Terrestrial Alien ✔

Chapter 40: Monster

Seth

   "Are you sure... you're sure about this..?" I ask uncertainly, leaning close to Joshua.

     We're in my room, and it's dark again, save for the flashlight I bought at the grocery store this morning. (It was a bit of an impulse buy; I saw it and thought of Joshua's question about the lights earlier.) It's a thin little black thing, a cord for your wrist at the end, while it twists at the head to turn on. It's bright enough, and we've left it on the floor, almost forgotten now.

   The light illuminates our faces from below, and it only makes the atmosphere around us feel more chilling. Because there's something more than just anticipation that's having goosebumps prickling over my skin. There's something eerie, something taboo, something dangerous.

   We shouldn't be trying this. And yet we are.

     I've never seen Joshua's face lit up like this before, this ghastly pallor, as if, of the two of us... he's the skeleton.

   A nervous shudder runs up my spine.

   "Of course I'm sure." Joshua answers me, his gaze fixed on the floor between us. "I wouldn't have convinced you of this if I wasn't."

   "Yes, but..." I eye him with worry, letting my sentence trail off into nothingness. He doesn't seem as sure as what he's projecting. This blistering confidence feels like a bluff.

   His shoulders are tensed up, and he sits cross-legged, his hands bunched into fists that press into his ankles. He has his back against the radiator cracking with flakey white paint, facing me and the bed, which is across from him. The foot of the bed is at my back, and we've moved all the clothes on the floor to a messy pile near the dresser. It's the cleanest my room's ever been.

   "Just do it." Joshua says sharply, bringing his gaze up to mine. "The sooner you do, the sooner we can get this done."

   I let out a breath. I can see how nervous he is in the small light, how clammy his skin seems. But he's not going to back down, not now. I can see this, too, in his eyes, in the way he challenges me to do as I promised. So I can't let him down either, even with this serious doubt of my own.

   We're never going to be completely ready to try this, so I guess we just need to jump in head first.

   Emphatically, not breaking eye contact, Joshua shifts his arms behind his back. I hesitate. In the end, I do as he's asked. I lean forward, reaching out and around him with a ratty rope pulled from a kitchen drawer.

   ("Guess there really is use in you being a hoarder." Joshua had commented when he saw it, smiling a weak little smile. His face had been so pale, even then.)

   He focuses on relaxing his shoulders as I work around him, and I can feel him steadying his breaths as he tilts his head forward, hiding his face near my neck. In an unpracticed hand, I wrap the rope a couple times around his wrists in a figure-eight-like pattern, then through the coils of the radiator a couple more times, until I have just enough rope to tie it off.

   I hesitate another moment, close enough to him that I can feel the warmth radiating from his body, the tension coiled in his muscles. Then I pull back.

   Looking into his eyes, I say, "We don't have to do it like this, you know... We can..."

  "No." Joshua says, meeting my gaze. Our faces are so close, and the space between us is like a tether pulled taught, holding us only so far apart.

   His gaze wanders away from my eyes, to the side of my face, and I know what he's looking at. All my injuries have healed now, but where I sustained that burn, well, it looks like there's going to be something of a scar. The skin there is healing slightly discoloured, a grey-ish, mint-ish color, and I'm still not entirely used to it yet.