As Sabrina approached her bed in the darkened room she could see a lump in it, facing away from her. She jostled the bed a bit, purposely. Mark had never gone to sleep facing away from her before. He had never gone to sleep without kissing her good-night, and had certainly never before worn pajamas. He was pretending to be asleep.
"What's wrong?" Sabrina whispered.
"Nothing."
"Come on."
"I don't like whispering and knowing she can hear us through the walls."
"She's probably asleep by now."
"Just like me."
"I'll check and see." Sabrina threw back the covers.
Mark put his hand on her arm, stopping her, "It's okay. I just don't feel like doing anything."
Sabrina lay down on her back next to Mark and sighed. It was going to be a long night. He wasn't being fair about Eve at all. Sabrina could tell Eve was trying to behave, trying to act like a real person. After all, she was only a few weeks old.
"I keep seeing your face, and it's eating gory, bloody meat. Then crunching on that enormous bone."
Sabrina turned over and reached for the bedside lamp. She threw back the covers. "Look at me."
"Why?"
"My face is up here." She waited until he was looking in her eyes. "Eve doesn't look that much like me."
"Oh, come on! She's an exact duplicate of you. Even your expressions. She's got them down pat."
"No really, Mark. When you look closely at Eve, she looks like she wasn't finished. She has no wrinkles. None."
"Right. And you're a wrinkled old crone."
"She looks like a younger version of me."
"That's really not the point," Mark said.
"What is?"
"I don't know. Even with the black hair she looks exactly like you, to me. But maybe you're right, because I never do look directly at her. Because she stares so much. She's creepy."
"She was trying to be nice to you tonight. Giving you her wine."
"How does she know I like wine?"
"She even knows when I have to go to the bathroom."
"She gave it to me because she didn't like it."
"No. She knew."
"How do you know?"
"She even tried to smile at you. And she never smiles."
"Did you see how much she ate?"
"She has to. And she was very polite about it. She really is trying, Mark. And she probably knows you don't like her."
Mark pushed his black hair off of his forehead, frowning. "She freaks me out. I don't know if I don't like her. I do know that I don't want to be around her."
"It seems that you, as a journalist, would want to know all about her."
"What if she gets hungry tonight. What if she decides she needs more raw meat?"
Sabrina threw back her head and laughed. Mark must have fantasies about Eve stalking them with the butcher knife so that she could satisfy some kind of blood lust.
"It's not funny, Sabrina. I don't think she was totally satisfied with the amount she consumed."
Sabrina made a great effort to be serious. "When I got her ready for bed, I told her to go ahead and eat anything she wanted if she got hungry."
"I hope you mentioned she get it from the kitchen."
"Mark!"
"And did you see her face when she talked about the exhilaration of eating her kill. She began, at first, like it was a memory. But after a while she was saying 'we' hunted small animals. And 'we' hunted mammoths. Like she had been there, in actual fact. Very strange, Sabrina."
"Maybe she does have racial memories, Mark." Sabrina leaned over to turn off the light.
"Leave it on." He reached over and pulled her next to him. "I'm going to memorize every tiny wrinkle on your face."
Sometime later, Sabrina and Mark were suddenly torn awake by a disturbance coming from the living room. They had fallen asleep with the light still on, and they looked at each other in startled panic. It sounded like someone being painfully tortured and slowly killed. Mark leaped to his feet beside the bed.
"It's Eve," Sabrina said, jumping up and rushing out the door.
"Wait," Mark said, but Sabrina was gone. He followed her into the living room, briefly wondering why women never listened to him.
Sabrina turned on the light beside the couch and saw Eve shaking and crying, but obviously asleep. She had stopped screaming, but was sobbing and clutching her pillow.
"Poor thing, she must be having a terrible nightmare."
"Scared me to death," Mark said. He was still panting from the eerie thrill of waking to blood curdling screams.
"We have to wake her," Sabrina said. "I'll get some syrup." She hurried into the kitchen.
