Chrysalis in Sunlight
Chrysalis in Sunlight
Sarena Ulibarri
August 1, 2018 Volume 8 No 10
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Chrysalis in Sunlight
By Sarena Ulibarri
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The thin gray webs stretching across Aunt Melissa’s hand hadn’t been there the night before. Her condition wasn’t supposed to be contagious, but I went to the kitchen for some latex gloves anyway. If these webs were a new stage, all the procedures might change. There was still so much we didn’t know about the alien microbes now living in her body.
Aunt Melissa stared out the window at the mountains, wincing slightly as I cleaned her fingers. “Is this anywhere else?”
She didn’t answer. I bounced my leg—a nervous tic that passed the time and soothed my chronic muscle aches. After a full minute passed, I tried again.
“Aunt Melissa, are you with me?”
She didn’t turn her head to me, and her lips barely moved. “Yes.”
“You had sticky stuff between your fingers. Do you have it anywhere else?”
Another mumbled word: “No.”
“I’m going to check, is that okay?”
A long sigh. “Okay.”
I hated the downswings, though they were certainly easier than the active hallucinations that sometimes accompanied upswings. It worried me, though, that the former were becoming more common than the latter. She placidly allowed me to check her armpits and thighs. Her toes curled as I pulled off her socks to inspect her feet. Nothing else out of the ordinary, except for a little more muscle atrophy. She was only forty, but exposure to the alien microbes during the war had aged and transformed her. The broad-shouldered soldier I remembered had been steadily withering.
I peeled off the gloves, then turned on some music and left her alone to go call Dr. Acacia. Except, when I picked up my phone, she was already calling me. I tapped the device against my living room wall to transfer the call there. Her face filled the wall screen.
“I’m glad you picked up, Erin,” she said. I could tell she was working hard to keep worry from bunching her forehead, but she wasn’t succeeding. “How’s Melissa?”
I paced the living room as I told her about the webs. She nodded.
Her lips pressed together in a tight line for a moment before she spoke. “This complication has appeared recently in many of the Exposed. We’re asking all caretakers to bring their charges to the EERF.”
My throat tightened. The Extraterrestrial Exposure Research Facility was halfway across the country in San Diego; this wasn’t going to be a casual checkup. I sat on the couch, grabbed a throw pillow, and clenched it in my lap. I couldn’t stand the thought of her being locked up in that laboratory. They’d said they wouldn’t as long as I was willing to take care of her. “She’s doing just fine here in Denver.”
“Erin, your home care has always been fantastic, but we’re seeing rapid accelerations of this webbing you described and we need to act quickly to counteract the complications.”
“What complications?”
“With some of the Exposed, its come close to encasing the whole body.”
It took another moment to choke out the word, “Fatal?”
“That remains to be seen, but our researchers here can certainly slow down the process. With time, maybe we can even reverse it.”
“And this isn’t something local facilities can handle, is it?”
I knew the answer before Dr. Acacia shook her head. Civilian hospitals refused to work with the Exposed, and the Denver VA was overbooked with vets dealing with the more familiar repercussions of war: brain traumas and prosthetic limbs and PTSD. The VA was fine for routine appointments and prescription refills, but they gave no priority to the Exposed in their lengthy appointment waitlist.
When I was younger, Aunt Melissa used to show up twice a year, always stirring my otherwise mild-mannered family into a party, defeating my father in arm wrestling matches, challenging my grandfather to whiskey shots. She’d once driven all the way to Denver from the base in Missouri where she was stationed so she could beat the crap out of my ex-boyfriend who had given me a bruise.
Once she was discharged from service and we learned we were the only ones in our family who had survived, Aunt Melissa came to live with me. The first signs that the war had changed her were subtle: laughing at a joke that no one else could hear, starting sentences in the middle or trailing off before the end, yelling at service workers for even the smallest perceived slight. She stopped driving after spacing out at a stoplight for a full ten minutes, completely unaware of the car horns and the people banging on the windows. She was diagnosed with PTSD, then later with Bipolar, until the pattern became clear among all the Exposed and the true cause was revealed. Over the last few years, she had weakened and started swinging between nearly catatonic downs and vivid hallucinations—I assumed they were war flashbacks, but she’d never been able to describe them in a way that made any sense to me. Many vets were sent to the EERF by frustrated family members. I never considered it for a second. We adapted.
I stared down at the throw pillow and tried to unclench my fists, slow my breathing. “She’s all I have left.”
“I know,” Dr. Acacia said. “That’s why you need to get her here as soon as possible.”
Abstract shapes swirled on the wall screen long after Dr. Acacia hung up. Aunt Melissa hummed along with the soft music playing in her room. That was good, usually a sign she was coming back up from the downswing. For a while, anyway.
In the movies, aliens always attack the significant city centers: Los Angeles, New York, London, Hong Kong. But when these aliens landed, they showed up right in the center of the largest land masses: the border of Russia and Mongolia, the deserts of Chad, and the plains of Kansas. They drove massive machines with twenty-foot metallic legs and whining motors. We never knew where they’d come from or why.
