We Are Ash Read online

  We enjoyed touching the Dolores. The Dolores seemed to find it pleasant as well, but it also made face indications that this was somehow unexpected or not acceptable. This is a mystery we will have to try to solve without breathing into the Dolores. We know now that we might have to leave the Bozeman if the blood-juice-coughs are traced to the Dolores. We know it is not a good idea to underestimate the soft bipeds—that is how we got shot.

  We consider drifting to a place where we can acquire new shoes, but we would have to procure new body drapes as well and we are already incensed that the humans are expected to wear different drapes all the time. Clothes. We must remember more of these… words. They must be the thing giving our nature away. The clothes and the shoes make us wish to use bear noises.

  We did not tell the Dolores, but we also have dog noises and cat noises, but not from breathing. We didn't breathe those creatures, we would not like to hurt other creatures. We happen to be an excellent mimic when it comes to sounds. We have even discovered how to modify our vocal cords to be more effective at making a variety of sounds. We find the human voice we created to be quite pleasant, but unique. Just because we can mimic does not mean we don't want our very own voice.

  We decide to go to the hospital and observe. We think breathing into someone close to the hospital might be too risky despite how curious we are about what the blood-juice-coughers have said about us. We are sad we left our dictionary at the Starbucks, but we have often recovered the dictionary. The humans do not seem to value the dictionary. Perhaps the devices they attach to their hands contain information similar to the dictionary. We can sense the waves flowing in and out of the devices, but we can't imagine any better form of information than a dictionary. Perhaps it is a more cohesive set of information with explanations of complex interactions as well. We think we might like to inspect a device and see whether it could be a useful tool for our assimilation. We do so love to learn.

  5 Just Dolores

  Dolores spent the rest of her shift responding to orders in a monotone while she tried to process whatever the fuck had just happened with Ash. The strange woman didn't have an accent at all, so it was unlikely she was just learning English, but she also asked questions about the most basic of phrases. Dolores only “spoke” high school level Spanish and she could see herself using incorrect pronouns left and right and probably driving some poor Spanish speaker to madness. She decided that learning where Ash was from would be her mission for their impromptu evening get together.

  She didn’t quite know why she had agreed to hang out with Ash. The woman was weird beyond even Dolores standards, yet she was oddly drawn to this stranger who couldn't even order a goddamn coffee. Ash was attractive with her long, shiny blonde hair and those unsettling green eyes, and her face was beautiful, but in an odd, cobbled together sort of way that would probably not register with the average passer-by. Dolores—the Dolores, she thought with a chuckle—found the strange woman intriguing to be sure.

  Maybe Ash's appeal was that she could be a cure for the crushing loneliness Dolores had been feeling—something it seemed like they had in common. Now if Ash could just acquire the ability to use the word “you” without losing her shit and roaring like a goddamn bear. What the hell had that been? Maybe she shouldn’t be getting involved with someone who could sound that much like a bear. Maybe Ash had been part of some crazy, fucked up circus cult and was raised by bears. Though she hadn't had seen any scars—her skin looked airbrushed it was so flawless.

  What felt like the shortest shift ever was suddenly over. Her coworker Rachel nudged her out of the way at the counter, saying, “Go home, you look like you’re ready for a day off.” Dolores nodded and pulled her green apron over her shoulder. It was then she realized that she hadn't exchanged numbers with Ash—how would they decide where to meet up?

  But lo and behold—as if hearing her thoughts, Ash stepped into Starbucks, scanning the whole place with her laser eyes before they fell on her abandoned dictionary. She grinned her real smile—not the mock grimace—and picked it up greedily. Then her eyes drifted to Dolores and glowed—now she was certain of it. She was equally certain—and even more unsettled—that Ash was a couple inches taller. She was still in her ridiculously out of season flip-flops but her shirt was buttoned incorrectly. Now Dolores really wanted to know what she'd been up to in the few hours they'd been apart—taking human growth hormone and having hurried sex?

