We Are Ash Read online

  Poor Ash had been mopey at first and sullen second, but had finally resigned to her lack of the Dolores. Her cooking had gotten more adventurous. Dolores had introduced her to the library’s computers and how to use them to look up recipes and techniques. She had to calm her down several times as Ash kept loudly whispering every time she found a video or picture explaining things:“So elaborate! Clever squishies with your glowing boxes filled with information!”

  Dolores swore that sometimes Ash had a mischievous gleam in her eye when Dolores arrived home, but no new cases of the plague had happened since “breathing into squishies” had been added in bold, red Sharpie to the Not Allowed list on the fridge. Ash had also added in her own odd handwriting: “the fixing.” Then, smaller: “Allowed: Mouth-smashing, not the Colt.”

  Her new life also kept Dolores from having to think too hard about her mother's death, or the fact that she was harboring Typhoid Ash in her house, or the thing that maybe bothered her most—missing Colt. They had kept up texting and he even occasionally called her, but she didn't know what they were or what he expected of her. Often, she simply tried to push him from her mind. She could deal with that confusion later. There were other newer and more confusing things at hand.

  Overall, though, she thought maybe the tide of her life had turned, that things were improving, and maybe—just maybe—everything would get easier from here on out.

  29 The Broom

  We are the alone again, but not all the time. The Dolores says it is too busy to spend much time with us, and we try to make the face that the squishies make when they don't want a thing but are supposed to accept the thing. We hoped that when the Dolores disappeared from the lair it would make things Allowed again, but it has been emphatic that breathing into squishies is still Not Allowed.

  Spending more time at the magical book place—the library—has made us less morose about the alone. It is not learning and exploring the way that we can learn and explore when we breathe into the squishies, but it is learning, more learning than any silly biped could do in a lifetime, but we are no silly biped. So we learn and learn and learn from the books and the glowing information boxes. We also travel to the places we have already been so we can run in those places. We do not mention this to the Dolores because we don't want it to make travel Not Allowed and we can never predict what the Dolores will make Not Allowed.

  Lately the Dolores has been very attached to its tiny glowing hand-face device. Its thumbs are always going, going, going and it is always having secret smiles and it forgets that it has its crazy bitch right there. We are not happy. We are sad. We are the alone enough when the Dolores takes its body away to do the College, but now it takes its mind away even when its body is at home on the couch with us. It makes us want to crush the small device—the phone thing—down into a fine powder and watch it fly away on the ever-present wind. We wish that the Dolores lived in a place that did not have so much winter.

  We have also had an unsettling tingling in us. We don't know what exactly it is yet, but we feel fear. We can almost hear something on the horizon, like the hollow howling before a tornado. Each of us vibrates and aches and each of our many, many senses reach out into the void, seeking what we can't see in the dark, ominous feeling that fills us more and more every day. At first we thought it was just the alone combined with being Not Allowed to breathe into squishies, but it is more. We feel like a prey animal with our noses to the wind, tall grass hiding something or nothing, so we wait.

  We have devised a method to both conserve firewood and to circumvent the Not Allowed. When we are at home doing the housewife things, we allow ourselves a nice pelt. It is much cozier to do everything in the lair with fur. We still respect the Not Allowed when we are outside the house because the Dolores said not to be naked outside the den, but that doesn't mean we can never enjoy not being in a bald, squishy body. We enjoy that the Dolores seems to have no means of discerning whether we break some of the rules. It calls us sneaky, so sneaky we will be.

  We have also been practicing the other mouth-noise categories. We practice the Spanish. We practice the porcupine. Yesterday on our run in the dark early morning when we can have fur and no one sees, we met a group of creatures that the squishies call raccoons. The raccoons are clever creatures and they use their paws to perform complicated tasks. We are briefly sad that we didn't just decide to become a raccoon, but it is too late for that now, we didn't know about the raccoons when we decided to become we. But we like the raccoon mouth-noises and we make them quite effectively, startling the whole lot of them.