Militaries met the threat in the rural areas, but the invaders eventually headed toward the cities. Though Denver had fared better than some, civilian casualties were high and much of the infrastructure still hadn’t recovered. After everything that landed had been defeated, the orbiting ship had disappeared.
The bodies of the alien pilots were always burned beyond recognition by the time the pods at the top of the machines were broken open, but the microbes from those alien bodies lodged themselves into the cells of the soldiers unlucky enough to explore the wreckage.
I had never understood why they’d put the research facility so far from any of the landing sites, though I supposed I was glad we wouldn’t have to go overseas. Still, it was going to be a long and difficult trip, for both of us.
My neck began to ache from sitting still for too long, so I stood and went back to check on Aunt Melissa before going to the gym early for my evening swim—movement was the best relief for my chronic pain. The smart home system would alert me if anything happened, but I knew her downswing would last a few more hours, and I’d likely find her in the same place I left her. I waited until after dinner to book a flight, hoping there would be none available for a few days, but there was one the next morning. I called the vertical farm where I worked, hoping they would tell me they couldn’t possibly approve the time off this week, but they had always been understanding when I needed to leave to take care of Aunt Melissa. Of course they didn’t need me.
Tomorrow it is, then.
In the morning I found Aunt Melissa cooking breakfast. She’d even pulled her hair back into a tight military bun and opened the windows. An upswing should make travel easier, if she didn’t slip into a hallucination. I hobbled toward the table, pain flashing up my spine. I’d meant to get up early so I could swim before the flight, but I hadn’t slept well.
“I’m not a goddamned lab rat,” she said, but her tone and face were cheerful. She flipped a pancake. “Where to?”
“San Diego.”
She hesitated for a beat, then flipped another pancake before it was ready, splashing batter against the side of the pan. “Oh, my good friends at the EERF.” She pronounced it as one slurred-together word: earf. “Must be serious. Unless they’ve finally discovered my miracle cure?”
I winced at a twinge in my neck that almost felt like a muscle slowly tearing.
“There’s no such thing.”
She humphed. “Says you.”
She started telling me about a rare plant in Madagascar she’d read about, and how “experts” were saying it could completely eliminate downswings for the Exposed. I half-listened while I ate the undercooked pancakes, as I always did when she started on this subject, but encouraged her to pack as soon as breakfast was finished. All of the supposed cures she listed had been proven false months ago. She never believed when they were discredited.
We’d gotten into a big fight about this once: I wanted her to stop obsessing over a cure and make more efforts to adapt to her condition; she told me she wasn’t willing to give up and accept it. I realized afterward that our perspectives were entirely opposite. She had suffered a severe trauma only a few years ago, whereas I had lived with chronic pain my whole life. We shared the psychological pain of having lost our whole family to the aliens, but our physical pains were quite different. My pain, as much as I hated it, was part of me. Aunt Melissa’s had taken away who she used to be.
The airport security line wrapped far past the roped queues and practically all the way around to the baggage claim. I took an extra dose of my pills while we stood in line, knowing that the two-hour flight would aggravate my pain. The best explanation I’d ever gotten was that the fibers surrounding my muscles were extra tight, prone to hardening when not in motion. This was a normal process for everyone, but mine callused faster than usual, and my nerves overreacted to the pressure.
Aunt Melissa had kept on about the supposed miracle cures the entire rail ride here, and now she was looping back over things she’d already said. To distract her, I pointed out a man in a Hawaiian shirt like my father used to love to wear. It worked. She started on a family story instead, one I’d heard a thousand times, but would be happy to hear a thousand times more.
“And your grandmother never even knew. She always insisted we were at that game the entire time. Erin, I don’t think I can do this.”
“What? What do you mean?” We inched closer to the TSA agent who scanned IDs and directed people into the various screening lines.
“I’m having a heart attack.” Her eyes darted from the ID scanner to the X-ray machines to the flashing advertisements to the line of people pressing us forward.
“You’re not having a heart attack. What is it? What’s triggering you?” Sometimes, if we identified the triggers and faced them consciously, we could keep an episode at bay. A couple had even been eliminated by repeatedly confronting them.
“It’s...” Her breath was fast and audible. Someone behind us told us to keep moving, and I shot them a look of annoyance and gestured for them to go around us.
I held onto her shoulders. “Aunt Melissa, we’re in the airport. Look at me.” Her eyes finally settled on mine. “It’s okay, we’re in the Denver airport. Do you know where you are?”
She exhaled. “The airport,” she said. “Going to San Diego.”
The TSA agent waved us forward. I wasn’t sure Aunt Melissa was completely present, but I encouraged her to go in front of me. The agent scanned her ID, and the machine blinked red.
“I’ll need you to go to the line at the far right.”
“I’ll need you to bite my ass,” Aunt Melissa said.
Oh good, she’s back. “Look, it’s a shorter line,” I told her, hiding my own irritation at the discriminatory procedures under an encouraging cheerfulness.
