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Before The Joining, Carol spent her days wishing for silence, daydreaming of reprieves from book tours and small talk, closing her eyes mid conversations to roll them behind the privacy of her lids, excusing herself during social events to scroll Twitter on her phone in the bathroom.
With the exception of Helen, Carol found that the general population was generally insufferable to interact with. She hated crowds. She hated social gatherings. She hated passing people by on hallways and sidewalks, on supermarket aisles. She barely tolerated small talk, even the kind of small talk that most others considered pleasant rather than awkward or draining.
She was, by all accounts of those who really, truly got to know her, quite a miserable person. By choice.
Before The Joining, she wondered most days if the life that was meant for her was a lonely one. If she would’ve found more joy far away from everybody else, more satisfaction in isolation, more comfort in loneliness. She wondered if she simply lacked in her DNA whatever it was that made everybody else crave connection.
If this whole apocalypse had taught Carol anything about herself, it would be that she could not be alone.
Loneliness was a disease in its own right and regardless of her previous misconceptions about her being immune to it, her body was just as incapable of fighting against it as everybody else. There was no vaccination to protect oneself from the crippling feeling of being well and truly alone on Earth, and prolonged exposure caused only madness, then death.
Didn’t matter that Carol was immune to the hive mind. This was the true virus.
Heat stroke, risky investigation, a firework pointed the wrong direction. She could do quite terrible things to herself if left to her own devices.
All this was to say, less than two weeks after Zosia dropped her off, after she and They exchanged glances that should have been their last, Carol found herself begging Zosia back once more. There was a dog metaphor in here somewhere, an easy one to make.
Carol called her in the night.
“Come back,” croaked out as soon as the phone stopped ringing, escaped from her throat with a shaking desperation, as if she was reading letters as large as her painted on black asphalt, meant for an eye in the sky to see. Like a prayer.
Zosia was there in twenty minutes.
Before, Carol would have thought Zosia was the dog in this scenario. Now, she knew better.
Anyway.
Less than two weeks after the goodbye that was meant to be their last, Carol and Zosia found themselves sitting by the crated bomb on plastic lawn chairs.
The night was not a particularly cold one, but the lack of sun and occasional night breeze brought suggestions of a chill which Carol took to heart. Clouds formed and dissipated softly overhead, but the moon, bright as it was full, easily reached through the curtains of them, bathing the scene in a pale gossamer of light. Crickets and cicadas serenaded the evening, but for the most part, there was silence.
Carol cleared her throat in an attempt to cleanse it.
“Did I take you away from anything?” She asked Zosia, out of an awkward sort of politeness.
And she knew already that she hadn’t, that Zosia’s primary job was to be there for her at her beck and call, and so she knew that asking this question was nothing but a pitiful attempt at maintaining some semblance of normalcy in the face of every impossibly unreal thing that had happened to her since The Joining.
Did I take you away from anything, as if Zosia was a real individual with a real life. As if Zosia had a choice in coming here.
Zosia smiled at her with that deceptively sincere smile, soft but looking just as awkward as Carol felt, and she shook her head no.
“I wasn’t doing anything more important than this,” she returned. Her accented voice was soft, like polyester. And after a small, thoughtful pause, she added, “I’m glad you called, Carol.”
And Carol nodded stiffly.
“Cool,” she said. “Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.”
“Cool,” Zosia repeated.
And then another silence.
Carol rubbed the arms of the lawn chair to have something to do with her hands. She figured she looked neurotic — Helen always used to tell her so — but when she snuck a glance at Zosia beside her, Zosia looked none too bothered at all. Just a bit awkward. Uncomfortable.
And Carol wondered if she really was uncomfortable, or if her demeanor was just acting by the alien virus to get Carol to respond kindly, if this was yet another clever manipulation, if there was any way for her to stop falling for it.
She stewed on her bitterness thinking about this probable-deception for a moment before the sound of Zosia inhaling sharply beside her interrupted her from her thoughts.
”Listen,” Zosia began, slowly, “Carol, was there anything We could help you with? Any, err, particular reason you called?”
Carol blinked.
”I…” Carol trailed off. Truthfully, the answer was no. No, there was no reason. No task, no need to necessitate the presence of a chaperone. Nothing but Carol’s weak will and desire for the presence of a… friend. Or something. She sounded rough when she returned, “Does it matter?”
Zosia stared at her, and she seemed to understand.
“No,” the woman rushed, and she smiled a beatific smile. “It doesn’t matter. We’re glad to keep you company.”
And another pause fell over them.
And they sat there, silently, side by side, and Carol felt increasingly, excruciatingly anxious as Zosia sat stiffly beside her. The stillness of the woman beside Carol only made her feel more and more discomforted. She shifted in her own lawn chair, which made the plastic of the seat squeak.
Zosia arched a brow at her. Asked, “Anxious?”
Carol shook her head sharply, flushing. “No. No. Just— fuck. Stay here.”
And she shot up, rushed inside her house, and rushed back out holding a half drank bottle of liquor. She sat back in her chair, gulped down several gulps like water, let the sting in her throat warm her up, and she felt herself settle into a buzz beside Zosia. Certainly, she stopped shifting.
Zosia paid her no mind. Like she didn’t care, or couldn’t be bothered, or simply expected this of Carol.
