I open my eyes to the darkness of my prison. There was some moonlight coming in from the window and leaking in through cracks in the walls, the ceiling, and the door. As I stirred, a thin layer of dust floated down. Apparently, I had been asleep for a while. My old bones creaked as I got up. I groaned as I got up to sit on the chair in front of the window. I watched myself in the mirror, the way I slowly shuffled across the floor, knowing that all of my youth had been drained from my body months ago. I reached the chair, and sat down, staring out the window to the endless expanse of trees set before me. I no longer want my youth. I just wanted to die.

  There is not much to do in my cell, especially in the darkness. And so, much like the other nights where I’d stay up, longing for the end of my drawn out existence, I thought, and I remembered what I had done to myself to end up where I am. Even after all I’ve done to make myself human, the one stubborn thing that refuses to change is my brain. Color has rushed into my skin, my blood has become the same color and thickness, even my mannerisms can be called human. But the one thing that hasn’t faded is my memory.

I remember the sounds from inside the egg I came from. Everything was muffled. My people are born without eyes, so our ears are the only things we have to register our surroundings. I heard the caretakers outside, screeching at each other. The one that would become the equivalent of my parents later told me that they were fighting over which egg they wanted. She had wanted another egg, but had lost the argument and was given mine instead. Thinking about the old way of talking seems so strange now. We would screech at each other. To the humans, the sound was grating, a terrifying noise. But even now, I find comfort in the sound. I lost my vocal chords years ago, thinking about it. I don’t think anyone else will ever hear the sound of my people again.

The day I left the egg was a strange one. I had developed the sudden urge to move, but not like I had before. Not to relocate my arm, or reposition my legs, but to jerk around violently, to beat the walls of my home. I didn’t understand why I did it. This innate sense of violence suddenly blossomed inside of me, and I needed to release it. I kicked and I punched as hard as I could until I heard a crack. The noise was new- terrifying to me. I didn’t know what it was. I stopped thrashing about, frightened that I had done something wrong. I waited and waited for something, anything to happen. But when none of that came, I thrashed about again.

The effect the cracking had dulled instantly and I thrashed about without a care. When the shell finally broke, I was stunned. The dull voices came into focus rapidly. There was a splash as the liquid I was suspended in fell onto the floor. I felt the sharp, dusty ground beneath me. Things were dry. When I opened my mouth, nothing came in, yet something flooded my gills. I screeched, and the things around me screeched. I knew where things were. I could “see” the caretakers around me. When I was picked up by my caretaker, I could feel her hands upon my skin. I could feel my own skin. I could hear clearly and feel freely. I was out of my shell, and in the new world.

I look at myself again in the mirror. I would be a freak amongst my people. I’m missing my third arm. My legs are disproportionately long. My arms have long, partial bending divisions. I breathe through my mouth, I smell with a nose, and hear through ears. I’m as human as I could be. The days of my youth, where I’d wander with my three arms undulating in a wave to keep me moving forward, chasing my friends by listening to the sounds they’d make. My hands are fine, now, but are nothing compared to the freedom I used to have.

I sigh, and my breath fogs the mirror. I turn back to the window, thinking about whether I’m just being nostalgic, or if life really was better them. A gentle breeze blows in through the holes in the window. I drop the topic, and think to the day I first saw the world for the first time. I don’t know when it was that I got my eyes, but I know it was the first time I had ever melded. It’s everyone’s first time melding. First you learn to walk, then to listen and to talk, and finally, you’re taught to meld. And when you meld, you see. I recall walking alongside my caretaker, through the woods to an incline with a deep depression at the start. She told me to wait inside, and I did. She came back, near instantly with an animal in her grasp. A squirrel, if I recall correctly. She to imagine a place I never understood that I needed. At first I didn’t understand. Then I felt a prickling sensation near my mouth. I never felt it before, but I had the sudden urge to have something there. Just like in the egg, there was a craving inside me that I needed to satiate.

