HMS Valediction

Chapter 12

An unrecognizable stench filters through my cabin. I can't decide if it's because ARC10's smells are now foreign in comparison to the dusty musk of Heedeem, or I've fundamentally changed and all my senses have shifted to accommodate. It's as if they were stripped from my body, screwed up, and then re-inserted the wrong way. I can't shake the discomfort.

The debacle with Kai left me off-kilter.

I messed everything up. I ran when I should have remained. I acted irrationally in the face of conflict. I overreacted.

My feet are propped up on my makeshift bed with Brave New World open on my lap. I close my eyes again. They're too dry from staring into the gray monotone bulkhead of my cabin. I tried to sleep, but my brain is too heavy with chaotic thoughts. Images of Knuckles, Kai, the creature with the meatloaf mug, the Tadj judge, the burning skin, Moyra, Hayomo, Knuckles, Kai, the creature with the meatloaf mug. . .

Over and over and over again. They appear, disappear, and swing around like boomerang flash-bang canisters.

I pick up the book.

One day (John calculated later that it must have been soon after his twelfth birthday) he came home and found a book that he had never seen before lying on the floor in the bedroom. It was a thick book and looked very old. The binding had been eaten by mice; some of its pages were loose and crumpled. He picked it up, looked at the title-page: the book was called The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

There's no way I can keep reading tonight. The words, even though they are the ones that Dean has seen a million times before, bring me no comfort. Holding it the same way Dean holds his books makes me feel just slightly better. Only because if I close my eyes tight enough, I can outline him in the darkness and use cut-outs of our life to piece together a make-believe scenario. I imagine what he would say.

"Don't cut yourself." He would peer over the rim of the pages. "I know you're not used to holding such dangerous objects."

I'd sneer, because that's what I do when I'm around him. "Yeah. This stuff—" I'd hold up the book, "real lethal."

I can imagine us on the couch in his pod. The threadbare one with the springs that poke out and goose you in the thigh if you don't take it at an angle. Dean always grabbed the spot above the surprise spring so I wouldn't have to. His long body would drape diagonally across it. We'd be on separate ends of the couch, but our knees would graze. Our eyes would linger, our smiles would keep us warm in the cool spot where the air blows from the vents above. He would return to his book, as I've seen him revert his attention back to the printed words a hundred times before.

"Suit yourself. You better not bleed all over my pages."

In my made-up scenario, I'd try again. After a few more unsuccessful attempts at engaging in the story, I'd peer at him over my own cover. "Your book will bore me to death before it has the chance to slice me up."

He would raise a single eyebrow. Concentration still hard on the words, he would move his knee until it touches mine. At first, I'd assume it's accidental—I always do. When he picks up a casual beat tapping against me, I'd know that no, it's not a casual brush. It's how Dean reminds me he's there.

I would give anything to feel his leg against mine right now.

If we were together now, after everything we've endured together, I'd take the book from his hands, throw it over my shoulder, and prowl over him, line my body up with his, a leg on either side. We'd be lopsided on the see-saw springs of the couch cushions and I would struggle to straddle his lap. I would bend, hovering a breath away, my hair falling around us as he reached up to caress my cheek. I'd close my eyes and lean into it.

With the pad of his thumb, he would tap my cheek lightly.

Tik tik tik tik tik tik tik.

The noise raps against the ceiling of my cabin and for a second, fear overrides my system. I tense, unable to move a nerve. For a second, I forget who it is. There was no metal for him to scuttle over in our prison cell.

"John?" I say to the air. "Is that you?"

Out of one corner of the room, he appears as if he was waiting there all along. As if he was part of the angles that take up inconvenient spaces in my cabin.

"I'm sorry you got pinched."

When he drops to the ground, I stand to meet him. His left back leg quivers as if cold. "That's where you got hit, isn't it?"

He doesn't respond. I don't expect him to, but maybe one day, he'll acknowledge that he understands me.

"I don't have much, but you can stay here tonight."

With bent neck and long strands of drool, John limps his way to my bed.

"Oh no. Hell no. Anywhere else but there. That's mine. I've earned that." My body squeezes between him and my unmade nest. As I throw myself between him and my bed, my protruding belly touches him. I don't startle and neither does he, but he descends, inch by inch until his face is level with it. From a similar time, he begins jittering, vibrating over the bump.

"Is that why you tolerate me? You like my kid?"

All six legs vibrate, clinking against the metal floor.

"If you can swing it, you can stay in his bed until he comes." I point to the large crate in the corner of the cabin I covered in blankets.

John follows my finger and tilts his head at the crate.

"After that, you're on your own. The three of us won't fit in here."

He rises until he's level with my chest. The flaky phyllo skin covering the contours of his orange form scrapes against my arm as he saunters over to the crate. His body arches until he can squeeze his four back legs into the box on the floor. Each leg jostles as it shifts and slips lower and lower. He powers down and folds his legs under him and rests in my makeshift cradle like an over-baked loaf of bred in a too-small tin. His head hangs from his bent neck as he watches me with wide, empty sockets. As usual, he drools.

"Hey! This isn't the slammer. You're responsible for picking up your own snot."

A blob slips from his open mouth.

A new comfort pervades the air. My son kicks softly as I know the fight has left him for the night. The fight has left me too.

"Goodnight, John." I drift away, the first night in my bed with my new roommate only a few meters away. Somewhere in the middle of the night, or morning, I don't have my PAHLM to be sure about it, I stretch and drop the blankets around me. It's warm in here. Perfectly warm. Warm without the need for extra blankets or extra protection from the emptiness of the ship. It radiates from the corner of the room where the silhouette of a man drapes over the edges of a box.

I can't help but be glad. But I also can't help but try to remember why I was afraid to begin with.