Agrippa
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Periodical Cicadas – Chapter 12
🕑 Added 2023-08-08 03:35:13 +0000 UTCI don’t hate Dad.
“Taylor, can we talk?” the man on the other side of my bedroom’s door asks.
I don’t. I… I am angry at him. Betrayed.
But I don’t hate him.
“Sure,” I answer with a nonchalant tone that fools absolutely no one.
Least of all me.
I don’t know when he touches the doorknob, but, despite the almost total darkness of my room, I know when he twists it to open my door.
Because of the vinegar fly hidden inside of it, feeding me positional knowledge of it at all times.
Like all the other vinegar flies hidden inside all the other doorknobs of my house.
It’s one of the newest additions to the décor. Subtle. Unstated. The opposite of Brockton’s aesthetics, really.
But the murderers in here have a tad more taste, so I figure I should keep up.
“Hey,” he says when he’s halfway through the door, only to remain silent until he sits by my side in my bed.
And then he hugs me.
It’s…
It’s fierce. More than anything, it’s fierce.
Scared, protective, possessive. Something that comforts nobody implied, neither him nor me, because it reeks of too much fear.
But it’s still fierce.
It’s still filled with the will to stand despite the fear.
And…
And I turn in his arms and bury my face in his chest, grabbing the front of his pajama shirt with two clenched fists as I keep my eyes tightly closed so that nothing traitorous will spill out as I struggle to keep away the thoughts of him being a target, as I do my best to not think about him turned into Saturn devouring helpless versions of me or whatever the killer would think ironically befitting of my father’s sins.
I struggle not to see him pale as the blood is drained out of him by impossibly thin wires painting a beautiful tapestry of vivid red surrounding the horror and madness of a man sinking his fingers into the torso of his mutilated daughter that would, for the first time in years, make me look at my father in awe.
Bile rises at it, at the thought or the efforts to repress it, and I push that down as well, not knowing what I can allow myself to feel, what is safe for me to have inside of me other than the rage and hatred.
And…
I don’t hate that.
But that is a lie.
So tears finally spill out, squeezed from the corners of my eyes, more bitter than the first time Emma, my Emma, made me cry and more intense and vivid than the last time she achieved such a feat.
The last time she mattered to me.
But Dad… Dad matters. He always will, and so I can be angry at him and at him being in danger. I can hate him and the thought of losing him. I can…
I can’t.
“Shush,” he says, sounding calm and reassuring despite… despite being Dad. “It’s all right. I’m not going anywhere.”
My fists tremble against the thin fabric covering his chest.
“Promise?” I ask with a weak voice that makes me hate myself.
And then I notice the arms wrapped around me. The long, strong arms that were relentlessly beating on our sofa at my acerbic prodding not that long ago and are now…
Holding me.
Steadying me.
“Yes. Yes, Taylor, I promise,” he says.
And I could throw in his face all the broken promises that lie between us. All the little and not-so-little betrayals.
Except… He never did promise me anything he didn’t do.
He just… stopped promising. Stopped doing.
“I don’t believe you,” I still say, my voice muffled by wet cotton bunching over my lips with every word.
“I know,” he says without bitterness or reproach. “But I’ll still promise you.”
Then he leans down to kiss the top of my head, and I finally open my eyes.
I almost laugh.
Because… He’s wearing a set of pajamas I bought him for Father’s Day years ago, one that Mom helped me pick up and pay for but that he rarely wore because they were thin summer pajamas, and we ended up not taking as many trips to the beach as we had planned.
Brockton… It had a beach, and we could go even if the Atlantic’s water was never above cool.
So that was enough for our summer vacations.
And now, after all those years, one of the things that Dad packed when leaving his city, his home, his job, and his friends is…
A thin set of pajamas with the Tasmanian Devil mid-whirlwind.
It’s… Ridiculous. Almost bathos, I would call it.
A tad ironic, maybe, given what I now know about Dad’s actual temper.
“I can’t believe you still have this,” I say, tugging lightly at his shirt just to let him know what I’m talking about.
He doesn’t answer.
Not until after a brief tightening of his embrace and burying his face in my hair.
“It was a gift from my daughter. Please don’t tell her she has terrible taste; it would break her heart.”
It’s not funny.
It’s stupid.
It’s… It’s not even really a joke. Not even a Dad joke.
I still laugh.
It comes out sounding like a croak, strangled by the tears still clinging to my voice, but it’s a laugh.
And there have been too few of those in my life.
***
Dad’s already back in his bedroom. A brief moment of weakness almost made me ask him to sleep in the same room tonight, but the certainty that I would never be able to look him again in the eye after that made me rethink it.
Partially because I can, and will, keep an eye on him with my power all the same.
But now my father’s in his room, lying on his bed, tossing and turning often enough that the spiders clinging to his blanket are about to get dizzy.
