Chapter Text
Hundreds, thousands, millions of little sounds, a kaleidoscopic cacophony of color, the relative distance of each little spark, all slammed into my mind. My head started to hurt. I let the little sparks do what they were doing. They continued their intricate dance, some eating the others, some laying traps, some nuzzling flowers, but one fateful creature stung a person’s eye.
Maybe I should have been able to know, despite the suddenness of the sensations, despite being overwhelmed and feeling myself being pushed out of my mind. Guilty or not, the action was mine. Forgivable or not, it was murder. Innocent or not, I was damned. Those minutes after the sting were the last quiet moments of my life. That minute of forced unconsciousness was the last time I would sleep.
I awoke in the locker, the building headache suddenly gone. Pain immunity. A voice cut into my thoughts. You better get used to that. The thoughts crawled from the depths of my mind unbidden and without my effort. A steady mumbling built in the back of my consciousness. Images flashed through it, feelings without words baked into them. The pictures were of gore, blood, love, loss, and dozens of people I’d never met. Your people. One voice stood out from the rest so much that I wasn’t sure the others were voices.
No, it was more like internal monologues I didn’t control. Get out of this shit . My thoughts and others agreed. I pushed on the door in front of me. No! Do—How about—You can—Fuck it! One after the other, little half formed suggestions were made then shouted over. As I pushed, I pushed harder. The sensation of increasing strength was familiar in ways that didn’t feel like me but were me.
The door popped open, and I stumbled from the locker. My feet moved with quick grace and arrested my fall. The blood and rancid filth on me was too old to absorb. Why did I think that? Did I think that? The chorus in my mind shouted about how dumb I was. Not dumb enough to die of a bee allergy . A morose feeling cut through the waves of hate like mourning a close death in the family, a feeling I know all too well. Mine. My death.
Your death? Why would my own mind be mourning its own death? Not your mind any longer. You have to share. Why would I share my own mind? No. It was my mind. I tried to push the voices down, push them anywhere, push them into the little bugs I was connected to. Let them drown in the endless waves of sounds, sights, and other sensation.
They did not move. They got louder. The sense of images and feelings distilled down into more voices. They shouted at me. They taunted my optimism. No one silences the Butcher! I grasped my head as I tried to sort through all the information between the bugs and the voices. Blood dripped from my nose and I absorbed it. See, works fine when fresh. It was intuitive, like I always knew how to do it. Just like your regular power. What power? Oh, the bugs.
It had been a short time, but the bugs felt like natural extensions of me. I knew I could command them. My mind was blocking off more senses from the bugs, but I ripped the walls down. With bugs on the brain, the voices seemed less loud but—We’re always here. Blood streamed from my nose, even as I absorbed it, even as I healed. I kept pulling in more bug senses to drown out the voices.
It didn’t work. I got woozy and fell to my hands and knees. The blood from my nose slowed to a trickle and then stopped. Thinker headaches don’t matter so much when you can heal through the damage and don’t feel the pain.
Damn, did I damage my brain—Yes—trying to drown out the voices, the voices that claim to be the Butcher?
I knew they were in town. They and the rest of the Teeth decided to try to make Brockton Bay their home again. An announcement told the school to evacuate because a fight was too close to the school. No one let me out.
As I took a minute to relive the moments leading up to being trapped in the school, the voices quieted down, fading into feelings and vivid mental imagery. They were still there, just not thinking in words. As they processed my own thoughts, the rage built within me.
I thought the bullying made me mad. I thought it made me hurt. I didn’t know a damn thing. My heart thundered in my chest. My nails extended, revealing their clawlike nature. A second row of teeth elongated their fangs. Breathing came out in ragged puffs. Images of disemboweling my tormentors and feasting on their entrails filled my mind with a longing that was both for catharsis and a sudden hunger.
The rage filled me until my limbs were shaking. It was not any one thing. The need to hurt and lash out was multifaceted. In a way, they were responsible for my death. No, the last one’s death. Quarrel, I was Quarrel before we were the Butcher . She thought with my thoughts. The thoughts were different in mental tone or flavor, but I could feel us blending into each other. She wasn’t as angry as the others. From her was sadness, a clear emotion.
The most disturbing part of this rage wasn’t cannibalism. Another mind opens! No, it was that the Butchers weren’t even that angry compared to what they consider normal. My bullies disrespected a Butcher, a mistake that they felt should be fatal.