                My caretaker noticed my discomfort. She told me to let myself go, to release my body of any anchors I had. I was confused. She told me to imagine something to satisfy me, but that I also needed to give myself up. I couldn’t understand what she meant. The squirrel was squirming in my grasp. I could feel it moving, its small heart pulsing. Then I found myself in sync with the animal. And that’s when I understood. I had to release myself, and join with the squirrel. I was about to ask about how I could do this when I started to feel light. I “saw” myself slowly disappearing, turning to a light dust. Everything was disappearing. I wanted to scream, but I had no mouth. I could hear, but my ears were gone. I could feel, but I only had one arm left, and after a bit, I felt that fade. But suddenly, there was something else. A fourth thing I never noticed before. In front of me was a grey figure, balanced on two legs, with things on the tips of all three arms. I was seeing my caretaker. I thought I was dying. I was experiencing something so new to me that I almost passed out. I tried to move, but I just fell down. I couldn’t feel my arms, everything was disproportionate. I was lying face down in the dust that used to be me. I tried to speak, but my voice wasn’t the same. It was of a different timbre, almost as high, but not as raw or powerful. I tried speaking again, and my caretaker laughed. She picked me up and brought me to her face. In the reflection of her eyes, I saw myself. I screamed.

                I was a squirrel. She laughed and calmed me down as I swung my limp body around. She told me it was natural, that I would get used to being so small and furry. When I started to wail, she calmed me down, and told me to focus on my new found eyes. I calmed down and did as I was told. She told me to find my old self in my new body, to take everything I knew to do, and use it with the new set of materials that I was given. I didn’t understand. I tried, but failed. Repeatedly. Then, I noticed, with my newfound eyes, that something was changing. Everything started turning a different color, orange, not blue. The sun was rising.

                I laugh, now. Thinking back to my fear of the sun. My people used to tell the children tales of the horrors of the sun, about how monsters would stir from their sleep when the sun came up. They said the sun tells people to search the mountains for our people to kill. As I remember this, I stop laughing. The story was made up, a tale to keep the kids from wandering around outside while the adults were busy working in the lower levels of the caves. But it wasn’t based off complete fiction.

                The fear at the time, however, did help me focus. I found my memories of walking with my arms, and looked from where my head sat to something that looked like it could do the same thing. I found something that was round like arms, but when I assigned the area to my memories, all I did was spin the thing around. It didn’t help me move at all. Then I saw my caretaker’s hands. They weren’t round like mine. They were divided. The thing in front my face had similar divisions. I moved the thought there, and was able to drag myself a little. I saw another similar appendage, and was able to do the same thing. Now, I was slowly dragging myself forward. It was hard to see anything without the ability to move my head, so I quickly found the neck of the animal, and the mouth of the animal. Now I could at least make out words, and move my head around. I was able to find the other two legs, and was slowly figuring out how to walk. I finally was able to move, extending all of my limbs and moving them forwards and backwards. My caretaker laughed at my awkward gait, but went along with me, reminding me to focus on my eye sight and the placement of the memories I had. As we walked back to the cave, I found walking much easier. I thought I had mastered being a squirrel. I told this to my caretaker and she stifled a laugh.

                By the time we had reached the cave, the sun had just barely made it over the horizon. I smiled as I walked, people glancing at me and smiling as well. I felt like a king. I smile at this memory, now. Everyone wasn’t smiling because I had successfully melded for the first time. They were stifling laughter because I didn’t know that I would change back from a squirrel into what I was before, but with the eyes I had focused on. So I was walking through the cave, as myself, but with my awkward squirrel-gait. I would move my two arms, then my other arm and my dangling leg, as if it were doing something. And whenever I got bored, I would spin my other leg in a circle, thinking it was still a fluffy tail I could spin around. I chuckled audibly, surprising myself. My voice was that of an old woman’s. Frail, breathy. I grew somber again.

                I thought about all the other steps I had taken. Melding with owls to take their night vision, repeat melding with moles to gain their finger-like appendages, all that. I then thought about the night that I had finished all the necessary melding to become part of the work force. Melding with bats. First, you had to catch one. Then, you had to meld with one, to gain their wings. Once I had finished all that, I went and hugged my caretaker, encompassing her in my newly winged arms. She smiled and looked at me with dead eyes. I asked her about why she was so sad. She stared at me and sighed, telling me I wouldn’t understand what she felt. I had grown close to her, as everyone does with their caretaker. She looked at me, with her beautiful face, and tired eyes, with my arms still wrapped around her.

                “I’m old.”

