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2022-07-20 18:03:08Related chapters
Absolute Unit 6.
6.As far ashosts go, upgrading from Bill to Trent is the equivalent of going from a broken-down double-wide on the edge of a radioactive pit to a nice McMansion in a quiet subdivision. Trent’s lungs are blissfully clear of ash and phlegm, his heart ticks along like a Swiss watch, and his muscles are lean and hard. Now we feel a little bad about living so long in Bill when newer models were available. But beggars can’t be choosers, and when we swam out of that tanker into our new life in America, we were the textbook definition of vulnerable. Trent has no idea we entered him. We waited until his eyes flicked left, toward the onrushing ambulance, before firing the tendril into his open mouth. He coughed, swallowed, and pounded his chest—massive booms through the cavern of his sternum as we affixed to his esophagus, then sent a sub-tendril winding through his tissues (So pink! So lovely!) toward his spine. Plugging into a convenient nerve, we could share his vision—so cris
Last Updated : 2022-07-20Absolute Unit 7.
7.Trent has acaring heart, because after he spends half an hour ugly-crying on a park bench while listening to David Bowie on his phone, he heads to the hospital to visit his dear, injured uncle. We’ve been deprived of good music. The ringing of a cash register as a harried restaurant owner slapped out a couple hundred dollars, the begging of a bodega staffer for a little more time to pay up—that was the only music for dear Bill, who always liked to play sports radio while making his rounds. If Trent spins classics cut two decades before he was born, we consider that a big step up.Still humming “Heroes” under his breath, Trent uses his last ten dollars to buy flowers from a kiosk in the hospital lobby.Soon enough Bill is out of surgery and bedded in the ICU, in a bright and featureless room with no art on the walls, the window-shade pulled down, the television blaring from its perch on the wall. He lies in the depths of a medically induced coma, wrapped in a cocoon of tub
Last Updated : 2022-07-20Absolute Unit 8.
8.No sooner doesTrent leave Bill’s room when a nurse ambushes him with a paper bag. “What’s this?” Trent asks.“Your uncle’s stuff. And you’re family.” She shoves it into his hands. “Your lucky day.”She leaves Trent to sort through it. He finds Bill’s well-scuffed wallet (stuffed with dollar bills, along with faded receipts and some business cards), his battered phone (drained of juice), a well-crumpled cigarette pack (empty), and a few unmarked pills (questionable). Trent pockets it all, his thoughts a gentle buzzing. After a morning of kidnapping, car crashes, homicide, and cop interrogation, his energy levels are bottoming out.We think about what Bill said earlier: You’re nearly seventeen, Trent. You can handle yourself, right? We doubt that. If Trent has any hope of surviving, he needs our help. He has a different set of problems than Bill, we suspect, but also a fine-tuned body, a brain that appears in working order (from our limited perspective), and better fashi
Last Updated : 2022-07-20Absolute Unit 9.
9.Trent leaves thehospital and boards a bus for the West Side. We have traveled through this area often with Bill, its avenues like the treads of a scuffed and shit-speckled sole. The sidewalks fronted by grimy restaurants and dim stores, filled with people sucked dry and wrinkled by their problems. In a year or two, the luxury condos and trendy coffee shops will arrive, and these crowds will need to find new, worse places to live. As an entity who suffers from what the news calls “housing insecurity,” we sympathize with their plight. In contrast with the shabby block around it, Tricky’s Tacos is shiny red and white, with a mural of a sparkling-blue skull on its bricked flank. It’s that dead time between lunch and dinner, and there’s nobody waiting to order at the stainless-steel counter. A bored lady sits behind the register. In the back, a cook grunts as he runs a scraper over the smoking griddle. It smells like charred meat and Fabuloso.Even without reading Trent’s
Last Updated : 2022-07-20Absolute Unit 10.
