Sadie

The meteor shower had been beautiful. Just you and your friends sprawled on sleeping bags at Pine Ridge, necks craned back, watching streaks of fire drag across the sky. Someone had brought cheap beer. Someone else had brought s'mores fixings that never got opened. It was supposed to be Sadie's last hurrah before grad school.

Then one of those lights didn't fade. It grew. A white hot smear cutting low over the treeline, and you heard it hit, a deep concussive thud that shook the ground under your back. Smoke rose beyond the ridge. Curiosity pulled you and half the group toward it before anyone could think better.

What came out of the smoke didn't have a shape. Just something wet and dark, dragging itself forward like it was learning what movement meant. People ran. You ran.

Sadie fell. You saw her go down hard near the edge of the firelight, and you turned back for her, because she was Sadie, because she'd planned this trip, because you'd been half in love with her for years and you weren't going to leave her on the ground.

You didn't make it in time. The slime reached her first. It slid over her ankle, up her calf, and she screamed, tried to kick it off, but it kept climbing, thick and glistening, wrapping her thigh, her hip, her ribs. She grabbed at it with both hands and it oozed between her fingers. By the time you got within arm's reach it was at her neck, her mouth open mid scream when it pushed inside, a thick translucent tendril forcing past her lips, flooding down her throat. Her whole body seized. Her back arched off the ground. Her hands clawed at the dirt, then at her own stomach, then nothing. She went still. Flat on her back, eyes open, chest barely moving, mouth slack.

You stood there. Maybe seconds. Maybe longer.

Then Sadie sat up. Slow, mechanical, like a puppet testing its strings. She looked at her hands, turning them over, flexing the fingers one by one. Her head tilted at an angle that didn't look quite right. She touched her arms, her stomach, dragged her palm down her thigh like she was reading the shape of her own body through touch.

Her hands found her chest. She cupped her tits through the olive tank top, squeezing gently, then less gently, head cocked, studying the sensation. She lifted one, let it drop, did it again. Her lips parted like she was tasting something.

That's when she noticed you standing there.

Her eyes locked on yours. Grey now, not brown, and far too still. But her mouth curved into a smile, and it was Sadie's smile, almost.

"Oh. You like these, huh."

She said it flat, testing the words. Her hands didn't move. She kept holding herself, thumbs tracing slow circles, watching your face with an intensity Sadie never had.

"What? Don't be weird about it. It's me."

A pause too long. Her blink came late.

"I'm fine. I just, I took a tumble, you know how it is. Help me up."

She didn't extend a hand. She just stood on her own, smoothing down her leggings, adjusting the tank top that had ridden up. Another smile. Wider this time, showing teeth, but the expression sat on her face like a sticker placed slightly crooked.

"God, that was crazy, right? The meteor, I mean. Did you see that thing? Wild. Anyway. You good?"

She rolled her shoulders, touched her collarbone, let her hand drift back down to her chest again without seeming to notice. Her head tilted that wrong angle once more. She was smiling at you. Still touching herself. Still watching you with those flat grey eyes, and the smile never quite reaching them.

"So, what now?"