I… I needed to get out of here before anyone came back. I push off the ground with force, stopping exactly once I was upright by moving my inertia down. It was effortless. I didn’t need to think about it.
One foot went in front of the other as I felt my bugs. Some slipped out of range while others came into range as I walked. Many were attracted to the gore covering me. I called forth the swarm and let thousands of little mouths and graspers do their best to clean me before I exited the school.
By the time I got to the front door, I looked less like a horror movie villain. Not that we aren’t. I sent the bugs out toward the school dumpster. Infest the teacher’s lounge. My gut told me to not use my powers on people at the school—why not? I would probably go too far—Is it really too far?—and that isn’t considering my new condition.
I pushed open the doors and stared at the sun. It doesn’t hurt anymore. I know I’ll regenerate from the damage. It was then that I realized my glasses were gone. I guessed I didn’t need them anymore. I was the Butcher, a ticking time bomb of mayhem, violence, and death. It’s alright. You can complain about the bad parts too . Oh, I already felt myself slipping. The joy so many in my mind felt at the idea of murder. I never felt anything like it.
I thought I knew what happiness was, despite how it felt like a distant memory. I thought I knew what it was like to desperately want. There were hungers in my life that I satisfied. There had been good food, movies, TV shows, books, bittersweet moments with a friend, and love from my parents.
The strength of feeling from the Butchers at the mere idea of killing my former best friend made every other joy I had ever felt feel small.
One foot moved in front of the other as I slowly took myself home while fighting every urge to run and teleport toward the Teeth. You will. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but soon. I wanted to deny that assertion, but I already wanted to. There were people there that I considered friends, that respected me, that loved me. Yeah, Alice is probably going to end that relationship. OK, that made sense. She was old enough to be my dead mother. Annette?
What? Oh no. That voice started thinking about a younger version of my mom and what they got up to, and oh god. I loved my mom, but I wasn’t prepared to feel a burst of that kind of affection. A nearby bush experienced the last remnants of my breakfast as my stomach emptied in solidarity with my desire to eject those memories from my mind.
It failed. Good game idea! It felt like each voice started thinking about a memory they thought would shock and break a teenage girl. My mind could process each one as my attention effortlessly split to handle the information dump.
The walk home was interrupted by curling up on the sidewalk and dry heaving. They laughed at my sobs, each trying to outdo the others. Except for the one who started us off. There there, I’m sorry. You can get through this, Taylor. I’ll make sure of it. I didn’t think you would care. Another voice cut in. It wasn’t the easiest to tell them apart. Sometimes they were distinct. Other times they were not. A man imagined playing catch with one of his kids. I latched onto that memory and actively thought about it.
The scenes of families dying, villains being tortured to death, mass murder, and the fate of one school bus that never made it, all still play in my mind. It was all experienced, but I was focusing on the guy playing catch with his kid. He grew up without a father, but he grew up.
Slowly, I pushed myself up. In a way, this was like school bullying, just worse. Unlike Winslow, I had a couple allies in the battlefield of my mind, people to share the burden. I’ll need all the help I could get.
I gritted my teeth and walked home.
Unconsciously, rocks flow beneath my feet to support what was the bad step to my house. The wood was still broken, the nails still rusted through, but it was firmer now than it ever had been. Like me, it was merely wearing the shell of what it once was, never to be the same again. Like being the bullied loser girl at Winslow was preferable.
Well, at least that would have to change. I couldn’t let myself be bullied anymore, for their safety, if nothing else. I reached for the doorknob, not bothering with the key. When I touched it, I willed all of the pins up and out of the lock and then twisted the handle. It opened.
Rich girl here. I bet she has food in her pantry! That sent them all reminiscing. A few had decent, loving childhoods. One didn’t have a childhood at all. Most of them thought about holes in the drywall, bottles on the floor mixed with used needles, and kitchens with little in them but rats.
I thought I had been poor, especially as more of my stuff was ruined, and we couldn’t afford replacements. I never had sleep for dinner. My torments always ended at home, rather than beginning.
For a moment, I was lost in a dozen childhoods. Once I came back to myself, I closed the door behind me and went up to the bathroom. Quickly, I undressed and stepped into the shower. Before I closed the curtain, I caught myself in the mirror. I wasn’t looking great after the events of today, but I was strangely ripped. We have a few powers that contribute to our overall physique.
