HALF-DROWNED HOUND

A Peculiar Happening at the Nightclub

The club was abuzz with movement and sound at 1:30 in the morning on a Saturday. Flashes of collared dress shirts and LBDs bobbed in and out of view, and a din of chatter hummed in every inch. At the bar, slender fingers wrapped around the stem of the Nick and Nora glass, the surface cool beneath them. The music, synthpop bordering on trite, thrummed in the air as if radiating from the walls itself, and blue light stretched luxuriously across the bar to land, sparkling, on the rim of the glass.

Talnin knew as soon as he spotted the man at the bar that he was the one. He was sitting by himself with only the bartender for company, and there was an air about him that said he wasn’t just waiting for someone who’d gone to the bathroom. It's with a self-satisfied smile that's barely disguised as friendly that Talnin placed his shoulder bag on the bar, took a seat next to the man, and said, "'s a good looking drink you've got there."

Midway through a sip, the other man glanced over at him and flashed him a smile in return. "Amaretto cranberry kiss," he replied after swallowing the pale orange concoction. "And it is. Glad you're not judging me for it, honestly."

Talnin quirked an eyebrow. "Judge you? Why would I do that?" To the bartender, he added, "Black cherry daiquiri for me, thanks."

The other man shrugged and took another sip of his drink. "My friends always make fun of me for only liking fruity drinks," he said. There's a pause before friends, brief and nigh imperceptible, but not uncatchable.

"They don't know what they're talking about, then," Talnin said, mentally filing away that little hint of hesitancy. The whole thing tracked: the people who run in circles like his are invariably judgemental, be it of the lower classes or a friend who ordered a fruity drink. If he'd known parasitizing a CEO specifically would be this irritating, he'd never have agreed to the mission.

"Well, maybe. Either way, it's good." The man finished off his drink and licked the excess off his lips, then held his hand out. "Altair Hall."

"Florence Bishop," Talnin replied, the lie sliding off his tongue with practiced ease, and gave Altair’s glass-cool hand a firm shake. "Altair like the star?"

"A little unconventional, I know. My parents sorta wanted me to stand out." Altair scratched the back of his head, looking sheepish at the reminder. "I guess I sorta did, though, huh? Marrying a billionaire. You know, a self-made woman and all that."

"'Self-made woman'?" Talnin echoed, and grabbed the glass the bartender had set in front of him.

“Selene Vogel, co-founder of Greenfinch. Y’know, the electronics company?” Altair grinned as he says her name, affection unalloyed. “She’s… she’s amazing. I mean, she’s the most wonderful woman I’ve ever known.”

She did sound somewhat familiar; Bishop & Bishop was an investment bank, not a rival electronics company, so she wasn’t particularly relevant to him, but it’s not as if Talnin had never read a newspaper. “Right, yeah,” he said, for lack of a better response, and gestured vaguely as he asked, “How’d you manage to, ah…”

“Marry someone so out of my league?”

“No offense.”

“None taken.” Altair laughed as he tucked his hair, black and fashionably unruly, behind his ear, and said, “We were childhood friends. Grew up in the same town, went to church together… Sort of an ‘I knew her when’ situation.”

Talnin hummed in acknowledgement as he sipped at his daiquiri. He’d never gotten the appeal of marriage, but good for him, he supposed. “Y’know, money changes a person,” he found himself saying, and berated himself as he did. He wasn’t Talnin right now, he was Florence Bishop, and Florence Bishop had been born rich, raised rich, and died rich. Florence Bishop wouldn’t know a damn thing about the folie à deux of capitalist superiority.

“How would you know?” Altair asked, as if he’d read his mind. He looked less suspicious than baffled, though, and added a moment later, “Well, I guess they say that on TV all the time.”

Barely biting back a sigh of relief, Talnin said, “Exactly.”

“Well... I don’t think she’s changed.” Altair cupped his chin in one hand and stared idly at the shelves of sparkling bottles on the other side of the bar, and just for a moment, a wistful expression came over his face. “I sorta miss our old friends from when we were kids, though.”

Talnin didn’t reply out loud; instead, he just raised an eyebrow. He was only faintly aware of the way his hand gripped his glass just a little tighter.

