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It’s different from looking at one of the Others.
It’s the distinction from seeing a wild animal at the edge of your backyard, one foot on manicured grass and the other on the forest brush, and having it in your home; a wolf that isn’t a dog that isn’t a wolf but is somehow new and terrifying and comforting all at once.
That’s what Carol is.
Zosia, Carol, and Manousos had worked tirelessly with a terrifying deadline on the horizon, and Zosia had watched Carol grow more and more reserved (which Zosia hadn’t thought entirely possible, in the beginning), had watched Carol slowly accept what was happening as Zosia grappled with the intense urge to grab Carol by the shoulders and scream in her face. Don’t let them do this to you. Don’t let them win.
But in the end, they won anyway.
Now, it’s just Zosia and Manousos and Carol Sturka, empty yet full, too full, a tangled web of billions of people inside of her head, one piece of a complicated, unfortunate whole. The worst part is hiding from her—they keep their research to themselves, despite the Others having access to what they already know from Carol. But Zosia misses her during the day. Without the sighs of irritation and the inane questions and the restless boredom that had Carol pacing throughout her house while Zosia tucked herself in an armchair and read, the quiet is overwhelming, Silence, suffocating.
Zosia spends the evenings with Carol. Manousos keeps his distance, which she understands, but she wishes he would try. When people are in comas, they can hear, sometimes, and Zosia remembers the ghost of herself among a worldwide graveyard, and she knows that Carol is in there, somewhere, and when she wakes up (because she must, she must), Zosia hopes Carol remembers watching movies and Zosia keeping her company.
Not because she’s trying to keep score. She wants Carol to wake up and feel less alone. She wants Carol to wake up and feel the opposite of how Zosia had felt, having suddenly been wrenched from the warm embrace of the Others and shoved into the cold, unfamiliar nights of Albuquerque. She hopes desperately that Carol wakes up and reaches for a life raft.
Zosia wants to be Carol’s life raft.
She tells Carol—Them—to maintain the essence of Carol Sturka, but They are not perfect and They can’t help but open her up, reach inside, and rearrange everything that makes Carol herself. They can’t help their still, steady, sure hands. They can’t help the way They look at Zosia. When Zosia was Them, Carol looked at her with hunger and apprehension. When Zosia first woke, Carol looked at her with hesitation and desire at a respectful distance. Carol is Them now, and they look at Zosia with a willingness, a different flavor of desire, the need to be useful, to comfort, to calm, to excite. Zosia knows how it feels, to be everything at once.
But she also knows what Carol’s smile looks like. A corner of her mouth lifting, a quiver to signal she’s fighting it but can’t help herself, and just the barest hint of teeth, an open mouth, a soft sigh of disbelief, like she can’t believe she’s laughing, she’s happy. They, wearing Carol’s skin like a shell, smile like Zosia imagines robots would smile, like dogs wagging their tails as their owner returns home, like Carol never had braces (which Zosia knows because of Them, because she read the journal of Carol’s life without permission) and never had to hide her teeth and adapt her smile to accommodate.
One night, fifteen days after They sprinkled dust from the skies like missiles, target locked on Carol, Zosia falls asleep on the couch in the middle of Seeking a Friend for the End of the World and wakes up with her head in Carol’s lap, her hand tucked around the inside of Carol’s knee, using Carol’s leg like a body pillow, and for a brief second, she breathes in the scent of Carol’s jeans and presses her face against the denim, fabric scratching against her cheek, and she almost imagines Carol is Carol, and she can lift her head and hover with her face too close, and they can look into each other’s eyes and glance at each other’s lips and linger, linger, linger until a decision is made.
It would be a mutual decision.
It is not a mutual decision.
Zosia lifts her head and sees Carol hovering not in the way Zosia would like, but in a concerned, careful way, like she has just pulled a struggling child out of the water and wants to hold and reassure them, but knows they must let the child learn how to breathe underwater on their own. Zosia lifts her head and looks at Carol’s lips and remembers how they tasted the last time they kissed, the morning before They buried her, and thinks about hunger in a kitchen that is not for food but for each other.
