Quit Your Waning (Over the Moon #3)

JIHAE

“Rahrrrrr!”

Ciara and Soyeon screamed bloody murder, their high-pitched, girlish giggles piercing my ear drums as I lumbered around the dining room table with locked knees and twitching shoulders, contorting my fingers into knobby, gnarled claws.

“Soooo hungryyyyy!”

I snorted like a zombie pig, moaning and oinking, spinning around on my heel and flailing my arms to brush Soyeon’s hair. She squealed, gripping Ciara’s sleeve.

“Eat Ciara, she tastes better!”

“Eeeee! No! Eat Sunny!”

Siobhan pelted a pillow at my face “Ach, away on with ye, zombie!” and I fell dramatically to the couch on my back, my limbs straight up in the air. Ciara laughed so hard that she crossed her legs to squeeze her bladder as I let my tongue loll out of the side of my mouth.

I moaned like a zombie, putting my hoarse voice to good use in a monotonous braaiiinnnsss voice. “Heeelllp. I’ve fallen and I can’t get up,” I drawled, wriggling like a turtle stuck on its back.

Siobhan collapsed next to me, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Saints preserve us, not the infomercials!” With a grand flop of my limbs, I “died” and closed my eyes.

I didn’t stay dead for very long though. Staying still reminded me of the ache in my joints. Ever since Sizzle and I had left the clinic, I’d been overheating and achy. For once, I was thankful that Siobhan’s unit felt like an ice box.

I sat up with a groan, fanning my face. “Phew.”

“Pee pee pee pee!”

Ciara grabbed Soyeon’s hand and dragged her towards the bathroom, running like a penguin with her knees pressed together. Siobhan and I guffawed watching them go, then bounced back against the couch with our drinks in hand. We took a drag of Sherry’s improved rum recipe in unison. “By God, that's grand stuff altogether,” she declared.

The stillness yawned as we both caught our breath. Siobhan dabbed her finger in her drink and lifted the corner of her skirt to rub the alcohol against her bad knee. She caught me looking at it thoughtfully and shrugged.

“Wish it was Poitin,” she laughed, referring to Irish moonshine. “Me granny swore by it, God rest her soul. Said it could cure everything from a bad knee to a broken heart.” She was superstitious and thought it would help relieve the pain. Maybe it did. I hoped so.

Before I could give her a tired platitude about the rain or chasing after the girls, a howl erupted from the jungle outside. We both stared at our reflections in the dark sliding glass door.

“That’d be Sizzle, aye?” Siobhan wondered. “Making me toss at night, hearing him. Like a banshee, so he is.”

I inhaled, wishing I could smell his bonfire scent. He made me toss too, but for different reasons.

“Probably,” I admitted. “I commed him the last time it happened. He told me he was hunting for dinner.”

Siobhan turned to look at me with a thoughtful eye. “Spend a lot of time together these days, do ye?”

My cheeks turned red. I nodded, hiding my face in my drink. She waited me out, though, and I couldn’t pretend to drink any longer. I wrapped my fingers around the glass hard as I set it on my thigh. “There’s a lot to do on the trail.”

“Bit odd,” she mused, downing the rest of her rum. “Fancyin’ a guy with a snout and four legs. I was joking when I asked if he fit, like.”

I gasped, scandalized, jolting straight up in my seat. Siobhan bellowed with laughter, sloshing the ice in her glass as I shoved her with a flustered shout.

“Ya!”

“Oh, tell me I’m daft, go on! Lie!” She waggled a finger at me. “I’ll eat my hat if I’m wrong!” and I buried my face in my hands. When I couldn’t deny it, she set her glass on the coffee table with a smug grin. “I’m not an old biddy, Jihae. I don’t give a fiddler’s fart who you shag. But I want all the dirty details. No holding back, like. Spill the beans or I’ll die of curiosity, so I will!”

“Siobhan…” I groaned, but she pushed forward like my crush was a battlefield and she was the cavalry, waiting with bated breath. Biting down on my lip did nothing to stop the helpless, girlish smile stuck on my face. I rubbed my cheeks, fanning the heat rising off them with my palms. And Siobhan thoroughly enjoyed every moment.

“We haven’t, ah…” I couldn’t say it out loud, so I just shook my head. “I don’t even know if we can. But I-I do like him. A lot. Ah, chukgetta.”

Saying it out loud was novel and strange. Would she judge me for liking him? Yes, we’d talked about the human-alien couples around the colony, and most humans didn’t find it weird anymore. But Sizzle was Sizzle. He made even the shilpakaari and venandi colonists turn their heads in wonder and apprehension. My stomach roiled with adrenaline, and I sat on my hands to keep them still. Siobhan didn’t tease me like I expected though. She just patted my knee.

“Ah, I’m chuffed for ya, so I am,” she said. “I wanna meet him, ‘course. Maybe our next movie night, aye?”

“But you know he doesn’t fit,” I said with an innocent bat of my lashes. Siobhan slapped my knee and we both chuckled, trying to keep the innuendos down as the toilet flushed. “Maybe our next movie night could be outside at the playfield.”

Siobhan stood up, taking my glass with her. “Sounds like great craic altogether. Now, I’ve got to get these wee ghouls to bed before they turn into proper banshees.”

We said our goodnights and I left, my feet lighter than air as I practically bounced down the hall, exhilarated and afraid, enthralled and anxious. My heart was on a rollercoaster, and it felt as if I was cresting that first hill before something wild took control of the car. I lifted my wrist where my pink Sizzle charm and key fob hung from a bracelet and breathed in his scent. It gave me a shiver that descended between my legs.

By the time I fell asleep, that shiver had graduated to a fever. It wasn’t a reaction to my new treatment regimen, since I wouldn’t be starting until the morning. For the first time since I’d been on Earth, I was coming down with a cold, and Mother Nature was going to bulldoze me to make up for lost time.

Throwing my clothes to the floor, I crawled into bed naked and turned on the aircon. I tossed and turned, pressing my damp forehead into the pillows with a groan of frustration. The ache infected all of me, like the first day of my period or a stomachache with full-body chills. My hips and pussy pulsed. The backs of my knees creaked. My toes tingled. I pressed the heels of my palms against my groin, squeezed them with my thighs, and found some relief with the pressure.

But that hollow need was still there.

Desperate, I subconsciously pressed my fingers into my channel. It helped for a miraculous moment. Like a woman drowning in white water rapids, I broke the surface of my fever and found fresh air. I breathed with relief and my trembling core softened.

And then the need returned to the beat of the same relentless drum. Maybe the pressure inside helped, like putting a heat pad on your back or rubbing your temples. I tried again, but my fingers weren’t enough. I had nothing else. Not a pen or a hairbrush or a toy…

So I whimpered into my sweaty pillow and rocked back and forth, hoping the worst of it passed by morning like a normal cold. Sizzle’s howling helped me drift off to sleep as his siren call floated over the trees, and in my fever dreams he paced next to me, singing his beastly song in my bedroom. He pressed his fur to my face and nudged his nose between my thighs. His claws pricked my flesh and tore my sheets apart. I heard his ominous click click click click of hungry curiosity and leaned my ear towards it.

And that’s how I stayed, lost to the sensations of his ghost until the morning ushered in the fog.