Great, I might as well be a girl with abs. Actually nothing wrong with that. As the water turned on, I shifted the temperature colder. The thought about abs sent the chorus into thinking about various paramours. My face flushed at the thoughts and heat rose up in me. I’d never felt this way before. I’d looked at the occasional boy, but the constant looking over my shoulder and general wariness I had at school, stopped me from thinking about it too much. Pfff, sure girl.
The pitter patter of water did little to distract me. I found myself falling down memory holes not my own as I mechanically work through my routine. The cold didn’t sharpen my mind or help me focus. All it did was wash out shampoo poorly. Once I switched to warm water, I felt myself relaxing and sinking deeper into the thoughts and images.
The various trains of thought crossed at junctions and blended before separating. A series of images would still as one of the chorus decided to make a comment on another’s visions. I saw them all. I felt them all. I heard them all.
By the time I finished, the water was cold. I exited the shower to find that the mirror wasn't fogged over, despite forgetting to turn on the fan; that autonomic motion slipped my mind in the storm of thoughts. I must have lingered in the water until my fingers pruned over, and a shower the temperature of rain let all the fog evaporate.
I didn’t notice that it was that cold for that long.
With more than a dozen powers, none of them helped me dry off. I grabbed a towel instead of seeing if bugs could carry away the moisture. Eww . The chill didn’t bother me as much as it should. There was no pain anymore. It was merely the sensation accompanied by shivers, uncomfortable without being debilitating.
I entered my room and flopped onto my bed. After laying there for several minutes, the whispering started getting louder. Rest is for the dead. As we all know. I clambered to my feet and opened my closet. No, this all has to go. The voices generally agreed that my ‘drip’ of worn, stained, and torn dark hoodies with jeans was an unacceptable look. It had to be rectified immediately.
“Ok, but I have nothing else.” For the first time, I spoke out loud to them. I was alone, no one was going to think I was crazy. Come on, we’re going to the mall. You could always pick up digs at the Teeth. I snorted at the image of heading to school covered in human bones. It’d been hours and already my sense of humor was getting desensitized.
I started putting on the clothes I had. “I don’t have enough money for new clothes.” There was a little bit of savings I had squirreled away, money my dad gave me to hang out with my friends and do other teenage things… It remained unspent in a shoebox under my bed. You don’t have to pay for anything. I imagined myself with an armful of clothes, teleporting away with ill-gotten gains. My smile would turn feral as I fled back to the safety of the Teeth.
No. No, not yet. Yet. There had to be another way. Maybe I didn’t need to go shopping. The low murmurs turned into a dull roar as they scream at me and call me names. LoserScumMiserableshitPatheticWeakNobackboneLame . This isn’t the hill to die on.
Growling, I grabbed the shoebox and pocketed the money before stomping out of my room and out of the house. A heavy lump in my stomach formed as I gave into these bullies, as I let them win. Oh yeah, convincing you to not dress as drab as possible is devastating bullying. Bitch, we’re hazing you. I hoped that was true because I couldn’t run or escape from them. They were with me forever. And ever and ever.
I hadn’t looked up the Butcher before. I only knew the barest details, but the mechanics of inheritance and how the mantle couldn’t be removed were trickling in as one of the voices purposefully thought about them. I spent my days looking for an escape and all it did was drive me madder.
Quit cringing! The Butchers had opinions on my posture and how I carried myself to the bus stop. As I stood straighter and squared my shoulders, the shouts in my mind lessened. It wasn’t terrible advice. I tried to hide in school, to be obscure and unnoticed. It didn’t work.
Outside of school, I had no need for that. The posture, the mannerisms, the quiet voice, they were habits that carried over to the rest of my life, as though my torments defined me. In a way they did. In another more pressing way, they couldn’t. The Butchers wouldn’t let me be that girl anymore. They would shout and rail against my weakness. Their feelings would bleed over and slowly erode what I thought I wanted. If I let Emma keep bullying me, I would kill her.
I didn’t want that. I just wanted her to leave me alone. Now, I would need to hurt her to save her from me. After a brief exchange of grunts with the bus driver and scanning my card, I sat down and marveled at the thought. I hadn’t agonized over it. There was no build up. When I went to reflect and think about the situation again, I found that my beliefs had changed. I had chosen to hurt Emma.