  Today we decided to clean the grooming room and we are cold because it is always cold in the Bozeman, but especially in that room where everything is hard, cold, and shiny. We do not think the Dolores will be home for a long time, so we grow a nice raccoon fur. We are very sad that the bald bipeds do not have tails. Tails seem delightful if the dogs the squishies serve are any indication. But we cannot change our structure quite enough to have a tail. Not yet. But we are always learning. We do grow a nice raccoon pelt, though, and we clean with our raccoonish hands and we make raccoon noises, delighting in our chattering that is no-point noise.

  We are finishing the toilet when we hear a scream and something smacks into our side. We curl up and roll so we don't hurt too much of our soft, defenseless body. Then we spring to our feet and roar at our assailant, and not a raccoon roar, but a nice, big-bellied bear roar. Then we see that we were hit with a broom and we let our fur retract and we make our best “sorry” face because it was the Dolores that hit us. It is looking at us with wild panic in its pretty face and its blue eyes are so bright.

  We think that it should make a sorry face too, but it doesn't; it makes the what-the-hell face. As our fur disappears, the Dolores lowers the broom.

  “Ash? What the ever-loving fuck was that? I thought there was a fucking gigantic raccoon in my bathroom.” It sighs and looks at my side where it hit me—silly, sweet biped. The Dolores thinks it could hurt us. Even though it is a squishy body, it is our squishy body, and it is stronger, better.

  We say nothing. We glare at the Dolores, though, because it shouldn't hit raccoons or us. We decide to press for this to be on the Not Allowed list. “The Dolores is Not Allowed to hit raccoons… or us… with brooms.”

  She nods and props the broom back in the corner where we had for sweeping. “Fine, fine, I didn't mean to hit you with the broom.”

  “It should not hit anything with the broom, even the You. We did not expect the Dolores to be home so soon.”

  “I’m surprised too. Miraculously, I have a day off. I thought you and I could hang out. But I mean it, what the hell was that? Did you have fur or was that some weird illusion?”

  We cross our arms. Now it will say Not Allowed. Always Not Allowed. We can't even save firewood and be cozy without it being Not Allowed. We say nothing. We glare our very best the Stink-Eye at the Dolores. We are cold now because we did not start a fire. We push past the Dolores and arrange the wood in the nice pyramid for burning. It follows us and makes the noise that indicates it wishes us to make noise.

  “We save firewood and the Dolores hits us with a broom. The Dolores does not appreciate its housewife. It does not appreciate that we mostly obey the Not Allowed. Why is it Not Allowed to have a pelt? Why are the squishies bald? It is very unpleasant in winter with no fur! It is not-nice! Not-nice at all! The firewood comes from the cold and we carry it far for the Dolores who also will not grow a nice pelt. We do not understand why we can't simply grow our fur. We do not like all the stupid squishy customs about drapes! Drapes are not so warm as a nice pelt!”

  The Dolores watches us for a bit and then laughs a small laugh. “Fine, in the house you may grow a pelt. I mean, can you? I don't even—holy shit!”

  It screams as I regrow nice, thick fur. After, I can see in the Dolores's eager gaze that it wishes to pet us. We grew our best pelt, sleek, but dense, and very, very soft, pale to hide us in the snow like the great polar be
ars we have seen in images and moving around inside the glowing information boxes.

  “You can just… change… grow… whatever? You can just do that?”

  “We tell it every day, we know nothing of what the You can do. We grow nice pelts. Can the Dolores not grow a nice covering of fur?”

  The Dolores shakes its head dramatically. “What about the noises? What the hell was that?”

  “Raccoon noises. We like them. They are nice noises.”

  “Can I touch it?”

  We do the nodding thing that replaces the mouth-noises. The Dolores runs its hand over our back, lightly at first, but then it sends its fingers through the fur and rakes its nails lightly along our hide and we wish to use the delightful cat-happy noise, but we suspect we are Not Allowed and that we have already almost gotten the not-nice yelling today, so we don't make the noise. Instead we think about the cat-noise and the Dolores continues to pet us.