Helen — just months ago, back when there was a Helen — would’ve been filled with questions. “Why did you do that,” or, “What do you think you’re doing,” or, “Are you okay,” or some other shit like that. It used to annoy Carol greatly. But now, Zosia’s lack of questioning ignited a sharper sort of feeling in her.
Moments later, Carol wondered out loud, “Do you even feel curiosity?”
And she tried to keep her voice level, like she didn’t care that much or even at all, because she always found the ledge of disinterest to be an elevating height, but her voice wavered in the way it always did, refusing to be an accomplice to her lies, and even if it hadn’t, Carol’s shoulders shrugged tensely as a tell anyway.
Her body often told on itself. It lacked discipline. She lacked discipline.
Zosia paused to think before answering. Not in a way that suggested she was unsure — Zosia seemed incapable of being anything but sure, although perhaps that was more a symptom of being a hive mind rather than something intrinsic to Zosia’s character, Carol didn’t know — but in a way that suggested she knew exactly her answer to Carol’s question and was pausing to think of a way to phrase it in a way that Carol understood.
She did this often. Pause for brevity’s sake. Pause to get it right the first time. Simplify in her mind. It always made Carol feel… dumb.
“It’s difficult to feel curious about many things when We already know so much,” Zosia answered, finally, and she stopped there.
Carol cleared her throat again.
“Well, come on,” she continued to prompt, and the cadence of her voice, her tone, sounded a bit like she was trying to egg Zosia on to doing something bad, like toilet paper a house or swallow pills, or debase herself, like Zosia was an Alexa, and Carol was asking, Alexa, do you feel love?
It seemed cruel, to ask her questions of that nature. Like dangling Eden over a fallen Eve.
Still, Carol continued to prompt. Perhaps holding onto the hope that poking at those old wounds might encourage Zosia to heal them. If she even considered the loss of humanity a wound. Carol doubted it. Heavily.
“You never wonder about, y’know, why the sky is blue, or how the world came to exist?”
Zosia shrugged. “The sky is blue because the air of Earth’s atmosphere scatters—“
“Okay, whatever,” interrupted Carol, scoffing, inexplicably still charmed. “You know what I mean.”
“We do,” smiled Zosia. And Carol, despite herself, couldn’t help but smile back. They shared a look, and then Carol looked away, and Zosia continued.
“We wonder about some things, the same way We always used to before, but with distinct differences. For example, We no longer wonder about politics or social organization, because those concepts no longer exist. We no longer wonder about language, because We know them all, and even without, We can communicate amongst Ourselves with perfect, complete understanding. We don’t wonder about animal husbandry. We don’t wonder about the deep oceans, or Antarctica.”
“So what do you wonder about?” Carol huffed, getting impatient, or maybe uncomfortable.
“You,” Zosia answered. And she said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and maybe it was.
Her eyes met Carol’s again, and held, with a heaviness that compelled Carol to not look away, with a meaning Carol couldn’t decipher, with a feeling that felt far away but familiar.
“And the others like you,” Zosia continued, shattering the illusion only just slightly, not enough to make Carol look away. “Your thoughts. Your needs. How you must feel at any given moment. What you must want.”
Carol swallowed. Her voice wavered again when she asked, “What else?”
Another shrug. Then, looking away, Zosia admitted, “Food.”
Carol swallowed again, but with more difficulty this time.
“People,” she rephrased, feeling her shoulders tense, her brain sober up a little. “Human juice.”
“No.” It came firm, came sure. Zosia corrected, “Apples.”
Carol repeated, dumbly, “Apples.”
Zosia nodded.
Carol blinked at her.
“Right. Right… I don’t follow.”
“Sustenance,” chuckled Zosia, amused at the questioning knot between Carol’s brows. “How to feed all of Us on wind-fallen fruit. How not to starve. It will become a real issue soon.”
“Oh,” said Carol. And then she shrugged. And sarcastically, she suggested, like a smart ass, “Plant more trees?”
Zosia ignored her.
“We think a lot,” Zosia said, “about feeling full.”
And Carol felt like there was something so something about that.
“How many of you are hungry right now?” Carol heard herself ask, but the question felt far away, felt like something else.
Zosia stared at her, understanding what even she could not.
“Not too many,” Zosia answered. “Some.” And then a pause. “Have you ever felt hungry, Carol?”
Carol felt stiff. She felt unsure, turned around, far away, someplace else.
“I— Um. Ye— Yeah, yep.” She wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans. “Mhm. Have, uh, have you?”
Zosia grinned wide.
“I am.” Her eyes brightened. And that starved look in her eyes disappeared, like it was never there to begin with. “What do you say about some sandwiches? The ones you ate, California, May fifteen, two-thousand and twelve. You loved it so much you went back to the shop the next day for another.”
Carol blinked back into herself.
“Right, um, yeah. I remember. The second one didn’t taste half as good as the first. It was a let down.”
Zosia nodded sweetly. She knew before Carol even told her.
“We could make it again, exactly like the first. Would you like that?”
Carol closed her eyes.