  “Hello the Dolores.”

  Dolores shepherded Ash outdoors again when a couple customers turned at either the strange quality of Ash's voice or the odd phrasing of her greeting. Ash was definitely taller, not tall like Dolores, but closer to five-six. What the hell was going on?

  “I told you, just Dolores.”

  “Hello Just Dolores.”

  Dolores face-palmed and sighed, wondering why she agreed to undertake this inevitably confusing and possibly irritating outing. She unlocked her bike and began walking it with Ash beside her. Ash stared at the bike like it was the eighth wonder of the world but remained silent. How could a bike so enrapture an adult? Dolores was a little jealous of the obvious joy Ash seemed to take from simple things, like bikes and dictionaries.

  Suddenly Ash turned her attention from the bike and to Dolores's shoes instead. “Are those the Starbucks foot cov—shoes?”

  “Dude, where are you from?”

  Ash did her owl head cock and said, “Where are we from? Is that relevant to where the Dolores's gets their shoes?”

  “No. But you are really weird. Like, super-duper special deluxe weird. And stop cocking your head to the side like that, you're freaking me out.”

  “Many mouth-noises still confuse us. We are learning.”

  “Say: I am learning.”

  “What is the I?”

  “You are the I.”

  “We still hate the You. We certainly don't need the I.”

  Dolores sighed and continued walking. “Just try to talk more like me, okay?”

  Dolores jumped away when Ash repeated the phrase in Dolores's exact voice back to her. “Just try to talk more like me, okay?”

  “What the fuck?” Dolores shrieked.

  “What the fuck?” Ash shrieked back in Dolores's voice again with a giant, unabashed smile.

  “Stop it! I didn't mean in my voice. Say the words I say, but with your own voice. The Ash voice.” Dolores felt mildly insane having just heard her own voice come out of someone else's mouth.

  “The Dolores speaks a lot of this I. We do not wish to speak of the I and the You so much.”

  “Fine. Come on, I'll take you to my place where at least no one will hear you and your damn crazy talk and your weird voice.”

  “We have a weird voice? Is our voice not-nice?”

  “Ash, your voice is fine, it's lovely. It’s just strange. And it's super freaky that you can mimic me so well.”

  “We are excellent at mimicking sounds. We are perhaps better at mimicry than learning. We also enjoy mimicry.” Ash suddenly belted out a part of the song that had been on the radio before they stepped out of Starbucks. She sounded exactly like Lady Gaga and Dolores felt her eyes grow wide. “Does the Dolores not like the mimicry all the time, or only when we make the Dolores sounds?”

  “You can mimic stuff with me, but don't do that around other people. You'll either get shot or someone will call a priest.”

  “We definitely do not enjoy being shot. What is a priest?”

  Dolores chose to sail right past the fact that Ash seemed to have been shot at some point. “You know, guys in black with white collars that run the show in churches? The places with crosses on top. Not all of them, I guess priests are just Catholic. I think. My mom would know. But she's evangelical, so priests are something she does not approve of. But that’s beside the point. You still haven’t told me where you’re from.”

  “And the Dolores never told us if those are the Starbucks shoes.”

  “You first.”

  Ash growled h
er bearish growl. “Even if we sort of understand, we hate the You. We are from everywhere, but most recently we are from the cluster of human-boxes that they call the Bozeman.”

  “Just Bozeman.”

  “Just Bozeman. We are glad it is not unjust. Now tell us of the shoes.”

  “Sure, yeah, these are Starbucks shoes,” Dolores answered with a glance down at her very worn Dr. Martens. At one point they had been covered in periwinkle velvet, but now the velvet was balding and the laces had broken off so many times that they were only laced up through the first four eyelets on each side. Another ancient gift from Danny. Was there anything nice in her life that wasn't a gift from Danny?

  Ash seemed pleased by the answer. “We like to run, but the other humans look at our foot covers strangely. Does the Dolores know if these are not the accepted foot covers for running?”

