It is not hard to sneak out while the others are talking about entering the house. Red draws lines in the dirt, another reminder that he is a few inches and a few hair shades away from Mimsy. He even crouches over the ground the way she does, so low to the dirt that his nose is in it. It would be easy to push down his spine with my shoe. The middle children cluster around him with their blank eyes on the lines in the dirt.

The smell of earth is potent in the air. After a heavy rain everything is laid on too thick. I put a hand to Kali, whose shoulders slide up with my touch. The inner side of one of my fingernails rubs against her neck and I can hear her hissing. "We are going," I say.

She does not talk much anymore. It makes things easier. Her feet turn the dirt. The night air is chill. The woods are deep.

We enter a small outcrop of stone. The ground there is revolting, but it is drier than outside, where there would be leaves and dirt on my body. When anything touches my skin I can feel a thousand legs crawling out of my body at the position. When Kali touches my skin we fall still. I sit against the rock, moving the dress from my shoulders.

"Kali," I say.

Kali is taking her coat off. She breathes out, shaking her head. "Cold outside tonight."

"Is that a problem?" I ask.

"No," Kali says. The coat slips off and recedes into her arms. She begins working at her shirt, revealing the folds of her stomach. Her body hangs off her more than mine does. I do not know why she has decided to create so much of herself. "What do you want?" she asks.

I look her up and down. "You sound ingrateful."

"I'm not," she promises.

We leer at each other. Her eyes narrow up and she leans against the ground, shivering. She wipes a hand across her face.

"You have been my companion for a long time," I say.

"Yep," Kali says.

"Kali, you love me, is this correct?"

Kali stares down towards the other side of the cave, where the blackness recedes and becomes a little hole. I take her head in my hand and raise it to mine. Her eyes are blue, rimmed by circles of grime. She has been kissed by her own negligence. It wears her.

"I am checking. I want you to say it, Kali?" I begin to pour on the charmspeak, layering it atop my own voice.

"Of course," she says, but there is something missing in her voice. She turns back away under my hand.

We lean over each other. She kisses me, softly, but the whole time I can feel her drawn back as far as possible. She is cornered up against the wall, inert. The gleam of her eyes is dull and starless. Outside the sky is engulfed in clouds. Something is being smothered. Something is wanting.

"Red'll be here any second," Kali says.

I feel my neck break out. A knife forms in my fingers. "Did you tell him where we would be?"

Kali hesitates. "No."

I have my fingers around her. My head is up against her ear, where I can whisper to her. "You want him to be here. You want him to stop us. Is that right, Kali?"

"Stop using my name," Kali whispers back.

My laugh is full of charmspeak, too. I sit in front of her, knees pulled back, and I laugh until a fear overtakes me. She is telling them things. They might know of the more intimate details of our relationship. Red would remove me if he knew what I was doing or what I have done. Red could have seen the lines. I could be out in the cold.

My fingers become a soft metal at her neck. "You better not have told him anything."

Kali does not even flinch. "You know the real problem is that I'm not afraid of you anymore. At first, I was thrilled, then terrified, and now I don't have enough energy to be afraid of you at all." She looks up at the ceiling. "I don't have any energy left at all. It's like being a ghost, and I'm sitting here, trying to remember how it felt to feel... I think it's been a while. Longer than before you came around, maybe, though for a while you were a break in the pattern."
The flesh tilts towards the skin.

"You can't feel anything either, can you?" asks Kali. "Then why are you doing this to me? Why do you keep... bringing me out here?"

I run fingers down her chest. It is exposed but the skin there is also dry and lifeless. All of Kali is ruined. Her whole body has turned back to seed. She has always been inert.

Kali makes a harsh rumbling noise in her throat, closing her eyes. She takes my now-formed knife in her hands. I feel the grip in my body. Someone has closed a hand around my back. "Please don't hurt me."

The moon shines over us.

Her blue eyes stare up at me. "I wouldn't have let this happen to me a few months ago."

"You're wearing thin," I tell her, truthfully.

