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Zosia woke up and saw the full moon through the curtains. It had always been hard for her to sleep during the full moon. She moved slowly to her left side, but after five minutes she decided it wasn’t her night. Slowly, she sat on the bed, some pillows supporting her back. She breathed deeply trying to find grounding. In the past, other things would come at her at dawns like this. Now it was mainly the hive, the hive taking consent from her, the hive making her fall in love with someone she had never met before, the hive still actively looking for her.
She started picking her cuticles, not with a frantic pace like in the beginning, but still doing it despite all of the protests Carol would tell her in the morning. Carol, she thought, and looked at her on her side of the bed, sleeping oblivious to everything that was going on in her head. For a second she thought of waking her up, telling her that she was having trouble sleeping, forgetting everything that was surging in her head with kisses and caresses. Carol would help her, of course. She was always trying to make her feel better due to guilt. She still felt like she had taken advantage of her, no matter how many times Zosia would try to explain that they both had been victims of the hive. Alas, Zosia was not a selfish person. She would never wake up Carol.
She decided to surrender to her mind-wandering and the first thing that came to her was waking up in that very bedroom. Feeling nauseous and like the biggest headache of her life was beginning to form. She recognized and not recognized the bedroom at the same time. It felt like being born again, but at the same time, she felt like she was dead.
She wasn’t happy anymore. She was in hell. She was in heaven. She cried and then laughed and then cried and laughed at the same time. She felt so much at the same time that confused was just a tiny fragment of what she was going through. Then she saw Carol and grabbed her arm. She didn’t let go until Manousos shot her something that made her lose consciousness. She could hear an angry Carol shouting at him until she finally let go.
The best way she could describe how she felt after coming back was that she felt like a baby. It was hard for her to speak, to eat, to walk. Manousos kept spouting things like “trauma” and “shock”, while Carol kept trying to feed her mango ice cream.
“She has to eat something else, nutritivo,” Manousos said once, angry after seeing Carol bring mango ice cream again.
“She’s not eating anything. It’s either this or nothing. Guess what’s more nutritious?”
Zosia cried after that and Carol kicked him out of the room, being as patient with her as she could muster.
It went on for weeks. The headaches becoming less pronounced, the memories and facts getting lost somewhere, although she wasn’t sure where. She started speaking a little. She refused to speak of her life, either before or during the hive. Manousos tried asking about the hive once and Zosia closed her mouth and didn’t open it for three days. She could hear Carol screaming at Manousos on the other side of the house. Still, she couldn’t do anything except stare at the city through Carol’s window.
She had refused to sleep without Carol. Carol took her to her guest room and Zosia appeared in front of her bed twenty minutes later. Silently, she climbed on to the bed and tried to sleep while tears rolled from her eyes into the pillow. Carol didn’t have the guts to tell her to leave. She was wise enough to not touch her during the night.
“I miss feeling like we are all connected. I was never alone.” Zosia said one day surprising Carol.
“You are not alone now,” said Carol.
“It feels like I am. There’s an emptiness here,” she said pointing to her chest.
“Would you like to go back to the hive?” asked Carol for the first and only time.
“No,” said Zosia without offering an explanation, but it was enough. She felt Carol breathe for the first time since she came back.
She had first held Carol on a night like this. The full moon’s light had woken her up. The world felt so bleak that she had no option but to get close to Carol. Carol didn’t wake up, so Zosia felt at total liberty to spoon her. When they woke up in the morning, Carol tried to get out of the embrace but couldn’t, that’s how hard she was held in Zosia’s arms.
Zosia thought about what she felt for Carol a lot. She wasn’t sure she would have fallen for Carol if the hive hadn’t put her in her way. For starters, Helen would still be alive and Carol would have not registered her. Also, Zosia would have probably seen how attractive she was and just run for her life. That’s what she always did, at least since she had lost… She moved her head from one side to the other. She wasn’t remembering that right now.
