Concealment Failures, by Mir Rainbird

Didnthappendidnthappendidnthappen did not

Hiding under the bed wasn’t working as well as it used to. 

Cade’s bed at home had been bigger and they could get all the way back against the wall and be blanketed in darkness. In their new dorm room the bed was a single and the sun came through the blinds so there wasn’t much shadow, and they had to curl up to fit next to the built-in drawer so if their roommate came in he would see Cade’s shins and think Cade was a total freak instead of just kind of weird.

What Mitch thought didn’t seem as important as it had this morning, before

Nononononononono don’t think about that

Cade shuddered and pressed their face into the scratchy, glue-smelling carpeting. It wasn’t comforting, and they were starting to get a cramp in their calf. 

Cade put a hand on their abdomen and winced. It hurt, but not that badly. Not as much as getting punched, and definitely not as much as the thing that they were not thinking about because it hadn’t happened because it wasn’t possible and Cade was maybe losing their mind. Being crazy would be better than the alternative. 

It couldn’t have happened. It had been…a nightmare? Daymare? Some kind of hallucination induced by the stress of leaving home and meeting a thousand new people in a new place? By the stress of for the first time having, well, not a crush exactly, but they had wanted Keith to notice them, to think Cade was special.

Keith had noticed them, all right.

Cade pressed a little harder and whimpered as pain lanced through their center. Fresh tears welled up, dissolving the salty residue of earlier crying. They didn’t touch their face because Keith had licked some of the tears away. He’d licked Cade’s tears and smiled. 

It should have been a different smile from the one he gave Cade as he invited them to a study session or as he pulled Cade down beside him on Keith’s unmade bed, but it hadn’t been. 

Keith had smiled as he raised a hand to stroke Cade’s hair. The movement had been slow, as if he understood that Cade didn’t like to be surprised, needed time to think about the touch before it happened, and Cade had thought maybe, finally, they had met someone who got them and would be okay. Would be safe.

And then the things, the limbs, had come out of Keith, black and chitinous like spider legs but flexible like tentacles. Keith had put a hand over Cade’s mouth and nine pincer-tipped limbs had held them completely still while the long needle of the tenth limb had pressed its tip to Cade’s navel and slowly slid in.

It had hurt so much, and it had been inside Cade and that made it worse than any beating or medical examination. And it had gone on and on and they couldn’t move or scream or—

The door rattled and Cade scrambled out from under the bed, banging their head on the frame and making their hair stick up. Dizzy, they wobbled to their feet and fell awkwardly onto the bed, just as Mitch came in.

“Hey,” Mitch said, studying them with narrowed eyes. “What’s up?”

“I’m just, um, going to shower,” they told Mitch.

“Okay.” Mitch looked at them in that sidelong way that meant You’re weird. 

Cade grabbed a change of clothing and hurried out of the room. 

Cade arranged their clean clothes on the hook by the shower stall, with their towel over them. They never walked back to their room in a towel like lots of people in the dorm did.

They got into the stall without turning the water on, and reluctantly undressed. Their navel looked mostly normal: a bit pink, and there was a little dried blood in the center. The blood would wash away in seconds, as if it had never been there. The places where the pincers had held them looked worse, reddened scratches, some bloody, but just scrapes. They’d gotten worse on the schoolyard.

See, it’s not that bad, their mother had always said, cleaning the bruises. Doesn’t even need a bandaid. 

“Not that bad,” they whispered to themself, trying to believe it. They turned the shower on and closed their eyes. 

***

The next thirty-six hours were normal, or at least as normal as Cade could pretend to be. They didn’t eat because they felt sick, and they couldn’t sleep because they had nightmares, and they skipped English because Keith was in their class, and then the class after that because on the way there they passed Keith walking with his arm around a girl and had to run into the restroom and then hide in a stall crying. 

If the thing that hadn’t happened had happened, it had probably happened to other people, too. Was happening to other people. 

Cade already knew they weren’t going to say anything. They had never been able to tell anyone anything. When they were eight their cousin Alan had said, afterward, “No one will believe you if you tell them. I’ll say you’re lying and they’ll lock you up in the looney bin with the other weirdos,” and Cade had believed him, because Cade was bad at telling things and always said them wrong somehow so people didn’t believe them, or didn’t understand, or laughed. 

Keith had listened to them, and smiled like Cade was normal, and that was almost the worst thing of all.

***

The next morning they didn’t even try to go to class.

“I’m sick,” they told Mitch, pulling the blanket up to their chin.

“Whatever,” Mitch said, picking up his tablet and leaving the room.

A second later Cade heard a familiar voice greeting Mitch and bolted for the door, but it was too late. They collided with Keith, who didn’t even sway under the impact, just shoved Cade casually backward and closed the door behind him. Locked it. Smiled the same easy smile as ever.

“You don’t seem happy to see me, Cade. You don’t like me anymore?”

Cade shook their head, backing away, not that there was anywhere to escape in the tiny room. 

“But you wanted it. You wanted me.”

No. But Cade’s throat wouldn’t work. They flailed at Keith as Keith stepped into Cade’s personal space, but Keith caught their wrist and pushed them sideways onto the bed. Easily, like Cade’s parents had done when they were a child and things were too much and they had frozen, like they were doing now, but their parents’ hands had been careful and Keith was pressing his thumb into the raw spot where a pincer had scraped Cade’s wrist two days ago. And smiling.

