Yearning

1.2

Danny Hebert pulled into the driveway at quarter past 11. The house was dark, its windows unlit and not even the porch light on to brighten things up. Taylor must have forgotten. He grabbed his box of leftover takeout from lunch and climbed the stairs into the house.

He moved slowly, one fist in the small of his back, trying to work out the kinks from sitting behind a desk all day. There was a faint ache behind his eyes; on some days it might have bloomed into a stress headache, but today he'd been lucky.

He'd been distracted, not worrying about the job so much as Taylor. The insurance had covered most of the medical bills, and the school had picked up the rest when he started throwing his weight around, but it didn't change the fact that someone had broken his little girl's leg.

As much as Blackwell would blather on about slippery stairs and clumsy girls, he knew the score. Taylor had told him. She'd been vague, too vague about some things, but about others she was very clear.

"I got in Sophia's way so she kicked me."

What the hell was he supposed to say to that?

He flicked on the foyer lights as he entered. The door got locked behind him, and he hit the porch lights for good measure. A bright light would deter a lot more assholes than most people thought.

The rest of the house was pitch black, the front hall a lonely spot of light in the dark. He moved toward the stairs, watching his steps closely. Taylor was probably asleep by now, and he thought she had the right idea.

Flick. Foyer light off. Hall light on.

Danny stopped.

One of Taylor's crutches lay at the foot of the stairs. He bolted forward, his heart rocketing painfully into action. Had she fallen? He'd told her to make up a bed on the couch but she'd refused and-

"Taylor?" His voice vanished into the quiet. He called again. "Taylor?!"

Silence.

It was only as he approached the stairs that he saw. The second crutch lay a little further away, not on the steps but fallen at an angle on the hallway floor. Danny picked it up. There was a stain on the handgrip. A dried, red-brown stain.

"Shit!"

He dropped it. More of her things were littering the hall. A trail leading down to…

Danny stopped once more. His heart hadn't stopped racing, but the sight forced him to stillness.

The trail led to Annette's study.

Taylor's coat was just a little further down. Then her scarf. Then her hat. Her sweater lay piled against the closed door.

Danny moved. Taylor wasn't the neatest kid, but she'd never tossed things off like this. It looked like- No. It's just her winter clothing. Nothing more. But his mind completed the thought anyway. It looked like the trail a pair of lovers might leave, shedding clothes along the way to the bedroom.

Taylor didn't know any boys. Didn't date. And that meant - Was there someone else here? Someone alone with his crippled daughter?

He ran the rest of the way and hit the door hard enough to rattle it in its frame. It was locked. He wiggled the knob, pushing hard against the door. If it didn't open in a few seconds, he'd kick it open. He'd-

A rustle.

Danny froze, straining his ears for another noise.

There was a full minute of silence, with only the hiss of his breath for company, when the sound came again.

A soft rustling noise. And then a groan.

From… upstairs?

He hurtled down the hall, stumbled over her scarf, kicked it aside, and then ran up the steps, flicking on the upstairs light as he went.

"Taylor!"

Her door flew open hard enough to rebound off the wall. He caught it, staring into the darkness of her room. The beam of light from the hall fell across the foot of her bed, highlighting the mound of blankets covering her sleeping form.

Danny let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. She'd just been tired and gone to bed. It didn't explain what the mess downstairs was, but that was a problem for tomorrow.

He took a half-step into the room before stopping himself. She needed her sleep. He looked back at her, her thin body curled up beneath the covers. As he stared, she twitched, the sheets rustling.

He hoped she was having a good dream. She could use it.

With a sigh, he tiptoed to the window. There, in the plug beneath Taylor's desk, was an Alexandria nightlight. The little plastic cut-out of the heroine was yellowed by time, but he could remember buying it for her like it was yesterday. He sighed again and clicked it on.

The tiny bulb provided just enough light to see her by when he turned out the hall light.

Just enough light to see her. To know that she was still there.

"Good night, Little Owl."

He shut the door and headed for his own bedroom. Any sense of relief at seeing her alright was fading, replaced with a low, ugly sort of melancholy. His anger, so near the surface these days, flickered into life, old embers igniting under his frustration.