She had loved Carol, of course. If there’s anything the hive was good at, other than happiness, was loving. A loving that needed boundaries for sure, a loving that was a little manipulative, but loving nevertheless. The hole she felt in her chest wasn’t so horrible when she could touch Carol. She still remembered most of Carol’s life, most of the time she’d spent with her as well. It was something or somebody she could find assurance on.
Was it healthy? She wasn’t sure. She knew that Carol wasn’t sure. She was certain that Manousos thought it wasn’t.
The first time she kissed Carol they were in bed. Carol was telling her a silly story from her childhood that Zosia already knew, but she still listened with a smile on her lips. When Carol noticed that she already knew it, she’d stopped talking and looked a bit sad. Zosia didn’t want to see her sad and gave her a quick peck on her lips. Carol got close to her in the next few seconds and kissed her passionately back. Thirty seconds later she noticed what she was doing and stopped abruptly. Carol looked adorable with her face red with embarrassment.
“I’m sorry. We probably shouldn’t do this.”
“Why not?” Asked Zosia
“You haven’t completely healed yet. You probably feel a certain way about me because of what the hive did. I would just be taking advantage of the situation. I’m sorry, I also think Manousos would probably kick me out of this house if he knew.”
“It’s your house,” it’s all she said.
“Yeah, and I want you to feel safe.”
Zosia thought she felt safe. There was no one else in the world where she felt safe. She understood Carol’s point of view though and backed off. She still fell asleep completely wrapped up in her old lover.
Sometimes she would wake up from a nightmare. The hive had found her and dragged her out of Carol’s house where they tried to make her one of them again. When this happened, it was Carol who woke her up and she could see she had been sweating, and probably screaming in her sleep. Sometimes she cried while Carol silently held her, sometimes she asked Carol to check if there was anyone outside of the house.
She realized one day she loved Carol out of the hive too. That meant that she loved who Carol was. She loved the way that she had fed her mango ice cream, the way she was so patient with Zosia whenever she regressed with her recovery. She loved the attention she had put to her wife’s grave, She loved how Carol had started to love Manousos silently, in her own way, fighting each day less and less, listening to him with acceptance instead of being defensive all the time.
It also helped that Carol was so attractive too, of course. She thought that if it had been the other way, if she had been the one who was immune, the hive would have chosen Carol.
At some point Zosia started talking more. She told Manousos she was ready for the interview and was able to answer everything he wanted to know about the hive. Carol had been pacing nervously around the living room, looking at Zosia like a worried mother, ready to protest to any question that Manousos might make that could hurt her. In the end, Manousos kicked her out of the house. Not for long, but yes while the interview continued. Carol had made Zosia promise to stop Manousos if it got too hard before she left.
It hadn’t been that hard. The hive had felt like family, like belonging. However, she wasn’t sure how she fit in there. She hadn’t given her consent, her personality had been erased. It was a family that accepted you, but forced you to be something you were not. Happiness was beautiful, of course, but had felt artificial and fake after the unhiving because joy is only joy when you can compare it to the bad things that life brings you every day. There was no separation and it never felt invasive. There was never fear.
“You are scared that if you unjoin everyone, they will all feel like this.” Zosia said.
“It is one of my worries. I don’t want to do this the way the hive did it, without giving too much thought to the consequences.”
“Oh, they thought about the consequences. They just thought that some people dying was the right price to pay for their happiness.”
“Do you think it was worth it? The unjoining?”
“Yes. It’s been hard, you and Carol know that. Nevertheless, each day that passes, the more I feel like myself and the more disgusted I am with them. I like how I can make my own choices.”
“Do you?” He asked, “You chose Carol every day and I often wonder if that is because of the love you felt while you were in the hive.”
“Do you think I’m still being controlled by them?”
“Not directly. I’m not sure how much it all affected you.”
Zosia looked uncomfortable, but then spotted Carol outside, still worried, trying to look away from the house and said, “I’m not sure either. I do know that I am lucky enough that I know Carol and that she’s been nothing but good to me. I would continue to chose her as long as she’d let me.”
Manousos seemed satisfied with that answer.