"I know," Kali says. "That's your fault."

There is far too much resistance in that voice of yours. I did not ask for a songbird.

My face cracks open. Mandibles drag against her body, and I sense everything. Compound eyes stare from my head. We watch each other, not quite human, and she scans my Veritas. It thinks no differently than I, but it might be more still. It clicks its mouth together. A similar strand of motions happen recurrently down and through the mouth. I contain many small moving parts. Kali breathes heavily. I can feel the stillness of her body, like death. I contain many thousands of poisons with which to silence her.

I pull myself back into myself. I can feel things forming, crackling out, and I am trying to pull everything in at once. "It does not affect you," I state.

Kali shakes her head.

"You are not..." I say.

"No, I'm not," she agrees. "What I am is an antidote to every bad idea that's ever passed through anyone's mind. What I am is a counterattack. I am the antithesis to all of your powers, all your problems, and if everyone just let me do what I was supposed to do in the first place, I'd probably be a swift, humane end."

My hand closes around her neck. Digits bend in unnatural fashion. "Were you manipulating me, Kali?"
She looks up at me. "Do you think I have the ability to manipulate you?"

"I have had you at length. You could have told at any time. You can tell them at any time."

"Was that an invitation?" she asks. I hate her white-toothed smile, mocking pain. I will bash it in but nothing I own is the right implement for brute strength. I can not coerce her fist into her face. She laughs weakly. "Oh man. I did this all anyways. I kept coming out here like a lost puppy, absolutely drowning in your sickness, and I thought I could just... keep it up for as long as I needed it, no repercussions, no nothin'. You having a good time, Elle? I'm having a great time. I love being--"

I slam her with the hilt of the knife. Skin vibrates around the point of impact. I can see the welt of the bruise. I take the handle again. It is the most powerful blunt object I have. I slam it again, this time hitting something that vibrates through both our bodies. Kali chokes up.

"Did you want this? Is this all a trap of yours?" I ask her. "Are you manipulating me right now? Am I doing what you want?"

"No," Kali says. "It's a pretty nice trap though. I... can't leave."

I hit her again. This time I swing the knife around.

"Don't touch me," Kali says. Her voice dries out. "Please."

I don't know what else I could possibly do. We watch each other. The mantis decapitates its suitor. Sometimes the bug even eats the unlucky other. We are both unfortunate to have found each other. I put the blade to Kali's chest. "You won't stop me."

Kali looks up. Her fingers twitch. I can see her tearing up a bit. "I can barely move," she says. "I don't know if I'm scared or if I'm just so tired that dying seems like the best option."

"Then I'd be helping?" I ask.

She closes her eyes.

"You are dangerous to me," I tell her. "You know that this is your own fault."

She shrugs. "It doesn't really matter what you do, Elle. Everything will turn out okay in the end."

"You don't believe that."

"For me, yes. For you, no. No matter what you do or try, I won't make you happy, because I can't. You are physically incapable of feeling love in the way I do, so no matter what, I will get all of this glorious, honey-sweet sensation, and you're going to be up there, empty, sizing me up. It's been fun playing with you, honey. It's been hilarious to watch you pretend that you--"

She does not finish. The knife goes in and out of her chest several dozen times, indiscriminately. The result is a wash of red and a few quick grunts that give way to silence. I draw out the blade and look at what I have done. I raise the bloodied hand to my face, dropping the knife, which extends from me on a fine thread before unravelling itself. I stare at my handiwork. This does not arouse my interest either. It is empty as it was when she was alive.

They will find out what I've done one way or the other. When they do I am dead.

Don't think ahead. This second is all that counts.

Yes.

Something moves beneath my skin, and it reaches out and touches her face, brushes a bloodied lock of hair aside. I breathe again. I try to convince myself of the existence of an apple in my body, the large, red organ that creates affection and desire. I imagine something large enough to hold sensation in my chest.

I run the knife down the edge of my finger and draw blood for the first time.

Then I feel the terror set in, like rain.