He brushed his teeth with the bathroom light off. The sight of himself in the mirror, a worn down, broken man growing old before his time… He didn't need that now. Not when there was so much else going on.

He hadn't been there for Taylor. Not in any sense of the word.

"I got in Sophia's way so she kicked me."

"It's okay; I can get around on my crutches just fine."

"I've got it handled, Dad."

"I can do it, Dad."

"Don't worry about it."

"Don't worry-"

"Don't-"

Danny turned, tossed his work shirt into the hamper in his closet, and shut the closet door. The calendar hanging on it shifted and caught his eye. He scanned the days and weeks automatically, making note of events he had penciled in, trying to focus on anything by but his thoughts.

Dentist appointment next week, meeting with the zoning commission on Thursday, negotiations with Camden shipping on Friday…

His eye fell on the present day. January 12th, and something clicked into place in his mind. Something that had been lingering on the periphery of thought all day. Something that he'd been forgetting.

The second anniversary. Two years since Annie died.

"Christ," he whispered.

No wonder Taylor had been so out of sorts.

"What a fucking mess." The words sank into the silent house without a trace, and Danny felt suddenly small; suddenly very, very small and brittle.

He'd forgotten the day she died.

He sank onto the edge of his bed- his empty bed, and put his head in his hands.

Doing a real goddamn good job there, Dannyboy.

"Fuck." He whispered it, and then said it again, his breath hot and sour against his hands.

Were there any more ways he could have fucked this up? Taylor hurt – probably crippled, Annie gone, and he was… he was on the edge.

It was the kind of thought that only bubbled up during sleepless nights. During the day it was easier to push it down; pretend he was making progress in some way, scrabbling away trying to bail out a sinking ship.

In the night, it was there, cold and hard and terrible in the way only truly honest thoughts could be.

Danny pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, rubbing, trying to force the thoughts away. Taylor needed him. That was what he lived for. Keeping a roof over her head and-

Keeping her safe?

He shifted, dropping his elbows onto his knees so he could slump forward. Something fluttered away as he moved – a bug, a moth or something.

I need a fucking drink. The thought was there suddenly – not new, but oozing up in the same way the other dark thoughts did, something ever-present seeping into focus.

He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. That'd be nice right about now. He could use it. Needed it, really. He really did, and it was… mitigating? Meeting a negative desire with something more acceptable. Annie would have known the name of it from her psych classes, but Annie couldn't tell him because-

He jerked open the drawer to the bedside table. His hand swept through the detritus inside as he dug to the very back. His fingers touched cool glass, and he withdrew them, bringing with a small bottle.

Just for tonight. Mitigating. Having a drink when he really wanted to open the second drawer and take a good long look at the cigar box inside that always smelled like cold steel and oil.

Just for tonight, and in the morning, things would be brighter. He needed to touch base with Taylor before he left. He had to. Had to turn things around. Do things right for once. For the first time since Annie died. Two years of fuck-ups.

Danny cracked open the bottle.

The morning was a long way away. There would be time for Taylor then.

He thought of Annette.

The world inside the room was moving. Every single inch of landscape shifted and scurried; a desert where every grain of sand moved independently. A desert of shining black sand.

-our little secret-

The world tilted, and I fell. The desert rushed up to meet me, and I threw out my hands to break my fall, but there was no ground.

There was no sand. No desert. No-

My scream vanished over the whispering of a trillion tiny bodies.

There was no sand. The world was insects.

They boiled up and over me, legs and jaws tearing at my naked flesh. The tide of bugs swallowed me. They pressed in, covering me, eating me.

I opened my mouth to scream again, and they pressed in, squirming against my lips.

-drink it. Drink it all-

I bit down, grinding the vermin between my teeth. Hot, viscous guts squirted out, and I tasted their meat on my tongue.

- eat my flesh-

Something hard shattered, and I bit down again and again. Their taste- their bodies- they were sweet. So sweet. Endlessly, they piled in, and I gorged. More and more and more and more until I was welcoming it, reaching out to them, growing impatient because I couldn't get enough.