10.Trent beats ourprediction, stumbling for three more minutes—and five blocks—before he drops to his knees, energy spent. He twists around, to better greet his creeping doom, and raises his hands. “Listen,” he says. “I know ... I know I messed up ... ”That’s the understatement of the year. Bill was nobody’s idea of a competent professional (his tombstone will probably say “Nobody Misses This Asshole”) but he never turned a standard-issue shakedown into a very public butchering. You might excuse dear Trent by saying it’s his first time, but there are no learning curves in real life. We know this better than most. The lady raises the knife over her head, muttering something lost in the honking and growling of cars. Traffic is stalled in both directions, drivers leaning out their open windows to scream at her (“Bitch, couldn’t you kill him on the fuckin’ sidewalk?”), but nobody makes a move to intervene. If she swings at Trent, perhaps we c
Last Updated : 2022-07-20Absolute Unit 11.
11.Pink Bunny turns, waving for us to follow him down a narrow corridor lit by construction lights jury-rigged along the ceiling. The spooky glow makes the graffiti sprayed on the concrete walls look like blood splatters. Trent mutters something under his breath about turning back, until Carrie plants a boot against his rear and shoves him into the building. “This is bad,” Trent hisses.“This is the job,” she whispers. “Believe it or not, I’ve seen weirder.”Stopping in front of another metal door at the end of the hallway, Pink Bunny bends over and punches a ten-digit code into a small keypad embedded in the doorframe. As he does, we notice that the costume’s waist has a zipper that runs all the way around. That certainly makes sense. How else could he go to the bathroom without taking the whole costume off?Carrie wrinkles her nose. “What’s that smell?”We sense it via a thin strand we plugged into Trent’s olfactory nerve: a faint floral scent, mixed with a whiff of poop. And
Last Updated : 2022-07-20Absolute Unit 12.
12.The mini-car’s enginewhines more shrilly than usual, and Carrie white-knuckles the wheel. “Something’s wrong,” she says, pumping the brakes. “This crap-bucket’s going sludgy on me.”“Maybe when you hit that old lady, you damaged something,” Trent says. “Car this size, I’m surprised you didn’t bounce right off.”“It’s fuel-efficient, okay? Big Jim likes to save money.” She smacks the dashboard, a move that miraculously convinces the mini-car to fix its attitude. The engine settles back to a high-pitched purr, and she relaxes her grip on the wheel. Trent spins the radio dial, settling on a station pounding out last century Bristol trip-hop with a beat that sounds like robots morosely fucking. “When I’m driven around, I prefer a Rolls-Royce.” He grins, bobbing his head to the music, loving this chance to dig into her. “Luxury rides like that are truly on my level.”“In order for anyone to reach your level, they’d have to take a boat to the Mariana Trench, strap some
Last Updated : 2022-07-20Absolute Unit 13.
13.From nothingness we emerge, into a red fog that reminds us of those first moments in the sunlit murk off New Jersey, when we were nothing but a strand of tissue no longer than a fingernail, thrashing amidst bored fish. From our furthest reaches, we receive damage reports: some tendrils burnt to a crisp, mewling their pain to the void. Others vaporized entirely. We are not concerned. So long as just a few of our cells survive, we can overcome, stabilize, regrow ...Actually, we are a little concerned.No, that’s a lie. We are very concerned.What has happened to us?The tendrils circling the brainstem issue fresh reports: Trent’s heartbeat is normal, along with his breathing and other vitals. No severed nerve endings, no drops in temperature that would indicate a severe bleed. Trent’s eyes are closed, and we can hear nothing through his ears except for a vague humming. It sounds like a distant machine.The humming fades as the red fog clears, revealing a gray bea
Last Updated : 2022-07-20
Latest chapter
Absolute Unit 21.
