AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Really, if we could work together with one another, we would have devoured this place centuries ago. That's the secret. That's the gift evolution gave us, and through us, gave to everyone else. We hate each other so completely that we can't stand to keep one another company. That means it takes us time to eat our bright new hives from the inside out. Our hatred for one another is the way we get the time to breathe . . . and when we have time, everyone else has time. Even if it's only borrowed. We grant you all a stay of execution every time we decline to get along.
In a world of mammals, a single cuckoo might as well be all-powerful. We can go where we want, do what we want, take what we want, and few humans will ever realize they've been manipulated, much less become aware of our presence. We can eat a swath across a continent, and it's only by looking at the seemingly senseless crimes in our wake that anyone will ever know that we were there.
Which isn't to say that we're malicious. All we do is exploit what's available to us. Does a human who makes their dog work for its supper consider themselves malicious? Do they feel like terrible people because they enjoy a good piece of steak on occasion? No. They recognize themselves as the higher creature, and they use the lesser as they see fit. We simply do the same.
We simply do it to them.
One day, when we finish draining this place dry, we'll move on to something new, something fat and slow and unwary, like this world was before we came. We'll close the door behind us, and we'll set the sky on fire, because who would want to live in a world after we've taken everything good it had to offer? Really, if anything should prove that we're not monsters, it's that. We're willing to put the sick dog down, rather than walking away and calling it "mercy."
Mercy is for people who don't understand what it is to balance the equation and let the numbers speak for themselves.
I woke at sunset, in a room filled with warm amber light, warm and bright. I sat up, yawning languidly as I stretched the kinks out of my shoulders. Barb had clearly replaced her mattress within the last year: my back felt better than it had in days. I added another number to the "stay here awhile" column.
Some of my kind believe in planning, making elaborate itineraries and schedules, moving around the world according to a checklist. To be fair, they tend to have a great deal of fun, and better yet, they do very well at avoiding accidental encounters with our own kind. Knowing exactly when you're going to be somewhere makes it easier to hang out the KEEP AWAY sign.
But planning creates patterns, and patterns are how human hunters find us, the bastards. We may be an invasive species, but that doesn't mean we don't serve a purpose in the ecosystem. This world welcomed us during a time when it was bleeding predators, slaughtered by careless humans who didn't understand what they were doing. There have to be checks and balances, or else the equation of the world falls apart. Just look at what humanity's doing, now that it doesn't have anything bigger to keep it from spreading like a plague across the planet. They didn't learn anything from killing the dragons and the manticores and the sirens.
We keep the planet from collapsing under the weight of its own occupants, and how do those occupants repay us? By hunting us when they have the opportunity, because we're "unnatural" and "cruel" and all those other things that could just as easily be said about the human race. Really, it's only fair for us to play with them a little before we destroy them. They've earned it. Unquestionably, they've earned it.
The doorbell rang. I stopped mid-stretch. Barb wouldn't answer the door, not when she believed herself to be a guest in my home. I don't like humans who take initiative.
Indeed, a few seconds later, I heard footsteps on the stairs. Barb crept close to the partially open door before asking, sotto voce, "Eliza? Are you awake?"
I considered chastising her for risking waking me, and decided against it. She had company, and whoever it was hadn't been close to me long enough for my telepathy to begin revising their memories of this house. Under the circumstances, she'd done the right thing.
"The doorbell woke me," I said. I didn't have to work to sound irritated. "Please answer it, and let whoever's there know that I'll be down in a moment."
Barb looked surprised. "You don't want me to get rid of them?"
"Oh, no." I smiled as I emerged from the room. "Let's say hello."
Whoever this was didn't live here, or they wouldn't have rung the bell, and they weren't expected, or Barb would have remembered that they were coming and would assume they were here for both of us. My victims can justify almost anything within the framework of the world I construct for them. The fact that she'd come to wake me instead told me that this was a surprise for both of us.
I don't like surprises. They're messy. I slipped my shoes back on and smoothed my hair down with my fingers, aware that both humans would think I was the most beautiful thing they'd ever seen regardless of what I actually looked like.
Really, humans are so suggestible that they're lucky it was us who found them, and not something with a bigger appetite and a smaller sense of humor. We do a great deal of damage within our limited spheres, but the key word there is "limited." We are small equations moving the sum of humanity toward balance.
I could feel the second mind when I was halfway down the stairs. It was a human male, unreasonably excited, broadcasting his enthusiasm like glitter in the air. Barb was radiating confusion. Whoever this was, it was a stranger to her as well as to me. But there was no malicious intent in his thoughts: this was no hunter come looking for a cuckoo to kill.
I reached the bottom of the stairs and walked down the short hall to the living room. Our "guest" was standing just inside the door, wearing a high-collared coat that should have had him roasting in this heat. He turned toward the sound of my footsteps, and his thoughts exploded into relief and delight.
"Victoria," he said. "I knew it was you. I just knew it."
I froze.
Humans have a great deal of variety in their physical appearance: necessary, when recognition is visual, and not blessedly mental. It's all very messy as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately, because their recognition is purely based on what they see, they find cuckoos to be virtually indistinguishable from one another. I'd stumbled into another cuckoo's hunting grounds, and now I had one of her . . . victims? Servants? Not lovers: his delight was elemental and light, not mired down with physical desir
e. It didn't matter. Whoever he was, he'd spent enough time around this "Victoria" to reek of her now that I was looking for the signs of her interference.
Working around another cuckoo's changes is difficult and time-consuming, and not something to be done without preparation. I needed him gone.
"I'm sorry," I said stiffly. "You have the wrong house."
"No, I don't," he said. "Victoria, come on. It's me."
He wanted so badly for this Victoria to know who he was, to recognize him and accept him back into her life. The wanting was enough to put a crack in the walls she had constructed around him, leaving me an opening. Not enough to modify, sadly, but enough to learn. I shaped my mind into a needle and darted through the opening before his mental shielding--surprisingly good, for a human--recognized the danger and slammed closed again.
There she was. Victoria. A cuckoo in a long skirt, with a butterfly clip in her hair. She was on her knees in front of a cardboard box, flipping through its contents as she laughed at something the man had said to her. Laughing. We're excellent liars--nature designed us to be the best--but the sound in his memory was sincere. She sounded happy. She sounded entertained.
