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Something strange was happening to the corpse in the center of Seth’s apartment.
Stathis had told Veronica he was getting rid of the thing one way or another, but he’d relented eventually after all her insisting. He didn’t seem to understand, though, not really. Veronica didn’t know if he’d recognized the longing in her eyes or not, or if the thought of it had made him jealous.
She didn’t particularly care to know what Stathis thought. Not even after everything.
She had taken him out to the road, called an ambulance, and sent him on his way. But he’d seemed to expect that she’d be following after him, maybe to hold his hand in the hospital and stroke his hair or something like that. He’d looked at her with a tired expression like he’d already decided she was verging on hysterical, and he’d said, Ronnie, it’s been hours. I know you’re upset, but don’t you think it’s time you left?
She’d said, Don’t call me Ronnie.
It was cold and empty once he’d left. The fog in Veronica’s brain hadn’t lifted, not even with the absence of Stathis’ trudging insincerity over her shoulder. Listlessness overcame her. She drifted in and out of a haze that stretched for hours and hours. There wasn’t much of a way for her to know just how long it had been. She didn’t care to try.
She thought herself a widow, suffocated in black lace and satins, staring into closed moth-eaten curtains as the dawn threatened to spill through. She thought herself a madwoman, lying on the cold, hard floor until her curls were crude and mussed and she’d exhausted any notion of wanting to get up. Her dress was disheveled, her heels lying carelessly on the floor. She eyed the few flies buzzing around the corners of the room, huddling in the linings of the walls, approaching the scent of their…brethren, Veronica supposed. She didn’t like to see those bastards, even though they were everywhere. They reminded her of far too much.
She didn’t want to think about how awful the smell was. She didn’t want to look at the corpse much, either– it was better to maintain that memory of Seth as a good man, a human man, warm and happy, in her head than anything else. But it was undeniable that something about the body had shifted.
The body. Not Seth’s body. Veronica didn’t want to think of it as Seth’s body. It wasn’t, not really. Just half of him, if even that much at all. Not enough to be him. Just…a monster, Veronica decided. The monster that had killed Seth. Yeah. It hardly helped to try and picture it that way, but she kept on anyway.
In any case, the body had changed. Was changing. A strange covering had begun to form around the limp thing; it was a ruddy brown, Veronica noted, and it looked somewhat stiff. Slowly, it was wrapping around the limbs and the torso and the gaping wound where a head had once existed, dry-textured in the dim lights.
But Seth was dead. The insect was dead. This was not something any dead insect would ever do.
It had taken hours and hours for even this to come about— from what hazy recollection Veronica had of proximal time, at least— and as far as Veronica was aware of the habits of insects, it looked like something nearly ready to hatch. Wasn’t it? Almost entirely encased in a lump, the sorts of things one might occasionally find in the mildewed basement of their apartment building…
And that meant whatever was inside of it was alive.
God, Veronica hoped it wouldn’t be even further along in the stages of mutation. She was too exhausted to deal with anything like that ever again— especially not tonight, but never, ever again. And it made her sick to imagine Seth, or at least those last fragments of him, trapped in a repulsive thing that just wouldn’t die— he had, after all, been in there, in that horrible cross between hamburger-meat-flesh and the machinery of the telepod. She’d seen him in those goddamn eyes, even if they hadn’t looked anything remotely like his eyes anymore. She’d seen him. And he had wanted out.
Still, she reached over and pulled the shotgun close to her, just in case she needed it. It would be good, she told herself, for her and for Seth, if the occasion arose.
It was another empty block of time in which she waited, tired and half-present, knees tucked against her chest and head lolling against the wall. Her back ached. The thing in the center of the room did not move, not an inch, but she knew enough about insects to be aware that didn’t mean it wasn’t ready to burst. So she kept aware, aware as she could still in her fuzzy grief and her terror.
But the color of it— at some point, though she couldn’t quite know when it had happened— had gone nearly black, surely darker than it’d been last she checked. It looked even stiffer, almost like an eggshell, but Veronica wasn’t about to test that for herself.
And it was…wrinkled. Despite the stiffness. That must have meant something important. And it was important, Veronica realized, because then there was a noise. Was it like liquid? It was difficult to describe. But slowly, very slowly, the outer shell was moving. The cracks that had begun to form were so gradual it was almost imperceptible at first, but eventually Veronica had no choice but to admit to herself the pupa was opening.
The sound of sinew. A thin layer of cloudy white liquid revealed itself beneath the black. The movement grew faster, more desperate, more alive.