                I gave her a puzzled look. One facet of my people that never goes away is immortality. Regardless of how many times one of us melds, we retain our mind, and our infinite life spans. We are mortal creatures. I have lost friends who’ve hunted game too powerful for them to handle. But the concept of old was just one I didn’t understand. Our bodies don’t wear down unless we absorb a body that’s already been worn down, something that most normally avoid. I never understood what she meant by that, until now. But then, I was baffled. I asked her what she meant. She said she had lived since the beginning and end of numerous epochs and era, burying countless friends and people considered her family to the calamities that she was able to avoid, and that now, she was tired. And she decided it was time to go. I remained confused as she left me to prepare her death shroud.

                The request for the end of one’s life is not frowned upon in my society. The time and effort that one needs to go through to create the death shroud is respectable in itself. And no one ever dreams of death without one. To create the shroud, one must request the loom and the thread from the queen. She will have someone deliver the supplies to you, at which point you begin to the blank shroud. You have to make the whole shroud in one sitting. Any breaks longer than one minute will cause the shroud to fall apart. Once you finish the shroud, anywhere from a year to the end of time, you have to dye it with a set of colors the queen tells you to get. The journeys for the supplies are often long, and arduous. Some of my people leave for decades finding the dyes they need. Once they get back, they design the shroud exactly as the queen has told them too, without a single error- which would force the shroud maker to start all over again- and finally, they are able to complete the ceremony, finally able to release their souls.

                Within one month, my caretaker’s shroud was made. Everyone was in awe. She made it, her hands zipping back and forth, strand by strand, for one whole month, no breaks. It was the fastest anyone had ever prepared their death shroud. When she brought it to the queen, she looked at my caretaker and at the shawl. She stared at the shawl, and then back to my caretaker, then back to the shawl.

                “Old one, keep the shroud as pure and white as it is.”

                Within one month, my caretaker was ready to die. I spent the rest of the day with her, being the last child raised by her. She talked to me about the great future I have ahead of me, and how she is sorry that she won’t be there for most of it. I sit there silently, her words bouncing off me. I feel bad, now, thinking about that day. On her final day, I never showed her how much I cared for her. I was only thinking about why she was doing this to me, and how I wouldn’t have any more of her guidance in the future. As the sun set, she left to prepare for the ceremony, and I sat still, watching the darkness creep over the land.

                At some point during the night, I was told to join the procession of mourners. Every person has a different set of people that mourn them. The workers and hunters get their crew, caretakers get their past charges, and the queen gets everyone. Being her last and latest charge, I was at the back of the line for my caretaker. She led the procession to the top of the highest mountain in the area, and everyone formed a circle around her. Having lived as long as she had, she had an impossibly high number of charges. She was farther away from me than ever before. I was closer to her when she was alive than when she was dying. I felt, for the first time in my life, immense sadness. Heartbreak.

                She stood just within my view, her beautiful grey face almost covered by the pure, white shawl. She stood, staring out into the distance of the world beyond her. Soon the night started to show the signs of its inevitable end. The sky brightened, turning a light pink. She watched as the sun rose, waiting until the whole thing finally slipped over the edge of the horizon. She looked up to the sky and closed her eyes. She started turning to dust. I panicked. She wasn’t connected to anything! If she wasn’t connected, what would happen? Then I remembered. Back to the day I learned to meld. I noticed some of my friends were missing. They weren’t there. I had just thought they moved to a different group. But no, this is what happened. They tried to meld, but weren’t connect to anything. They just vanished. I was breathing, my gills flapping wildly. Tears were flowing from tear ducts I never knew existed. She was going to disappear, just like the others. I screamed. I released pure agony into the world. She was floating in the air, her arms and legs turned to dust, blowing away in the breeze, but her body still remained. When I let out my cry, she turned to me. Her kind, kind eyes looked at me, and she smiled. Even as her body turned to dust, she kept smiling at me. When only her head was left, she looked back up to the sky. She turned to dust and was blown away into the blue sky above. The queen struck two stones, and ignited her shroud. It was burned to ashes, following her into the sky.

                I had to be dragged back to the cave. I wouldn’t leave the spot. She was the only thing I had; I knew nothing else and almost no one else. I still cry, even now, just thinking about it. But back then, I had to harden up. I had to start working. I was put on tunnel duty, digging tunnels with other workers. The work was hard, especially without the tools humans had. We were using our mole-nails to dig, an infuriatingly slow process. Within a month I had almost forgotten about that night. Almost.

