Rachel. Rachel is my girlfriend. Red hair. Eyes the color of hazelnuts. Slender. Attractive. Parts of my body shifted when I brought a mental image of her to the front of my mind.
Psychic. Wait. What did that mean? She couldn’t read minds, but she could sense the supernatural in objects or people. What would she pick up when I walked in the door?
I’d have to do it fast. I remembered that she was strong. She’d punched me often enough.
I unlocked the door. Rachel was lying on the sofa, flipping through TV channels. “Hi! How’d it go?”
“Fine.” I locked the door.
Rachel sat up, muting the TV. “What’s for dinner? It’s your turn to cook. And no more grilled cheese sandwiches, that’s cheating. Unless you use the fancy cheese and make French fries. Aren’t you going to take your coat off?”
“I’ve got something to show you.” I reached into my pocket, walking toward the sofa.
Rachel stood up. She was wearing a black T-shirt and shorts. I remembered I likedher legs. She crossed her arms and sighed. “What?”
“This.” I pulled the creature out and grabbed her arm.
She reacted like a—like a cat. As if her psychic powers had suddenly been triggered even before I touched her. “Hey!” She tried to jerk her arm away, but I kept my fingers clamped on her.
Her eyes flared open in alarm. Not because of the creature—she only glanced at it for a moment—but because she sensed something different in me. She yanked her arm harder, and kicked my leg. Hard and painfully.
“What the hell—” She twisted, fighting to get away, but when she got a good look at the creature in my hand she punched at my face.
Rachel studied—what? Krav maga. I didn’t really know what that was, but her fist hurt. I remembered Pelz socking me in the stomach. Today was not my day, part of me thought, but I managed to stay in control of the body and thrust the creature at her face.
She chopped at my arm and twisted her head away, and at the last moment she wrapped her fingers around the creature’s body and tried to squeeze, but then one antenna sank into her throat and another one pierced the side of her neck, plunging deep. Blood rolled down onto her T-shirt.
Rachel screamed. The shriek was painful in my ears. She clawed at the antennae, trying to pull them out, rip them away, but I pushed the creature toward her until it sank its claws into her skin, wriggling out of my gasp and attaching itself to Rachel’s body.
I let go of her arm. Rachel stared at me, her eyes wide. I recognized fear, then betrayal, then anger as she staggered backward, still trying to pull the creature free. I watched, ready to stop her if she actually looked like she might damage it, but in two more seconds she flung her head back and dropped to the floor, grunting, her body shaking as the creature jabbed its claws into her.
I stood over Rachel and watched as the creature slithered behind her neck. I ripped the back of her T-shirt to let it get into the right position to plant its claws into her body. She shuddered, moaning once, then fell silent as the creature anchored itself on her back, flattening its body out down her spine.
Rachel’s breath was shallow. She didn’t move for three minutes, then she jerked her head up, blinking to focus her eyes. She looked at me.
“I’m okay,” she said.
I helped her stand up. She gazed around the apartment, like she’d never seen it before, then sat down on the sofa, her back straight.
“What now?” She picked up a bottle of water, then set it back down without drinking.
“We wait. One of them—Pelz—will call me to come get more. You’ll take them and give them to people at your school.”
Rachel nodded.
We sat next to each other, not looking, not touching. After some time—three hours—Rachel stood up. “I have to—eliminate.”
I did too, I realized. “We should eat and drink. We need fluids and solids for energy.”
She used the bathroom, and then I did. In the kitchen I found some bottles of water, and took out a loaf of bread. In the living room, on the sofa again, we ate and drank until the water and bread were gone. Then we sat.
More hours passed. Finally my phone buzzed. Pelz. “Yes?”
“Go see Clint Mason.” Pelz gave me an address. “He’s got some of us to give you. Have the girl take them to her classes.”
“Right.” I hung up. “I have to go. When I come back, you’ll take some of them to your classes.”
Rachel frowned. “I think—I don’t have any classes until tomorrow.”
I nodded. “Tomorrow.” I started to stand up.
“Wait.” She was staring at nothing. The air. “There’s something—” She gestured at her head. “I can see things.”
“You’re psychic,” I said. “It means you have senses beyond what other—”
“I know what psychic means.” For a split second something deep inside me recognized the real Rachel, the one who’d abuse me and punch me and roll her eyes at my jokes. Then she was gone. She cocked her head, gazing at me with unblinking eyes.
“I love you.” It was like something she’d only just remembered, and didn’t quite understand.
I thought for a moment, searching my brain. “I love you too.” It was a fact, not an emotion. Like my name, or the color of the curtains. I didn’t know what it meant either.
Rachel’s face looked puzzled. “We’ve—done things.”
I searched my mind for a moment, looking for memories. They went back years. We’d been together for a long time, fighting, eating together, driving places, having sex, confronting monsters, watching TV.
Part of me realized that I wouldn’t have wanted this. I would have fought against it, like I’d struggled with Pelz. I looked at Rachel and saw the same thing in her eyes.
Then I shook my head hard, clearing the memories away. They didn’t matter anymore. I stood up. “I’ll be back.”
Rachel nodded. Her eyes went blank as I left.
I knocked on the door of the address Pelz had given me. It was an apartment in Evanston, just north of Chicago. The door opened. “Come in.”