Carol envisioned Zosia’s face in her mind, because to look at Zosia then would have made her sick. She thought of Zosia’s rich brown hair, her lashes, her eyes. The way they looked when she smiled, bright and twinkly. Her lips. Her lips the first time they met, the harmlessness of their pinkness when Carol asked who she was and she said, Someone We thought you might like.
She envisioned the scar on Zosia’s back that she was now intimately familiar with. She thought about sex with Zosia, and how it was always good, even from their very first time. Carol felt like vomiting.
A lie, she thought. Zosia was a lie. A pretty one, made in the image of everything Carol had ever fallen for in her life. But still a lie. A lie, resembling Helen and Raban and the mother Carol never got to please but wanted so fucking badly to.
The bomb seemed to radiate heat beside Carol. Her right arm almost burned with it.
Or— No. Not the bomb. The bomb was to her left. Zosia was radiating heat beside her.
The issue with realizing you’re in love with a hive mind, once you’ve gotten through the hurdle of accepting it, was realizing that you must then get over it.
“I think you should leave,” Carol managed.
And she pushed herself off the lawn chair stiffly, and she marched back inside, slamming the door shut without looking back.
She came over to Manousos’s the next day for lunch. She made them both sad-tasting sandwiches while he spoke sparingly about his plan to save the world, the discoveries he’d made so far.
Carol thought he was holding back from telling her too much. He had a full notebook of notes he never once showed Carol, and she noticed.
Likely, he didn’t trust her all that well, and while she was slightly offended by his secrecy, considering her two-week long absence spent “getting the girl,” she understood.
If anything, it was refreshing, talking to someone and not Everyone. Manousos, as complicated as he was, was simple in comparison. Safe. Less welcoming, but real.
Anyway.
Over sandwiches, in between planning, he asked her how her girlfriend was.
Carol thought to say, “She’s not my girlfriend, she’s more like my ex,” or, “She’s never been my anything,” or, “She seems to be doing okay.”
Instead, she scoffed into a bite. And after swallowing, she declared, “She’s a cosmic bitch.”
Manousos chuckled, and Carol couldn’t find it in herself to be even the slightest bit annoyed.
At least somebody found humor in this situation.
The week after, Carol dreamt.
She dreamt she was in a seemingly never-ending hallway of some sort of a government building slash hospital slash nuclear power plant slash the Biology building of the college she graduated from.
It was dark, and the only source of light were flashing fire alarms, except instead of flashing white and beeping, they flashed red and blue like ambulances and honked like cars.
Everything seemed normal but different. Entirely real and entirely fake. Dreams were strange like that.
Anyway.
In the dream, she was sat on the cold, ceramic floor, and Zosia was seizing on her lap. Carol held some sort of buzzer button tightly with one hand and stabilized Zosia’s body with the other.
It felt real, the way her heart hammered against the cage of her ribs, the sound of her own blood pumping in her ears, the smooth, hard texture of the button beneath her left thumb and the warm, solid feeling of Zosia’s face against her right palm.
The button, Carol knew, could stop it all. Bring everybody back the way they were, cure their disease. She didn’t know how she knew this, or what events led up to this moment, or why the alarms were blaring, or much of anything else, but she just knew, because again, dreams were weird like that.
Carol also knew that pressing the button would kill Zosia.
And the alarms were getting louder. And something was getting closer.
What a situation.
Save the world or get the girl— The decision was impossible and hers.
She awoke crying before she could choose, and she called Zosia as soon as she stopped sobbing, the same way one might reach over to the right side of the bed for their partner’s body after a dream like that. For proof of life.
She hung up as soon as she heard Zosia’s voice, did not even say anything in return to Zosia’s ever jovial, even-keeled “Hello, Carol. How are you?”
Zosia called back immediately after.
Carol almost threw the phone to the ground. She didn’t. She just left it to ring.
Another week later, Zosia appeared on her welcome mat with a pan of fresh-baked bread, her smile sweet and bright, her hair tied back into low bun, and her eyes only worriedly glancing back at the atom bomb a couple times. She smelled like fresh linen and soap and blueberry pie.
Carol knew the battle was lost as soon as she opened the door, but still itching for a fight, she demanded, unkindly, “What the fuck is it?”
Zosia’s demeanor did not change.
“Good afternoon, Carol.” Her voice was sweet and chipper. Honey and birdsong. Bubbles. “Sorry for coming without warning. Just figured it would be wise to let you know that a thunder storm will be touching down here this evening, so everybody will likely tuck in early. If you need anything, we’ll try our best to get it to you, but request that you’d let us know before five PM when the storm hits.”
Carol blinked at her, unimpressed, unyielding.
“Also,” Zosia added, “We’d feel much more at ease if the atom bomb was brought into your garage by then. We’re more than willing to help in bringing it in, if you’d like.”
Another slow blink.
“This conversation could have been a voicemail,” Carol deadpanned.
And Zosia smiled sheepishly.
“We also wanted to give you some of this.” And she held out the pan of bread towards Carol, looking anxious to see if Carol would accept it, would approve of it. “Sourdough.”
Carol held the pan. She thought about chucking it onto the front yard. She looked up to find Zosia biting her lips nervously.
Zosia explained, “This recipe was one of Zosia’s favorites to make, before The Joining. I often baked it on rainy days, of which there were very many. I found the smell of fresh baked bread mixed with rain to be worth the labor, and the taste of warmth to be a comfort like no other.” Zosia grinned. “I figured you would like that comfort as well… no big deal if not.”