21.We can senseTrent deep in the basement of his own mind. He’s built a room down there, with a door impossible for us to unlock, but we can peer through the keyhole. The walls are covered with posters of David Bowie and Marilyn Monroe (always a fan of vintage, dear Trent), and a torn leather couch dominates the floor, facing a widescreen television that plays clips from classic films, music videos, memories of Carrie kissing him all over in that wintery bed. By sifting through the abandoned files in Trent’s hippocampus, we determine this is a replica of his basement at home, his safe space from life’s chaos. For what it’s worth, we whisper through the keyhole, we’re sorry about this.Screw off, Trent says, his eyes never leaving the television.We promise you can come out. You won’t be deleted.Yeah, right. I told you to screw off.We leave him down there. If he’s unwilling to cooperate, his fortress can serve as a prison. Let him watch through the keyhole as we take his
Absolute Unit 20.
20.We’re back onthe gray beach, the water lapping at our tendrils. Trent stands beside us in the surf, naked except for his leopard-print jacket, shivering in the cold wind slicing down the coast. “Great.” Trent says. “Not this again.”Footsteps crunch sand. Bill strides for us, also naked as the day he was born. A thick mass of tendrils dangles from between his legs, dragging on the sand, yellowish and segmented; when it touches a wetter patch of sand, it crackles and sparks with electricity. Smaller coils wave from his ears and the corner of his left eye-socket. His eyes are black with dried blood, making him look more like a bloated carcass than ever.“No more negotiations. No more of this useless equivocating. Here’s the deal,” Bill says. “We’re plugged into your brainstem and your cortex.”“Just leave us alone.” Trent scoops up a handful of wet gray sand and throws it at his uncle. “Please. I just want to be left alone.”Bill ignores him. He walks up to us, places a
Absolute Unit 19.
19.In the elevator, there’s no way to avoid Bill’s stink. He looms over Trent, reminding us of our breakfast meeting a million years ago. Bill barely held it together then, thanks to the magical forces of nicotine, caffeine and pills. Now he seems immense, powerful despite his gray and puckered flesh, seeping wound, messy hospital gown. As the elevator rises, the enormity of the situation appears to fully sink into Trent. Any residual effect of the drugs has dissipated, and our tendrils sense his growing panic, sizzling and sour. Only strategic squirts of adrenaline and dopamine work to keep him in some semblance of working order. “I just don’t get what’s happening here,” he says.How many times do I need to explain it, dumbass?“Patience,” Bill says, glancing at the floor indicator. The elevator stops on five. The doors hiss open, revealing a nurses’ station pocked with gunshots, its countertops smoldering with charred folders. Beyond, the floor-to-ceiling windows of the patient
Absolute Unit 18.
18.Bill waves agray hand, his fingers still jittering madly. “Come here, Trent.”“Are you okay?” Trent says, stepping forward—and then Carrie clutches his arm, her nails digging into his flesh until the pain begins to approach the dulling ache of his bullet wound. “What’s ‘total control’ mean?”He’s got us inside him, we tell Trent. We’ve taken over.Taken over? Trent’s mind rattles like a rat in a cage. You mean that’s not my uncle?No, yes ... we mean ...Trent begins to freak out: Do you want to do THAT to me?Have we said we wanted to do that?Bill lowers his hand. He’s trying to smile, but his lips writhe and jerk. A doctor might diagnose that as a nerve issue, which wouldn’t be too far off. The bit of us that stayed in Bill and took total control, maybe it’s still trying to figure out how to drive that lump of flesh. After just a few hours in Trent’s well-tuned body, we’d started to forget the A-1 horrorshow of Bill’s sagging muscles and dea
Absolute Unit 17.
17. We drift througha snowstorm.White particles flicker in the harsh light stabbing through broken glass. Snowdrifts rise on Trent’s hands and sift into the folds of his shirt, stick to the blood drying on his lips and forehead. We try to stick his tongue out, the better to collect some of it, but Trent’s body must have taken some damage during the crash, because moving it only a millimeter past Trent’s teeth sparks a wave of pain so intense that he moans—Stop complaining, we tell him. We’re trying to get you some medicine.What? I—Before he can say anything more, our efforts with his tongue are rendered moot, because a few flecks drift up his nose, and—zoom. Trent’s next words are lost in a screaming pleasure-storm, his nervous system exploding like the Fourth of July, his every cell a fireworks display, throbbing, pulsing, exploding—My God, my universe, this is AMAAAAAAZING—This is why we exist. To feel, to experience, to taste everything this weird mixture
Absolute Unit 16.
