form: Homo sapiens camouflage.

Oh, how Hemlock used to praise me for it.

It sickens me now, but our anatomy should match for the time being.

I have to get close enough to her to douse the fire blazing through my innards.

I have to see her for what she truly is: a bacterial microbe in a global pandemic of pride, violence, stupidity, and greed.

I am experiencing a psychotic symptom of loneliness and nothing more.

Nothing. More.

I’ll kill this inconsequential obsession and be done with it.

The moment she enters the ancient petrol station’s restroom, I soften her mind with telepathic kisses.

From across the ailing marketplace, I send forth invisible fingertips to smooth the ridges of her brain.

She puts up a fight most cannot. An uncanny amount of resistance pushes back against my touch, igniting curiosity, wonder, and .

. . despite my better judgment, desire for more.

The harder I press into her psyche, the more valiantly she erects her walls.

It is as though we are dancing with one another, communicating.

For her to communicate with me, she would have to be . . .

It’s not possible. All of the embryos grown alongside me were boiled into soft mounds of multicolor mush. Hemlock and her goons made sure of it. If one had escaped, I would have known. I was preoccupied, but I wasn’t blind.

It’s completely impossible. There are no more of my kind. I am alone; to be alone is my destiny and my cross to bear. It is what they designed me for.

But this beautiful woman, this beam from the ethereal void, this slithering slice of starless shadow . . . she is impossibility incarnate. She is disallowed daydreams come alive. She is real, she is here, and she is just like me.

She and I are one and the same, bound by shackles buried in the nucleic acids that define our most authentic vessels.

We share the same accursed blood, existing as chemically induced deviations from our creators.

I can sense it—no, I can see it. She is divine divergence, down to the twisting spirals of her genetic code.

It’s like looking in a mirror. We are both horrible monstrosities, and at long last, I am no longer alone. Neither of us is alone.

She stammers through her words, likely difficult on the human tongue.

It took me a very long time to speak. I wonder how long it’s taken her.

She presents a bundle of cacao-based confections as her eyes threaten to mesmerize me, her voice a melody without background music.

I get high on her essence, balmy seas I’d swim in forever.

“I’ll be in the car. Come out when you’re done flirting, Clara,” the youngest human says, his voice timid and quivering.

Clara.

Humans love to label themselves, don’t they?

They love to exaggerate their potential with meaningful titles, so I seldom bother to remember their sequences of introductory letters.

In this instance, that is far from the case.

Mother’s—Hemlock’s—dictionaries come to mind.

Clara means bright and beautiful, clarity and truth.

There is nothing more befitting of the exquisite creature who stands before me.

I need to offer her something equally, so when she asks for my title, something far less callous than JS-7R. I think of dictionaries, of words within them I’d once felt drawn to. Julian? No . . . Jacob? Heavens, no. Jett? Jack? Jesse?

Jasper.

When I utter it, she smiles, and seeing her smile produces a sensation like no other.

That will be it, then. Jasper, because it makes Miss Clara smile.

For the first time in my dreadful existence, I yearn to keep the smile there rather than urge it into a scream.

To lose her would leave me in shambles, so I mustn’t let her slip away.

Some delightful twist of fate delivered her to my doorstep, and I will not squander it.

Unfortunately, as quickly as our reunion manifests, it is interrupted by the scrawny fist of the young one.

Before I can whisk her into our new life and let the nectary sound of her name drip from my lips forever, the little nuisance pulls her beyond my reach.

Her fleeting footsteps make me want to massacre him on the spot, but I must control my temper.

Anxiousness uncharacteristic of me arises as she rejoins the others.

The blond at the wheel might choose to drive south, stealing her beyond the dimensional barrier I’ve yet to rip open.

The moments before his purring engine springs to life are the longest of my life.

Relievingly, the wheels screech in the right direction, leaving only a cloud of dust in the world beyond my domain.

They cross the threshold. They enter my forest.

She enters my forest.

A laugh riding on exuberant air ravages my lungs.

Heart racing and stomach soaring, I feel my resolve triple in intensity.

I return to Agent Brian Bexley, thank the EHKI for their donation, and pluck a flowering blood rose from between his teeth.

The scent of death, anomalous and aromatic, falls from its petals.

Siphoning the power from his lapsed life force, I replenish my abilities in preparation.

Today, I will not just be an abandoned antibiotic.

Today, I will come into contact with my own medicine.

I follow their Hummer for hours, a shadow.

My natural physique grants me the height and thinness of the surrounding trees, so it is easy enough to blend in.

I must gather intel on the blockages standing between Miss Clara, Clara, Clara, and me.

The other female would be easiest to subdue.

Beings who speak as loudly and frown as stoically as she does are always weaker than they seem.

Despairing spirits are easily diminished.

In fact, they do most of the work when self-destruction is stimulated.

The blond behind the wheel appears confident, but even from this distance, I can tell he is not. Something plagues him—desire, perhaps? Clara does not offer a cure. His actions around her are maladroit, which leaves plenty of room for opportunity.

The smallest human will be my biggest challenge. Already afraid but unwavering in nature, he was the first one to risk my future. Untouched by insecurity and unaffected by life’s most delightful distraction, he poses a problem that must be dealt with immediately. Primarily.

Then there is my beautiful Clara.

I adore the way her eyes scour my garden of death.

I’d give anything to oblige her curiosities and have her eyes scour me with the same mystified enthusiasm.

I don’t want to assume too much of her yet, though.

I won’t overanalyze what I’d rather take my time exploring.

However, my heart cannot help but beat to a tune identical to hers.

We are already in sync. Both of us know longing.

Both of us know the envy of watching the world pass from behind intangible bars.

Both of us seek freedom, and I am rapidly finding it in her.