“I mean… I don’t know how to say this kindly, but…” Altair’s voice dropped to a whisper that was barely audible above the music when he leaned in and said, “Rich people can be sorta… oh, you know.”

"Pretentious?"

"Exactly. Present company excluded."

Talnin’s mouth quirked into a half-smile. “How do you know I’m not?”

Altair clapped Talnin on the shoulder and let his hand linger there for a moment before he straightened up again and said, “Just your vibe.”

He began to laugh, and, despite himself, all Talnin could do was stare. Was it the time of night getting to him? The sticky heat of the nightlife? The third of a drink he’d forced down? He couldn’t exactly tell what it was, but something felt… different. A few inches to the left to how it should have been.

Pretentious. He’d never heard that before from anyone but himself.

Before he could say anything else, Altair gestured toward Talnin’s shoulder bag, emblazoned with the Gucci logo in a brilliant display of ostentation, and said, “So, what’s with the bag? Is it just an, uh… like, a fashion statement? I mean, there’s a coat check.” Alcohol had eradicated any shame that may have stemmed from the bluntness of the question, but Talnin couldn’t bring himself to care.

“I’m afraid of those things- I lost an Armani coat in one this one time. Pretty sure the attendant stole it,” he said, another lie. They layered upon one another like a sinister sort of crêpe cake, obfuscating any part of the original self he had left. A flicker of something—not doubt, exactly, but something with a similar hollow feeling—sparked in the back of Talnin’s brain, but he pushed it away in a moment, distracted instead by a small, impatient scratching sound from the bag.

Altair eyed it for a moment longer, but said nothing more of it. “Well, make use of that spooky, scary coat check and come out to the dancefloor with me,” he said, patting Talnin’s back. “If you want to, that is.”

“I’d love to,” Talnin said with a grin that dripped with charm. “You sure Selene won’t be jealous?”

Altair huffed a surprised laugh and said, “Uh, no. But I’m flattered you think I’m in your league.” He winked, and Talnin would have been disgusted— he loathed the idea of getting involved with anyone, especially a human, especially a rich human— but something stopped him from gagging internally at the insinuation. It wasn’t love, nor any other sort of attraction, so what-

No, no, no. He wrenched his brain away from the train of thought it’d been heading down and said, “Consider me flattered, too. Let me just finish my daiquiri.”

A house track, faceless yet obnoxiously catchy, was just ending as Talnin and Altair made their way onto the dancefloor, and was replaced by another equally generic permutation of itself. Blue and green lights poured onto them and spangled the black epoxy floor with a ceaseless flow of color, and the scent of mingling perfume and cologne filled the air even more as nameless bodies danced and ground against each other. It was marvellous and repulsive all at once, a brilliant pit of phony upper-class glamour.

“Y’know, one thing I don’t miss is the crowds,” Altair said as he maneuvered (somewhat) gracefully around a tall, pixie-cut-boasting woman retreating from the dancefloor. “The people you do let in at your little…boutiques might not be the best, but at least there’s less of them.” The smile on his face twitched into a mortified expression as he added, “Shit, sorry. I guess those are your friends I’m talking about, huh?”

“Friends?” Talnin mumbled, inaudible above the thumping bass. No, he wouldn’t consider the people he spoke to ‘friends’. They were humans, for one, but more than that, they were humans who were completely out of touch with reality, all Versace boxers and gala dinners. That was the one bearable part of the job—at the end of the night, they ended up dead.

Except. Except... maybe tonight, that wasn’t… maybe that’s not...

Nonsense thoughts. Dangerous thoughts. Talnin nearly stumbled midway through a step, but managed to keep himself upright and moving to the music.

"Florence? Did I say something wrong?"

Talnin looked up, putting on a smile that he hoped passed as genuine, and ran a hand through his hair. “Sorry, zoned out for a sec,” he said. “No, um, it’s fine, seriously. I mean, you have a point.”

Altair’s shoulders relaxed, and he smiled back, visibly relieved.

Mindless chatter filled the space between them for a few minutes, moving through song after obnoxious song until Altair burst into a grin. “Oh, my God,” he says, “I love this song, man! It’s, like, my favorite one.”

“Is it, now.” Talnin didn’t make a habit of insulting the people he’s got his eye on— pissing people off and having them leave before he can get them alone doesn’t really help further the cause— but he couldn’t help judging Altair’s taste in music. It wasn’t a bad song, for something you’d hear at a club, but it was still a little… well. Not his thing.