Fuck.
Carol was weak.
She sighed heavily, opened the door to her home wider, and shook her head in disbelief of her own actions.
”Come inside,” she breathed, and she turned away, leaving the front door open.
Zosia happily followed her in.
Time got away from them.
Zosia picked off pieces of sourdough to spread warm butter onto. Carol drank and watched her with suspicious eyes.
Time got away from them, and by the time Carol thought about pointing Zosia to the door, the storm had already begun.
From inside, Carol watched the raging wind knock over Helen’s makeshift headstone and felt an ache pang within her. She ran an inebriated hand over her face and breathed, exhausted, “I’m going upstairs. Sleep here tonight. Don’t go into the storm.”
And as she began to stumble away, Zosia asked, softly, “May We accompany you?”
And Carol — weak, pathetic Carol — turned back around, and she said, “I think of you in uppercase.”
And Zosia blinked at her, clueless.
Carol swallowed thickly. She shook her head. “Like you’re my God. No— greater than Him, even. I never even really understood religion like that. I used to think the whole idea of capitalizing God was ridiculous. Is He really even so great to deserve that? What’s He care if you capitalize His pronouns for? I used to lose respect for everybody who did, who wrote uppercase ‘God’ instead of lowercase ‘god’. But here I am. Uppercase ‘They’ instead of ‘they’. ‘We’ instead of ‘we’.”
Carol shook her head. She finished, “Maybe you are my God. My punishing, merciful, immutable Zosia.”
Zosia’s brows knitted together in confusion. She returned, politely, “We will sleep on the couch.”
Carol shook her head. “No. Come upstairs with me.”
And she padded away, and after a minute, Zosia followed.
And in the bedroom, on Carol’s bed, with her tongue inside of Zosia, she looked up, pale blue eyes meeting the arched curve of Zosia’s stomach in front of her, the juts of Zosia’s ribs and the peaks of her chest. She toyed with Zosia’s hardened nipple with one hand while her other dug into Zosia’s thighs, opening her up for Carol to lick into, savor.
Carol listened to Zosia’s moans. High and staggered. Wanting. Needing. And Carol joined in the chorus with her own, lapping Zosia up, wanting, needing.
“I need you,” she heard Zosia breathe from above her, and she felt the brunette’s fingers comb into her hair, a gentle presence, a soft tug. “I need you, I need you, I need you.”
Mindless. This was all mindless.
She paused to breathe, just for a second, and she kissed the inside of Zosia’s thigh, and she praised, “You’re going good for me. So good. Fuck.”
And as soon as her tongue was on Zosia again, Carol felt the woman shudder, shake, come to her own repeated chorus of “Yes, yes, yes,” and she tasted sweet, and warm, and right.
They made a habit of it— the sex.
Carol called Zosia over the week on lonely nights, or else Zosia came over unannounced. Just for sex.
It was all they did these days. They never went out like they did before. Not to lunch, not to hikes, not anything like that. And even if Carol requested chores to be done around the neighborhood — trash pickup, gardening, road sweeping — a different person would show up.
These days — or nights, to be more accurate, because they only ever met in the cover of darkness — Zosia only came by if Carol asked for her specifically. If the implication of what she was wanting was there.
Carol would dial zero with shaking anticipation, and she would say, desperate, like the word was fighting to get out of her, clawing at her throat, “Zosia,” and Zosia would arrive.
There would hardly be any talking before they were pulling each other’s clothes off, frenzied, reckless, clumsy. There would hardly be any foreplay before one was inside the other, crashing planets, animalistic or appallingly human, and they’d speak in garbled moans, gasped breaths, “I need you,” or, “You’re mine,” or, “I’m yours,” or, “You’re good, you’re so good, so good for me, my girl, mine.”
They’d come. Sometimes together. Most of the time not. Sometimes, only Carol did. Other times, only Zosia. The rest of the time, neither. Carol never understood those particular times, found them to be the most mystifying nights, because if neither found catharsis, if all the body-rocking and mindless moaning led to nothing but a faint fizzle-out, then what was it all for? Those nights, sex seemed nothing but a pretense for something pathetic.
If nobody came, then why did she call, or why did Zosia show up? For the after? To sleep together in the same bed? To speak? To plead their cases? To mind-fuck each other? To fall deeper and deeper in love, in Carol’s case? To separate again in the morning, hoping the next time would be sooner rather than later?
Useless. Pointless. They kept doing it.
Care built. A sort of misplaced one. A sort of confusing, disturbing one. One that begged the question, Does she love me? One that offered no answer. Resentment built alongside it, of the same nature.
In between kisses, after another meeting.
Carol’s bedroom again. Zosia’s hands ran up and down Carol’s body with a feather light touch, nails dragging, a sweet sensation. Earlier, Carol had asked, “So when I do this— is it just you… doing it with me?” Carol licked at Zosia’s neck as Zosia explained to her again, “They know. Everybody knows.”
“They don’t feel it,” Zosia continued, gasping when Carol’s fingers went down, down, down to the core of her and pressed though the thin cloth of her panties. “They— mmph— They don’t feel it, but Th—They’re— Carol— they’re aware.”