  “Holy shit, I can't believe you just sprouted this in a nanosecond like it was blinking your eyes. I wish I knew what you were.”

  “We wish it knew what the You was too so that the Dolores would stop talking about the You. We did not know that the squishies were involuntarily furless. We thought it was a social custom since the Dolores removes hair with the small pink stick in the grooming tub.”

  The Dolores laughs, and since we do not know why, we make its laugh noise. It explains the biped's hair growth system which seems arbitrary and stupid, like the things that are not clever about the squishies. We do not understand how they can have so many elaborate and clever behaviors, but also so many stupid, pointless systems. Even with all the learning we do at the library place, we still seem to know nothing about the bipeds.

  But we know the Dolores is now leaning on our shoulder, continuing to pet us and tell us how soft and nice we feel. We clarify that we are Allowed to have our nice fur when we are inside and it says it is Allowed. We feel victorious, since the Dolores almost never says things are Allowed.

  “Ash, the other things are still Not Allowed, okay? I know it's hard for Ash. And thanks. Thanks for taking such good care of me.”

  So we respond with our obligatory Okay and we snuggle closer to the Dolores. It has been a long time since it has cuddled with us and it is nice to not feel the alone. It makes the darkness recede and we can breathe for a while.

  30 The Brook

  Dolores almost wet her pants the day that she came home and heard the chittering of a raccoon inside her house. She assumed that Ash had made a misguided attempt at having a pet or—far worse—livestock. Then she saw an impossibly large raccoon wielding a toilet brush. The broom was simply the first thing within reach, although she wasn’t sure what she had hoped to accomplish by assaulting an unknown large, wild animal.

  But it had been only Ash. Freaky, sweet, alien, Ash. Dolores felt a kind of pride that she hadn't completely lost her shit about Ash's ability to spontaneously grow and un-grow fur. The green eyes glowing out of the shorter face fur made her look like some sort of fey yeti.

  Still, dolores didn't like the nagging suspicions this transgression caused. What other rules was Ash violating when Dolores wasn't around? She had put Pelts on the increasingly absurd Not Allowed list once upon a time, but she hadn't thought that Ash could actually grow fur. Instead she’d envisioned Ash taking down a bear in hand-to-hand combat and ripping off its skin. Dolores couldn't decide which scenario was more terrifying.

  They spent the rest of the night cuddling, stoking the fire, and playing Super Smash Bros. Ash was confused that it wasn't some kind of kissing game. She kept asking if smashing was not the right word, and Dolores explained the correct terms. Ash's face trembled with a fury that only English and the You seemed capable of causing, but let it drop with only a growl. Dolores even ignored her phone when it chimed, seeing Ash's face fill with hate at the noise. It had been a while since they'd had spent much quality time together, and Dolores realized that this raccoon-flavored rebellion might have been a result of loneliness.

  Dolores had hoped that Lane would ask after Ash again, but he hadn't. When she brought up their run he happily chatted about how Ash had completely smoked him, but when Dolores pressed further, he shrugged and said that she hadn't seemed that into him what with running away and all. Dolores tried to explain that Ash was unfamiliar with dating culture, but Lane shrugged and said it was no big deal. He’d moved on. It saddened Dolores that Lane's interest had been so entirely fleeting and insubstantial, but she had hoped maybe someone besides herself would befriend Ash soon.

  Dolores rushed to her contagious diseases class, trying to arrive in time to chat with Brook for a few minutes. But as she slid into the seat next to him, he didn't even look up from his phone. She glanced at what he was reading and saw that fifteen new cases of red pneumonia had cropped up in North Dakota.

  “Oh, fuck,” she gasped.

  Brook turned to her with an oddly bright expression. “Right? I knew it, I knew it wasn't over. A few weeks of nothing and then escalation. It totally supports my theory! I'm gonna expose this bastard.”

  “Don't you think a cure is more important?”

  “Yeah, sure. Obviously we need to find treatment for the people who are already sick. But in the meantime, preventing new cases is like contagion protocol number one, right? Isn't your brother up in that part of North Dakota? Is he okay?”