The thing split open with a terrible ripping of flesh– or something like it– and something (someone?) beneath it began to heave and choke. A shuddering breath emerged, as did an arm the color of elm wood, covered in a faint dusting of dark brown hair. Veronica knew that arm. Oh, she knew it intimately. Inside and outside of her, draped around her shoulders, stroking her cheek, toying with her hair.
It peeled the film away, and the other arm joined it. Transfixed, Veronica did not look away as the tear in the pupa widened and drooled out an awful mixture of…something. A curly head with a mouth gasping wide came out next, then a torso, then two well-built legs.
All stark-naked. All coated in a thick, slimy layer of– that was what it was. Blood, pus, and amniotic fluids. Jesus.
The corpse was a disgusting shell of itself, an unrecognizable mass of gore. And he was soaked in it. Veronica forced herself to look away from it, wrenching her head in the opposite direction, and in a sudden jerk she vomited. It wasn’t much of it, but it was enough. She clutched her hands to her shuddering torso and stared down at the mess of sick. She couldn’t look at the man in the nude. She couldn’t. She couldn’t. Her goddamn mind had already conjured up images of horrid maggot-babies, so it would be naive to assume it had the decency to avoid this, but it still sickened her. Seth at his most vulnerable, his most beautiful, and she couldn’t have him. Not ever again. And beautiful, still, but covered in disease. It was a grotesque perversion of all those nights she’d longed to go back to.
And the corpse. God. It wasn’t real, of course, but if it had been…Jesus, Veronica thought, if it wasn’t his body, then why was she mourning it?
A shuffling noise came from a few feet away. Then another deep breath, lungs sucking in desperate gulps of air. And another. And another. A puff of that air brushed against Veronica’s leg– she shuddered, just barely.
She didn’t want to look back and admit she believed this. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t have been. Seth was dead. Maybe he had been for a long while, if she thought about it in a different manner of speaking. The thing that begged her to kill it was a wispy ghost, not much more.
Seth was dead. Seth was dead. Seth was dead. Seth was—
There was a gasp. And then there was a scream. Veronica still didn’t look. But she recognized it. It was his voice, and he was yelling out, exhausting all the air in his lungs, maybe just because he realized he had the capability again. That was what it seemed like, anyways. But maybe it didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t real, after all. It couldn’t have been.
The sound softened and became a rasp, as if he were trying to form words. The hallucination, because it had to be– it must have been exceptionally detailed then, Veronica decided, her thoughts floating around so, so far away– stumbled over the phonemes until he managed to cobble together…something.
A moment passed. “Ro…Ronnie?” came his voice again, whispered and hoarse. Veronica still didn’t want to look back. She couldn’t. But— but— “Ronnie…Ronnie, is that…is that you?”
She just barely choked back a sob. It wrenched her body, sending her chest jerking. God. Oh, God, she couldn’t.
“Stop,” she moaned. “Please. I know. I know I killed him. I don’t need my mind to…to do this to me right now. Please just leave me alone. Haven’t you done enough to me?”
There was a low sound, then the noise of something wet shifting across the ground, flesh against concrete.
And then a damp, warm sensation against Veronica’s calf.
She shrieked, startled, head swiveling towards the source on instinct– if she had still been wearing her heels, she might have stumbled. And there was Seth, on the floor, dripping with that disgusting amniotic fluid from the…sac-thing. His arm was extended out— out towards Veronica, his hand hovering just about her leg. Slowly, he drew it back. A guilty look came to his dirtied face.
But it was his face. His curls (though they were matted to his head), his wide, dark eyes, his sculpted nose. Him. And she could feel him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t imagine that was a pleasant feeli—”
“Seth,” Veronica breathed. “Jesus Christ, Seth.” She spilled forward, arms wrapping around him, and although she knew for certain he was ruining her dress, that didn’t matter to her, not right now. A wail came out of her, though it brought no tears with it. She’d exhausted all her sources of moisture at this point. Her face was flush with old tearstains, but her mouth was dry. “You— oh, my God—”
“I’m sorry,” Seth said again, muffled by fabric. She hated how desperate he sounded. The last time he’d sounded like that, he was telling her to run. “Jesus, Ronnie, I’m so sorry.”
And what was she meant to say to that? It wasn’t you? I forgive you? It wasn’t really your fault? How much of it would be the truth? And how much of it would he believe she meant?
So she settled on: “I love you.”