”So it’s just you?” Carol questioned, a deep husk to her voice.
”Do you want there to be anybody else?” Zosia replied.
And Carol shook her head. She dropped to her knees. Pushed aside Zosia’s underwear. Looked up.
Brown eyes stared at her. Expectant. Zosia nodded. Excited.
After, Zosia began her pitch again.
“It’s really not bad at all.”
Carol groaned. “It’s a privacy, self-autonomy nightmare, Zosia. Goes against the very principle of being an individual.”
Zosia shrugged.
“It’s really not that great, being an individual,” she claimed, and at that, Carol had to laugh.
Zosia arched a brow at her. Carol shook her head.
“Come on,” she said. “Do you hear yourself?”
And Zosia nodded, self assured, fully convinced. “I do. Are you listening to me?”
Her tone suggested teasing. Carol couldn’t believe it. She scoffed.
And Zosia got this glazed look in her eyes. And she said, “So many things can be lost in communication. Meaning and intention. Perception. You know that thing people used to say? You can’t know if the blue that you’re seeing is the same as the blue other people see? Before The Joining, nobody knew anything about each other. There were some feelings, sensations, thoughts and ideas that didn’t have the words to explain themselves. And people would get close in saying what they meant, with similes and metaphors, with entire books and theses, but nobody could ever fully understand what it was like to be somebody else. Empathy and language could only do so much. Every man was an island, Carol.
“Jean-Paul Sartre said something once. You’ve heard it before, during a lecture in your first year college Philosophy class: ‘Hell is other people,’ meaning the lasting impressions that we make on others allow them to judge us, and that judgment binds us. That judgment is Hell. Not anymore. Now everybody is connected. There is no judgment. Just full understanding. Nothing lost in translation. It’s… paradise.”
Zosia looked blissful. Looked radiant. Almost looked convincing.
Carol stared at her. Said nothing.
Zosia took her by the hands. “I wish I knew you. All of you.”
And Carol knew what she really meant. And Carol felt disgust. Disbelief. Disillusioned.
Her throat felt stuffed up all of the sudden. It took effort to ask, “Are you done with your fucking sales pitch now?”
The other woman blinked, shocked. She dropped Carol’s hands, and she attempted to apologize, “We’re sorry if that wasn’t what you wanted to hear—“
Carol interrupted, saying, “Hell is whatever this is.”
Carol stood and began to pace.
Then she turned to Zosia sharply and asked, “You know it don’t you?” Because it was no secret, or if it was she did a poor job at hiding it. “You know that I’m in love with you?”
Zosia stalled for a moment.
Said nothing.
Carol pressed, “A million fucking geniuses inside that head, somebody must have figured it out by now.”
Slowly, carefully, Zosia answered, “…We suspected.”
“Can’t believe I fell in love with the fucking stripper,” Carol laughed humorlessly, maniacally. “Can’t believe I thought the stripper liked me back.” She threw her hands in the air, began pacing again. “This is all this is to you, isn’t it? The sex? Just another attempt to get me to join whatever mind meld you’ve got going on?”
Zosia sighed deeply, clearly distressed but distressed about the wrong fucking thing— distressed over Carol’s distress and not about anything fucking else, God, what an unbearable fucking joke.
“We love you, too, Carol—“
“I!” Carol cried. “I! Say I, not We, not Us, Christ! If you’re going to lie, be purposeful about it!”
“I,” Zosia started, and then They stopped. This abrupt stop was the closest thing They ever got to stuttering or stumbling over Their words. They never misspoke. Just paused to recollect Their thoughts.
After a moment, Zosia asked, gently, “Would you like for me to leave, Carol?”
“No— Yes— Ugh—!” Carol just barely resisted the urge to scream. “I don’t know what I want.” Tell me what I want, tell me you want me, or tell me to want something other than you.
Zosia kindly, cruelly narrowed down the choices, “Would you like for me to leave, or would you like for me to tell you I love you?”
It was the same fucking choice.
Save the world or get the girl.
“I want,” Carol heaved, “you to choose.”
“To choose what you want?” Zosia asked, head tilted, brows furrowed, forced and shaky smile halfway between concerned and bemused.
“To choose what you want!”
Zosia’s smile softened. She took a step towards Carol, a slow one, like how one might step towards a frightened cat.
“I love you,” chose Zosia. Her eyes looked sincere. Her ever present smile looked soft again. Warm. Forlorn. Pitying. How much of that was really her? How much of that was calculated to manipulate? Was there ever even a Zosia to begin with?
Defeat seeped into Carol’s bones like an ache that couldn’t be soothed, the type hard and heavy enough to nearly bring you to your knees.
“Carol,” Zosia repeated, “I love you.”
Of course They’d say that. Of course.
Carol rushed across the three-foot ocean between them. The coarse, sandy dirt crunched beneath her steps. She kissed Zosia. Desperate. Needy. Undisciplined. Selfish.
How could she save the world? How could she do anything?
The morning after the storm, Zosia left once more, bright and early, posture upright, smile lazy and reassuring. She honked the horn twice as she drove away, and she waved Carol goodbye with a slender hand out the car window, and as Carol’s eyes followed the vehicle away, she caught sight of Manousos standing at his yard with a severe frown on his face.
