He said, I took you into myself and we became one.
He said, meditatively, I mean, I tried. There was so much of you—you weren’t the small, stained soul of a normal human being. You were so much bigger than that. I opened my mouth and tried to cram you inside … you didn’t fit. I dropped to my knees—here, I believe.
He strode forward. She saw what he was pointing at: a pile of grassless dirt.
He said, So I dropped to my knees here, right … I scooped dirt into my mouth … ate until I vomited. I gathered up the bloody earth … I realised you were too much for me. This is the problem, the incorporation, this is the hardest part … It’s the human instinct, to take.When you burn your thumb, you stick it in your mouth, right? And there was still too much of me that was just a human being …
He said, I didn’t stick my thumb in my mouth. Had more sense than that. Fuck knows what would’ve happened if I tried to absorb you all the way; I probably would’ve burnt to death. But I needed a house to put you in, if I wasn’t going to put all of you in me. I made you one on the fly … I wasn’t even thinking … I ripped half my ribs from my body and made you from the dirt, my blood, my vomit, my bone.
He said, I wanted to make you the most beautiful body I could think of.
He paused and said: “But I was stressed, okay? I was insane. Most of what had made me John had gone somewhere else. There were a few little thoughts left … a handful of things that made me me … a couple scraps of id. It’s not fair to judge me, right? I didn’t do this thinking … I didn’t do it like art. When I was seven, you know, all Nana had to play with in her house was some of Mum’s old toys. And my favourite out of all of them…”
He gave a long, shuddering sigh.
“My favourite was her old Hollywood Hair Barbie,” he murmured. “I loved her little gold outfit and her long yellow hair. She was the best. She got to have all the adventures. There was also a Bride’s Dream Midge, but Mum had cut Midge’s hair into this weird mullet. It was Barbie for me.”
She looked at him. He looked at her.
He added, “Not Hollywood Hair Ken. Mum had him too, but he was a creep. I gave him to Nana’s dog to eat.”
He said, From my blood and bone and vomit I conjured up a beautiful labyrinth to house you in. I was terrified you’d find some way to escape before I was done. I made you look like a Christmas-tree fairy … I made you look like a Renaissance angel … I made you Adam and Eve … Galatea. Barbie. Frankenstein’s monster with long yellow hair.
He said, As the world went up I remade us both. I hid me in you … I hid you in me. And when we were together … once the shaman had claimed the sun … I became God.
He said, It wasn’t enough.
He said, The ships … the ships were still full of people. I reached our hand out into space. I extended. I struggled.
He said, I bit through the sun first. It’s human nature. That started things going. Once you take down the sun, you’re cooking with gas, pardon the pun. I sliced through Venus, Mercury, Mars … by that point a couple of the tugs had already launched through the Kuiper. I had to kill Jupiter and Saturn in a fucking hurry. I reached … they blinked away from me … all I could do was hope that they’d watched what I was doing and all died from fucking terror.
You and I went full fucking Hungry Caterpillar. We took Uranus … Neptune … crunched down Pluto … found every satellite and craft, reached in, crunched up all the humans, moved on. I didn’t know how to look, you see, only how to touch. The moment I found the fleet spinning up to enter FTL, it was too late … I could only grab one of them … and you and I held it in the palm of our hand. I was in there with them. All those frightened people. All those runaway rats.
He stopped.
She said, “Then?”
He said, Then they were gone … lost to me in time, forever. That’ll teach me not to hesitate.
She folded her arms across her chest. She wasn’t cold, but she felt as though she ought to be. Standing out in the shadows, in the dust and the dirt, with the reeking concrete shell behind them, she wanted to be cold.
He said, lightly— “That’s it. That’s the story. That’s what I did.”
“Oh,” she said.
Then he said— “Do you remember what you said to me once I had done it? When we stood here together?”
She looked at him and she said, “Yes.”
He said— “You said, ‘I picked you to change, and this is how you repay me?’”