If Altair picked up on the lack of enthusiasm in his voice, he didn’t show it. “I mean… at the moment, anyway. You know how it is.” And it was clear to see; Talnin couldn’t help but be impressed with the way he moved so easily… for a few moments. Then, the smile fell off his face for just a split second, and he said for the second time that night, “My friends make fun of me for it, though.”

Talnin found himself unable to hold himself back from telling him, “Your friends sound like they suck.” Oh, great. Yeah, excellent way to get someone to trust you and want to be around you: insult their friends.

Miracle of miracles, Altair didn’t seem to mind— or, rather, he didn’t get angry. Instead, he shifted awkwardly from foot to foot and said, “Well, I guess they’re not really my friends. Not totally. Just… people Selene knows from work.”

"What about the people who are?"

Altair laughed, but it didn't sound particularly amused. After a pause, he answered, “I mean… we keep in touch. It’s fine, seriously.”

Talnin frowned, finding himself almost worried for him, and was immediately hit deep in the gut with nauseating guilt. He couldn’t think this way, couldn’t feel this way, he couldn’t, because Kathach was waiting for him, and why the hell was he feeling this way about a human? Unbidden, a knife-sharp thought came to him loud and clear in his head:

Because you're lonely.

He wasn’t lonely, he wasn’t, he wasn’t, he wasn’t. Because he wasn’t weak. Because he wasn't soft. Florence got a cat a few years back, and she kept Talnin company now—though she maybe meowed a little too much—and he had the TV, so no, he wasn’t lonely. So what if he only ever talked to pompous humans, humans he facilitated the murder of and enjoyed it, and if the Crasectites he talked to the most were all stuffy and condescending? It didn’t matter. It didn’t-

"Florence? Dude."

For the second time, Altair shook Talnin from his morose musings. There was a look of concern on his face, genuine and unhindered by any loyalty to a rotting cause, and he’d stopped dancing.

Talnin braved a cursory glance around them— nobody was looking, thankfully, too engrossed in their own movement and the four-on-the-floor beat of the music. “Shit, sorry,” he said. “I forgot if I turned the oven off at home. Can’t stop thinking about it.” A classic excuse, but Altair seemed to buy it, or at least doesn’t push it. “But, um, anyway… at least you have me now.” It was a ridiculous thing to say, because Altair would be dead by the end of the night, but the lies had compounded so much by then that one semi-sentimental sentence was hardly a sin, just… embarrassing.

Altair’s face split into a wide— Talnin was half-tempted to say shining— smile, skin wrinkling around his eyes, but he contained himself shortly. “Hey, yeah,” he said. “Investment banks aren’t the mortal enemy of electronics companies, are they?”

“Not that I know of.” Talnin flashed a smile back. “I think we’re probably safe.”

The conversation fell into a comfortable silence, and the minutes began to peel away. Shit, how late was it now? If he checked his watch, he’d look like an ass, or worse, suspicious, but he couldn’t let Altair call it a night before he had a chance to get him alone.

In the end, Talnin didn’t have all that much to worry about. After a few more songs, Altair produced a black credit card from his wallet and gestured toward the bathrooms with it. “Hey, not to be too forward,” he said, lowering his voice, “but do you wanna, uh…”

It took Talnin a moment to understand, but when he did, he stifled a deep sigh of relief. Why can’t more people do his dirty work for him? Instead, his mouth turned up into a half-smile as he said, “I thought you didn’t like the rich life.”

Without waiting for agreement, Altair pulled away, sliding the card back into his wallet as he turned to head off the dancefloor. “I don’t like some rich people,” he said. “I like their drugs just fine.”

Talnin chuckled. “Lemme just stop by the coat check.”

The shoulder bag shifted when Talnin picked it up, not an adjustment of weight but an agitated writhing that echoed in the pit of his own stomach. It was a new feeling, a startling and revolting one, and he barely held back a hissed self-flagellation. He had nothing to worry about. This was fine. This was procedural. Nothing should change just because he’d found someone who-

Talnin squeezed his eyes shut tight, willing his brain to just shut up, then turned back to Altair, who was waiting outside the coat check. “Thanks for waiting,” he said, and shot him a smile before heading off toward the bathrooms again, allowing Altair to trail after him.

