Is the one who bursts into flame.
I stretch. The flaky chemical covering this form I’m in peels away. I have not moved in years, decades. After eons of stillness, I finally feel it: the bursting forth of the power I once had.
The girl must be terrified.
Roger was squeezing sweat in his palms. He didn’t know what to do. He had heard of spirits riding you, but only during sleep. He had seen possessions before, but only in church. He was frightened for his safety. He was terrified, too, of the secret Asima was about to tell him.
I must act quickly. I know a frightened human is liable to try anything. She saw me move. She saw the form I’m trapped in shift. She is the one I must draw in to free me. She must touch.
In the migration of ants, should you be the one that wanders off, you are on your own. Your feelers and you. No more refuge in the maddening movement of your community. There is no boss. No leader.
No queen.
Asima convulsed and leaped toward the lamppost. Roger didn’t know why, but he sprinted forward and caught her before she touched it. When his arms circled her body, the thing she had not told revealed itself. He heard the whisper of her voice. As the words unfolded he saw new life expanding in the air. The rapid multiplication of cells, the formation of new mitochondria and cellular nuclei—the consolidation of Asima and Roger’s DNA.
Roger pulled Asima to his chest, but she was as good as gone. He did not shake her or scream, nor did he plead for her to hold on. Instead he crumpled to the ground, holding Asima close. He leaned away from the lamppost, not noticing that Asima’s hand fell open and her finger rested against the base of the lamppost.
Have you ever seen a loved one burst into flame? I have. That is how this all began. Ages ago in a country that no longer exists, among a people long believed to be extinct, at least by flesh-dwellers, something that was what I am now found someone who was close to me, as close as this Asima is to this Roger — no, closer — and took her from me. Her body was left in flames, and I held her, wanting to burn too, but the flames would not eat me. Instead, they bridged this disease into me. You think the one in flames is in danger. No. She is already gone. It is the other, the one left behind.
The flames did not burn Roger. Even as Asima lay inflamed, he felt no pain. His mind did not register the heat, only the slow but certain advance of Asima’s death. He would not let go of her. Not even when her body began to glow, white hot. He barely flinched when that new life floated from her belly like a gently blown bubble and hovered over his waist. He stared vacantly as it lowered, disappearing into his solar plexus.
You never realize your loved one has been consumed until they are no longer there. It is only the absence that shocks, not the actual act of disappearing. You may one day forget the burning, having spent eons trapped, waiting for a bridge to another body. But the absence returns — no matter how many flesh-dwellers you consume. You create others like you: burners of flesh, devourers of flesh-dwellers — unrecorded souls.
But it is never enough.
In the migration of ants, there is always one.
Pod Rendezvous
During third meal, Laki was fidgety. She shoveled down her food without registering taste. Being part of a large birth group had trained her to eat quickly but, for once, her siblings were not the cause of her haste. Today, she was eating alone, and it was an odd sensation that she did not enjoy. There was no one to tell her to slow down or to ask for her leavings. She had finished the whole meal before she realized that no one, not even Se-se was going to join her. With a heavy sigh, she folded her platter in half and pushed it into the dish slot in the wall. The slot sealed itself, and Laki left the kitchen to find some company.
The hallways were incredibly empty, emptier than Laki had ever remembered them being. She walked with one arm outstretched so that she could trail her fingers along the wall. Halfway to Se-se’s room, she stopped and turned to face the wall. She placed her palm flat against it and closed her eyes. She imagined there was still a room behind the wall and that her sister Yasla was there, waiting to talk with her.
For Laki, Yasla had been a twin spirit, a guiding light, a soft embrace in a world that had begun to show Laki its sharp edges. And her departure had been devastating. In the year since Yasla’s maturation, Laki had battled disappointments, panic, and rage. While some girls wandered their way toward maturation confused and uncertain, Yasla had always known what she wanted. Before maturation she had applied for and won a top-secret appointment in the mesosphere’s weaponry and transportation department. Laki would have loved to follow in Yasla’s footsteps, but she would not be so lucky.
Laki’s first experiences with maturation had left her indifferent. Watching her older siblings depart into adulthood never troubled her. There were too many of them to build bonds with. She saw them as troublesome competitors who ruthlessly pushed each other around in wild ploys for dominance and attention. But by the time the birth group had been halved, Laki began to see her siblings differently. They became more precious to her; she saw them as friends rather than competitors, and she felt a deep loss whenever one of them reached maturation.
Without Yasla, Laki felt completely alone. She turned away from the sealed entrance to Yasla’s room and walked to Se-se’s room. She called out to Se-se, but there was no answer. She wandered on, making her way to the end of the hall where she stopped and placed her ear against the wall. She listened for echoes of the playful battles that had been waged up and down the halls outside her brothers’ rooms, but there was nothing behind that wall but silence.
Laki’s house never did sustain empty rooms for long. It was an economical entity, completely lacking in nostalgia. After sealing off unused rooms, it cannibalized them, using the raw material to build new rooms. One of Laki’s only at-home pleasures was pressing on walls in search of tiny patches of recycled material. To Laki, walls were like stretches of skin; each patch had its own history embedded within. When she found a new room, she could fuel weeks of ecstasy, methodically working her way around the new walls, judiciously releasing memories and relishing in the company of her beloved siblings—even if only in the fleeting and ghostly form of remembrance.
Laki felt as if the emptiness of the house would drive her mad. Even the hallways leading to the pod landing room were vacant. Where had Se-se gone? What could the mothers be doing, hidden out of sight? Laki walked toward the mothers’ private chambers, still trailing her fingers along the hallway walls. She was a few paces away from the entrance to the mothers’ rooms when she felt the wall buckle beneath her fingertips. She paused. These hallways were no strangers to her hands. She had poked, prodded, and rubbed every inch of wall that she could reach. She had uncovered and released every memory that was to be found in this quadrant of the house. There should not have been a room there.
Laki held her hand over the spot where the wall had buckled; her fingers tingled with expectation. As she waited for the wall to thin, she closed her eyes, anticipating the bliss of immersing herself in the company of her siblings. A moan escaped from the room, causing Laki’s eyes to snap open. She quickly pinched above and below the slit that had begun to part the wall.
She peered through the opening. The room within was full of mothers—more mothers than Laki knew she had. None of them were gathered into a unit. Most of them stood in a circle in the center of the room, dark red orbs hovering over their outstretched hands. Other mothers stood around the edges of the room with their backs against the walls.