I swallowed, my lips joyful, my throat burning as they went down, and then-

A door opened beneath me, the world tilting again and-

I shot up, shoving everything away. I was in the book room and it was moving and there were things touching-

no no no no no no nononono-

The light seared my eyes; too bright to see in. They were all over me, tiny legs pricking as they skittered back and forth. And-

And-

I blinked. The world came into focus.

My room.

My room, lit with the pale gray of early morning sun. Reality asserted itself slowly, sinking in as the dream faded. It had felt so real. All those insects crawling on me, biting my flesh, had felt absolutely real.

My heart still pounding in my ears, I ran my hands across my body, checking, just to be sure.

Nothing. There were no bugs on me. Nothing was eating me.

I let out a long, slow breath. My whole body felt shaky, my hands quivering a little as the adrenaline rush petered out.

Only…

My hand.

The edge of my shirt was ragged where strips of cloth had been torn off and wound around my right hand like black bandages.

Who had done that? Had I?

The thought raised only more questions. How had I gotten upstairs? Last night had only been a weird dream, hadn't it? Then what was this?

The strips were folded under each other, holding them in place. I tugged the ends free and started unwinding. Little by little, my pale flesh appeared from under the wrappings, the palm red where I'd scraped it in the cemetery. The strip ended, and I let it fall onto the covers.

The second strip was knotted around the base of my thumb. Unlike the first, it covered only one thing. My middle finger; wrapping around it like ribbon.

I undid the knot.

Stopped.

I could see just the barest strip of skin at the base of my finger, but the rest was hidden.

-now you have to eat-

I'd… done something. Dreamt it maybe, but still done something in the dream where Mom appeared to me.

If I unwrapped the cloth, what would I see?

I don't want to, a little voice in my head said.

I didn't. But I had to, even if I had a terrible sense of foreboding about it.

Had to be certain.

Had to-

"Taylor!"

I jolted, my hands shooting under the covers without thought. Dad stood in the doorway, his hair still tousled from sleep. He crossed the room in seconds to stand at my bedside. There was an odd scent lingering around him; something sharp, almost chemical, and under that… something… burnt?

"How are you feeling?"

I looked at him, at his face, gray with fatigue, his chin stubbly. There were new lines there, lines that had only been etched since I got hurt. Whatever I was going through, he didn't need to hear about it. It would only worry him needlessly.

"I'm fine. Why?"

Dad looked at me for a long moment. "After yesterday," he said slowly. "And… your mother?"

My false smile faltered just a little, but I injected as much sincerity into my voice as I could. "I'm okay. Really."

He stayed silent, just looking at me, as though he expected another answer. When I didn't give one, he sighed, rubbing at his eyes.

"I'll uh… I guess I'll make breakfast this morning," he said. "Meant to wake up and bring it to you, but I overslept. You hungry?"

-the desert tasted like salt-tears of joy as I gorged-

My smile came easily this time.

"Starving."

I changed clothes quickly, throwing the old ones in a pile at the back of the closet. It was what I did with all the clothes I didn't want Dad to see. Until I knew why I'd gone to bed dressed and woke up with a bandaged hand, they were staying in the closet. I chose my largest hoodie, one long enough that I could hide my hand in the sleeve without looking odd.

My knee brace got tossed to land atop my shirt, and my old jeans got the pockets turned out before I threw them aside. Two dead beetles fell out into my waiting hand. I pulled on a clean pair of jeans and pocketed the bugs. By the time I put on two pairs of socks – it was cold out – the house smelled pleasantly like frying bacon.

I gave my hair a quick brush before I bounced down the stairs, pulling it into a loose ponytail as I went. Whatever Dad was doing in the kitchen, it was working. The smell was nearly palpable, strong enough that I could imagine it literally tugging me along like in some old cartoon.

I reached the bottom of the stairs, and sound joined scent. Grease popping and sizzling in the pan, mixing and mingling with the fresh smell of eggs cooking. All of it together gnawed at my insides, and my stomach ached with hunger; I couldn't remember the last time I'd eaten, and I'd lost a lot of time yesterday. Everything after the cemetery was a blur.

