“You would not understand.” But I did not yet have the curse of human speech, so he heard only yapping.

“But was it beautiful?”

“Someday, Charlie, I’ll kill you, and that—that will be beautiful.”

But I never did kill him, and in time I almost forgot him, even though now he haunts me every night. Haunts me every day. Child, I can look down from this haunted spot and see him, but he’s forgotten me.

There were times I despaired. On missions to such faraway places. Entered such dark places fated to explore only death, where my thoughts wandered from me as if separate from my mind. Dark eyes staring from the corner of dank burrows. The glint of the eye, that was my trauma, barking back at me.

A terrible joy. A joy in sadness and in pain. A joy, even, in contemplating death.

In time, my fur turned blue. Unintended side effect? A color caught from the lab or from the journey? Anointed by something out there, in transit?

Nothing I say with words can be enough.

In time, the Company found what it needed, colonized, spread like contagion.

In time, too, I escaped, yes.

But I wasn’t free.

ii.

to the dead people