                I remember, about the after hours, when most would go back to their rest area to bathe and rest, and how I’d stay behind to claw away at an abandoned tunnel, and how that listless clawing became a project, and how that project became an escape for me. I eventually clawed a small hole that was small enough to not catch attention, but was large enough for me to crawl into. I then expanded the area within the walls to be a place where I could pace, lie down, or curl up. I made a place where I could be alone, by myself.

                I look at my prison now, and stubbornly accept the irony. I wanted to be by myself, and now here I am. I feel a sense of dread growing inside of me as well because I know full well what came next. It was about a month after the death of my caretaker. It was the day my people died.

                It was after everyone had finished working for the day, and I crawled into my hovel. I was sitting by myself, curled up when I first heard the screams. Everything was silent, as it always was. Then, the first shots rang out. For the first time since the day I broke into this world, there was a noise that terrified me. It was dull, having been filtered through layers of earth. But it came again and again, accompanied by duller thuds, and the screeches of my people.

                I was shocked into silence. I was confused, I was worried, I was petrified, mortified, terrified, I was so many things that I was nothing. I hollowed myself out, and remained still. I heard screams from above, snippets of my people yelling to each other. Save the children! Hide the queen! Have you seen my charge? Have you seen my caretaker? Run! They’re coming! They’re here! They’re killing everyone! The eggs! The children! The workers, the queen, the flyers, the diggers, the caretakers, dead, dead, dead!

                I heard my fellow workers in the tunnels running up to the chaos above, trying to help. I couldn’t go to help. I wouldn’t go to help. I kept hearing the gunshots, the screams, again and again. One was never without the other. I heard a group of flyers flying down the tunnel adjacent to my hovel. They were screaming for everyone to run and hide. Five gunshots, five thuds, complete silence. Until the footsteps came.

They were getting closer. A rhythm of steps, a group of people walking together, kicking up small stones and dust in the tunnel my people dug.  

                “You take that tunnel, I’ll take this one.”

                “Kill everything, on sight.”

“What if they show no signs of hostility?”

                “Then they’re just acting. Just kill the bastards.”

                These new creatures, speaking in a language I couldn’t understand, doing things to my people I never could have imagined, coming to my home, my sanctuary, and killing anything that moves. I didn’t understand. I needed something, someone to understand. And that’s when I met her. Amidst all this chaos and violence, I heard footsteps passing right by the entrance to my tunnel.

                “Agent Williams, check in there.”

                “On it.”

                I heard someone crawling into my tunnel. I was going to die. Tears once again came to my eyes. I made no sound as I saw a figure emerge from the little crawlspace. First came a small black object, a gun, as I’d later find out. Then a head, with fur, yellow fur on top- something I had never seen before- with these strange black cylinders with green fronts where the eyes should be. I cried as she pointed the gun at me. I let out a whimper as she put her finger on the trigger. She hesitated. She put the gun down. She crawled in the rest of the way, and came closer to me. I shrunk away as she held out her hand.

                “Shh… sh… you’ll be okay… I promise.”

                I didn’t understand what she said, but there was something about her voice that soothed me. She put her hand and put it on my face and brought hers closer. I winced when she came near, and she took off the goggles she was wearing. She had the most beautiful eyes in the world. They were a bright, vibrant green, so different than the beady black eyes of my fellow workers. Closer to the eyes of… the eyes of my caretaker. And then her voice! Her voice  was just like my caretaker’s too! That’s why it calmed me, that’s why I suddenly felt so comfortable. I had just found what I had only recently lost.

                “Williams, is everything okay?”

                “Yeah, the area’s clear.”

                She looked into my black, beady eyes, her face as sad as mine. She put her hand on my forehead and left.

                For the moment, I was fine. I was happy. I wanted to follow her, but I knew I shouldn’t, so I stayed. I was entranced; I longed to be with her, to be by her side where she would care for me, and comfort me. She reminded me of what I so dearly loved. I hoped that she would come back for me. I sat in my hovel and waited for her, waiting for her to return for me. But she never did. And that’s when the earth shook. There was a deafening blast, and then the earth around me shook. Dust began pouring into the tunnel. In the silence, I heard nothing. I slowly crawled out of my hole. The bodies of the flyers were still. A blue liquid seeped out of the holes in their bodies. I recognized the liquid, and turned away. I reached the end of the tunnel a lot quicker than I expected. It was very hard to see all of a sudden, but I felt like the tunnel should not have ended so soon. I reached for the wall, and fell down. There was no wall. It was the entrance to another branch of the tunnel. That’s when I realized what the ground shaking and dust came from. The creatures destroyed our home. They killed my people, then collapsed the ground to make a makeshift grave. I was buried alive with the corpses of my people. I sank to the ground.