And I, like a properly rebellious teenage daughter, take the chance to call a boy.
“Broody?” Noah asks in a tone that suggests he wasn’t asleep but that he should have been.
“That nickname is going to get old real fast,” I answer.
“Just because you’re the Final Girl in one movie doesn’t mean you’ll survive the sequel,” he jokes back.
I think.
“What?” I finally ask.
“I—okay, I’m going to give you maybe entirely too much context, and that will murder all the humor in the joke, but I believe that is a worthy sacrifice to avoid any kind of misunderstanding, particularly when we’re talking on the phone and are thus deprived of many valuable clues regarding non-verbal communication and kinesics,” he explains.
I can feel the migraine coming on.
“You really, really don’t need to bother—”
“Oh, it’s no bother at all! So, remember when I called you a Final Girl after you said you were from Brockton? Well, the first part of the joke was an allusion to our first meeting, which can be taken as further establishing some commonalities between us and, thus, some bonding context. Then there’s also the fact that you went through a trigger event—that you haven’t explained to me, by the way—but that, given it entails arthropod control, I assume to be further proof of you surviving a horror movie experience and cementing your status as both a Final Girl and a certified badass, except hopefully one less physically violent than Audrey. That, contrary to what common sense would suggest, doesn’t increase your odds of survival, but rather the opposite,” he says. All at once. Without pausing to breathe.
“… What?” I say, trying to breathe.
“See, in sequels? The usual formula of the horror genre entails a constantly dwindling cast pared down by a vicious killer, a threat of supernatural or otherwise origins. The Final Girl needs not be literal, it could be that more than a single person of the original group survives, but if the franchise is to keep moving forward, then the threat needs to be firmly established in the viewers’ minds.”
“You take this entirely too seriously.”
“Well, yes, of course, that’s just one of my many lovable quirks as the eccentric character whose death marks the movie taking a darker turn. Just like the Final Girl dying at the start of a sequel does.”
“What?” I repeat, yet not for emphasis.
All right, maybe for a bit of emphasis. But it’s mostly me questioning the will of the cosmos aloud rather than contributing to the conversation in any way whatsoever.
“Look, in a horror franchise? It’s not the heroes that are recognizable. The character who defeats Freddy Krueger in the fifth installment of the series is barely a side note, and we know that Freddy will be back in the sixth movie. Except, if he does? He needs to do something that will erase his earlier defeat. He needs to become once again unbeatable, and that means either retconning his loss or turning him into something that could not have been defeated the way he was beaten. This sometimes is as straightforward as the next movie starting with a continuation of the last scene from the one that precedes it, with the monster rising up and acting immediately, even if it usually isn’t that unsubtle, but what it almost always entails is that the ones who were instrumental in diffusing the horror, in giving the audience the catharsis of some unfathomable evil being destroyed, are the ones most likely to die first when that evil returns.”
I lean back on my bed, shifting my shoulders over my hair and blankets without resting on my pillow, idly looking up at the thin bands of light painted across my ceiling by the half-closed blinds.
And I wait to see if Noah will add anything else to his unfathomably long, nonsensical, absolutely apropos of nothing rant.
“Broody? Are you there? Are you doing that thing Audrey does when she holds the phone away from her ear until I stop making noises?”
I sigh.
“Your best friend, one who shares your obsessions and tastes, does that to you, and you thought it would be a good idea to monologue at me?” I say, the question mostly rhetorical.
“Well, I prioritized you getting information that may turn out to be important rather than you getting an optimal impression of me. I’m trying to be a good friend, not seduce you,” he says with what I know is a perfectly Noah grin.
I want to punch him.
And not even because of how carelessly he just dropped that.
“I don’t see how the particularities of a Final Girl’s chances of survival in a sequel apply to me, Noah, seeing as what happened in Brockton is completely unrelated to what’s going on here,” I finally say, opting to avoid as many verbal mines as I am able to, waggling my fingers in front of my face distractedly as I flex my power to canvass my house and its surroundings yet again, keeping my multiple threads of thought as busy as I can.
“Are you sure about that?” he asks.
And I stop waggling my fingers.
“What do you mean?” I say with an inflectionless tone that surprises me—except I don’t have time to be surprised, not when I could be checking the integrity of the house’s windows, reassuring myself that Dad’s still breathing by the movement of his chest, running a line of ants under the two entrances to the house—
“You got here on the day of the first victim’s appearance. And I know your alibi is solid… but maybe somebody followed you. Waited for you,” he says.
My heart beats loudly. Harshly. It feels like I’m about to jump up off the bed with each hammer strike.
My throat closes.
My sight goes dark.
