Eleanor Henderson

Dark Star: Excision

Mike stood in the hallway outside the apartment. He clenched and unclenched his hands, and went over the arguments pro and con, again. It came out the same every time. Ariana was tanking. She still had lucid moments, but they were now so brief, so patchy. She would not last long. He wasn’t going to walk away from his little sister, his best friend, comfort, anchor. And there were the jewel-green eyes. He saw them now, luminous phantasms, guiding him. He could do this. He had to do this.

Ariana was clenched into a tight ball, too tight to breathe easily, a giant cramp. She juddered back and forth, her eyeballs pressed to her knees to keep them in her skull; her fingernails rooted in her scalp. “Jeez, Ri-ri.” He coughed, probably at the stench of her. “Let’s get you cleaned up.” His voice cut through to her, banished the dark figures into the shadows of her mind. She heard the sound of running water, felt her brother’s hands gently lift and carry her into a stream of warm water. He turned her around under the water until the stench lifted, then cut the water. He propped her against the wall, and scrubbed the back of her neck with something that smelled antiseptic. He slipped the edge of a blanket under her left arm and turned her around until she was wrapped securely and completely immobilized. With a few well-practice moves, he suited himself up in a sterile outer layer as well. Overkill, really. His hands and face were all that mattered.

“Stop! What are you doing?” Hers was an inhuman wail, older than time.

Mike strapped her securely against a chair, and sat directly in front of her. His breath came in short, sharp intakes, and his hands trembled slightly as he stretched the mask toward her. It covered her mouth and nose, but allowed her a clear view of her brother’s eyes as gas started to flow through the mask. Her eyelids fluttered and closed. He monitored her pulse and breathing. They were at the middle of normal. He removed the mask from her face, and set out the very few things he would need: antiseptic, knife, tweezers, closure, bandages, containers for refuse. As he swabbed Ariana’s neck again, the jewel-green eyes floated like a map over the neck with its lethal grey bulb embedded at the nape. The effect was like having borrowed eyes that could see another dimension. Time to get the f-ing thing out, off, gone. The incision was such a light thing. He’d practiced knife cuts on paper and cardboard of different weights until he could feel the slightest changes in resistance that meant passing from one layer to the another. He cut a small flap of skin which he peeled back and attached to her skin with a dot of adhesive. The unholy bulb was attached to Ariana’s neck by six strands of wire so thin that it was barely visible. A very subtle, gradual change of color went from the bulb to Ariana’s flesh. There! A miniscule pale spot marked a transition from inorganic to organic. Snip. Repeat. Six times. He used tweezers to move the alien object, and thoroughly cleansed Ariana’s neck. Whew! The wound was small and superficial with a few tiny punctures. He’d gotten worse tears from rock climbing. A small butterfly closure covered with anaesthetic pads and tape. Done. Ariana’s pulse and breathing were strong and even.

Mike collapsed into a chair and shook for awhile. He was back in the human world, alone and aghast at what he had just done. The wave of relief after the first phase gave way to bracing for what came next.

The gas mask was on Ariana’s face as she awoke. The sharp smell revived her. The familiar outlines of the room were clear and sharp: the window frames light blue, the sashes, white, the branch of a camellia bush stretched across the window in front of her. The mask loosened, came off her face. Mike sat directly in front of her, and held up two fingers.

“How many fingers do you see?”

“Two fing’rs an’ uh shadishtic ash-hole.” She mumbled. Her mouth felt gravelly.

Mike nodded and continued to read from a list in his hands.

“How old are you?”

“You decided not to kill me.” Ariana’s statement was as much a query as a statement.

“How old are you?” Mike repeated the question patiently.

“Twenty?” She said hopefully, but really wasn’t sure. She felt a little wobbly.

“What is the date?”

She said a date, then realized it was her birth date.

Mike looked at his knees and smiled.

“That’s not right!” she barked.

“Ariana, you haven’t been awake five minutes. After what I did . . . I just had to know.”

“What did you do?”

Mike pointed to a small round pot on the small, low table between them. On it was a small, ceramic bowl containing a jagged bit of what looked like a chunk of a frying pan. On that rested a small greyish object that seemed to be very slowly melting into the bit of frying pan. The bit of frying pan was also starting to melt. She reached out her hand, and Mike firmly grasped her wrist. Their eyes met.

“Is it hot?” She knew the answer, but asked anyway.

Mike looked blindly over her shoulder at something he didn’t want to remember.

“No. Not especially hot.”

“Ariana.” Deep breath. “I cut that out of the back of your neck. With that” He pointed at the grip of an a small, surgically sharp utility knife in a jar with the blade thoroughly wrapped in packing tape. The rest tumbled out of him:

“I cut a little flap, and it was big enough to get that thing out, and big enough for me to get the threads that were patched into you out. It all came out clean. What’s left is just you.”

Ariana examined her hands. They seemed ok. She remembered seeing the bones in her hands before, before this thing that had just happened, that Mike had just done. “Am I ok?”

“Yeah.”

“No BS, Mike. I feel different.”

“I guess so, after what you went through. Different, but good. I haven’t seen you this good for a long time. I’ve missed you.”

There it was. They were like twins, like a right and a left hand. Ariana experimentally turned her neck down and around.

“Ow! It hurts. It really hurts.” She sounded scared.

“Any more than a skinned knee?”

The memory of skinned knees and hands came back to her. A half-smile crossed her face. She shook her head, and turned her attention back to what had just been cut out of her. The pair watched the grey horror melt its way through the pile of doomed oddments on the table.

“That bulb, or whatever it is, will it burn through all those layers you have underneath it?”

“Dunno.”

“Why didn’t it burn me?”

“Okay, this is just a guess. It’s looking for something to connect to.”

They both shuddered. They fell asleep watching the bulb slowly melt. It didn’t get past the bit of frying pan.

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