                I sat still, fuming. I was not as sad as I should have been, in retrospect. I had just experienced the genocide of my people. But I was angry. Not at the loss of my people. But at the sheer amount of evil I had to experience. I think, back then, somewhere in the back of my mind, I expected there to be survivors. Not everyone could have died. I wasn’t alone. I know now, that I was wrong. But then, I was too angry to be upset. And I’m glad it was that way. The anger fueled my arms, I dug my way upwards and outwards. I used my two arms to grip the wall, digging away at the ceiling with my third. Digging up was much easier than digging sideways. Just a punch was enough to dislodge most of the dirt. I had been digging for a couple of hours before I came across my first body.

There was a large rock blocking further movement, so I dug out the sides of the shaft I created, and dug around the rock, hoping to loosen it. Sure enough, the rock eventually gave way. I watched as it fell down my shaft. Just as it hit the bottom, something behind me moved. Before I could turn, it hit me right on the back, sending my down my shaft. In my mad dash to find something to grab onto, my right arm stabbed the body, dragging it down with me. With one arm buried in a corpse, and the other barely scraping the sides, and the last one unprepared to do anything, I fell to the bottom of the shaft, landing on the rock I had unearthed. I groaned at the pain I felt over my body before looking at what had caught my right arm. I had stabbed the back of a caretaker, judging by the more delicate fingers she had. I did not realize it was a body until this moment, and I panicked when I realized what I had done, thinking I had killed her. When I noticed the bullet holes, I calmed myself down again. I then used my arms to push her off of my right arm, which was digging into her shoulder. When I finally pushed her off, her arms went limp and a child rolled out from her grasp. He didn’t have his eyes yet. There was a bullet wound where they should’ve been. I sat myself down again. I couldn’t grasp the evil of those that did this. I took the child, and placed it back in the caretaker’s arms before climbing back up again.

I dug and dug for what feels like days for no rest. I didn’t come across any more bodies along the way, but I came across little rivers of blood still running down the side of my tunnel, leaking through the debris. After what seemed like forever, I brought sunlight. It was a bright, sunny day outside. I stepped out, blinded by the light for a moment. I let out a small, hesitant laugh. I had made it alive. I let out a slightly bigger laugh, before sitting down. I looked down the hole I had dug. Sunlight shined down the shaft, illuminating the corpse of the caretaker and child. They were nearly buried in the earth I dug out. A part of me cried for them, but another part of me waiting for others to begin surfacing as well. I was still young then, still naïve. I couldn’t have been alone. There were always others. Always.

Days passed. Nobody came. Maybe there was more rubble in their way. Two full weeks had passed before I realized there was nobody else. I didn’t cry because the whole time, I think I knew. I knew I was the last one. By the time I understood, I had figured out a plan, something that would make life worth living.

I had been taken out of my life with my people, thrust into a world of violent murders. But I had seen good. I knew there was at least one person out there that could love me. She had the most beautiful eyes. She would love me, and take care of me. But deep inside me, I knew that, even if she would, there are more that would not. They would try to harm me, to kill me. They wouldn’t want me. They’d just want me dead. So I knew what I had to do.

I had to become one of them.

I made a mental list of things I needed to become human. I needed their hair, their skin, their appendages, noses, ears, eyes, feet, hands, all that. And I know what I needed for that to happen. It was difficult, deciding which part of me I wanted to change first. I made a plan of action. I would change parts of me I did not necessarily need. Ears, nose, hands, hair, skin, first. Then I would change my legs and feet, then my arms and hands, and finally my eyes. I would become human.