"Taylor, eggs sunny-side up or scrambled?" Dad called.

"Both!" I yelled back.

The kitchen was only a few feet away, and I walked quickly to-

I stopped.

Looked back.

My crutches were leaning against the bannister.

My knee. The brace.

The memory flickered into my mind's eye – I'd taken it off upstairs. Done it without thought.

My knee didn't hurt. I bent it experimentally, flexing my leg this way and that, probing for the familiar spike of pain.

Nothing.

The doctors had said I'd been in the brace for another eight weeks, and that was if it healed well.

Sophia had hit me four days ago.

I pulled up the leg of my jeans to look. My knee had swollen badly yesterday, but today it was fine, my skin unmarred. I touched it lightly, inspecting it with my fingers. They brushed something on the back of my knee, and I twisted around awkwardly to look.

Three ticks clung to my skin. Two were miniscule; still the rusty-red color that said they hadn't fed yet. The third was a bilious yellow-green, so swollen and bloated with my blood that it looked like a behemoth beside the other two.

A wave of disgust swept through me as I looked at them, and I felt my lip curl. How long had they been there, slowly sucking me dry? Parasites.

I hobbled down the hallway to the powder room under the stairs and shut the door. For once, I was glad my hand was bandaged. I took the fat tick between two fingers and plucked it away. My knee twinged in protest, but I took a vindictive joy in pitching the little bloodsucker into the toilet.

The other two squirmed, but I pinched them between my nails and sent them sailing in to join the first. Plink, plunk.

I flushed, washed my hands, and turned to leave. Oddly enough, I felt a little better. One problem down; I'd gotten rid of the ticks, though where and how I'd picked up three in January, I didn't know. My hand met the doorknob and-

My knee folded under me. I fell face first into the door, my cheek smacking against wood, and barely caught myself against the sink before I hit the floor.

"Ahh, dammit!" I hissed, my face stinging from where it had struck.

What the hell?!

My knee was throbbing, the pain sickeningly familiar, each pulse punctuated by a sharp little jolt that seemed to travel through my whole body. I could feel the difference without my brace, like the bones themselves were already splintering under the strain, and only needed a little more to break and shatter entirely.

"What-the-hell?!" I pushed myself up, balancing on one leg.

The pain had… I stopped, frozen at the thought. I took the ticks off, and the pain came back. But I'd been fine until then. I'd healed, but I hadn't. I'd seen something last night, but I hadn't. My hand was wrapped, but I didn't remember doing it.

Could I… was it possible that…?

"Taylor, are you coming? How much toast do you want?"

I jumped at Dad's voice and nearly fell again, barely holding onto the doorknob with my good hand to stay up.

Later. I'd figure this out after he left.

Luckily, my crutches were only a few feet from the powder room. I hopped as quietly as I could and grabbed them. Hobbling into the kitchen came with depressing ease; I was getting used to the crutches.

Dad was bustling around, working the stove while feeding slices of bread into the toaster. The smell of breakfast hit me like a wall, blunting my worries I had about my knee. There was another smell though; something unfamiliar wafting through the scents.

I did my best to baby my knee as I sat down, propping the crutches against the table beside me. The pain had dulled a little, and having breakfast to concentrate on helped. I turned to watch Dad work, and that strange smell carried over again. It took me a moment to place it, the same smell I'd caught off Dad when we were upstairs.

Two scents. One sharp, somewhat sour, and another, burnt... almost sulfurous. The latter I had no idea about, but the first… I inhaled, tasting it, rolling it around on my tongue. Beneath the Dad's scent, the composite of sweat, deodorant, shampoo, aftershave… there was the sharp smell.

The toaster popped, and Dad swapped out the toast for new slices, stacking the browned bread on a plate.

It came to me suddenly, the source of that smell; a faint memory of throwing out bottles after Mom had a dinner party for her coworkers. That same sharp-sour smell lingering around those bottles, wafting out of the recycling bin…

My heart beat a little faster as I realized.

Dad had been drinking.

He'd been drinking because of me.