Carol frowned back. She shrugged her arms like, What?
And he shook his head like, I can’t even look at you right now. Then he walked back into his house, disappearing behind a slammed door.
Carol scoffed, like, Whatever, fuck you, and followed suit behind her own slammed door.
Still, the next day, she knocked at Manousos’s door holding a bottle of aged, unopened wine, rehearsing a joke she came up with about housewarming gifts in her mind. She hoped to make more of an effort connecting with the man and perhaps make some progress in saving the world.
But when he opened the door, he only fixed her with a terrible glare. Like a disappointed father.
She said the joke. It fell flat between them. He invited her in, out of respect for their shared humanity, but Carol knew enough to know when she was not wanted and simply declined.
And she crossed the cul-de-sac eager to be back inside her own home.
And she tried not to feel lonely when she was.
Of course, very few days after that, she called Zosia. To complain, mostly, about Manousos’s behavior. But then after an hour on the phone, Zosia offered to just come over, and Carol was too drunk to look a gift horse in the mouth.
They spoke.
They fucked.
Carol didn’t know how to feel about that.
“He doesn’t understand,” said Zosia, the morning after.
On the bed, Carol laid naked on her stomach with her eyes closed while Zosia trailed a long finger onto the expanse of skin on the small of her back, tracing little nothings. A heart. A star. Circles. Letters. A. T. C. G.
“Damn right he doesn’t,” Carol grumbled, pretending she was talking about a coworker instead of one of the last individuals on Earth, pretending Zosia was her partner comforting her after a hard day work, pretending normalcy. “He’s crazy. Absolutely fucking crazy. And he thinks I’m the crazy one. He’s miserable.”
Again, Zosia hummed, “He just doesn’t understand.” And she leaned down, pressed a soft kiss against the back of Carol’s neck, eliciting pleasant shudders. “Not the way you do.”
And it took Carol a moment, but then the words processed, and she froze, and she looked at Zosia, and she parroted, “The way I do?”
Zosia smiled at her. A gentle thing. Soft. Lovely. Sunshine through grapevines at a vineyard in Italy. A lit fireplace in the middle of a Canadian winter. Moonlight through the haze of clouds.
“Yes, Carol. The way you do.” Honey sweet.
Carol swallowed. “What is it that I understand, exactly?”
Zosia tilted her head like an endeared owner to a clueless pet. “Well, you know… how happy it can be.”
Carol sat up then. Slowly. Slightly afraid. ”To what?”
“To be one,” Zosia answered.
Carol stared.
She stood from the bed. Shook her head firmly. “No, Zosia, I don’t understand that either.”
And Zosia did not look bothered. Continued smiling. Like nothing.
”But you’re starting to, Carol. We can see that.”
Carol’s blood ran entirely cold.
She shook her head. She said, “Stop saying shit like that to me.” And she curled up into herself under the thick, white duvet, facing the wall instead of Zosia.
Zosia sighed, turned the lights off, and slept in the same way.
She was gone before Carol even woke up.
That same morning, Carol knocked at Manousos’s door, and Manousos answered, swinging the door open to reveal his tired, beaten down figure.
Carol waved hello. She offered him a bottle of wine. And he looked down at her extended arm, then up at her face, and he fixed her with a sharp, admonishing glare.
”How is your girlfriend?” he near-spat.
Carol blinked. She turned her gaze to the ground, felt the shame travel up from her toes to her face. “She’s fine,” she answered.
And Manousos scoffed. “I’m busy today, Carol Sturka.”
And the door shut without another word.
Another night. Late night. Zosia on the right side of her bed, naked, her chest rising and falling in steady rhythm, like beach waves lapping on a sandy shore. Inhale. Exhale. Zosia breathing in. Zosia breathing out. Carol, sitting up against the headboard watching, lost in the tide of her.
Anger, Carol realized, was no longer anywhere to be found when she looked at Zosia, which was surprising, because Carol was such an angry person.
As Carol, to be furious was to breathe. She was mad always. Mad at every situation she was in, mad at the world, mad at herself. Probably, she came out of her mother mad. Probably, her first cry as a newborn was one of rage. But somehow, these feelings disappeared any time she looked at Zosia’s face.
That’s what love did to her, she supposed, because to her, that’s what being in love was— not being angry.
Carol could count on both hands the number of times she got angry at Helen when she was… before. Helen just always seemed to find a way to pacify her with her presence. That’s what Zosia did now.
But Carol felt other negative emotions.
Annoyance. Frustration. Disgust. Discomfort. Resentment.
Hate.
Pity.
“I can feel you thinking,” came Zosia’s voice, eliciting a jump from Carol.
The hive mind had not opened her eyes, and her slow, even breathing remained as it was. How long had she been awake, Carol wondered, and did she pretend to be asleep hoping that Carol would follow?
Zosia peeked one eye open. Her lips tilted upwards in a small, lazy grin. “Did you need anything, Carol?”
“Carol.” Not “angel,” not “honey,” not “dear.” Always “Carol.” Never “baby,” or “sweetheart,” or “my love.” Just “Carol.”
Carol frowned deeply. “I just can’t sleep,” she mumbled.