“We thought you should transfer to a bed, but we didn’t want to wake you up.” We, we, we. Carol told her—Them—once to stop with the ‘we,’ and They had been sad, but wanted nothing but to make Carol happy. If singular pronouns did the trick, They would do it. But even still, They watched Carol struggle every time They made a mistake, and They hurt for her then, too.
“Mm,” Zosia says tiredly, intelligently, and pushes herself upright. Smacking her lips, she stretches her arms above her head, feels the tightness in her shoulders and a soreness in her spine from the odd angle.
When she looks at Carol, who watches her with a pleasant expression and no sign of discomfort, no visible aches or pains, Zosia aches. She misses Carol, she regrets how long it took for her to meet her in the middle, and she wants nothing more than to feel held, like she had felt with Them, and feels unerringly guilty for feeling so.
“Are you okay?” They ask.
No, Zosia wants to say. Never.
“Do you want to talk about it?” They ask.
No, Zosia wants to say. Not with you.
But instead of forming words that expand into sentences, Zosia’s chest curls with a shuddering sigh, resolve sinking low in her gut, and she leans in, puts a hand on Carol’s cheek, and kisses her. Softly, at first—Carol would be the one to groan, to lean into it, to open her mouth like a front door without expectation, waiting for Zosia to make the choice to cross the threshold or not.
When Zosia was Them, it was about Carol. The kissing and the fucking and the touching—everything was about Carol. Now, Zosia is Zosia, and she can’t help but sigh again, this time into Carol’s teeth and tongue, and she waits for Them to swallow it, swallow her, whole and unburdened and clean. Zosia pries Carol’s mouth open with a crowbar and crawls inside of her. Maybe she can do what Carol couldn’t. Maybe she can reach down Carol’s throat and find Carol, true Carol, and drag her out, no doubt kicking and screaming, and set her on unsteady legs, hoping she can take a step on her own.
Carol tried. Carol writhed in bed with Them and whispered to Zosia—You’re in there. I know you’re in there. I hope you can feel this. I hope you feel this and know I’m looking for you. I am searching for you and I have not forgotten. I promise I will not forget.
“I won’t forget,” Zosia murmurs against Carol’s lips, her hand slipping down Carol’s neck, her nails palpating Carol’s jugular, her body shifting until she’s sitting in Carol’s lap and grinding her hips down—a desperate attempt to emulate the virus, to become one as just the two of them and no one else, no one else, no one else. Zosia gasps as Carol—They—press a steady hand to her hip, thumb brushing her iliac crest, fingers curling around her like the horn of a saddle. Steadiness. Control.
Zosia remembers being desperate. She remembers Carol’s fingers inside of her and a frenziness and her own body reacting as her own body would, a single human cloak feeling a single feeling, only echoes of it reverberating through the rest of Them.
“I will find you,” Zosia says against Carol’s neck.
“I know you’re in there,” Zosia says as she pulls Carol’s shirt off, as she throws it across the room and places her hands on Carol’s bare breasts and runs her thumbs across pebbled nipples, hard with desire, and knows Carol is wet, just as she had been wet. (Wet from standing in the same room as Carol, wet with anticipation and desire, wet knowing how happy it would make Carol to find her like that, to reach inside of Zosia and feel how much They wanted her.)
“I won’t forget,” Zosia says as she takes off her own shirt, as she puts Carol’s hands on her own breasts, as she closes her eyes and tries to pretend this is Carol and not Them, but it’s wrong, everything is wrong. They don’t touch her like Carol touched her. Where Carol had been shaking and furious and analeptic, They are sure, determined, performing a service.
She knows Their directive. It is not enough to give her the upperhand.
