(Rose)
She looks like my youngest sister, Blue.
My long gone, and much older when she actually died, young sister Blue.
But she looks like her as I remember her. Only her skin is of a dark grey, as is her hair. She's a dark Blue, with blue eyes.
She's still smirking as if I was the most funny thing to look at. She's slowly getting accustomed to the light of my lamp.
She tried to wear my wet clothes, but obviously isn't used to put them. Trying to act human...
She never seems to blink her bright blue eyes. I don't see any clear pupils inside, the colour gradually fades to black inside. They're black spots with a sharp horizon of blue.
Her face keeps that smirk with a hateful or sadistic side. A great smile nonetheless. She looks so strange in this uncanny place.
While I look at her, she's looking at me sharply too, scrutinising me as if she was had been impatient to do so.
We turn around each other, looking at how the other species is made with plain curiosity. The more it goes and the more I feel under her strong gaze, that rather me observing the lifeform she is, it's even more her who's observing me.
She takes other whiffs at me like a dog. They say smells hold more information than sight alone does.
I wonder what I smell like to this isolated thing.
She grabs my arm with her thin dark grey hands. They're rather cold. I think at first that she wants to bite me, but she instead takes a lick at my skin. My hair stands on my back at how odd it feels. Her tongue is coarse as a brick and dry as one too. It's rubbing my skin like a dry cloth would, not a dog.
She steps back from my arm once the long lick is done, and she smiles sharply again. She has the look of a playful predator on her face. I ask her why she did that but doesn't reply. Blume however does, within my head.
B - She took a good sample of the bacterias living onto your skin. I think it's for her personal use and learning. She's still a rather sterile being, as is everything around here. That pile of pudding behind is also oddly sterile. I wonder what kind of radiation might have cleansed everything here.
R - So, I'm sharing my bacterias now? Is that okay?
B - I don't see why not.
Dark Blue suddenly grabs my head with both hands and comes to take another lick, at my cheek now. This feels even weirder. She looks like she's enjoying herself though, smiling and laughing in the dark. It stings a little where her coarse tongue has been, as it felt she almost peeled my skin off.
She stands up, still grinning but turns her back and go toward the pile of flesh and gelatinous bones. It looks like a giant pudding filled with bones and clothing. All the meat and flesh turned into an heterogeneous goo. She's eating it. She plunges her teeth in it, and swallows as much of it as she can with every bite.
After a while, watching her eat with obvious hunger and a very serious look over her face, she suddenly looked at me oddly. Her eyes reflected my light. Her face was covered with spoiled diluted blood. Her hand ripped a piece of flesh from the pile and she offered it to me.
She's offering me to have some of her... meal. I hesitate strongly for so many reasons.
I appreciate that she shows sign of intelligence and sociability. But eating oddly transformed human flesh is just... Mortifying. Even for the sake of petting the thing she is, I can't do that. That dripping jelly of flesh in her hand makes me want to vomit. Thinking about how this was human before feels very wrong. I'm trembling.
Blume tells me there's nothing wrong with this food. She tried to reassure me seriously, but does not understand where the trouble truly is at all.
Do I? Once again I agonise over the choice between the leftovers of my previous life and morality, against the new world that does not care about what morality or ethics were in my time. The terrifying freedom of nature's laws lies between the gooey fingers of that animal, which happens to look like someone I've known.
My trembling hand grabbed a piece of that grey or orange slime she held. It smells like death and disgusts me. She looks at me with that hateful smile, as if she was trying me out, daring me to do this disgusting thing. She returned to her heartful eating after a minute where I couldn't do anything but stand there, unable to move or think.
Blume tells me that it looks very nutritious. I yell at her with a strong spurt of violence in my head. I'm truly angry at her right now. She apologises after another moment of silence.
I take a shy lick at that jelly. It doesn't have any taste at all actually. It only smells like dead bodies. I throw it away before I dare taking a bite at it.
Dark Blue is still eating with gusto. She's swallowing pounds and pounds of it.
I go beside her and get my lighter back where she abandoned it. She suddenly grabs my wrist with her gooey hand. She smells awful.
She points at my clothes and the ones she tried to wear. I think she wants to learn that.
She tries to speak but only raw sounds come out. I think I got the idea anyway. I sigh with the beginning of a smile.
~
I've washed my hands as she washed herself too. At least she is already quite clean. She comes out from the icy water like a dog, on all four. She even barks.
Then she stands up proudly and tries to speak, or mimics someone talking, roughly.