“I’m sure he’s really looking out for me,” she said, her voice rising. “I’m sure he really cares if we make the flight.”
“Let’s go.” I pulled her toward the line.
“Ma’am, I need your ID too.”
“I gave you my goddamn ID!” Aunt Melissa yelled.
“He means me.” I kept one hand on her sleeve and fumbled for my ID and boarding pass with the other.
“To the left, ma’am,” he said as he handed it back to me.
“No,” I said firmly. “I’m going with her.”
The security agent in the far right lane was dressed in full Hazmat suit and helmet. Aunt Melissa balked. Seriously, did these people understand nothing about the kinds of things that were triggers for the Exposed?
“We’re at the airport.” I reminded her.
“If you say so,” she said.
We set our bags on an x-ray conveyor belt. The agent waved her toward a machine that resembled a revolving door.
“It’s not contagious, you know,” I snapped at the suit. They ignored me and just gestured more urgently for us to keep moving. Aunt Melissa had grown very tense now, her eyes focused, unblinking, on the suit.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Just do what they say and it’ll be over in five seconds.”
She tolerated the machine, standing with hands over her head like a fugitive, but the second the agent in the Hazmat suit touched her, Aunt Melissa executed a flawless Krav Maga move that I was shocked she had the strength to do and pinned the agent to the ground. Two others rushed to restrain her while she kicked at them. I watched in shock for about ten seconds before I flung myself into the fray too, screaming at them not to hurt her.
At least they gave our bags back before they kicked us out of the airport.
She calmed down on the rail home, though my mind was racing and my leg bounced even more than usual. I wished for the hundredth time that I knew more about what she saw in moments like those. I couldn’t help her fight her demons when I didn’t know the shape of them. By the time we reached our stop she had slid into that inevitable downswing and was barely able to carry her own bag.
At home, she slumped at the table. “I’m sorry.”
I dropped the bags in the middle of the kitchen and rubbed my neck. “Airports are infuriating.”
“We have to drive now.”
I shook my head. “Maybe we don’t even have to go.”
“Yes.” She held up her left hand. It was completely covered in gray webs. “We do.”
There were three problems with driving. First, I, like most people, had an electric car that was not designed for distance. Roads in the West were long and charging facilities were far between. The second was the weather since it was early spring and the Rocky Mountains were currently wrapped in blizzard conditions. The snow wasn’t affecting the city yet, but it meant we’d have to take the farther route, down through New Mexico and Arizona, skirting the Mexico border. The third was my pain. I’d been concerned about a two-hour flight, and now I was facing a two-day drive.
Before the war, I’d been a teacher, but the long stretches at desks and screens were excruciating. After the war, I decided life was too short to hurt all the time. I worked at the Denver Vertical Farms now because it kept me moving: cleaning and climbing, spraying the produce that filled local groceries. Increased movement meant less pain.
Various exercise regimes always worked for a while, then lost their effectiveness. After running stopped helping, I did Tai Chi, and when that brought no relief, I switched to dance aerobics, etc. Rinse, repeat. Swimming was what worked right now—not very practical for a desert road trip. I had been thinking of switching soon to yoga, a fast-paced power vinyasa I’d done before. If I could remember some of the sequences, I could start it on my own, and that might alleviate the last of those three problems.
To address the first, I had a row of solar panels installed on the car’s roof, old-fas
hioned ones with big purple squares that they fit onto the ski rack. Not nearly as efficient or sleek as the ones embedded right into the roof of newer models, but they were supposed to provide a reliable backup charge. I kept checking the forecast and looking up at the clouds that engulfed the mountains. The snow only seemed to be getting worse. Nothing to be done about the route.
Twice more before we left, I cleaned webs off Aunt Melissa’s hand. The second time, they reached halfway up her forearm.
We left Denver at sunrise. I stopped to do sun salutations in Colorado Springs, a warrior sequence in Pueblo, some lunges and twists in Raton. At each stop, I plugged the car into a charging station to keep it topped off.
She stared out the window as I drove and stayed in the car each time I stopped. She would hum along with the music for a little while, then be silent for an hour, then hum again, sometimes starting up with the same tune she’d left off before readjusting to what was actually playing. We talked a little bit, but she continued to slide down, leaving stories half-finished, or not responding to my prompts at all.
Somewhere in northern New Mexico, I exited off the highway toward what the car’s computer claimed was a charging station, but it was only a boarded-up old gas station and I couldn’t find a way back onto the highway. The frontage road ran parallel to it, with a ditch and barbed wire fence separating them. The car shuddered over potholes; the asphalt crumbled along the sides, sage, and cactus growing through the cracks. With each bump, the ache crept higher up my neck and into my jaw and head. I’d have to stop soon, charging station or not.
“It’s just like that, isn’t it?”
I startled at the sound of Aunt Melissa’s voice. Her head was turned toward me, leaning back on the headrest and jarring with the movement of the car.
“Like what?”
She pointed toward the highway, and I noticed the webs were growing again. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be. That’s the easy road. But you take one wrong turn and it’s not there anymore. You can still see it, but you can never get back to it.”