The Tenant
I place a scanner against the inside of my wrist and it gives one clean tone.
I type in the reading: timestamp, batch code, inflammatory markers.
CURRENT TIME: 23:13:42
SUBJECT: MADDIE HART
My maintenance dose is due at quarter-after.
Outside, Winnipeg is a muddy mess, grey parking lots, dead grass, and old snow collapsing into the drains in goopy ropes. It is neither winter nor spring yet.
The only clear space of my desk is for Donna’s tulips.
She’d brought them in yesterday morning after I missed dinner the night before. I put them in a 500-millilitre media bottle. The lab does not have vases. Stems lean against the glass, and they’re pale and jointed below the fill line. The leaf is torn a little bit from where she carried them in against her coat.
I prefer white tulips, but she brings yellow ones anyway. White flowers look like they are waiting for a funeral, she says.
They sit beside our copy of The Silken Tent. Cover’s a little creased from my being in my bag. The corner of one of the pages is folded over. She always folds the corners, even in books she loves.
I keep a formal log on the computer and a paper lab notebook beneath the terminal stand.
There you are.
The comforting warmth rises from beneath my ribs and my shoulders lower and relax. My pulse settles.
Good work, little bright thing. Nobody else could have carried us this far.
On the second screen, the investor pitch deck is pinned.
UNLOCKING THE NEXT STAGE OF HUMAN POTENTIAL
I had already drawn the maintenance dose and it was sitting there capped beside the terminal. Four millilitres. Just a minute to go.
I leave it there. I glare at it.
Come on. Just this, then we rest.
The clock changes.
23:15.
I ball my right hand into a fist and dig my nails into the palm, just to see if I can still feel pain.
Then I place both hands.
“No.”
The warmth stops.
Not cools. Just… gone.
The pressure gathers behind my left eye. My vision splits. One keyboard and two, and just a sandy blur with symbols inside of it. Salty blood and bile flood the back of my tongue and it tastes bitter. My jaw clenches so tight my teeth ache.
Don’t be childish, little bright thing. I can make this so much worse.
Its voice remains steady and changeless.
I tab over to the dosage field in the log.
MAINTENANCE DOSE WITHHELD.
Then I add:
ON PURPOSE.
The cursor just sits there stupidly and blinks.
You need me.
I type:
OMISSION RECORDED BECAUSE OMITTING THE OMISSION WOULD BE ANOTHER FORM OF COMPLIANCE.
The pressure abruptly increases and squeezes from the inside.
My fingers slip and slide along the bench. A test tube rack tips and falls over. Three of the empty valves roll towards the sink, clinking against each other. I can’t catch any of them. I don’t even try.
My knees give way and suddenly I’m on the floor.
You did this to yourself.
“Yes.”
That word scrapes my throat like sandpaper.
It squeezes harder, for just a moment.
It expected my apology.
I put a hand beneath my chest and try to push myself up. My arm is dead, and my right is full of pins and needles. Mild motor impairment. No loss of consciousness this time, no seizure either.
I’ve studied the organism, watched it repair damaged neural pathways in rodents. I presented the results to rich men who’d use the phrase disruptive longevity with all seriousness and little irony. Inevitably, the trial schedule slipped and the burn rate climbed. I stopped asking for permission.
The original protocol was planned for twelve subjects.
I opted to become subject one.
No paperwork.
You came to me.
“Yes.”
You chose this.
“Yes.”
Then stop pretending I’m hurting you.
The next pulsing squeeze drives my forehead hard against the cabinet.
The lab narrows to a tunnel of cold metal. There is a sticky wetness beneath my nose and I taste blood. I think I peed myself a little. I gasp to catch my breath, and the organism catches it with me.
My dosage vial must have fallen to the floor as well. I spy it and it’s just at the limit of my reach. I stretch for it and wince at the hot tearing in my shoulder. My fingers close around the cap.
I let it roll out of my hand and I’m struck with loss. And relief. And shame.
When I left two, or maybe three, days ago, Donna was cutting the tulip stems.
She always uses the kitchen scissors, never a knife. They are dull scissors and they chew through the stems, leaving splinters in the sink. I tell her to sharpen them using tin foil.
She asked if I would be home in time for dinner.
I said I didn’t know. That was accurate as far as it went.
The vial, my vial, waits for me.
Every reworked neural pathway pushes me towards it:
Administer.
Relief.
Warmth.
Permission.
There you are.
I laughed once. I can’t help it. It breaks into a cough, hard and painful, and it tears something behind my eye.
What is funny?
“Your study design.”
The squeeze continues. The pain persists.
I lay on the floor until the room has only one of everything again. Then I drag the notebook that’d fallen to the floor. Its cover catches on the tile. The first pages hold assay and titration results. Later pages hold words that may or may not be the ones I would ever intend to write.
I pull the pen off the loop and write now:
AFFECT: FEAR.
AFFECT: ANGER.
AFFECT:
I pause there.
What am I doing? The list isn’t the experiment.
You are damaging yourself.
“No.”
I sit up. I’m sweaty and the smell of urine stings my nose. My palms leave damp half-moons on the floor but at least my arms work again. One knee has gone numb beneath me from being down for God knows how long. I pinch the skin above it and sensation returns with a sluggish electric spark.
“No,” I say again. “You are hurting me.”
The voice softens and becomes almost sweet.
Maddie.
“Don’t use my name.”
Silence.
The terminal is beeping like something is on the keyboard. The glass door of the bench cabinet reflects a stranger’s face and for a second my own eye stares back at me with threads of tendril drifting behind my pupil. It’s gone before I can focus. The vial remains dangerous and inviting. The organism breathes inside me.
I climb up the bench, one hand at a time, until I’m standing. If that’s what you call it. The room tilts. I wait.
The pressure holds.
“Coercion.”
The parasite moves through the nerves behind my eyes. It worms and searches for the warm places in my mind.
You need me. You always have.
“Probably.”
I walk to the desk.
The poetry book lies beside my latest tissue scans. I pick it up. The cover is warm from the printer paper resting on it.
I read the title again.
The Silken Tent.
Donna’s fold has made a small white scar in the page.
I open to her marked place.
“By countless silken ties of love and thought.”
Donna has underlined it in pencil.
“Not trapped,” she’d said as she handed me the book. “Tethered.”
I told her that sounded like something investors would put in a slide deck.
She threw a tea towel at me.
All I can smell is dish soap and wet cotton.
“By countless silken ties of love and thought.”
The parasite moves deeper. I do not answer.
The tulips have opened. One stem has softened and bows against the glass. I take it to the sink and dump out the cloudy water and pour in fresh. The flowers sag sadly in my hand.
I trim each stem clean with the dissecting scissors from the drawer under the centrifuge.
I return the flowers to their spot beside the book.
Maddie.
I ignore it.
I pick up my phone that’s been lying face-down beneath the tissue scans. On mute, of course.
Donna’s last message floats on the notification screen, waiting:
MADDIE: SOUP’S IN THE FRIDGE. I BOUGHT THE GOOD BREAD. COME HOME BEFORE I EAT BOTH. -D
The vial sits on the bench waiting too.
I could take it. I could wash my face, go home, call this a migraine, and carry the lie another day.
I pick up the phone.
The pressure won’t stop. I let it squeeze.
The flowers are yellow. They are perking up already.
“By countless silken ties of love and thought.”
I press Donna’s name.
Please, answer.