Melding with things other than animals is unheard of. We knew of other creatures out there, from stories told by the hunters, and the people on their journey for death, but we had never imagined melding with one of them. What skills could they have given us? But, also from these stories, I heard some of my people trying to meld with them. Whenever one of us melds with a creature, what we do is take over their body. We make them do what we want to as our bodies overcome theirs. This is easy with animals, who have such little brain power. But these other creatures, they were smart. They could overtake our attempts to take them over. And if that happened, you vanish. I had thought it was impossible until I heard about one story, from a group of shroud makers who had gone to search together. One of them had tried to meld with a human as the human rested. And it worked. He ended up not taking anything, because nothing seemed useful to him. But it worked. If you wanted to meld with a human, it seems, you have to do it while they’re asleep. With this plan in mind, I went out to find my first human.

I remember when I first found her. She was walking on a path through the woods with a man. I was swinging in the high trees above them, watching them walk and talk together. I didn’t understand what they were talking about, but I hated the sounds they were making. I was blind with fury. When night fell, the two set up a tent in a clearing. I climbed down the tree, nervous. I walked up to the tent, hearing every single leaf crunching underneath my foot. I near the place I saw them enter the tent, when there was a loud sharp noise cut through the air. The man was opening the zipper. I quickly ducked to the left of the tent. The man exited the tent, putting on shoes and going to the right side. I watched as he hunched over and zipped the tent back up. He picked up a small shovel and a roll of paper and walked into some bushes away from the tent. I imitated him with my claws. I fumbled a little with the zipper before hooking it on one of my nails and slipping inside. I crawled my way over to the woman. It seemed like she was dead, but she was still breathing. I put my arms around her head. I let myself go.

I was seeing myself disintegrate. I watched as I slowly turned to dust. Once I finished disintegrating, I started trying to place parts of my body. I got a place for everything but my third arm. I cursed at myself for not thinking this through. Was I going to lose that already? I sighed, and let it go. I forced myself to focus on everything but my third arm. I made her get out from the tent. She started walking away from the tent.

“Hey honey, where are you going?”

He asked her something. I didn’t understand. I didn’t know how I would talk through her. I knew how I’d talk, but I didn’t know what to say. I panicked.

“Ahhhg.”

“Well jeez sleepyhead, sorry to bother. You won’t need these, will you?”

I walked away as fast as I could.

“Sheesh, sorry for asking. Hey babe, come back to bed soon! It’s a cold night out there, I don’t want you catching a cold, okay?”

I grunted again. He went back inside the tent. I ran as fast as I could. Seconds later I heard the tent unzipping again.

“Honey, what’s that powdery stuff in your bed? Did you spill your make up or something?”

He kept on calling out to her. I heard his voice become more frightened when I didn’t respond. I heard him running for me, calling out again and again. He was getting closer and closer.

“Honey! Where are you? Sweetie, come back! You’ll get sick out here!”

I heard a tear. Her clothes were ripping as she was taking my form.

“Baby, I’m sorry! What did I do? Please come back, I’m sorry for whatever I’ve done, please, come back!”

I felt my body becoming whole again, minus the one arm. I leaped into the nearest tree and climbed up as high as I could. I heard the man scream as I leaped away in the trees.

Back then, I felt no guilt for my actions. I thought these people were all bad people. I had an agenda, and a vendetta. I would do whatever it would take to become the human I thought that woman from that one time would want. I can’t count the number of lives I taken, because, back then, I never cared to count. The men, women, and children I took for their various parts became innumerable. I felt no guilt. When the police warned citizens to stay out of the forest, I moved into the cities. From the cities to the suburbs. From town to town. State to state. After years upon years of finding and melding with various people, I had nearly become human. Due to the loss of my third arm at such an early point, I had to change my legs and arms immediately. That was fairly simple. But when I changed my body to create a human mouth, I realized that I would need to change the whole of my physiology. I took a person’s brain the next chance I could. I absorbed his knowledge, but preserved my own. Over the years, I’ve forgotten about his first crush, and the day of his marriage, and the birth of his first child, but one stubborn memory seems to stay. It still plays out in my head, sometimes.

                He’s in a room. The floor is made of carpet. He’s carrying a baby in his arms, watching the baby, and occasionally giving it a little bounce. The baby beams at him, showing all of the two teeth he has. He says something silly to the baby and the baby giggles gleefully. He gives the baby a kiss on the cheek, the child’s soft skin meeting his rough lips, the delicate cheek giving away to the pressure being put on it. The dad looks the baby right in its bright, brown eyes and says, “I love you.” The baby looks at his eyes too, but then drops his smile. He stares at the man for a couple seconds. Then he starts glowing again, his eyes brightening as his frown turns into a smile. The baby puts its lips on the man’s cheek, the soft lips meeting the rough, bearded skin. The baby then struggles to push itself off the man’s cheek before getting a little help from the man. The baby looks at the man, still smiling.