Already my sense of self was working through the revelation and back justifying the changes, trying to make them consistent with who I saw myself as. It’s always like this. Emotions were first before logic. I realized that now, and my emotions were no longer my own.
I breathed in and out as the bus stops passed by. It was all I could do to not glare at people as they moved past me. About halfway there, I fucked up. A boy was trying to sit next to me, and I growled at him until he sat somewhere else. It was a small misstep, something I felt like doing but wouldn’t normally do.
The boy sat somewhere else after being spooked, but the bus driver kept glancing at me through his mirror. He heard me. He heard me growling like an animal. Hell, most of the bus did. My face flushed with embarrassment even as guilt racked me. The things I considered doing to him if he did sit down were not pleasant or legal. Were those my thoughts or their thoughts? Does it really matter? You are one of us now and will always be here.
I left at the next stop. A walk could do me some good. Lord Street Market wasn’t far. Hopefully they were still open today after all the fighting. My—No, Quarrel’s memories of it were particularly bad. A throwdown between E88 and the Teeth in ABB territory until Lung himself came to put an end to the noise. It would have been my finest moment without the damn bee sting.
Wait, dammit. Those were Quarrel’s thoughts. I was just engrossed in them as my own thoughts brushed up against hers; for a moment there, we weren’t two people. Yeah yeah, the inevitable blending of consciousness. *yawn* See that ATM over there. Stop by it.
My brow furrowed at the suggestion, but I followed it. The machine was relatively secluded and marked up with graffiti. Now, place your hand on it. The surface was filthy, and I worried about catching a disease from it. Pff not with our regen power. Now, feel through the machine. Do you feel all these points? Her thoughts became an image and a sensation of using her power. I felt through the machine as easily as using an invisible limb. The spots she highlighted become apparent. Pinch them.
Those thoughts were associated with happiness, so I do so. Quick! Reach in and grab the money. Someone will notice the disabled alarms soon. Wait no, that was theft. This was illegal. Kid, you’re the Butcher. Stealing is the least of your crimes.
It was just money from the bank anyway. It wasn’t like this was anyone’s money in particular. Compared to what they had been showing me, this did feel like nothing. My hand plunged into the machine. A couple powers warped the metal out of my way. I grabbed a couple fistfuls of cash and tossed them to the alley below. Watch out for dye packs. Bugs swarmed the packets at the warning.
Pincers gnawed at the rubber bands while tiny mandibles wiggled between to bite and drain off the dye. It wasn’t good for the bugs and many of them started to die, but by the time I grabbed the packets of money, they weren't ready to explode with the marking fluid. I shoved them into my front pocket as I ran away, heartbeat racing and anxiety tightening my chest.
Stop running. They will be looking for people who are acting like they just committed a crime. It was sound advice, so I slow down and school my features. A dead fished gaze as I acted like nothing was bothering me was a skill that I had mastered over this last year and a half. My hands rested in my pocket with the money and the pile of bugs still working on cleaning the money.
Spiders crawled up my leg and into my pocket to remove dead bugs. I stuck to the alleyways and avoided the police sirens I heard coming while the little critters did their work. Many of the Butchers stopped their mutterings and musings to focus on my power and how it worked. That’s a lot of detail control for both the range and number of subjects.
They started thinking about swarming their enemies with locusts or wasp swarms. Which yeah, that seemed like a good use of bugs, but what about sending the swarm to crawl into every orifice and biting their insides? The Butchers all decreased in volume for a moment. Keep going. All the soft and vulnerable parts of people were at or in the orifices. Bugs were very small and couldn’t do much damage, but even tiny bites on the uvula could cause someone to throw up. I figured I needed to do more research on bugs and their abilities, but…
What? Their attention was unnerving me. Nah, you’re doing great. Just surprised you jumped to bugs down the throat and up the butt before the rest of us. It’s intuitive! The Butchers started talking about the various bug facts they knew and then tried to outdo each other thinking of strange and twisted ways to use bugs on people. Most of them were pretty straightforward applications. A few caused me to pause and gag, but my stomach was still empty.
Just why would you use a crab like that? Some guys are into stuff like that. I shivered at the thought.