Breakfast was subdued. Dad seemed to have put on a cheerful face while he cooked, but it quickly faded once he sat down. He kept flinching whenever he looked at the window or whenever someone's fork hit their plate too loudly.

Hangover, I thought, the guilt wiping away the taste of my eggs.

We both made conversation, but Dad wasn't feeling it, and I was doing my best to avoid any sensitive topics. When I answered my fifth question with "I'm fine," Dad seemed to take the hint and stopped talking.

Any guilt over that, over stonewalling him yet again, was minimal. If he was drinking - if he had been drinking, because now couldn't be the first time, it was my fault. Anything I told him would only make things worse. It was the same reason I'd never talked about school. I got hurt, he found out about the bullying, and the next thing I know, he'd been drinking.

How did I know that though?

That was another thing. My sense of smell was way out of proportion to what it should be. Just eating breakfast was almost over-stimulating, everything's taste so much stronger, so much better than I was used to.

Bacon had gotten even more delicious. Somehow.

Another thing to figure out. To not tell Dad about.

"Where are your glasses?" Dad said suddenly.

I blinked. Touched my face.

"I left them upstairs," I said, trying to sound bemused and not terrified. "I was a little out of it."

Dad gave a small smile at that, and started in on his coffee. I put my head down and started desperately trying to catalogue any differences. My hand was safely hidden in my pocket, and my knee was still reminding me of its presence with nasty little jabs every time I moved it. Taste and smell I'd already noticed. My vision was fine – better than fine, it was good enough that I was noticing details in the kitchen I hadn't seen since I was three. My glasses didn't provide nearly this much acuity.

It didn't help. The realization was growing more and more apparent with every revelation. Superpowers. Were these superpowers? Far from being exciting, it terrified me; I had the sudden sense of alien forces manipulating my body, changing it, shifting it out of my control without my knowledge.

What else had changed?

What else had happened to me?

Dad finished his coffee and stood.

"I'll get the dishes," I said; my voice sounded distant, like someone else was speaking. Part of me was still quivering, fragile and confused, but I pushed it down. I just needed to hold out until Dad left.

"Thanks," Dad said. He checked the clock above the stove. "Hm… I better get moving."

He left the kitchen, heading upstairs to take his shower. I started clearing the table. Dad had left a couple bacon strips and eggs on his plate. I shoveled them onto my plate and finished them off before dumping the plates in the sink.

The water burbled on upstairs, and I began washing the dishes, eating toast with my bandaged hand as I worked, leaning on the counter rather than using a crutch.

There was something else. Something else inside me had changed imperceptibly. I knew there was a change, but couldn't pinpoint what or where. My senses were like the tip of an iceberg, something strange and wrong, but not massively so. The ticks, my hand, the book room, last night; those were something else, something other, just small parts of a whole. The big picture was there, waiting for me, but I couldn't see it, couldn't put the pieces together. The feeling of things going out of control was building slowly, snowballing into something terrible.

I finished the toast and sat down at the table. We had a little tv in the kitchen, and I flipped it on, staring blindly at the channels while I waited. The minutes oozed away, and I tried to ignore the way I could see the screen clearly for the first time in a decade.

"Alright, I'm off."

I jerked upright in the chair. Dad came back into the kitchen, dressed for work now, his hair still damp. He lingered for a moment at the counter, a sheaf of papers in his hand.

"You're going to be okay all alone, Taylor? I could call in if you need me-"

"No!" I hesitated, before saying it again more calmly. "No, really. What are you so worried about?"

He looked at me, his face pale and gray in the morning sun. I could still smell the alcohol on him, fainter now, but still there, lingering like an old memory.

"You, kiddo, I'm worried about you."

I waited ten minutes after he left before I went to the book room. The door opened without protest, and I surveyed the inside of a room I hadn't looked at in the daylight for nearly a year.

Bookshelves lined three walls, splitting on the wall ahead and to my right for windows. A desk, thick with dust, sat under the right window, and an area rug, sunfaded now, covered the floor. There were books everywhere; double-stacked onto shelves, and piled into corners like forgotten treasures.