And, through it all, I can only cling to my swarm. To my absolute awareness of its position. To the radius around me that I know not to be filled by Madison, Sophia, Emma—
“Broody? Taylor? Taylor, answer me—shit. Shit! An anxiety attack? Do you need me to call your father—no, that’s stupid, he’s part of your trauma, and—shit! Taylor! Listen to me, Taylor, close your eyes. Just close your eyes, all right? Limit the outside world and go back into yourself. Just… Just close your mouth and breathe through your nose. Count the breaths, Taylor, breathe in for one, two, three, four, five, and let it out for one two, three, four, five—good. You’re doing good. You’re doing great—shit. Breathe! Don’t forget to breathe for one, two, three, four—”
“Noah… I’m going to suffocate you with a swarm of tarantulas…” I finally say despite my head still swimming due to what is likely a mix of anger and frustration at the utter moron, an aborted panic attack at Brocktonbeing the actual monster out to get me, and some nameless feeling that shall be ruthlessly squashed before I acknowledge that it has anything at all to do with Noah’s panicked concern for my wellbeing.
…
Damn it, nameless feeling; you just had to slip that in, didn’t you?
“Tarantula poison is usually not dangerous to humans!” he cheerfully exclaims, as if getting a question on The Castle of Otranto right in literature class.
“I know. That’s why I specified death by asphyxiation,” I say.
“Oh,” he says, audibly crestfallen, and—I am notfeeling guilty about this! The absolute cretin almost killed me with his words—
…
That doesn’t sound erotic. Nor sexy. Not even a tiny little bit.
God, I am so messed up.
“Anyway, why were you calling?” he finally asks.
Damn it, Noah…
“My Dad got a call from the murderer,” I say.
And, immediately, there’s typing on his end of the line.
“Tell me everything,” he says.
“No,” I answer.
“What?” he replies with the auditory equivalent of puppy eyes.
“The murderer… they are a Tinker. And they called my father. And me.”
“… You think phones aren’t safe.”
“I do.”
He isn’t typing and, if I know him, he’s staring fixedly at a random spot in front of him that has nothing to do with the focus of his mind as it speeds up almost out of control, the barrage of ideas on the verge of becoming white noise for him to get lost in.
And I do. I know him at least that much.
Which is a baffling realization to come to. Slightly less shocking than my constant state of bipanic, but distressing, nonetheless.
“You called me to tell me not to put my theories anywhere the murderer can easily access them,” he says.
“Yes,” I answer.
“It… you could’ve told me face to face. Maybe we could’ve used this to slip them fake information—”
“Wouldn’t work. We’re not trained in counterintelligence, and they can hack anyone. If they spotted any inconsistencies, they would easily guess our reasons and goals. Our traps would get sprung on ourselves,” I say, mostly explaining my reasoning rather than just coming up with the justification partway through the conversation.
“Our traps?” he asks.
And I…
I close my eyes.
Like Noah told me to moments ago, as I focus on breathing through my nose, my mind supplying the count of five in a reasonable facsimile of his voice.
“Noah, they… They targeted my father. Sent their challenge.”
I open my eyes and stare up at the ceiling turned into bands of light and shadow.
Across my home, my swarm keeps sweeping any and all entrances. Combing through any crevices in search of anything that shouldn’t be there.
I’ve got cockroaches climbing across the wiring and plumbing. Thin webs, connected to any window, that will snap and warn me of any unauthorized entrance. Lines of ants in search of traces of unfamiliar chemicals to compare with all the scents coming from the pantry and the cupboard under the sink that my other ants are feeding to me, allowing me to memorize what is a common household detergent, what is bleach, what is ammonia…
What is anything and everything that should be here without alarming me.
Then…
Over my desk, rows of spiders are weaving lines out of drag silk, the threads that spiders use to climb rather than weave.
They haven’t been selected for any particular traits. Yes, there are species with stronger silk than others, but…
But it doesn’t matter. Not enough for me to bother.
Not with what I’m doing.
Not with rows of fire ants expelling their venom into empty spice bottles. Not with the spiders that have run out of silk unspooling the soft cotton out of the pack of Qtips spilled over my desk, taking the absorbent fibers out to drench them in the painful venom before either weaving them across lines of silk meant to incapacitate when thrown by someone wearing thickgloves or turning them into pellets easily transported by flying insects that will target mucous membranes with unerring aim after I have tagged any threatening human being in my radius.
From tomorrow on, I’ll also start visiting Dad at the precinct. That will get me within the radius of the forensics lab, where I will learn more about the things that should not be in my house.
But I’ll do so armed. Armed and ready.
For as much as I can be ready for.
“Broody?” Noah finally asks after the lull in our conversation grows too long.
Not because I was distracted by what I am building with my power, but…
But because I’m still off-balance by his suggestion that my past may have come chasing me across the country, ridiculous as the notion sounds while not in the middle of a bout of anxiety.
And because what I just told him also lingers in my mind:
They targeted my father. Sent their challenge.
“And I’m going to answer them as they deserve,” I finally finish the thought.
Out loud.
And, maybe, the murderer hears me.