I try to show her how to dress. It's more difficult than I thought it would be.
Night has fallen since, outside, but the storm lingers. I'm getting tired.
I ended up dressing her myself with my now damp and dirty clothes. Since they've been rummaged around this desolate place.
I dress her like a handicapped person would need to I guess. She lets me do, but always grin like a playful demon. I can't see her as a doll or a pet. Because she's something else, far different. She's a being that feeds on human corpses no matter how friendly it looks... Blume still does not worry for us. She's just curious about this being she doesn't quite understand either. It seems to be neither of my kind, nor of hers.
While we walk around this room, I yawn. It must be rather late already. I say aloud that I will perhaps spend the night in this house then. She giggled at that, mischievously. I look at her, scared. I shiver, but I think I understand something now.
R - You can't talk, but you actually understand me when I speak?
She nods affirmatively, and smiles in the creepiest way imaginable. Goodness.
What is she?
~
We went back to the rooms upstairs. She followed me, like my own shadow as I went back to grab my backpack. I could simply hear her giggle at times, right behind my shoulder.
I install myself in the master bedroom. The window does not open. Nothing beside the doors can open. This house is like a vault I broke into.
I set fire to an improvised oil lamp, with some oil in a cup I found and a piece of rough cloth.
The fire startles her at first, she hides behind my back. She carefully gets closer afterward. She's learning. I show her that fire can burn. She tries it. Her hand catches fire rapidly but she doesn't react. I panic and extinguish the flames with my water quickly. She laughs at me. Her skin is bubbling slowly. It looks like the inside of her arm is a pool of black viscous goo. Perhaps her whole being is just a kind of goo, stretched inside a human costume. She looks human from the outside. This does not mean she is in the slightest. Not today.
Her skin healed quickly. Since she does understand me, we can discuss a little.
She's not the child of something else. The egg below was a pupa actually. She wasn't born here, but metamorphosed into the being I see, down there. She replied no when I ask if she killed the humans now turned into meat paste below. Where was she before? What was she before? She does not seem to recall. Then when I sk the tough question, her reply is interesting.
R - Why do you look human?
She lost her usual smile. She touched lightly with her index the middle of my chest, my heart, then hers, then mine again. She then waved both her hands in a meaning I'm not sure of. Like something opening, or someone making signs in front of an infant's face. At least it meant something important to her. She wasn't here by mere chance.
Before I realise it, I'm dozing off. I see her sharp smile filled with teeth and her intimidating blue eyes, always open in the dark. I fall asleep on the old bed.
I dream about the one she reminds me of. Her smile could be a little mischievous too at times but... Never anything as creepy as this one. She was much kinder and always honest, in her own way...
Or so I think of her now at least... I must be idealizing my memories of her a little.
Truth be told, she was a little odd too at times, or unsettling. At least I believe she never ate human flesh or tried to lick me in order to take samples of my bacterias. I have weird dreams about licking after that.
I had to push Dark Blue away when she got too intrusive about that.
I wake up feeling very weird. That thing is licking me again. At least its tongue is dry but I still don't like it. I push it away and blame Blume for not protecting me.
B - I didn't see the harm, she was only cuddling you.
R - Alright Blume. I'm getting the feeling that since we set foot in here you've been more on that thing's side than mine!
The thing I pushed away from the bed looks at me with these wide scary eyes, I can tell even in the dark. But not because I pushed her away. Because she heard me clearly talk with Blume aloud this time.
Dark Blue tries to say something I understand. Not alone.
R - Indeed I'm not alone.
I lit my torch and get dressed up again. I've had enough of this place Blume likes more than I do. I want to leave.
I set myself ready to leave with little concern for the odd animal by my side. It's raining outside still, but less than yesterday. I wonder if I should try to make a friend of that thing we found. Maybe she's like to travel with us?
I tell her about it, but she refuses. She wants to stay here a little longer.
I smile as I open the door to the outside world. True light comes within the house at last. She hides in the shadows.
R - I'll leave the door opened to the outside. When you feel ready, come and explore it with us.
She steps into the light. It doesn't reveal her body much despite her being naked. Only her smile and piercing gaze stand out from her silhouette.
Her very coarse voice says something.
Perhaps we will meet again, is the feeling I get from her growls.
R - Someday!
I think her replies means that we will.
Very soon, we will.
She's laughing again as we leave. Goodness, she was creepy.
But the day will be nice after the rain.
~