A few cardboard boxes sat empty beside the door. Dad had meant to go through and throw things out, but had never worked up the nerve.

I'd never dreamed of it. This was Mom's room. Her things, her room.

I stepped in.

The night before was- I stopped, shaking my head. It had been daytime when I came in here yesterday. It had only been 2 in the afternoon, and…

It had been night when I came into the room. I didn't remember much, but I remembered that.

And I remembered Mom. I'd remembered Mom. It wasn't just last night, but long ago, when I was just a little girl. Something with Mom and a woman I didn't know.

And…

I held out my bandaged hand. The final strip of cloth still encircled my finger, dotted with toast crumbs now.

If I had superpowers, that was fine, but there was something more, something wrong here. That wasn't how powers worked – remembering stuff that had happened – stuff that couldn't have happened, because there had been a bug and… and…

I couldn't remember.

-our little secret-

Bits and pieces were there. The room. Mom. The woman. The bug. Moonlight.

Blood.

I remembered that clearly. The taste of blood.

Without thought, I pulled the end of the bandage off my thumb. It came away easily, and I began unwinding it.

I closed my eyes as I worked, going by feel alone.

Only when I felt the cloth fall away entirely did I open them again.

My flesh ended a bare millimeter after my knuckle. A scabbed, ragged edge marked the spot where my finger had been torn away by-

By-

-good girl-

My knees hit the rug. The right screamed in protest, but it was like someone else's knee, someone else's pain.

I remembered now.

My finger. I'd bit off my own finger. Bit it off and-

Sour bile rose in my throat and I heaved, my body shaking as I tried to vomit. Nothing came. I tried to force it; the nausea was there, but I just couldn't. The only other option was to stick my finger down my throat, and I wasn't doing that.

My finger. I'd eaten my own fucking finger. I could still taste it, could still taste it on my tongue – sweet meat wrapped around a core of bone and marrow and-

I heaved again, trying desperately to vomit, to purge, to get it out.

No relief came. I lay there on the rug, my heart throbbing painfully, my eyes watering.

Slowly, I pushed myself up. My whole body felt slow and dumb and foreign. If I could do that, then what else could happen? What else could I do?

And why?

This wasn't superpowers, it was losing my mind. Listening to my dead mother command me, cannibalizing myself, my senses going haywire, my body rebelling.

All madness.

"Why?" I whispered. "Why now?"

Why Mom?

I hadn't imagined all those things; they'd happened, but I couldn't understand why. But why her? Because I'd failed to visit her grave? Because I was losing it!? Why couldn't my stupid mind just leave well enough alone!? She was dead, and she was never coming back, and she'd never done anything with fucking bugs!

And-

It landed on the back of my hand. The mutilated hand. The bug adjusted itself, balancing on a dozen black legs. It was… a butterfly?

It was like a butterfly.

I stared closer.

But it was like a wasp too. And a grasshopper. And a fly. Strong jaws and six wings attached to a body wrapped in gray fur and shiny, spiked shell.

And it was real. I could feel its weight; feel its legs pinpricking the back of my hand.

Real.

"What the fuck?" I whispered. "What is this?"

The bug took flight suddenly, wheeling around the room.

"Wait!" I grabbed for it without thinking. "Come back!"

And I felt it.

A pulse of something in my words. A force behind them.

The bug darted through beams of sunlight and returned to my hand. I looked down at it with wide eyes.

It was real, and I'd just made it do something. I hadn't dreamt what happened. It had been real. I knew what it meant now. The dreams made sense.

I rose slowly to my knees, hunching over the bug, protecting it, keeping it from flying away.

Real. Real. Real.

It was proof. Something was happening. Something beyond me, something abnormal. An answer to what was happening.

A laugh escaped me, suddenly and unexpectedly. The butterfly fluttered its many wings as my breath ruffled it. I held it up to my face, looking at it from only a few inches away.

I breathed the word, and something in my chest seemed to ease, just a little.

"Real."

YEARNYEARNYEARNYEARNYEARN

Roll for SAN loss, Taylor.

Beta credit goes to Hellgodsrus, without whom this chapter wouldn't have made much sense.