Lord Street Market came into view. I did my best to not look like I was actively arguing with the voices in my head as I abandoned the last of the bugs out of my pouch. My life savings were pretty paltry compared to the stolen cash in my possession, but the clamor of requests and sudden material wants indicated that I was probably spending all of it.
First up, wardrobe! The voice that knew my mother was eager to—It’s Fester—get me clothes. Wait, why Fester? What about your regular name? The murmurings shifted. Butchers tend to not maintain secret identities. The mask becomes the person. I wasn’t sure I got it, but I believed them.
Only about six of the voices had opinions on my exact clothes beyond the current outfit being awful. I was hesitant to grab the bright colors or floral pattern clothing in the various thrift stalls. My far too personal stylists were quick to lean into that inclination. They decided that jeans were fine as long as they were skinny and had rips in them. Black and blue pairs were bought along with dark steel toed boots. A lucky find all things considered.
I thought the black leather jacket was a little much, but they were insistent. For tops, I ended up getting a bunch of branded t-shirts for a bunch of bands I didn’t know. What!? These are classics! I didn’t listen to much music. Oo, you’ll want to fix that. The cacophonous chorus agreed with ever louder demands to fix my ‘uncultured’ ways.
In desperation, I grabbed a used Zune. The man running the stall attempted to haggle with me, but I wasn’t interested in talking. I gave him his outrageous sum and put in the earbuds before pressing shuffle. Miraculously, the device had a charge. A guitar rift pounded into my ears with enough volume that I would worry about damaging them if I didn’t have regeneration. Since I did, I let the music fill me.
Immediately the roars calmed down. Many of the Butchers mutter along with the song or were lost entirely to memories it reminds them of. The relief was enough that I immediately started shopping for CDs that I could transfer over.
The last thing the Butchers made me buy before letting me leave was makeup. Even a few of the guys were pretty insistent. With your coloring, the goth look works and matches the vibe we try to set. You could get by with charcoal and grease, but we aren’t on the road yet.
Whatever, I grabbed the last item and a duffle bag before finally heading home. Go to Fugly’s and eat the Challenger! Now that was an intrusive thought. Brute powers or no, that seemed like a terrible idea. Instead, I slipped into a Steak ‘n Shake and ordered a burger and shake to go. While my food was cooking, I was prompted to head to the bathroom and change. My old clothes went into the waste bin, which seemed harsh, but even my shoes were stained with juice.
Putting on makeup wasn’t hard. I didn’t really know how, but I got step by step advice and supernatural coordination carried me through the rest. That’s meant for sword fighting. Oh, shut up! The voices were still hard to tell apart.
By the time I left the bathroom, I felt and looked like a different person. I sat down and waited for my food to finish. The music was a lifeline that I clung to. I stared out the window, unblinking, as I tried to focus on the notes. I couldn’t push the other thoughts, feelings, and voices away, but if I focused, I could have thoughts I felt were mine. Just being me was a struggle, especially since I didn’t really have a good idea who I was anymore after being slowly ground away to nothing, day in and day out. You’re the Butcher. A chilling thought that I didn’t have a good rebuttal for.
My food was placed before me by a smiling waitress. The music was too loud to hear them calling out my order. I tried to smile and say thank you. The smile failed to form, and I mumbled something while standing up, grabbing my food, and throwing my duffle bag over my shoulder.
It wasn’t my most graceful social interaction, but it was the best I could manage. Half the Butchers were fantasizing different ways of murdering the woman while one wanted to slowly eat her. She was nothing but nice to me, but the vast majority of myself saw her as a target to lash out toward. That was what it felt like, feeling what they feel, thinking what they think. It was like they were me even though they weren’t me. I hoped they weren’t me.
What made a waitress so abhorrent to them? The answer was more aspects than I previously thought possible to take umbrage with. Her weakness was first and foremost among the qualities the dark corners of my mind despised. She didn’t fight. She succumbed to the yoke and submitted to their rules. Her uniform marked that her keepers controlled even her appearance. But why the cruelty towards her? Because I could. Because she couldn’t stop me. Because in some ways, I saw it as a mercy.
The emotions that wanted to let her be weren’t as strong as the hate, as the rage. So, I could not manage a false cheer. I wanted to snarl and growl. With an act of will, I pushed the involuntary motion to my bugs. It was a stop gap. I wasn’t in control of myself, but I could hide the warning signs, like a dog that suddenly bites while being petted.