Seth laughed, and it was both an awful and a wonderful sound, afraid and thick with mucus but relieved, too, more than anything. It cracked away and splintered at the end. “God, I shouldn’t have– I don’t– God, God, Ronnie, I’m sorry, I’m sorry–” He buried his face into the space between her chest and her right shoulder, and he yelled again, though his voice gave out relatively quickly this time.
Veronica didn’t know what to do. She sat there, mindlessly holding him, mindlessly stroking his hair as if it were instinctive for her– though surely it wasn’t. Her chest heaved up and down, up and down, heart thrumming recklessly inside her ribcage. God. He was shivering in her arms. Now that she thought about it, it must have been so cold in here for him.
“Seth,” she began, very softly, like he was a wounded prey animal (well, he certainly had the eyes for it), “can you stand?”
“...Hold on.” Carefully, Seth untangled himself from her and planted one leg on the ground in front of him, then another. His balance was still unsteady; he wobbled back and forth a bit, and though he hadn’t fallen, Veronica worried he might. “I don’t know if…if I— ”
“Here.” Veronica clutched his arm and his shoulder and supported his weight against her. Her heart was racing, mind flashing with a strange mixture of terror and awe and joy. She wasn’t sure how she hadn’t collapsed into a sobbing heap yet. Oh, Seth. Oh, God, Seth. “Seth— ah…you’d like a bath, right?”
Seth nodded, smirked. “Oh, I could use one. It’s…” His body shuddered. “My skin feels…alien to me right now, and I— I can’t say if that’s, uh, because of the stickiness, or because…”
It was wise not to say it directly, Veronica thought. For a few more minutes, maybe they could pretend this was so much simpler than it really was, and they could talk and laugh and dwell in relative calm without focusing on…any of that. God, she needed a cigarette.
She guided him down the hall, into the bathroom, and helped him into the bathtub. The room itself was hardly a pretty sight (Veronica had to shut the medicine cabinet just as quickly as she’d absentmindedly opened it, because Jesus Christ), but the tub was clean enough. Sapped of energy, she slid down to the floor beside it and let her head fall against the wall.
Seth busied himself with lathering his body with soap and letting the tub fill up. It was strangely silent for a few moments aside from the sounds of the water— neither of them said a thing until Seth looked up, keen-eyed, and then turned to Veronica with an intrigued expression on his face.
“It’s quiet, Ronnie,” he murmured. “I…I can’t hear it anymore.” He laughed, but it wasn’t really out of humor, Veronica thought.
“Hear what?”
“Oh, you know. Brundlefly.” It was sort of a casual bitterness.
Veronica looked away. “Seth…”
“I’m sorry,” Seth said for what was maybe the fifth time since he’d come back. What was he apologetic for? Daring to mention it? “I don’t know why I’m alive, Ronnie. God knows I wanted it to be over. But…” A beat. “Look, maybe I deserved to die and stay dead after all I did to you. And, you know…” He shifted uncomfortably. “…your editor. Borans.”
“Stathis?” Veronica couldn’t help but laugh at that. “You feel bad for Stathis?”
“Ronnie, I was going to eat him.”
“I just never expected to hear anything like that from you, is all.” The poor sucker. Veronica half-wondered how he was doing in the hospital right now. He’d probably make it out fine. Eventually. He certainly had enough money to get things sorted out.
Seth huffed, but he sobered quickly, and his eyebrows drew together in contemplation again. “I’m sorry.”
“I know, Seth. It’s alright. You don’t have to keep telling me that.” Well, maybe it wasn’t alright, not at all, but she liked to pretend it was, at the very least.
“The baby,” Seth said, very quietly. “I was…stupid. I wasn’t thinking straight. You should abort it. Uh, only if you still want to, that is. And, of course, it isn’t exactly my decision, but, you know, I’m not going to try to stop you or anything aga—”
“I do,” Veronica said, and it felt good to admit it to him. “I do want to.”
“Okay. Good. That’s— that isn’t a bad call.” He relaxed, visibly, but there was still quite a bit of tenseness in his face and shoulders. Suddenly, there was a wet sound, and it took Veronica a second to realize it was coming from him— it was a sob, as a matter of fact, and then another, and then a shaky breath, and a few tears rolling down his cheeks. It must have been his equivalent of wet, mushy bawling. She had never seen him quite so childlike, not even when he’d been confessing to her in a terrified half-whisper that he knew he would hurt her if she didn’t leave.
“Goddammit,” Seth choked out, then wiped his face. “Oh, goddammit.” A wobbly little smile came to him. “Thank you, Ronnie. For…for letting me die. Thank you.”