Mark knelt by the side of the couch. Eve really looked a little pathetic, crying like that. He reached out and tentatively touched her shoulder. He could feel the sobs vibrating through her body and he rubbed her shoulder and said, "Shh, Shh. You're fine. Everything is all right."
Sabrina came back with the syrup and watched Mark. He kept talking to Eve and patting her shoulder. It seemed to help because Eve sighed, and her crying gradually subsided. She was still shivering uncontrollably.
Eve finally opened her eyes, shook her head sharply, and focused on Mark. "I'm not used to dreams."
"They can be frightening," Mark said.
"Would you like some syrup?" Sabrina asked. It seemed silly now, like offering a baby a bottle to quiet it down.
"Yes," Eve said. She sat up and reached for the syrup.
"The dream will go away soon," Mark said, and watched Eve gulp from the pour spout.
"I have a computer. I don't forget dreams. I remember all of my dreams from last night, perfectly. Tonight's also."
Sabrina shuddered at the thought. She'd had some dreadful nightmares herself.
"I guess I will have to get used to it. It's a part of the human condition."
"Must have been plenty disturbing, the way you were screaming," Mark commented.
"The best way to get rid of the scary ones is to think up a happy ending. Why don't you do that, Eve," Sabrina said.
"I don't have an imagination. I will have to tape my mouth closed."
Mark smiled and shook his head, "No."
"Maybe adhesive tape."
"Too uncomfortable," Sabrina said. "Tell us about the dream and we'll think of a good ending for you."
"Do you want to be scared?" Eve asked, quite seriously.
Sabrina nodded and did not smile. It was a yes sign, and Eve always obeyed, so she started talking.
"I was thinking, but everything was black. I could not see. All blackness, even though I knew my eyes were open. Then I was trying to move my legs, but they would not budge. Same thing happened with my arms. I had never known existence like this. My sense of direction said that I was lying down and that I could not see because there was no light. Then I realized I was dead. I was buried and the computer was still working. I was hoping that the computer would cease functioning because it was too horrible to be dead with nothing but computer thoughts to repeat endlessly. A total vacuum that would go on forever. I had a panic attack, frantically trying to move all my muscles, but they wouldn't even twitch."
As Sabrina watched Eve, she was sure that Eve was horrified by the dream, but there was absolutely no expression on her face. She recited the dream as though it was a rather uninteresting documentary.
"It dawned on me that I would never see or hear or....and then I realized that I loved to live. I was not breathing and knew it was true. The body was dead. And the brain was dead too. All the thoughts were repeats. From my life before the death. No happy surprise thoughts. No Sabrina Thoughts. Then I was experiencing the emotion of sadness. All alone forever.
"Then suddenly I was walking in a forest. A dream change. There were trees that had such thick, dark green tops, that you could only see a little sky through the foliage. Like a rain forest. It was such a relief from the previous dream, but I did not know where I was. I walked around a tree trunk and that's when I saw the creature. It was standing on its hind legs, hunched over me. I had almost bumped right into it, and I was so close I could feel the big, hot exhales blast me. I felt compelled to look up at its face, but first I saw the arms and hands. Tiny in comparison to the size of thing. And it had thick course hairs on the arms. The body was shiny brown and hairless and segmented in three pieces, with each part nipped in very skinny. There were six legs. The bottom two were very large and I realized that the thing was actually sitting because the knees came up past the arms and were also covered with course hair, as thick as one of my fingers. But the face..."
Here Eve stopped and took a big breath.
"It was revolting. The head was on a long thin neck, so scrawny that it looked too delicate to support the large head. It had a big lantern mandible. Antennae were sticking out of the top of it's head and they were twitching. But the eyes were the worse, because when I looked into them I could see absolutely nothing...like there was positively no intelligence. Just a hungry killer. They glittered black and protruded on stalks which moved down to look at me. The eyes were long and slanted upward, composed of hundreds of tiny lenses. Very shiny black and very alien and so frightening. I don't know why I was scared because I know about all types of insects. And usually they don't harm you. Oh some can hurt you, like scorpions and some spiders. Even mosquitoes, which suck blood and can pass diseases like malaria. But this thing terrified me.
