passed overhead, and the air was fresh and pure.
She didn’t question it. She was positive that soon enough a giant squid would rise up out of the ocean or the sand would come alive and attempt to eat her. But for now she was content to pick some berries off the bushes and eat them while enjoying the view.
“You don’t belong here, Number Five,” said West from behind her.
“I was wondering when you’d show up to ruin everything.” She held out her hand. “Berry? They taste like chocolate.”
He passed.
“What’s wrong with this place?” she asked.
“Nothing. It’s an unspoiled realm, where everything lives in harmony. There’s death here. And chaos. Enough to make it viable. But for the most part it’s a world at peace.”
“No people, huh?”
“Oh, there’s people. Not humans. But close enough. And they’re really quite pleasant. They follow a philosophy of cooperation, respect among individuals, and moderation in all things. You’d hate them.”
“I get it. This isn’t a world I can live in.” She smiled slightly. “Not really made for me.”
“Technically, you’re not made for it. But that’s close enough.”
“Nice place to visit, though.”
He nodded. “Yes, it is.”
“How can a place like this exist at all? From what I’ve seen so far the universe is a big, ugly place. There has to be something I’m missing. Something bad about it. Doesn’t there?”
“Well, that’s just keen.”
She scooped up a handful of sand. It ran through her fingers. Trying to hold on to the grains was impossible, just like trying to hold on to this beach.
A swarm of bugs blew past her face. She brushed them aside, only to have more appear. She felt more of the things crawling up her legs. They were in the sand. Thousands of them.
So much for paradise.
Diana jumped to her feet. The bugs seemed harmless. They hadn’t stung her yet, but she shooed them away, swatting at her arms and legs. She ran a few steps, and they stopped pursuing her.
She wiped the dead bugs from her hands and pajamas. Some had gotten in her mouth. She spat those out, rolled her tongue around to look for more.
A single gnat landed on her nose. She was about to crush it when she noticed that it wasn’t a bug at all.
It was a tiny, tiny person. No bigger than a gnat. Too small to make out in great detail, but if she squinted she could see its humanoid shape.
“Oh my God.”
The corpses of a few dozen of the tiny winged people stuck to the backs of her hands.
“Oh my God.”
The sand churned with life. Hundreds of thousands, millions of the creatures, had been brought to the surface. Clouds of the winged ones circled her.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t think…”
They couldn’t understand her. Even if they could, an apology wouldn’t do any good. West had told her she didn’t belong here, and now she knew why.
His legs were covered in the tiny people. He stood perfectly still, and she followed his example. If she didn’t move, she couldn’t do much damage.
“I warned you that you wouldn’t like the people of this world,” he said.
They were just bugs, she told herself. Weird bugs with human bodies, but bugs nonetheless. And it was just an accident. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t as if she’d asked to be here. It was all a cosmic mistake.
The people—damn it, that was the only way she could think of them now—crept up her feet and ankles while flocks of the flying ones hovered around her head.
“Go away,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
But ld her shehad. Her slightest step, her most careless gesture could destroy thousands. Intent was irrelevant. The damage was done. She was become Diana Malone, destroyer of worlds.
The sickening realization punched her in the gut.
The people continued to swarm around her. She didn’t know if they were trying to defend themselves or merely confused. She couldn’t know. Just like they couldn’t fathom why she would attack them without provocation.
“What do I do?” she asked. “West?”
She turned her head slowly in his direction, but he was gone.
It took every ounce of willpower to stay still as the teeming millions crawled over her. She closed her eyes. That only made it worse. It allowed her to concentrate on the unpleasant sensation across her skin.
Diana broke. It was too much. She couldn’t take it. She had to get away. Some place where she wouldn’t do any damage, where she could escape the hordes. She ran across the beach, every step crushing hundreds, swinging her arms in wild deadly arcs, slicing through the swarms with deadly grace.
She tripped, falling flat on her face.
She spat out sand and wiped the genocide from her face. There was a palpable snap throughout the universe. She heard the pop as she was ejected from the beach and onto Chuck’s kitchen floor.
She pushed to her knees. Most of the tiny people had been left behind. Only a few corpses remained on her pajamas and the tile. Not all had been killed, though. Some of the people skittered across the floor while others hovered in confusion. She’d dragged them from their paradise to a hostile place.
They flew off to explore their strange new universe. She hoped they had a better time of it than she had.
She carefully swept up the dead, collecting them all in a plastic bag she found. There had been billions of the creatures. Trillions of them. This handful of a few dozen souls, smashed by her carelessness, didn’t amount to much. But they hadn’t asked for this, didn’t deserve it.
In the morning she buried them in the park.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
For her second date with Chuck, Diana had her self-control back. She still ended up sleeping with him. Once the genie was out of the bottle, she couldn’t think of a reason to go backward.
They lay in his bed. The previous night it’d been a water bed. Or something like a water bed. The liquid within hadn’t moved like water. There was a rhythm that reminded her more of something breathing. She decided not to overthink it, though, and just to pretend it was a water bed.
Tonight the bed had changed, as he had mentioned his furniture had a tendency to do, into an asymmetrical oval cored in yellow fuzz.
She’d been picking up a weird vibe from Chuck all night. She assumed at first that she’d been imagining it, but it remained. He was awkward, on edge. Something was bothering him. At first she didn’t assume it had anything to do with her. They’d only been on one date at this point, and he must have had other things going on in his life. So she played it cool, and just enjoyed being in his arms. Cuddling was one of the few things that reminded her of what it was like to be human.
“I’ve had a great time,” he said.
She laughed. “I should hope so.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that.” Chuck hugged her tighter. “You’re great. You really are.”
Diana let the statement sit there for a minute.
“Are you breaking up with me?”
“What? No.” He repeated himself, more emphatically. “What? No! No!”