Clint Mason was a Black man, short and bony, in a sweatshirt and jeans. He looked me over as I stepped inside and closed the door. “You’re Tom? Tom Jurgen?”
“Yes. Do you have them for me?”
He nodded. He seemed nervous. That felt wrong, but I didn’t know how to respond. Maybe he was sick with something, or needed to remember to eat.
Mason pointed toward another room. “In the kitchen. Right there.”
This apartment was cleaner than Pelz’s. No boxes or plastic bags on the floor, but newspapers and magazines were scattered over every chair and table. Mason’s clothes were soiled with sweat and food stains, like Pelz had been, and he was barefoot.
I headed for the kitchen. Mason followed, pausing to move a pillow on the sofa. “They’re right there on the kitchen table—”
I felt his breath on my neck, and recognized that something was wrong. Mason wasn’t behaving like me, or Pelz, or Rachel. He was nervous. Talkative. In a hurry—
A surge of pain knifed suddenly through my body. An electric jolt that burned my nerves and clouded my vision. I shouted, waving my arms, but the shock bit into me again. Not the body, I realized in a sudden flash of fear. The creature on my back.
Mason jabbed it again. “Die, you son of a bitch!”
I felt the creature curl up, trying to protect itself. For a moment, I was two people—or at least two separate beings. One was flailing, screaming silently, fighting desperately to dig into my skin, looking for a place to hide.
The other was me.
I tore off my jacket. “Get it off me!” My voice was hoarse and raspy, and sounded different now. Like I hadn’t heard it in a long time. I clawed at my shirt, popping buttons, yanking it down. “Get it off me!”
With a grin, Mason dropped his stun gun and grabbed the creature with both hands. The jagged claws hurt ripping free of my skin, and blood dripped down my back, but I felt like I could breathe after being trapped underwater for longer than anyone could survive. I gasped, staggered forward, and turned to see Mason fling the creature to the floor and stomp it with his bare foot.
“Wait—here—” I didn’t want to risk him getting taken, if it was possible for the creature to go in through his feet or legs. I pushed him aside and slammed my heel down on the thing. I was wearing sneakers, not boots or anything, but I stomped its head again and again until I finally crushed it, and mustard-yellowish guts spilled out over Mason’s carpet.
I leaned over, catching my breath. The stench from the creature’s blood and brains threatened to make me throw up. I stumbled away, wiping my heel on the carpet, spreading the muck around.
I finally looked up at Mason, who was staring at me. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I think so. Thanks.” I rubbed my eyes. “What the hell is that?”
He motioned me to follow him.
In the kitchen, another plastic box like the one in Pelz’s place sat on the table. Mason opened it up, and I looked in to find at least 10 or the creatures half-immersed in a pool of water, with the green mossy stuff packed into the corners.
They twitched and squirmed. Could they see me? Did they know I was here? Could they jump out at me? I stepped away, breathing raggedly.
Mason slammed the box shut. “I call them the Masters.” He walked over to the refrigerator, opened the freezer, and pulled out a bottle of vodka. “I don’t know what they are or where they’re from. I was leaving work one night about a week ago—I work maintenance in a condo—and one of my friends offered me a ride home. Next thing I knew . . .” He shook his head, opened the bottle, and poured vodka into two glasses on the sink.
I’m not much of a drinker, but I took one and downed it. “How did you get rid of it?”
Mason shrugged. “It died. I don’t know. Maybe they don’t like Black men’s skin?” He grinned. “I had COVID, got over it. Maybe that killed it. All I know is about a day ago it just dropped off me. I couldn’t—I slept for 12 hours, and my phone woke me up, and it was some guy saying they’d just made a delivery.”
He drank again, and poured more for me, then put the bottle back in the freezer. “That box was outside the door. I didn’t know what to do. I just brought it inside and tried to think, and then somebody else called and told me you were coming over and to give you a couple. So I got my Taser and waited.”
I carried my drink back into the living and dropped into a chair. Mason carefully walked around the dead maker and leaned against the couch.
“What did you do while it—had you?” I asked, sipping my vodka.
“Nothing. I just sat here.” He looked around the room. “Four, five days. Every once in a while it remembered I had to eat, or drink, or go to the bathroom. I never took a shower, didn’t go to bed. Just sat.”
I stared at the Master again.
It had been on me. Inside me. In my brain. I tried to think back to the hours I’d been under its control. It had felt like watching TV, with no way to change the channel. It already seemed like a dream slipping away.
Except for Rachel.
Rachel. Oh God.
I swung around. “We have to go.”
“Where?” Mason blinked, confused.
“My girlfriend. They’ve got her.” I pointed at the box. “Bring a couple of them. I’ll need your Taser.”
“Wait—what are we doing?” He just stood in the middle of the living room, staring at me as if I were crazy.
“I took one of those—those things home and gave it to my girlfriend! Come on, man!” I stalked to the living room and picked up the stun gun.
“Wait, wait!” A moment later Mason came out of the kitchen, a big Tupperware container in his hands. I could see three Masters and some of the green muck floating in water. “This okay?”
“It’s great, thanks. Let’s go.” I reached for the doorknob.
“Let me get some shoes on, all right? Jesus Christ.” He looked across the floor. “Okay, give me a minute . . .”
I took a deep breath to calm myself. “Sorry. Take your time. Shoes are important.”
“Damn right. Let me check the bedroom.”
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