  Dolores wondered if she should be worried that she was getting pretty fluent in Ash-ese. “Yeah, people are definitely going to look at you askance if you're running in flip-flops. Were you just out running? Is that why your shirt is messed up? Why are you wearing flip-flops when it's this cold out anyway? And do you have a jacket? Are you homeless?”

  Ash started to rotate her head again but aborted midway, making the gesture look even stranger than her full horror-movie head cock. Dolores stopped and leaned her bike against herself to gently adjust Ash's head. Ash grimaced in such a way that Dolores assumed it was supposed to be a smile.

  “We did run. We love to run fast, it is refreshing. Can the Dolores show us the proper shoes for running? We are cold, we wish we had nice fur like the other animals. What is a jacket? What is a homeless?”

  “A jacket is another layer of clothes you wear to stay warm. You might be in Bozeman now, but you are not from here, any idiot can see that. Homeless is kind of obvious, it means you don't have a home. You know, a place to live... shelter.”

  Ash's bioluminescent eyes flashed as she turned to Dolores and responded so happily it took Dolores a minute to process the actual words, “Yes! We are homeless! We are free to go where we please. We do not have a jacket, but we see the value in having a jacket. Does the Dolores have a shelter?”

  Dolores nodded, “I do have a home, but it's small and it's been weird there lately.”

  “Does the Dolores think the weird is not-nice?”

  “I don't know. I guess I can be honest with you because you don't seem to have a full deck anyway. Lately at my house I've felt like someone is watching me all the time. The only time it stops is when I'm at Starbucks, which is pretty lame, because I'd rather spend time at home.”

  Ash's eyes darted back and forth on the ground and her expression was one of deep contemplation and sorrow, as if she was torn about something existential.

  “Perhaps if the Dolores had another human in her lair, the watcher would go away. Does the Dolores have another human that could come to her human-box?”

  Dolores almost shed an involuntary tear when her social life was framed in such a way. Like it or not, though, she truly didn't feel like she had another human, just Ash. Rather than spiral into depression, Dolores said as much.

  “Just Ash. Do you have another human, Ash? Or just me?”

  “Just the Dolores. We tried to have other humans and they rejected us. It is fine, many humans are not-nice.”

  Dolores tried not to laugh at the way Ash made not nice into one fluid word: notnice. She knew personally that there were worse things than having just one human, though.

  “Well, Ash, even though you're weird as fuck, you can come to my lair.. You're one crazy bitch, but I guess you're my crazy bitch.”

  Ash's bright smile spread across her face and she said, in her own layered voice, “The Dolores is my crazy bitch as well.” And they laughed together.

  6 The Dolores's Lair

  Dolores only briefly considered the fact that Ash might be dangerous as she unlocked her door. The rest of the walk to her house had been filled with truly bizarre questions from Ash while Dolores attempted to correct her equally bizarre syntax and phrasing. But despite her insistence, though, she was still “the” Dolores and “the You” remained the enemy.

  Dolores couldn't imagine Ash hurting anyone, though—except maybe the You—or at least not without asking them a series of extremely obvious questions first: Does the Dolores die when we put an axe in its head? Does the Dolores have the ability to metabolize the powder that the other humans use to kill the quadrupeds?” Ash had actually asked the second one, but there was nothing menacing about her sweetly vulnerable way of inquiring.

  Given Ash's strange curiosity about basic things, Dolores had expected her new companion to stalk through the house investigating every single little thing and ask her a billion questions. But Ash went straight to Dolores's worn velvet couch as if she'd been in Dolores's lair a thousand times. Dolores flopped next to her, kicked her boots off, and reclined. Ash's face was pure delight—like she'd never sat on a couch, let alone next to another person before.

  “This is a nice nesting item,” the Ash said. “It provides our squishiness with a nice feeling.”

  Dolores chuckled. “Yeah, couches are great for squishiness. Home sweet home.”