                “Love you.”

                And then the memory ends.

                The immense pain I feel reliving that memory is unimaginable. I don’t know how old that child is right now, but all I want to do know is go to it and its mother and apologize. They’d never know or understand what I did, or accept my apology, but I still feel the need to. I’d selfishly taken that man from them, without thinking of what I was doing.

The parentless children I’ve created. The family in the perpetual mourning of losing a child because of my actions. The hell I’ve created for all the people I have taken from. It took me too long to realize. And I’m so sorry. But no one will know about what I’ve done. And if they did, none of them would forgive me. This one fact drags me down. I want to die. Not to be released of my pain, but to stop myself from harming anyone else.

The sun is rising outside of the window. My tears fall onto my old, wrinkled hands. I stare at them, remembering how this came to be. I remember how close I was to being human. The skin, the nose, the limbs, everything was in place, everything but the eyes. I found the woman I was looking for. Laura Willams. I went to her house, and was looking for someone whose eyes I could take. I wanted something like hers, something so beautiful, so comforting. I wanted her to know, always and forever, that it was me who she loved. The love I had for this woman was so blinding, that logic never found a place in the place. Because the person I chose was the one walking out of her front door. Her daughter had her wonderful eyes.

I watched her daughter from afar, trying to find the perfect time to take her eyes. That opportunity came when I noticed that she was planning a camping trip. I followed them there and took each other them. My skin was still a couple shades too grey, so I took all of them, save the daughter. And then, I finally got her. I took her eyes. And then I went home to mother.

She greeted me with apprehension at the door. She was not the young woman I remember. Her eyes were still vibrant, but there was a certain hesitation behind them. Like she wasn’t as alive as she was all those years ago. We exchanged some small talk, since she thought I was friends with her daughter. I was getting nervous, afraid of what she would think of me now that I found her. I was thinking about how to bring it up when she stopped what she was saying and said:

                “I’m sorry if this bothers you, but you have really beautiful eyes.”

                I stopped worrying and started smiling.

                “Not as beautiful as yours”

                She blushed and started to talk about how I should be getting home. But I was ready.

                “I still remember them from when I was hiding in those caves all those years ago.”

                She stopped talking. Her face stopped where it was.

                “What did you say?”

                “Your eyes! They were so kind, and at the time, I was so scared, and you helped me-“

                “What cave?”

                “I don’t know exactly-“

                “What. Cave.”

                “Oh, sorry. You know the cave, the one with all the people in it?”

                “… what?”

                “The one that your people blew up? The one where, you know, you killed all of my people? I’m not that mad any more though. Especially now that I found you.”

                “You’re… you’re one of them?”

                “I was! But now I’m human. Human like you.”

                “But your people, they… they…oh god. Those eyes! Those eyes! No!”

                She fell to the floor. I knelt down beside her.

                “I’m sorry, are you okay?”

                She screamed and screamed. Her neighbor came out to ask her what was wrong. By the time he came over, she had regained composure, and sent him off.

                “You. Come with me.”

                I followed her, answering every question she had about my species, and the things I had done to get to where I was. I answered every question with full honesty. I believed that she still loved me, and that she was just sad that her daughter was gone. I thought she would come to understand that I was supposed to be her new child. She told me to get in her car. I did as I was told. She was angry, but I expected that. I thought everything was okay. She took me to a little shack on the side of a tall mountain. A little wooden dingy, off the beaten path, with one large window on the side. She took me inside and told me that the shack I was in would be my home for the rest of my life. I agreed.

                I stayed there, and near the end of every month, she’d stop by and ask me how I was. I’d tell her about how happy I am to see her, and all about how much I’ve waited to thank her for that one day. After about a year, she came with someone. An old woman in a wheelchair.

                “I want you to take her.”

                “Why?”

                “Because, if you don’t, I will stop coming here.”

                I couldn’t handle the idea of that, so I did. I took her. I didn’t have anything to keep, so I didn’t.

                “Why didn’t you change?”

                “Because I didn’t want anything.”