”Perhaps you should count sheep,” suggested Zosia, and Carol couldn’t quite tell if she was joking or not. She’d gotten good at that— speaking in ambiguity, allowing Carol to decide what she meant rather than meaning anything.
Carol ignored her.
“Manousos trusts me less and less every day,” she said.
Zosia shifted, sensing this conversation was one she needed to be more present for, and she replied, “We hope that’s not because of us.”
”Yeah, well, it very obviously is,” scoffed Carol, and she immediately regretted it as soon as Zosia’s small smile dropped into something more subdued. “Sorry.”
”No need.” Zosia shook her head. “We should have known. Would it help you to talk about it?”
”What is there to talk about?” Carol laughed. “He hates my guts. I— I mean, I can’t blame the guy— I’m at his house every day talking saving the world, and your car’s on my driveway every damn night and— and it’s gone every morning, and God knows we’re not in here playing cards. He doesn’t trust me. I’m, I’m fucking compromised, and it’s pathetic. It’s— I’m sick. Disgusting.”
Zosia’s hand found hers and squeezed. Carol looked at her, vision blurry.
“We don’t think that about you,” Zosia said, softly.
And she kept repeating it late into the night, face buried in Carol’s neck while Carol fucked into her, gasping and blabbering, “I see you, I see you, I see you.”
And Carol kissed her. And it didn’t matter what Zosia thought. She felt pathetic. She felt sick. She felt disgusting. She felt Zosia’s lips, firm against hers, despite.
Another night. It could’ve been the night after the last or three weeks later.
Same fucking story.
Except different this time.
Because Manousos got royally pissed at her in the morning, and she got royally pissed back, and because yelling at each other couldn’t result in the death of eleven million people, Carol found herself in a proper screaming match, which was half cathartic, half really fucking shitty.
Different this time, because unlike the hive, Manousos was capable of holding Carol accountable. Capable of staring her in the face and saying, “No, this is not okay, you cannot keep doing it.”
There was a kind of love to that, Carol realized. A love to telling someone no. And no, Manousos did not tell her she “THE ONLY REASON YOU ARE NOT BRAINWASHED MUST BE BECAUSE YOU DO NOT HAVE A BRAIN” out of a love for her as an individual, but out of love for her as a human.
So anyway, it was the same story — Zosia in her bed, naked again, Carol sat up beside her, naked as well — but different, because Carol had Manousos’s words fresh in mind, and Helen, too. Helen, that fiercely stubborn, dangerously intelligent woman who’d once dumped a six-thousand dollar bottle of wine down the drain out of love for Carol.
She would have agreed with Manousos, infuriating as it was for Carol to admit. She would have stood right by him and added, “NO IDEA WHY THEY WANT YOU SO BAD— ONE CAROL STURKA IN A HIVE MIND EQUIVALENT TO TEN DEAD EINSTEINS.”
“Zosia,” Carol blurted out. And Zosia did not reply. “Zosia. I know you’re awake.”
Zosia let out a noncommittal hum. She laid with her back turned to Carol, so Carol could only see her thin frame from the back, the styled ringlets of her hair, her prominent clavicle, shoulder bones, scapulae. Her scar Carol knew nothing about. The dip of her lower back as it disappeared under the sheets. Not her face. Small mercies.
“Zosia. We need to talk.”
“Statistically, conversations between partners happen are most productive after a good night’s rest,” Zosia mumbled.
And Carol frowned. “According to what study?”
”According to my experiences,” Zosia retorted. “Which is everybody’s. Sleep well, Carol.”
Carol huffed. She recalled Manousos, declaring, “Carol Sturka, you may not be one of them but you are acting worse, because you have free will, and you are choosing the most cowardly path.”
Frustration built.
”Zosia, we need to talk and I need you to be honest with me,” she demanded, or at least attempted to. Her voice shook. It sounded nervous rather than firm.
“Would that make you happy?” came Zosia’s voice, slightly skeptical but paying more attention now, and really, Carol knew it meant, Do you really?
Carol cleared her throat. Even that small action sounded frantic. “I want you to tell me honestly what you plan to do with me.”
Zosia shifted. Turned around to face her. Here was the end of that mercy.
“What do you mean, Carol?”
Who was Carol speaking to, she wondered. Primarily, was this voice Zosia, that woman from Poland who died in Morocco, who had a husband, who loved mango ice cream, who baked sourdough when it rained, who… well, Carol didn’t know much about her, and all that she did seemed intrusive enough for her to know already.
Or, was this voice that of a therapist’s, from somewhere where they need therapists, like New Jersey, or something. Zosia’s voice had the cadence that all mental health professionals in Carol’s experience seemed to share.
Carol imagined the inside of Zosia’s head as a meeting room, a war room. A big table in the middle and sat around it, her child psychiatrist when she was seven and her parents divorced, her therapist when she was eleven, and then the next one when she was thirteen, and then the four she had between the ages fifteen and twenty-one, two of which were male, which infuriated her at the time and still kind of did, and definitely contributed to her stopping therapy altogether. She imagined her NA sponsor from her late twenties there. And she imagined her counselor from that place sat at the head of the table, saying, “Okay, Zosia, tell her you’re doing this because you love her. This will really win it for us.”
