Immortal Clay

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

MY STRINGS cut, I collapsed. Rough carpet scratched my face as I hit the ground. The knuckles of my left hand cracked against hard tile. Dust and vanilla filled my nose. Air huffed out of my lungs. I choked, then involuntarily sucked in another breath.

I didn’t want to breathe. I didn’t want anything.

White carpet a fraction of an inch from my open eye. Tight knobs of fabric in a rippled pattern.

I knew this carpet.

My living room.

I coughed. My lungs burned with dust. Sheila never let the carpet get dusty. She’d badger Julie into vacuuming. One of her chores.

But Sheila was dead.

I’d killed her.

And Julie.

No, not me. Kevin had killed her.

Except…I was Kevin.

Kevin’s appendix had burst a few years ago. I remembered the surgical recovery room. Anesthesia-darkened vision, turning overhead fluorescents dim. A looming shadow of a face said “Yes, you lived,” and I—he—said “Aw, shit.” Occasional glimpses of a light. A ceiling tile. Sheila’s face, worried, lips moving too slowly for the words rattling from her. Awakening the next morning, with tubes in veins and cold sterile metal rails along each side of the bed.

Looking back, the surgeon hadn’t taken an appendix. He’d sliced out a chunk of a life, and stitched together the severed ends of time as neatly as he did the healthy chunks of intestine around excised necrotic tissue.

Escaping Absolute’s grip felt like coming out of anesthesia.

The gun bucking in my hand. Sheila’s skull scattering like a thrown puzzle. Julie crumpling halfway through a scream. Those were my memories. Mine.

My sight blurred. I clutched at the carpet. Sheila loved vanilla, and breathing that smell filled me with her absence even as I coughed in the dust. Tears drowned my vision.

If Kevin hadn’t killed Sheila and Julie, they would be here now. Except they wouldn’t be them. They’d be copies. Like me.

I curled around my gut, trying to hold myself together as a sob ripped free of my chest.

The house echoed around me. No sound of television. No radio. Julie always had music going, electronic stuff that made me grit my teeth. The absence hurt like a missing tooth.

Eventually, the tears passed. My mouth burned, my eyes ached. Every beat of my heart felt like a violation. The blister beneath my chin throbbed. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to be anywhere. But you can’t cry forever. Once the shudders stopped, once my breath stopped hitching and became almost normal, I grudgingly rolled to my knees and lifted my head.

Our living room. Pale green walls, with the crown molding a darker green accent. A jar of vanilla essential oils on the mantle. A sound system the size of a shoebox, silent. I heard nothing except my own heartbeat and breath. The electronic picture frame, brightly displaying a small section of upper Michigan’s thick pine forest.

The picture changed. Julie holding my hand on that same trip, five years younger than she should be now.

I wrenched my vision away even as my spine quivered, turning to face the row of plants beneath the picture window. Sheila had tended her plants for years, growing herbs in a box and orchids and African violets in luridly glazed pots.

The pots stood intact but lifeless. Empty dirt filled them. A few crumbs of black soil lay on the surrounding carpet.

Everywhere I looked, family stared back. Framed photos of marriage, birthdays, and weekends on the wall, Julie’s algebra book dropped carelessly beside her favorite chair, Kevin’s weekend shoes piled with Sheila’s beside the front door, laces intimately intertwined.

I forced a deep breath. The window. The window wouldn’t accuse me. I staggered to the gauze curtains and flung them aside. Streetlights illuminated the asphalt. The silhouettes of neighboring houses stood out against the cloudy sky and trees. A few lit rectangles showed where other houses had lights.

Something shrieked in the darkness, the sound muffled by glass.

A distant gunshot. A scream.

Staring into the night, I tried to think. What had happened?

I remembered the gun in my hand, the blistering hot barrel jammed into my chin. Tentacles stabbed into me. A moment of diffuse pain, a billion billion cold needles searing my nerves.

Then—nothing. Only flickers of memories. Yellow dashes on asphalt. A handful of algae-filled water lifted towards my mouth. Boneless hands wrapped like tentacles around a steering wheel. I remembered a sense of purpose, rules I had to obey.

Had Collins been like that, I wondered? My brain seized on the question, grateful for any thoughts that didn’t splash acid on my heart. Collins had announced that if I—if Kevin—and his family had accepted the alien eating and copying them, he had to let them, that he could only attack if denied.

Had I given someone the same choice?

My hollow gut burned.

I dropped the curtain. My hands smudged the rough white linen.

My hands were filthy. Arms, too. Dirt saturated my denim pants and crusted the graying hair on my bare chest. I suddenly felt dirty, not just outside but inside. My restless body seized on it.

To my surprise, the blue-tiled stall shower had hot water. The house had solar shingles, so the electricity hadn’t surprised me, but I hadn’t expected the gas water heater to still work. I tried to concentrate on cleaning the stains from my flesh, feeling the water’s warmth grow incrementally closer as dirt swirled around the drain. Knots and snarls in my uncombed hair.

Maybe I should try some of Julie’s conditioner to clear it up. The bright purple bottle sat where it always did, promising the smell of apples amidst Sheila’s half-dozen shampoos. My vision blurred. My knees sagged.

No. I was not going to buckle again. I grabbed the petrified washcloth, soaked it until it could take a load of soap, and attacked the dirt again.

I needed a moment to realize that something was still on my hand. A ring. Kevin’s white and yellow gold wedding ring.

I sagged against the cold wet tile, hot water blasting down, and sobbed until the water ran cold.