  Ash's brilliant eyes blinked twice, and as with so many things about Ash, it wasn't quite normal—rather an approximation of normal. “Is the Dolores's home sweeter than other human lairs? We have only seen the inside of a few box-shelters.” Ash sniffed dramatically and scrunched up her nose before continuing, “We smell many different things, but the only sweet smell comes from the clear-hard container filled with the colorful wax.”

  “Do you mean the candle? Home sweet home is just a phrase. It means it's my home and that I guess it's better than not having a home.”

  “Do the humans not feel vulnerable to attack when they settle in the same shelters always?”

  Dolores took a long breath and watched Ash as she unpacked that one. “No dude, not in a civilized society. It's not like people run around attacking one another, and most animals can't get into houses. Trailers maybe, but no, no—most people feel secure in their houses. It's like, the only safe place.”

  “Humans do run around attacking each other. We see it in the newspapers and when we got shot.”

  “You keep mentioning that you got shot. Who shot you? And where?”

  “The Cody shot us. Twice. It was not-nice.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ, did he go to jail?”

  “We do not know what the jail is. We unmade ourselves and then remade ourselves, so we do not know what happened to the Cody. We do not like the Cody and we do not like being shot. But we are fine now, the Dolores does not need to feel sad.”

  “Are you okay?! Do we need to call someone? The police?” Dolores realized that might be overstepping the boundaries of such a new friendship, but holy shit. She imagined that it was a huge trauma—probably an abusive boyfriend, which would explain why Ash was homeless if she'd had to leave him to “remake” herself. She could hardly imagine the trauma.

  “We do not need the police and we most certainly do not need the You! We have no needs. We are happy here.”

  Ash resisted the urge to push more, but it only endeared Ash to her further. She’d let her share at her own pace, but in the meantime, she’d keep an ear open for anything else about “the Cody.” Maybe she could call the police on him herself.

  “Well, that’s really, really intense. I hope you never get shot again.”

  “We hope for the same,” Ash replied, again unshakingly staring Dolores right in eyes.

  Eventually Dolores had to break the gaze—it was starting to feel weird. “So, uh, what do you want to do the rest of the afternoon? I'm basically broke, so it needs to be free.”

  Ash's face crumpled a little before she furtively looked a word up in her dictionary. Satisfied with her finding, she responded with jubilation. “We are free!”

  Dolores cocked her own head at this and said, “How do you feel about Mario K
art?”

  The blank look on Ash's face told Dolores all she needed to know.

  “You know what, never mind. I'm gonna show you how to play Mario Kart. But first I'm going to see if I have any food left in my kitchen. You hungry?”

  Ash smiled placidly and said, “We are never hungry.”

  “Well, I guess that's good if you're homeless.”

  As Dolores strolled into the kitchen she realized that Ash had been right—she no longer had the watched feeling that had plagued her house recently. And she did feel strangely at ease with her new weirdo, like they'd known each other in a past life or something. Dolores peeled a couple of clementines and put the sections in a bowl. Then she bent into her fridge for a Dr. Pepper—well, knock-off, cheaper Mr. Pizazz. She felt a strange kinship with this failure of a soda with no advanced degree.

  She turned around and saw Ash sitting, again raptly scanning through the dictionary like it had the answers to the meaning of life. Dolores supposed that if someone spoke like Ash, maybe the dictionary did have all the answers. She shook her head and rejoined her new friend on the couch and leaned forward to grab the two controllers she had for her Nintendo Switch. One control was very worn, the other had not been touched. Another present from Danny.

  Dolores suddenly missed him sharply. He'd been all she had for so long, but he'd left like everyone else to go north and work the oil fields. He made good money, but the last time she'd talked to him things were collapsing up there. Evidently the company he worked for was trying to hush up some minor environmental catastrophe or something, although she’d promised not to talk about it with anyone but him. She glanced at her phone and realized she hadn't heard from him in over a week. It was unusual, so she shot him a quick text.