  Dolores felt her mouth go dry and quickly pulled out her phone. “This is my first time hearing about it. When did this happen?”

  “They all started pouring into the hospital last night but none of them had a coherent story about what happened.”

  “Were they all at one location?” she asked while texting Danny.

  “Yeah, they were, and they said it happened to them within minutes. They were all in some kind of corporate housing, and then they were all coughing blood. But check this out—they said that someone showed up right before they all got sick. Some stranger they’d never seen before.”

  “Did they say what she looked like?”

  “She? This has crazy, white supremacist man written all over it. It's like Unibomber, but Unipoisoner.”

  “Yeah, yeah. But still, do they describe the person?”

  “None of them got much of a look at him, but I guess the government is now considering looking into this as possible bioterrorism. You can bet if this had happened anywhere on the East Coast they wouldn’t be so slow-moving about it. Nobody gives a crap about the boonies. With population densities approaching zero, we're hardly the ideal habitat for a contagious disease. Another reason to suspect it’s a person.”

  Dolores's heart was racing and she made a snap decision she hoped she wouldn't regret. If Ash did do this, she needed someone else to understand that her friend didn't mean to hurt people. She’d also need help figuring out a way to convince Ash to work towards figuring out how to cure people.

  “Look, do you have some time to come by my place later tonight? There's somebody I think you need to meet.”

  Brooks eyebrows flew up in surprise and he whispered under their professors’ calling the class to attention. “About this? About the attacks?”

  “If that's what they are, yeah. I'll text you my address. I get off my shift at ten.”

  “Okay, sure. I’ll see you then.”

  Class started and Dolores wondered what this earnest nerd would think about Ash. Would he be like Lane and simply see that Ash was beautiful, or would he see that Ash was bizarre and inhuman in some ways while still being so very, very human in others?

  After work, Dolores got to her house with only a few minutes to prep Ash. She was cooking something that smelled amazing and covered in a shiny, black fur that had the faint spots of a black leopard.

  “Ash, drop the fur. Someone’s coming over to visit.”

  “Drop it?” Ash shrugged, gave a dog-like shake, and the entire coat of thick, luxurious fur fell off her in a soft, whiffing pile, molted like her clothes.

  “Goddamn
it! That—fuck—never mind, go go go, go. Get some clothes on. Tell me you have some in a pile somewhere?”

  Ash said nothing, but stalked out of the room, rubbing her now bare arms pointedly. “We are cold, we will start a fire and put on drapes if the Dolores doesn't like our fur.”

  “No, it's not that. The fur is lovely, but a friend is coming over to meet you. So you—Ash—Ash needs to act normal, okay?”

  “We always act normal.”

  “Clothes! Now!”

  “It does not have to Not-Nice yell!”

  Dolores ignored Ash’s grumbling and started frantically sweeping up the huge mountain of dark fur—more unsettling than seeing it grow. On Ash, it seemed like an octopus changing its texture to blend in with coral or sand, but this—this implied she wasn't just morphing, she was actually growing fur. Dolores dumped a load in the trash. Then she took a small clump and put it in a baggie to take to university’s lab. She wanted to look at it under a microscope. She wondered if MSU had leopard fur on a slide somewhere that she could compare it to.

  A knock came at the door, and while Dolores still wasn’t prepared, it was ten below zero. She intended to reveal Ash in all her furry, bad grammar glory anway, so might as well get this over with. She left her broom and walked to the front door, beckoning Brook in.

  “Man, Mother Nature is not messing around this winter.” His eyes roamed around and landed on the pile of hair. “Did you shave a dog or blow one up?”

  “Neither. It's a long story. Let me just go see if—” but at that moment, Ash came out of Dolores's bedroom where Ash kept her rotating stash of ‘drapes’. Dolores's heart sank a little as Brook's eyes widened and a helpless grin spread across his face.

  “Ash, this is Brook. Brook, this is Ash.”