The bathroom was covered in dizzying black-and-white marble from wall to wall. Alternating green and blue lights hung above circular mirrors, and black sinks beneath scintillated with the brilliant hues. It was beautiful, really; it seemed almost a shame to murder someone there.

The air was suffocating, warm and humid; it crawled into Talnin’s throat and clogged it, tightening his airway to a pinprick. It all came down to this room, as it always did at some nightclub or another, maybe a charity gala he’d shelled out Florence’s money for, but it’d never made his heart thud in such a way before. It was a sickening rhythm, vile in every pump of his blood, but he swallowed whatever it was back.

When he was done scraping as much of the claustrophobic feeling out of himself as he could, Altair had already produced the cocaine from somewhere and was dangling the baggie in front of Talnin’s face. “I hope there’s enough to share,” he said as he curled his fingers around it again and turned to the sink. “I wasn’t really expecting to meet anyone here. I sorta went on a whim. Selene’s off with her work friends, so…” He shrugged. “Worse things to do than snort coke alone in a nightclub bathroom.”

“Coulda gotten started on the next great American novel,” Talnin replied, affect flat. While Altair huffed a laugh and wiped a glittering puddle of water off the marble countertop, he took a deep breath and sighed it out, willing his mind to focus into some sort of clarity. He unslung his shoulder bag, and, placing his hand on the zipper’s slider, realized just how much he was sweating, salty moisture slicking the metal. In his mind’s eye, everything he touched dissolved, rubbed through with corrosive perspiration that dripped like slime from his pores.

And yet, the zipper remained, unharmed by any perversion of biology. Altair didn’t even seem to notice, too busy tapping out the powder from the baggie and cutting it with his credit card. Talnin stared, enraptured, as he rolled up a bill, fingers surprisingly deft for someone who’s not terribly sober, and snorted one of the lines, then sniffled, peering at his pale, slender reflection in the mirror before him.

He had to do this. He had to, and he could; he’d done it who knows how many times, effortlessly, uncaringly, snubbing out redundant socialites with practiced ease. His brain started beating out a mantra: I am not a coward, I am not a coward, I am not a-

Coward. The memory hissed around him, chittered in his ear like a curse, something arcane, and it hit like one, too. Weak. What is the point of you? You’re not worth the air you breathe.

Talnin— then-Talnin, however many years ago, however many galaxies away— curled in on himself, legs weak, and now-Talnin did, too, throat tightening again, shaking with the effort of keeping himself erect, hoping in the back of his rattled brain that Altair was too tipsy to notice, or too high— how long had it been? A minute? Half a second? Two hours? What was happening to him? It hurt before, when he was young, but never like that, never in a bathroom in the dead of the night with the bass humming all around him and shoving itself against his skin, not with someone else, but the someone else was the issue here, wasn’t it, because, because, because…

If he killed him then, he would have nobody. He barely had him in the first place. But if he didn’t, then he’d be worthless, pointless, irrelevant to the cause… and completely disposable. And he couldn’t be weak, weak, weak, he couldn’t be weak he couldn’t be w-

“Florence? You don’t look so good, man.”

At the sound of Altair’s voice, Kathach shifted in the bag again, a violent, impatient thrashing then, and everything in Talnin’s brain came to a climax, a cacophony of taunts and longing and invective and desperation. In a mindless attempt to stop the frenzy, his body made up his mind for him, and he practically tore the bag open, wrenching the zipper so hard it broke against the stop.

From the ruined bag skittered a moldy-green creature with entirely too many legs, a wretched mockery of an Earth millipede. It was slender, serpentine, and it moved snake-smooth as it scurried across the floor toward Altair. With every movement of its legs, a cascade of clicks filled the room, sending shivers down Talnin’s spine like a waterfall.

When Altair caught sight of the creature, he started, face twisted into an expression of horror and disgust. Pressing himself against the counter, the edge digging into his back, he choked out, “What the fuck is that? Is that a millipede? I mean, if it’s your pet, then- I mean, I’m just sorta scared of-”

Like all of his kind, Kathach was fast, unnaturally so, darting between Altair’s legs as he stumbled to get away from it. As Talnin watched, frozen in place with bewilderment and fright, the other man tripped and fell onto the shining tile and scrambled backward to push himself against the wall. Kathach took the opportunity to climb onto him with a sickening deftness, digging the miniscule hooks on his legs into his dress clothes.