“Relax, this won’t be as bad as last time. I’m just checking.”

Keith knelt on the floor between Cade’s legs and tugged Cade’s shirt out of their waistband, pushing it up to bare their abdomen the way he had the other day.

Cade could feel tears running from the corners of their eyes into their hair. 

Keith pressed his wide-open mouth to Cade’s skin, over their navel. Something that felt too scratchy and sharp to be a human tongue prodded their belly button. There was pain, a pinprick at first, then more, like getting an injection, only worse, deeper, with a bigger needle. Bad pain, but not the agony of two days ago.

It also tickled. 

Not tickled like intrusive fingertips—which Cade hated—but like threads moving under their skin, filaments wriggling and twisting around their muscles and making them twitch and tremble. 

Disgustingly, shamefully, they were becoming aroused.

Keith’s grip on their wrists was—not loosening, exactly, but distracted. With a sudden desperate jerk Cade yanked one hand free and grabbed Keith’s hair, trying to pull his head away.

The hair came off in Cade’s hand. 

The scalp was attached to it. Thick and wet with clearish fluid tinged slightly pink.

They dropped it, gagging.

Keith recaptured their wrist, twisting it painfully. 

Slowly, the filaments and then the needle withdrew and Keith raised his head.

“Stop messing around.” Keith sounded annoyed for the first time. “Skins aren’t easy to come by.”

He picked up the chunk of scalp and pressed it back onto his head.

A black limb emerged from under Keith’s collar and poked into his hair, adjusting the torn section. 

Cade tried to squirm backward, but another limb whipped from under the hem of Keith’s shirt and wrapped around Cade’s knee. They felt the sharp pressure of the pincer and froze, more afraid of the contamination of it, the invasion of their body, than of the pain.

Another limb emerged and hovered threateningly over their midriff, then slithered under their waistband.

Cade twitched but froze again as the first pincer nipped at the tendons in the back of their leg. Their arousal, which had vanished when they ripped away Keith’s scalp, began to resurge as the exploratory limb rubbed against their groin.

It wriggled between their thighs and they took shallow breaths and stared at the ceiling and tried not to think.

“Don’t give me any trouble,” Keith said, “or I’ll do something that will hurt a lot more.”

All the limbs withdrew under Keith’s clothing.

Keith turned and left without another word.

Cade rolled off the bed onto their hands and knees and vomited. 

***

Cade spent the next few days hiding. Not in their room, because Keith knew where that was, just like he knew where Cade’s classes were. Cade skipped them all. They hid in restroom stalls, the library, study rooms in buildings they had no reason to be in. They didn’t study, just sat with their book open in a fugue state. Their mind was filled with a buzzing haze, as if panic had become a background noise that drowned out thought.

After five days one of their nicer professors emailed to remind them that they’d missed the maximum days allowed by the departmental attendance party and would fail if they had any further absences. 

Sluggish with exhaustion, they returned to their dorm room to change out of the sweats they’d been wearing for days. As they pulled the shirt over their head they noticed that they smelled pretty bad. Had they really worn these clothes for five days? Gross. 

They rubbed their forehead, breathing through their mouth so they wouldn’t smell themself. They had to get it together. Do the things. Shower. Eat. Not fail all their classes. 

Don’t give me any trouble, Keith had said, and Cade hadn’t given him any trouble, so it should be okay, right? Cade could just pretend it hadn’t happened and go to class and forget.

There wasn’t time to shower before their next class, but they put on deodorant and a clean shirt. Then clean pants, but their jeans wouldn’t button. They inhaled and tugged at the waistband and saw something move under their skin. 

They screamed and jerked their hands away, but how could they escape from themself?

They pressed their dirty sweatshirt over their face and crawled under the bed, where they huddled, hyperventilating into the fabric until they heard the door open.

Cade’s body clenched in fear, but it was only Mitch, pausing between their beds and asking, “Uh, you okay, bro?”

Cade tried to answer, although they weren’t sure if they meant to say yes or no, but only a muffled moan emerged. 

After a minute, Mitch announced, “I’m getting the residence manager,” and left the room.

It wasn’t the manager, a thin and purse-lipped older man, who came an hour later. Cade had drifted into a foggy state of exhausted disassociation, but they felt the weight of multiple heavier footsteps in their body, reminiscent of being surrounded by a pack of bigger kids at school.

A shoe kicked their bare foot, hard like a work boot but oddly like crinkled plastic wrap in texture. They tried to pull further under the bed, but there was no room.

“What’s the matter with this one?” a man asked gruffly.

“How should I know?” another man responded irritably. “The roommate said he was odd.”

A third man: “Just bag him. Let the experts figure it out.”

Plastic-gloved hands caught Cade’s ankles and dragged them from under the bed.

Cade whimpered but couldn’t muster the strength to resist.

A second later they were staring up at four men in hazmat suits. One stooped and yanked the crumpled sweatshirt away from Cade’s face. Another bent over them with a clear plastic mask attached to a tube.

He pressed it to Cade’s face and ordered, “Just breathe.”

Cade couldn’t not.

Then everything was gone.

Mir Rainbird

Mir Rainbird is composed primarily of words. Mir's hobbies include arguing with cats and being mediocre at art. For more words see Cosmic Horror Monthly, Trollbreath, or recent anthologies from B Cubed. For good cats and bad art follow @mir_rainy on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mir_rainy/