“Seth—”
“I know, I know— but I didn’t know I would live then, did I? You could have run away, left me to waste away in that…fucking body…but you let me die.” He lathered more soap onto his arms, just for good measure. “So, uh…thank you. Really. I can’t imagine it was a pretty sight, my head blown open like some kind of…meaty rose…”
Veronica winced. Yes, Seth, I definitely saw it. “Well, how could I have just let you suffer like that?”
“Ah, I don’t know.” Seth shrugged, washed the soap off his arms. “But, again…mercy wasn’t exactly something I deserved, not at, uh, that point. You know?”
Veronica didn’t think she did. Not entirely. “But, Seth…” Oh, and here it came. Maybe she was destined to say it eventually. “…Seth, it wasn’t really you, was it? I know you didn’t really want it.”
“Ronnie, I, uh…” Seth swallowed, stared down at the pink-red tint swirling around in the clouded water. His hands rose from beneath and hovered there, palms up, twitchy, like he still hadn’t quite processed the idea that they belonged to him yet. “...I don’t know. I don’t…it didn’t matter what I wanted, did it?” He laughed again. “The fly had his– well, its, you know, uh– its mind made up from the start. It felt…like I was…like I barely existed at all. It was hard to think, you know. Flies…their brains aren’t nearly as complex as ours, of course. And it wasn’t exactly sure what to do with something like me, but…I was a threat to it. And it decided to fix that.”
“That’s…horrible. Jesus, Seth, I—”
“You can’t blame the fly for it. It wasn’t like it did it maliciously.” Seth smiled ruefully. “It did what just about every animal would do when its great big goal of fucking is, you know…threatened.”
“Well, then who am I supposed to blame, Seth?”
“You could blame me. I made a big mistake, didn’t I? That’s mostly on my hands, I should think.”
Veronica sighed and let her head drop down onto Seth’s wet shoulder. She didn’t say anything about that. She’d had enough of blaming him for now. After a long moment, she asked: “Did it drive you insane? Being…trapped like that, I mean?”
He took some time to consider that. “Yeah. I guess it did. I don’t know if I could explain it, honestly, maybe not even to myself. But, uh…maybe it didn’t leave me. Maybe there’s still a little…a little bit of it, somewhere up here.” A finger swirled absentmindedly in the air around his ear. “I feel…I feel like my skin doesn’t fit quite right, like it’s going to split open again any second. I feel like, uh, like I’m not quite here. Does that make sense? Like there’s still a piece of me in that thing, even though it’s rotting and hollow. And I’m, well, I’m fuzzy like…static, I’m different, somehow, as if Seth Brundle died in that fucking body and I’m something else, something else entirely. Does that make…” Seth stopped. “I’m rambling, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” Veronica said, “but I don’t mind. You need this, don’t you?”
“Maybe I do. It’s…God.” He blinked, shook his head, inhaled sharply. “Who knows how long it’ll take me to get out of there. If I ever do at all. If, uh…if I don’t…become again.”
“You won’t.”
“You can’t be sure of that. There’s no certainty to any of this.”
“Well, why would you have your own body again, then? What would be the point?”
“What would make you think there’s a point to any of it at all, Ronnie?”
“I don’t know.” Veronica shrugged and lifted her eyebrows. “I have to believe in something, Seth. And besides, I never took you for a nihilist.” She sighed and settled a hand on Seth’s cheek. “Please. You were optimistic before all this, don’t you remember? You can afford to have a little hope.”
“Okay,” Seth said. It took him a second to consider it. “Alright. I, uh…I can do that— for you, if nothing else.”
Veronica smiled. “Good. That’s good.” Then she studied Seth’s face— he’d washed it some time in the past few minutes, so now it was no longer slimy or greasy or anything like that. His skin was…relatively clear, too, at least by his standards. So she leaned forward and kissed him gently, very gently, on his lips.
When she’d opened her eyes and bent back again, Seth had a dorky sort of smile on his face. It was still a little sad, a little worried, but it was the start of something.
“Jesus,” he said, and for a second Veronica was worried he was going to start crying a bit again, but he didn’t. “You know, I didn’t think I was ever going to feel that again.”
Veronica didn’t know what to say to that, and she certainly didn’t know what to feel other than pity. “The water’s getting cold,” she eventually murmured, helping Seth out of the bathtub. “Let’s get you some clothes.”
And his body pressed tightly against hers as they went down the hall, his soft body hair and clean skin uninhibited by no fabric but Veronica’s— and she thought to herself, with a sort of tranquility, that she hadn’t realized just how much she had missed this.