"It made this horrible high screeching noise. When it opened it's mouth it had large fangs. From the opened mouth all this clear bubbly liquid came pouring out, like it was salivating. Like I was lunch. The noise it made was high in pitch, screeching. It began to reach for me with two pairs of ugly little hands. Did I mention it had claws? Dirty, long claws. As it reached for me, I saw that it had spread it's wings. The wings must have spanned fifteen feet, and I knew that even if I ran—it could fly. So it would get me.
"Even though I knew I could not get away, I turned and ran. I could hear a loud sound, like a fan, and I knew the thing was flying after me. I was screaming in my dream, and probably really screaming by that time. I was running and dodging through the trees. It seemed probable that if there was one insect chasing me, it would be logical to expect that there were more of them around. Finally it caught me, I felt it grabbing my shoulder, but it was not hurting. Then I was hearing Mark saying that I was all right. It was not the huge insect, but Mark. Then I really woke up."
"Oh, my God," Sabrina said. It sounded like her own worse nightmare. Happy endings. Sure.
"I know there are no large insects in existence, and I should have understood that I was having an awful nightmare, but I couldn't seem to control the fear. And even knowing that I can’t feel pain, I expected to in my dream. I would be torn apart by that grizzly thing, eaten in those huge fangs, and it would be agonizing. Which is pretty interesting because I have never experienced physical pain, but I knew that it would be just horrible. So maybe dreams will help me to understand humans better, although I would rather not go to sleep again after that one."
"I don't blame you a bit, Eve," Sabrina said.
"Since you don't have an imagination, I'll think up an ending for the dream," Mark said. He was silent for a moment, thinking. "Let’s imagine that you are running away from the bug again. You are very strong, so you turn around and as it flies down at you, you give it an enormous wallop in the jaw, and it falls down dead."
"I couldn't stand to touch the hairy jaw."
"You are running from the bug, and another bug comes from the opposite....No. Wait. I know. You are running from the bug and you start running in circles around a tree. The bug is after you, but it gets so dizzy that it bangs it's silly head right into the tree and falls down dead."
Sabrina started giggling and Eve, glancing at her, smiled.
"Or. I know. You're running away from the Big Ugly Stupid Bug. The bug is so stupid that it starts to dive at you and you just stop running, jump sideways, and it dives right past you down into the ground and gets its Ugly Gross head stuck in the mud and can't pull it out. Or it breaks its skinny neck."
Sabrina was laughing hysterically and Eve started laughing too. Mark knew he was on a roll.
"Or, wait, I know," Mark said pointing his finger in the air, "The Big Gross Ugly Thing is after you. But remember. It is so stupid that it forgets it is hungry because it sees another ugly gross thing like itself. Another big bug. It is so repelled that it tries to fly backward, somersaults in mid air, and falls right next to the other ugly bug. Both are instantly dead of fright."
Sabrina was laughing so much that her side hurt.
Eve was experiencing laughter for the first time and it was wonderful and fun. Mark didn't just tell the stories, he acted them out. She could actually picture the bugs in her mind as Mark flapped his arms and buzzed. But now they weren't scary. And laughter, mingled laughter, was the best thing she had ever experienced.
"Or, I know..." Mark had them hysterical with bugs crashing heads, dying of fright and stupidity, and Eve as heroine in the tales.
Now Mark was infected with the laughter and could not go on. When one had almost stopped, a glance at the other two would start them all in again. Finally, all three were sitting on the floor, holding their stomachs, and trying to control themselves.
When they were finally resting from the hysterics, Mark pointed his finger up in the air and said, "Or...Wait...I know..."
Everyone started laughing.