It’s when Altair, eyes bulging wide, began to shriek as he pawed desperately at Kathach’s slender, zig-zagging form, that Talnin’s muscles came to life again, synapses finally beginning to spark. He bolted forward across the bathroom, so yawningly huge now instead of contracting around him, and attempted to yank Kathach off of him, ignoring any treason he may be committing.

Altair, however, pushed him clumsily away. “What the hell are you doing? Get off of me!” he cried, and Talnin realized with a sinking feeling that, if he died then, he’d die afraid of him, even hating him. He could have drowned in the thought with the way it stopped him from breathing.

Talnin couldn’t be sure how long the struggle lasted, his sense of time dilating and eroding like labored breathing, but it came to a decisive end when Kathach crawled up the side of Altair’s panicked face and into his ear. Although Altair made a frantic effort to pull him out, he disappeared into his inner ear before he could get a solid grip.

Altair’s shrieking had raised into a full-on scream, so loud Talnin could barely believe nobody had rushed into the bathroom to investigate. Shortly after Kathach slipped into his ear, though, he fell hauntingly silent, eyes rolling back so Talnin could see the blood vessels on the undersides. His body—no longer his, really—went slack for a few moments before it twitched once, twice, again. Revolted, Talnin squeezed his eyes shut tight until shaking fireworks burst behind the lids.

When he opened them again, his breathing shallow, Altair was gone. His body was still there, it hadn’t miraculously vanished, but there was nothing left of him but a shell of the man he’d been. Talnin found himself on the verge of vomiting, but swallowed back the bile with what little determination he had left.

Kathach came to within a minute, wiggling the fingers of his new form with a sloppy sort of resolve. When he pulled his feet in toward himself to stand up, they dragged along the floor like lumps of dead flesh. Still, he slowly rose and looked around, taking in his surroundings, until his eyes settled on Talnin.

Immediately, a look of abject disgust crossed his face, lips twisted into a grimace. Carefully, deliberately, he made his way over to him and crouched down to stare him in the eyes, their faces only inches apart. His breath warm on Talnin’s face, Kathach said, “And what, pray tell, was that?”

If he were a braver person, or perhaps just stupider, Talnin would have said, “Hello to you, too.” But he wasn’t brave, he was only crushed by fright and shame and grief, so instead, he just said, “I don’t… know.”

“Oh, come on.” Kathach’s voice was languid, dripping with contempt. It was nauseating coming from Altair’s throat.

It was then that Talnin noticed that his cheeks were flushed and wet with tears. He’d been crying- sitting here on the bathroom floor and crying. He didn’t even know he could do that. Pathetic. “I don’t…” he mumbled, so quiet he wasn’t sure he even did. “He was… I don’t know.”

"He was a human, Talnin."

"I didn't mean to-"

“To get attached?” Talnin flinched as spittle landed on his reddened skin, Kathach’s pointed words edged with saliva. “To almost fuck up your whole mission because someone was nice to you?”

Talnin squeezed his eyes shut. "I know."

“I knew this was going to happen,” Kathach said. “I finally get to be a part of this, and it’s you I have to work with?”

Another pang of despair dug itself into Talnin’s gut like a bullet. Of course it was Kathach who did this, who took over his- his friend’s body, a final cosmic mockery, some sort of karma for something he hadn’t even done yet. His main tormentor, the person whose chattering echoed in his mind when he was up too late and the restless night curdled. “I know,” he repeated, voice wavering.

Kathach studied him for a moment, head cocked to one side, eyes cold and reticent. Somehow, it was more terrifying than his anger. “I could tell everyone, you know,” he said, soft yet anything but tender. “Let them know you’ve gone spineless. You can be replaced.”

Talnin twitched. The invasion wasn’t like a business— Crasectites didn’t get fired. They didn’t get 'let go'. They were, as the voices in the back of his head had always reminded him, disposed of in a much more permanent way. “Please don’t tell anyone,” he said, if only out of some subconscious obligation. “Don’t… just don’t tell anyone.”