The Butchers laughed and jeered at my struggles. You are doing great, Taylor. Two voices were enough to break me. Each hour you restrain yourself is—A waste. Let go of your chains and seize your passions.
Instead of taking the bus, I walked and ate. The shake and the burger were good. I had been avoiding them due to the stubborn pudge that was once on my stomach. The monsters in my mind stopped mentally flaying a woman and making boots to savor the meal with me. The savory salty fat of the burger paired well with the thick milkshake. Each was a palette cleanser for the other.
Images flashed through my mind, of eating similar meals with friends, gatherings around burning barrels with the rough looking individuals, a freshly played guitar by my side and a girl in one of my arms, the two of us building up strength for the night to come. We would—
My cheeks burned as I blushed furiously. A strange sight I must have made, blushing like a schoolgirl while eating a burger. Wait until you actually let your freak out.
The sudden desire and lust for women barely registered as strange, not when compared to everything else I felt I wanted to do to them. The voices felt—Was it helpful to maintain the distinction? They were thinking with my mind. Did I accept that they were influencing me and tried to address that, or did I put up as many walls as possible? It’s best to just let it happen. Find what you are passionate about and cling to it. If you feel strong enough about it, you can push it into the collective.
It had become obvious to me that I wasn’t feeling much of anything for a long time—Depression—at least compared to now. My meal finished, and I was sad that the experience was over. A fullness beyond food filled me as a simple joy was experienced in its entirety from multiple perspectives. Part of me wanted to rush into the nearest restaurant and order more food, another knew there would be diminishing returns. For now, I would leave it be and continue my walk home.
The sun was setting by the time I made it back to my house. The sights and sounds from the bugs around me were a chaotic unintelligible mess, but focusing on the discordant chaos was oddly soothing as the Butchers continued to mutter and muse to themselves.
With a mental flick, the door unlocked at my touch, and I entered my home.
The sink turned off and my father poked his head out of the kitchen. His eyes opened in surprise, but he quickly schools his features. “Good timing! Dinner's almost ready, so feel free to come to the table.” He popped his head back into the kitchen.
The father figure in my life sends most of the Butchers spiraling. Many of them either never knew their father or had terrible relationships with them. They filled my mind with flashes of abuse: beer bottles broken off their skulls, a child desperately applying Narcan to a man who tormented her but she loved anyways, deep hunger because pappy spent the food money on beer, an open hand smacking down repeatedly…
It put into context Danny’s brief period of neglect, a small blip really in an otherwise healthy relationship. We weren’t as close as we used to be, but that had been more on my end than his. A deep longing to run up and hug him filled me with a mix of hate for that longing and a smidgen of jealousy from one of the Butchers. Was she jealous of me? No, she was jealous of Danny because—
That part of my mind rapidly started thinking about what dinner smelled like, which made me hungry. I carefully sat down at the dining table after dropping off my duffle bag in the living room and watched my father work in the kitchen, doing my best not to twitch or mutter at the voices in my head. Get up and hug him. Pick up a knife and stab him!
The smell of well-seasoned tomato sauce wafted over from the stovetop even as the aroma of baking meatballs filled my nostrils. Each smell in my enhanced nose spawned dozens of memories as the Butchers got lost in nostalgia.
It made my own feelings feel small, that I was just a small part of a greater whole. You are the first part. It is important to remember that. More like the last part.
My dad occasionally glanced at me, and I realized I was staring. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, turning up my music and letting the bugs watch my father. Knowing what I should be hearing and seeing helped me calibrate the signals. I would need to look up what people knew about bug sensing organs. The sound was odd. Through enough bugs collectively, I could almost make out the same noise my human-ish ears could hear. I had to be careful not to swarm the kitchen and keep the bugs out of sight. That risked starting a conversation I wasn’t ready to have.
What’s so hard? Just say ‘Hey dad, I’m Butcher XV!’ A reflexive grimace was pushed out into my bugs. Let the chitin hide my feelings. I thought I had an entire life to talk to my father, that there was always tomorrow to mend the gap. Now… I didn’t think I could string more than a few words together before my roiling emotions overwhelmed me. Growling, crying, or going off a ramble seem like terrible ways to sell the notion that I was still sane.
