Dermaphoria by Craig Clevenger Page A

silicon circuits. All the foil in the world won’t stop these bleeding-edge, bioengineered organisms because they’re bred, not built, for transferring data the same way they’ve done for millions of years through dances, wing-flutter code and antenna semaphores. They spread news of food, danger, a new nesting location, my running solitaire statistics and bathroom habits.
    Their engineering evolves with each generation, the progeny faster and their camouflage better. They hide in the fluttering shadows thrown by swaying power lines outside my window, or the shimmering reflections from a glass of water. They can look like patterns in the hallway carpet, red diamonds with yellow highlights, black squares likeprocessor chips or irregular blobs from coffee stains or blood. Snap on a light and instead of scattering, they freeze where they’re crawling and disappear.
    They move in the dark, legions of them on every surface of my room and my skin. Sometimes I’ll think I’ve stepped on a slippery pebble before the exoshell cracks like an apple skin and there’s something wet beneath my foot, something else scurrying over my toes. They whisper to each other, monitor my sleep, fluid intake, pulse, temperature and record my conversations. The ones I’ve killed by accident or design are bigger than the rest, relay points or data backups, so they’re easier to catch. Their system is rife with redundancies, so the death of one messenger doesn’t derail the flow of data. My recent specimens flutter inside an empty baby food jar, awaiting the cockroach chop shop. They climb atop one another, scrambling for the punctured lid and fall backward like marbles rattling against the glass. The noise keeps me awake.
    I pull the sheets from my bed, tie the corners together and throw the bundle out the window. I tear open a box of Borax, dumping it into every corner and crevice I find. Someone knocks and I have a small heart attack.
    I answer the door in my underwear, my body dusted with boric acid.
    “Have you been talking?” Suit and tie. He looks familiar.
    “I’ve been cleaning.”
    “You were supposed to call me with an address.”
    “Are you an exterminator?
    “I’m your lawyer.” He steps into my room without invitation. “We have business,” he says. “While you’re housecleaning, Anslinger is burying you. He doesn’t sleep and he doesn’t stop working. He’s a machine. Do you understand me?”
    My memory comes into focus. Morell.
    “Can I get you anything?” I ask. “Water? I have a sink.”
    Decades of junky sex and a contract hits have stained the mattress with dark Rorschach shapes. One looks like a dog, another a clown. Morell sits on the bare corner beside a burning nun, his briefcase in his lap.
    “What have you been using?” he asks.
    “Boric acid.”
    “No, you. What have you been shooting?”
    “Nothing. I’m clean and I can prove it if you’ve got a coffee cup.”
    “No, you are not clean. And I can’t help you unless you are.”
    I thrust my arms out, wrists up, dotted with the cigarette burns. My bites aren’t as advanced as those on Jack and the Beanstalk. They must be scratching too much.
    “Insects. They’re eating me in my sleep. The place is crawling with them,” I explain, and at night they’re everywhere. Most of them are too fast for me. I slap at the night table corners and shadow specks on my bedspread, but they’re gone before my palm hits. I thought they were planting tracking chips, but they’re not mechanical. They’re marking me, like cats pissing on furniture, so the squads assigned to a different detail don’t monitor the wrong target.
    “Let’s move you somewhere else,” says Morell.
    “They’ll follow me. Or signal others. I think they work for Anslinger.”
    “I’m going to assume you haven’t recalled anything helpful.” Morell sighs, staring at the cockroach chop shop. “Here’s my card. Again.” He stands, reaching into his pocket. “Check in with me