                She stared at me with her beautiful, kind eyes, and then left. Months later, she came back with another woman. This woman had a sign around her neck saying “Leg.” So I took her leg. I knocked on the window, and gave Ms. Williams the empty wheelchair. She took note of my shriveled leg and left. Every so now and again, she’d stop by with another woman with another sign. I asked her where she got all these people from. She looked at me bitterly.

“I take them from an old folk’s home where there is no one to love, and no one to love them.”

 Over time, I could feel my body getting weaker and weaker from their bodies, but I didn’t care. This woman was the only thing I ever needed in my life. I would do anything to keep her around. This went on for decades until Ms. Williams was quite old herself. It took longer and longer for me to transform because of how slowly they could move in addition to how slowly I could move. After the decade was over, she asked to see the signs that I had kept in the corner. She took a look through all of them.

“The only one I’m missing is the eyes.”

She looked through the cards and nodded.

“Don’t you worry, I’ll find a nice set of eyes for you.”

It was almost a year before she came back again. I was worried that she had passed without coming back, and was getting ready to go out and find her. But she came, and I was pleased. The last woman she brought had the “Eyes” sign around her neck; I took her, and her eyes. I took the wheelchair to the door and knocked on the window. I peeked outside. There was no one there. I was a little surprised, so I went and peeked out the door. She wasn’t there. Puzzled, I turned look at the sign, to see if she left something on it. There was just one message.

“I should’ve killed you.”

I was disturbed, but okay with the message. I went over to examine my eyes.

They were surprisingly vibrant, a rich green… I stopped. I read the message. I turned back. These were her eyes. I had her eyes. I took her. I took the only other person I had cared about. I panicked. Maybe it wasn’t her, maybe it was her sister? I tried to rationalize the situation. Where is she? Did she do this? Why did she do this? And then it all clicked.

About 12 years ago, on this very day, I took her daughter’s eyes. That’s the why she did it, I felt, but why the need for revenge? And that’s when I uncovered the part that I hid from myself from the very beginning. By melding with these people, I’m not just combining them with me. No, I kill them. When they become a part of me, they lose themselves. I live, and they just… disappear. I became flooded with everyone I ever melded with, the woman in the woods, the father on a business trip, the girl taking a nap at her desk, the mother sleeping while her baby rests, they all shouted out to me at once. A shout of pure agony. I doubled over. The things I have done to these people. I became the monster that I had so much feared before. I cried. Human tears through human tear ducts, falling onto human cheeks warmed by human blood. And none of it was mine. I stole all of that from people. I stole their lives, and the lives of those that loved for them, those that cared for them. In my search for someone I never thought of them as someone who has found what I was looking for; they were the ones who had what I was looking for. So I took it.

I thought of my caretaker, up on the mountain, turning into dust and floating away. She was smiling at me. But I know, deep inside me, that one part that’s still me, only me, that if she was still alive, she would hate me for I had done. I couldn’t bear the thought. I threw the wheelchair out the door. I slammed it and locked it shut. The shack was now my prison.

I’ve been in the shack for maybe nine months now. The seasons have come and gone, and now I’m back in the spring. The sun heats up the earth as I rot away in my self-imposed prison. I know that I deserve everything I get. But I still feel like I’m not done yet. I need to take one more person. One person. Just one. I need to die. I know now, I know why my caretaker did what she did. She was connected to something. I thought she vanished, that she disappeared, but no. When you meld with something, then the thing that loses, that’s what disappears. When you do what she did, you don’t disappear. You connect with a high place. A place where you can be at peace. And I want to get there. I want to get there, not for me, but for all the parts of me that deserve to rest in peace. They deserve everything I’ve taken from them, and all I need to do that is one more person. Just one more person. Anyone.

The sun is high in the sky now. I hide in the darkness, away from the light. I hear something outside. I hold my breath. A shadow appears in the window. Someone’s looking in. I hide in the shadow. If this person comes in, this could be my chance. But should I? Must I take one more person with me? I hear him try the door knob. I need this boy to climb up the mountain but do I deserve to take him he is still so young and would my caretaker understand why I need to do this and all the souls I have forced inside of me deserve to be put to rest and I need someone young enough to take me up the mountain to do that but the pain and the suffering of his family and the pain and the suffering I’ve already caused which one wins which one loses do they cancel each other out?

The door flies in and sunlight floods my opened prison.