I felt a plate set on the table. It wasn’t a surprise since I sort of saw it coming through the bugs. I opened my eyes and leaned forward to see the pile of spaghetti with meatballs. Dad was moving his mouth and the bugs could tell he was talking, but not the words.
My hand fiddled with the device in my pocket as the other removed my earbuds. “Hmm?” I spoke teenager for ‘please repeat the question’.
He smirked and made a sarcastic sigh before sitting down with his food and repeating himself. “I said, are you trying out a new look?”
Right, I had drastically changed my appearance since this morning, which was probably a good move since it could hide all the other physical changes. I nodded and grunted in affirmation before grating parmesan over my meal. Don’t forget the red pepper!
Dad looked a little flummoxed by my wordless response, but he pushed through. “Well, you look nice.”
“Thanks…” I managed to mutter out before digging into my food. Oh… My dad’s cooking was a lot better with so many people in my head focused on tasting it. I haven’t been noticing the subtle spices in the sauce. It was a nice touch and brought out the flavor in the meatballs. Did I detect a hint of beef broth?
I kind of lost myself in the experience. Not everyone enjoyed spaghetti the same way, and I was experiencing several of them at the same time. Throwing myself into the perspectives of the others was easy and relieving after a day of awful impulses and horrific imagery.
My contemplation of the food was apparently not quiet. I only noticed after banging my knee against a table leg. It didn’t hurt, but the sudden sensation of touch pulled me out of my food long enough to notice that I had been slurping down my food with a passion while bouncing my knee.
I paused my consumption to look up and see Dad with a bemused expression on his face. “I knew what this recipe needed was a little cumin!” His bemusement turned into a full smile before digging into his own food. The parental figure looked thoroughly pleased with himself.
I was embarrassed, but also a little happy that I made him happy. It was a terrible time to be having my own mixed emotions as the other Butchers pulled my thoughts in different directions. Aww, are you enjoying your domestic moment? It’s—Going to be hilarious when you kill him—Nah, fuck off. We ain’t doing that to the one good—Second or third decent father by my reckoning. Maybe fourth, depending on Nemean’s true origins—Older male makes food for us. If dead, he will stop.
That seemed to end the debate for now as the more murderous Butchers decided home cooked meals would be more enjoyable in aggregate than one murder. Yay? That didn’t stop the mutters from speculating on how they would do it if they could. It wasn’t the best background noise for the rest of dinner, but at least they weren’t all shouting at me.
After dinner, I scrubbed my plate off in the sink. An application of cutting aura let my sponge scrape the plate clean in one swipe. The green aura was nearly invisible on the green sponge. You would be surprised just how much time that can save you.
With that done, I went to our bookshelf and pulled off an encyclopedia before settling down to read about bug facts. I plugged in the charger for my Zune and cranked up the music until it drowned out the sound of dishes being done. Only my bugs followed along with the tinkle of the water against ceramic.
Let’s see I… I… I… There! Insects! Page 167. I flipped to the page and started reading about their various organs and properties. I wasn’t a huge bug nerd before gaining powers, but now it was kind of a thing I needed to get a handle on. It was not like being obsessed with bugs was what I was going to be known for. My infamy was predestined.
I was in the middle of reading about how bees could recognize human faces when—Woah, this bitch can read! Rude. Of course I could read. Most people can read. This shouldn’t be surprising. Kid, it’s been seven Butchers since we have last been able to read. This is huge. What? I could have LOST THE ABILITY TO READ!? The one thing I still enjoyed could have been ripped from me. It was not even that hard. Yes, everyone else was still talking and thinking, but my portion of the brain can focus on reading. That’s new. It’s probably power related. Some sort of multitasking ability to help with your bugs? Hmmm. Well, running a dozen plus personalities normally takes up too much brain ‘RAM’ for the host to do anything too complicated. Yeah, none of us recent Butchers could focus or coordinate enough to process large blocks of text.
Hey, maybe that means I won’t go crazy. All the Butchers laughed at that. Are you trying to convince yourself or the 14 voices in your head? The Butchers then started musing about how to leverage this new ability. A few of them had book series they wanted to finish. The two tinkers started mentally drafting designs that they wanted me to build.
Sitting there and reading bug facts throughout the night was how I ended my first day as the Butcher.