Eat'em by Chase Webster Page A

closer she pulled toward me. Her warmth intoxicated and suffocated all at once. “Most people don’t see them as a spectacle. They see them as a bad omen. I get told I look like Steve Buscemi a lot. With horrible contacts.”
    She grabbed my chin and turned my face toward her. “I would have said you’re more of a toss up between Benicio Del Toro and James Dean. You have Del Toro’s eyes for sure… but more dangerous. Definitely have a James Dean thing going on.”
    “What is she talking about?” Eat’em burped into the fan. “Tell her you’re done studying and done talking about stupid things, yes. Time is better spent masticating than wasted copulating. – Eat’em. ”
    My attention snapped to the oscillating demon on the word copulating.
    “You don’t have to turn away,” Dixie’s fingers wrapped around my mid thigh. “You’re so shy.”
    I swallowed. The gulp seemed cartoony, but my mouth was oversaturated. I swallowed too much. And blinked too much.
    My leg twitched.
    I bet she felt it. My nervousness.
    “Ew…” Eat’em dropped from the fan and climbed onto the opposite side of my lap. He pointed to her hand, gently squeezing my left leg. “She loves you, yes. She desires you. Offer her a progeny.”
    “I’m not shy,” I pulled away and focused on the textbook. “Just, the things you say. Nobody’s ever talked to me like you.”
    Words became jigsaw puzzles. The pages split into tessellations. I tried to blink it back into sensible structure, but I couldn’t. I saw the threads and fibers that made up the paper and all the nooks the ink missed during print. Dixie’s hand on my thigh seemed to dematerialize into living cells. The fine lines on her knuckles grew into caverns. Her freckles blew up into giant splotches. The thin hairs climbing up her arm were a forest with no canopy.
    I looked out the window and felt like I could see across the city. “I killed someone today.” Without thinking the words fell from my lips as if letting go of an untied balloon.
    “That explains the clothes,” Dixie said calmly.
    “I’m not a murderer,” I feared looking at her. I feared her judgment. I feared her hatred.
    Unexpectedly, she drew nearer and squeezed my arm to keep it from shaking. “You don’t look the type.”
    “I don’t?” I searched her eyes for doubt.
    “No,” she said. “You’re not plain enough to be a murderer.”
    “Plain?”
    “Murderers are plain and boring. You’re abstract. You are beautiful. You, Jacob Brook, are full of heart.”
    I smiled. “Abstract, huh? That’s fitting, for some reason.”
    “Because you are.”
    “Yeah…” I said. “I’m also a killer. I mean, I’m not a killer, I guess. I only killed one guy… twice… kinda.”
    “Twice?” she cozied up to me tighter, stroking my arm, calming me. “This I have to hear.”
    “It’s what I went to Kempter about,” I said. “I think he had a virus. I saw him attacking a girl at the school. A blonde. He was… I don’t know… I think he was eating her, maybe.”
    “So, like a zom…”
    “No,” I interrupted. “Nothing so crazy as that. I mean, maybe crazier, who knows. But he wasn’t rotting or dead, just a normal guy… except fast. And strong. And he could jump like crazy. And pretty much he could heal instantly.”
    “Wow…” Dixie smiled, “…and you killed him?”
    “What?” I asked defensively. “I don’t look capable?”
    “No, no,” she said, “I’m sorry. I believe you. Just impressed. That’s all. Go on.”
    She shook me and as I loosened up she draped her legs over mine in a way that she pretty much sat across my lap.
    “It’s just,” I hesitated. “I don’t know what happened to this girl. I thought she died. I thought he died before today.”
    “What if he gave her whatever virus he had?” Dixie asked. “What if they’re already spreading it to others as we speak.”
    “They?”
    “Him and her?”
    “He’s dead.”
    “Are you sure this