Zosia helped Carol with the garden. Manousos had said that even if they could bring everyone back the world would be in a state of disarray for months or even years. He also thought it would be good for Zosia. They needed to prepare, so they read books on growing vegetables. They had to go to another city to get everything they needed, which meant Zosia had to leave the house. Carol said she could do it on her own, but the younger woman panicked. She had issues because she didn’t trust the hive at all.
“You don’t know how manipulative they can be. I mean, they are full of shit. The thing is that they believe their shit, so they genuinely don’t think they are doing anything wrong.”
“I know. Still, I don’t think they are going to convert me while I’m looking for vegetable plants.”
“Manousos could go with you,” said Zosia, only to realize that would mean she’d stay alone in the house.
Zosia didn’t like any of the options, but decided to go with Carol because it felt like the safer choice. She had two panic attacks before getting to the other city. Carol waited through them patiently.
“You know, maybe we don’t have to do this today,” said Carol, “We can tell Manousos to come by himself next week. He might be freer then.”
Zosia felt horrible. She could’t accept that she was weak or felt weak. She couldn’t make Carol go back to the house either, so she decided to take a couple of breaths and power through the rest of the day.
She vomited as soon as she got back. First, she felt guilty for everything that transpired that day. Then, Carol found her in the middle of her self-pity fest and tried to tell her to see the other side. She had gone outside of the house, to another city no less, and she had only gotten two panic attacks. She wasn’t sure if she felt better after that, but it was true that she had done it.
Zosia started reading the books that Manousos told her to read. All of them were about physics. He complained that Carol couldn’t concentrate on any.
“I need someone to bounce my ideas off. I can’t do it with that one.”
“Hey! I have a name,” Carol had shouted from the kitchen where she was washing dishes.
Reading books about something so hard to understand had its benefits. She wasn’t thinking about the hive all the time anymore. Plus, Manousos seemed happier and they started getting along more too.
They had changed her back easily. Manousos wanted to change the rest of the world at the same time. They had to use satellites or hijack the giant antenna that the hived were building.
One particularly hot and sunny day that Zosia and Carol had been working on the garden, Zosia couldn’t resist and kissed a tiny mole on Carol’s shoulder. She’d been wearing a turtleneck sleeveless top and looked incredibly good. Carol held her breath at the touch of the other woman’s lips on her own skin. She turned to look at her and Zosia nodded, giving her consent and approval of the things she could see in Carol’s eyes.
Carol grabbed her hand and took her to their room.
Zosia needed Carol. Tasting her, touching her, it had been something she’d wanted since she woke up all those months ago in her room. She remembered what Carol liked, but she wanted to discover her own things too. Things that the hive didn’t know, things that Helen hadn’t noticed. They would need their own language from now on. Her fingers were looking for every stimulus inside of Carol. She patiently noticed every change in Carol’s gestures while she was mapping her. She made a mental note of every one of the sounds that left her lips. Carol had always been loud. Just one of the things she loved about her.
After the first orgasm, Carol looked like she had never been fucked like that before and she felt proud. The hive wasn’t perfect, they could have never done that.
At some point, she noticed that Carol loved when she swore, so she didn’t hold back. The hive had never done that. It was so easy to scream “fuck” when the woman she loved was on top of her, using a strap on like she was an expert. Carol had also noticed everything she liked when she had been part of the hive.
“Your body didn’t lie,” is one of the things Carol had told her once. Zosia had become embarrassed and Carol had left the house for a walk. Now she knew what Carol had truly meant.
When she was about to cum, Zosia told her, sounding a little bit desperate, “Make me yours.” Two seconds later she was screaming Carol’s name while she rode her high.
They spent the whole day in bed. They only had to separate because Manousos called them from his assigned house, which he barely used now, to ask them if it was safe to come back. Most of his books were at Carol’s house.
Zosia saw Carol stir. Carol saw her lover picking on her nails and grabbed her hand to bring her back next to her. She kissed her fingers and nails, told her everything was going to be okay and asked if she wanted Carol to properly wake up or if she could try to sleep now. Zosia relaxed and decided to try to sleep. She heard Carol sigh and saw her go back to her peaceful breathing rhythm. Everything was still fucked up, but at least she had Carol.