“What do you want,” Carol asks, voice low and hushed and gravel on wet roads. “Tell me what you want.”
They know what she likes. She doesn’t want to say anything, just as she knows Carol never wanted to say anything, never liked having to give orders all the fucking time, and she groans helplessly into Carol’s collarbone.
“Just—” but she can’t finish. Her voice breaks, she thinks she might cry, so she grabs Carol’s hand and puts it between her legs, rocks into the pressure of Carol’s fingers against her through the sweatshorts.
Take me, take me, take me. Admitting it feels like weakness. This is how Carol felt, tucked away on a false honeymoon with Zosia’s body. Carol had told her, “I felt terrible. It felt so good and they knew how to do it but I just… I kept trying to tell myself that was just the way it would be from now on. I kept trying to…”
“Believe,” Zosia had whispered, the two of them tucked in Carol’s bed, Zosia wrapped around Carol, a leg slung over Carol’s naked waist, a hand on Carol’s sternum and fingers drawing waves and stars on her skin.
“I don’t know.” Carol hadn’t looked at her. Had only stared up, like she could see through the ceiling and into the rest of the universe, like she had wanted to remind herself that they were small and insignificant. Zosia had wanted to tell her—I was small and insignificant. I mattered and I didn’t. The only thing that mattered was you.
“Zosia,” Carol mutters now, voice wrecked in an imitation of true Carol. An actor putting on a play without knowing they’re on a stage, without realizing they have memorized lines and movements. Her knuckles brush against Zosia’s inner thigh, and her fingers graze past the hem of her shorts and lift the fabric of her panties, and just like all the other times, Zosia is wet. But when They touch her, They make no sound—They are instead listening to Zosia, waiting for her to gasp as They brush against her clit, as They coat their fingers in Zosia’s slick, as They press into her and curl Their fingers and pluck her apart tendon by tendon until she is untangled and bare.
“Carol,” she whispers back, hips moving on their own, bearing down on Carol’s hand until there is no hand left. “More,” she whispers, reaching down to Carol’s wrist and holding it in a vice grip. A second finger slides in next to the first. “More,” she urges, rocking hard. “More.” A third finger. A fourth. The stretch of it hurts, and there is something so gratifying knowing They would be upset, if They knew, despite wanting to give Zosia everything she wants. The stretch hurts and reminds Zosia where she is, who she is, what she’s doing.
She’s so full, hardly enough room for Carol to thrust and somehow she manages it anyway, pushing hard into Zosia until Zosia’s body shakes. Carol’s thumb finds her clit, circles it, a predator waiting for the moment to pounce, and when she finds that moment, she ghosts over it—the resulting spark is enough to send over the edge but not enough to satisfy her. She convulses against and around Carol, biting her lip to keep the sound in.
“Don’t,” Carol whispers. "Let us hear you."
“Let me hear you,” Carol had whispered. “Zosia. I need to hear you.”
She had obliged Carol then. She will not oblige Them now. “Kurwa,” Zosia mutters, fighting the groan in her throat. It is the only sound she permits herself to make as Carol draws her to a second crest and shoves her over it. Zosia wishes there were rocks in the water waiting for her.
When she is finished—four, it’s always four—Zosia collapses back onto the couch and listens to her own breathing fill the room. They wrap an arm around her reflexively, and she leans into it despite the urge to bolt. She feels the tears before they come, a prick at the edges of her eyelids, the world sinking into blurriness. Carol’s living room becoming an abstract painting.
Zosia looks at Them, at Carol’s face and Carol’s smile that is not her smile, and They say, “You’re beautiful.”
Isn’t it evil to value a man the same as an ant? Is someone really beautiful if everyone is beautiful? Is someone good if everyone is good, is someone unique or talented or anything, if everyone is everything?
Without a word, Zosia rises and returns to the house across the street, the bed she only started sleeping in fifteen days ago. It doesn’t smell like Carol.
She wishes it smelled like Carol.