Kathach didn’t respond at first, just stared at him, not intimidating but calculative; Talnin pictured his— Altair’s— slender fingers reaching into his skull to excavate his brain. A few heartbeats passed, banging in Talnin’s chest, before Kathach said, “I won’t.”

“Thank you,” Talnin says after a moment of hesitation, caught between relief and shame.

A sneer crossed Kathach’s face, morphing it into another display of repugnance. “I think maybe it would be better for you to live with this. Your little… secret.”

The twist in Talnin’s gut curled into itself again as the implications dawned on him. He already couldn’t come back from this, couldn’t undo causing the death of the one good human he’d ever known; now, he couldn’t even be forgiven by his own people. Any admission of his own folly would end in death, too, but there was no dignity in turning himself in for something he was getting away with. To die without even that dignity…

"Talnin. Look at me."

Talnin’s gaze had fallen, pensive, to the speckled floor, but he looked up again then, meeting Kathach’s pine green eyes. They no longer held the spark, the fresh passion that the real Altair’s had; now, they were devoid of any warmth, holding only a detached anger.

“Make sure this doesn’t happen again," Kathach said, and stared at him, eyes narrow, for a moment longer before standing up again.

“It won’t,” Talnin whispered, defeated, hollow. It wasn’t like he’d ever be in the position again. Altair was the only good human he’d ever met; now that he was gone, there was nothing, nobody.

“Yeah? Good. I don’t think you could live with the consequences anyway.”

Talnin recoiled when Kathach passed him by, ruffling his hair with a sardonic playfulness that left him nauseated. He tried to stifle the knowledge that it was his friend’s hand he was doing it with, but it snuck into the peripheries of his consciousness anyway, wrenching a low whimper from him.

At first, Talnin thought the whimper he heard a moment later was an echo of his own bouncing off the marble walls, but, when it repeated itself a moment later, he realized with a start that there was someone else in the bathroom with him. Of course.

He remained frozen in place, staring at the wall, as a stall door slowly creaked open. After a few seconds of silence— no hand washing, no door slamming— he risked a look behind him, shifting shakily so he was facing whoever it was.

A tall, lanky man stood in front of him, pale-faced and wide-eyed. His lip quivered for a moment before he opened his mouth, then closed it again, like a question had come into his mind before his memory betrayed him. The two of them locked eyes for a long moment, both startled, before the tall man asked, “What just… what…?”

And something in Talnin twinged, twisted. It bit into him and held, mutating into a sensation that crawled, putrescent, through each of his throbbing veins. He couldn’t kill Altair—not willingly, not consciously—but… but... he could prove himself now. The man in front of him wasn’t a man, he was a test, a living, breathing test with a trembling frame and shaking hands. Just another person. Not Altair, nothing like Altair, so he could do this, easy.

For the cause (because I’m not soft), so they wouldn’t be found out (because I’m not pathetic) and they could continue with their plan (because I’m not worthless) and seize control (because I’m not weak).

The flitting thoughts, dizzying and manic, seeped out of Talnin’s brain as he rose to his feet, leaving his mind blank as they slipped away. His movements were slow, calculated, and the man took a step back as he approached, pressing himself against the wall. "Hey, man, I just-"

It was with a predator's grace that Talnin lunged at the man, knocking his head against the wall as he took him by the throat. The ridges of his trachea rubbed against Talnin's palm as he struggled, gasping narrowly, but Talnin squeezed tighter in an effort to stifle the writhing. "For us," he muttered. "For us, for us, for us."

Worthless, worthless—a worthless human, one of the seven billion that wasn't-

One minute.

Altair, who wasn't worth-

Two minutes.

the air he was choking on, wasn't worth-

Three minutes.

the brain that was suffocating-

Four minutes.

wasn't worth the heartbeat that stopped after five minutes.

Talnin's knowledge of human anatomy and its pathetic end was the only thing that could tell him that; his head was swimming, sense of time completely lost—he could have been choking the man for five years and he wouldn't have known. After a few moments, he released the man's throat, and they both crumpled to the floor.

Talnin stared at the body before him, an empty corpse that housed nothing— no breath, no life, not even a Crasectite latching onto his brain, sharp pincers digging into the grey matter. Just… empty.

"For us," he murmured a final time, and hung his head.

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