“Why do you keep coming back to me?” Carol gritted out. She shut her eyes tightly. “Why are you in my bed?”
Zosia paused to think. And this time, Carol actually thought she might’ve been unsure of what to say. Carol was a desert, peppered with landmines, and Zosia was navigating, and for once, it felt like Zosia didn’t know where to step, like this time, she was utterly, entirely befuddled.
The feeling did not feel as great as Carol imagined.
Zosia began, “Because—“
“Don’t say you love me,” Carol interrupted. Zosia had been saying it a lot lately, but Carol felt she’d die if Zosia said it then.
Zosia smiled sadly. She settled instead on, “Because you fascinate Us.”
Carol held her breath.
“You called Us yours, months ago, and it made Us feel happy. Because We are yours.” Zosia shrugged. “And, well, We are in your bed because We want you to be Ours, too.”
Carol felt like crying, but if she did, she’d have choked.
The silence hung heavy between them for a moment. Just a moment. Neither of them knew if what Zosia said was right or if the landmine was just slow to respond.
“I thought I knew everything there was to know about you,” Carol managed, finally. The back of her throat gurgled slightly. “This pitying smile, that’s Them. This sardonically playful eye roll, that’s Zosia. This stiff hug, that’s Them. This easy kiss, Zosia. This ‘I’m doing this because I love you,’ Them. This ‘Maybe you just suck,’ Zosia.”
“There is no separation,” Zosia said, shaking her head. “I am Us. We are me.”
And Carol laughed, humorlessly, spitefully.
“Fuck off, Captain Pronoun.”
Zosia frowned sadly.
“Sorry,” Carol apologized, despite herself, and she felt hot, angry, confused tears spill over, involuntary. “Sorry, I just—“ Carol groaned, having difficulty finding the worlds. Some fucking author she was. “How can you use her body and act like she’s some sort of— of free-thinking individual with, fuck, with wants and thoughts of her own, with an identity, with—“
Carol interrupted herself with a groan. A frustrated, raging groan.
“God, how can you use her lips to tell me you love me as if she has the— the capacity to feel love as herself?”
Zosia stared at her with an assessing look in her eyes, a neutral smile on her slightly-pursed lips. Carol barreled on.
“And— And, what, her life — her entire life — just stopped as soon as she joined? Her likes, her dislikes, what she wanted to do, who she wanted to be, just stopped, and now all she wants, all everybody wants is to— to build some fucking antenna to heaven so you can fuck over the rest of the universe too? No more passion, no more new thoughts, ideas, opinions? Just… just flatworms trying to continue their cycle of parasitism?
“If all of you are in her head, how much of her is even in there?” Carol heaved. She took Zosia by the shoulders. “Is it your biological imperative to be here with me? Zosia, do you care for me?”
Zosia smiled at her.
“Of course We—“
Carol cried, “No, her! Zosia! Would she have loved me? If this had never happened? If she and I had met under normal—“
“Zosia had a husband,” Zosia interrupted, and everything quieted. She said it casually. Not cruelly. Just a fact. Everything was a fact with her. “You had a wife. These aren’t normal circumstances, Carol. But these are the circumstances. Truthfully, Zosia would have found you annoying. Haughty. While the chances of you two falling in love if you had met before The Joining are not zero, it would have been unlikely.”
Carol’s face fell. Her heart dropped alongside with it. But then Zosia took Carols hand in her own, and she smiled, and Carol didn’t know how to feel. Her fingers, longer than Carol’s with more calluses and prominent veins, felt warm.
“You would have had to have met in the right place, at the right time, in the exact right state of mind.”
Zosia brought Carol’s hands to her lips. Lightly, she pressed a kiss on the inside of Carol’s wrists, and she held Carol’s hand there, against her face, still smiling, offering, promising something.
“Is that not what this is, Carol?”
You would say anything to get me, Carol thought. And inexplicably, disgustingly, Carol felt an urge to kiss Zosia then, to make the sickly feeling in her stomach go away, and she could have, because her life was her own, but she didn’t, because Zosia’s was not. You would say anything so long as you knew I’d respond to it.
And she inhaled slow, exhaled slower.
“I don’t want you to kiss me anymore,” she said. “I don’t want you to initiate sex. I don’t even want you to touch me. I don’t want you to come by uninvited, and I won’t invite you back. This is done. We are done.”
A look of dejection passed over Zosia’s face. A gentle thing, soft as it covered, like gossamer clouds covering the moonlight that was her easy smile. Disappointment made her shoulders droop, weighed down her grin.
But she nodded, like she understood, and she said, “Okay, Carol,” and she dropped Carol’s hand, dressed herself, and she got up off the bed, and Carol did not reach out, did not stop her.
Before Zosia slipped out the door, Carol called, “I’ll save you. I will. I’ll find a way to turn you back, and— and if you’ll have me then….” She trailed off. Swallowed. Finished, promised, resolutely, “I’ll save you.”
Zosia smiled. Winked at her. “Not if I save you first.”
And then she was gone.
In the morning, she knocked once more on Manousos’s door, and when the man answered, he asked once again, “How is your girlfriend?”
Carol shook her head firmly. “She was never my anything.”
And Manousos stared at her for a very long time before sighing and stepping aside.
“Come in, Carol Sturka.”