16.Carrie stomps onthe gas, propelling her car down the alley at its laughable top speed. “Duct tape in the glove compartment,” she says. Trent retrieves the tape and wraps three long strips of it around his shoulder. How am I looking in there?Good, we reply. His blood loss slows to a seep as the vessels clot, and his other vitals seem normal enough, considering everything he’s endured over the past several hours. Maybe they can set him up in a hospital room next to Bill.At the end of the alley, Carrie turns onto the main avenue without checking for traffic, leaving startled drivers honking in her wake. She takes a deep breath, exhales loudly, and destroys Trent’s fragile calm: “We messed up back there.” “No shit,” Trent yelps.“Big Jim’s expanding into cocaine. He hates the stuff, says it means too many cartel people up his ass, but since the state’s legalizing weed soon, he’s got to find another line of business.”“Why doesn’t he just sell legal weed?”
Absolute Unit 15.
15.At the sightof trouble, the worker in coveralls drops his hose and runs for the kitchen door. Angry Fox socks his rifle to his shoulder, aiming at that fleeing head, but Pink Bunny shoves the barrel aside with an oversized paw. Pink Bunny says something muffled by plastic and fake fur. Angry Fox shouts back, louder but equally unintelligible, before ripping the barrel from his friend’s grip. The worker disappears into the building, the door slamming behind him. The forgotten hose rolls across the concrete, spurting water.“The hell is this?” Big Jim asks, more amused than angry. Trent and Carrie, of course, know exactly what this is. All these furries had to do was look up the pizza restaurant’s address. The weapons suggest they’re not here to order an extra-large Gut Bomb and a side order of garlic knots. No fool, Carrie ducks behind her car. Trent stands frozen between Big Jim and the Mountain. Angry Fox strides forward, raising the rifle again, y
Absolute Unit 14.
14.Trent opens his eyes. He’s in a windowless storage room, its sides lined with shelves loaded with canned goods, bags of flour, boxes of dried meats. Through the thick steel door comes the roar and clang of a kitchen in mid-shift, chefs yelling in Spanish as they wrestle with a tide of orders.Trent winces at a line of pain around his wrist. He’s handcuffed to a floor-to-ceiling pipe, the cuff tightened until it threatens to break the skin. He tries to stand and the cuff smacks against a flange, stopping him in a crouch. He plops back onto cold concrete, tears brimming in the corners of his eyes.Stop it, we tell him, hoping he’ll somehow hear—and wonder of wonders, he does.I can’t, he thinks at us. Then: Wait, you weren’t a dream?No.“God,” Trent says, scratching at his neck and arms with his free hand. “Am I fucking losing it?”Calm down. If you don’t, we’re not getting out of here.Despite our request, Trent’s heart speeds, his forehead beading with sweat despite the
Absolute Unit 13.
13.From nothingness we emerge, into a red fog that reminds us of those first moments in the sunlit murk off New Jersey, when we were nothing but a strand of tissue no longer than a fingernail, thrashing amidst bored fish. From our furthest reaches, we receive damage reports: some tendrils burnt to a crisp, mewling their pain to the void. Others vaporized entirely. We are not concerned. So long as just a few of our cells survive, we can overcome, stabilize, regrow ...Actually, we are a little concerned.No, that’s a lie. We are very concerned.What has happened to us?The tendrils circling the brainstem issue fresh reports: Trent’s heartbeat is normal, along with his breathing and other vitals. No severed nerve endings, no drops in temperature that would indicate a severe bleed. Trent’s eyes are closed, and we can hear nothing through his ears except for a vague humming. It sounds like a distant machine.The humming fades as the red fog clears, revealing a gray bea
