She crouched outside Klerk Cent's bedroom window, clinging upside down to the outer wall with her leg lazy hanging and the easy casualness of a thing evolution would not have approved of, and stared through the glass at the glowing television inside.
Rain had passed an hour ago, leaving the Kansas night damp and humming. Crickets rasped in the grass below. The porch light by the front of the farmhouse buzzed weakly, too far away to reach this side of the house. From here, the world smelled like wet dirt, old wood, cut grass, and cow stink.
Inside, the television blared triumphant music.
A white-haired old man in an expensive suit stood in front of a giant painted sign and spread his arms grandly.
"Welcome… to Cambrian Park!"
The screen filled with sparkling ocean shallows, soft blue water, and little armored arthropods skimming around in the mud while orchestral music swelled like God Himself had just invented feet.
Amaru stared.
Blink.
Blink.
Then she flattened one hand against the window and said, with total disgust, "That's it?"
Klerk, sitting cross-legged on the bed with a blanket around his shoulders, looked from the TV to her upside-down face at the window.
"Well…" he said carefully. "I think the point is they're, uh… prehistoric."
Amaru narrowed her eyes.
"They're shrimp with hats."
"They're arthropods."
"They're boring."
Klerk nodded at once. "Yeah. Kinda boring."
Amaru's expression turned even flatter.
"You don't have to agree with me every time."
Klerk blinked. "I wasn't—"
"You were."
"I just thought maybe—"
"You did that face."
"What face?"
"That pathetic 'please don't bite me, mysterious crater goblin' face."
Klerk looked genuinely unsure whether to defend himself.
"I'm trying to be polite."
Amaru made a noise in the back of her throat that suggested she considered politeness a contagious fungal disease.
Onscreen, the old man from Cambrian Park walked through a polished visitor center while a younger man in glasses asked whether bringing extinct life back through speculative bio-restoration might have ethical consequences.
The old man smiled warmly in the way only very rich people in movies smiled before making everyone else's lives worse.
"Nonsense," he said. "What could possibly go wrong?"
Amaru pointed at the television like she'd just caught it committing a crime.
"That guy sucks."
Klerk nodded again. "Yeah, he kind of does."
Amaru's head slowly turned toward him.
Again.
That same eager, reflexive agreement.
Not sincere. Not exactly fake either. More like he was scared that disagreeing would make the room sharp.
It annoyed her in a way she couldn't immediately categorize, which made it worse.
"You think everything I think," she said accusingly.
Klerk frowned. "I do not."
"You do."
"I don't."
"You absolutely do."
He pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders and looked away, embarrassed more than defensive.
"I just don't want to be rude."
Amaru peeled one hand off the wall and hooked a claw toward him through the open window.
"Rude is honest. That agreeable thing you do is creepy."
Klerk looked back at her, startled.
For a second the room went quiet except for the television.
Onscreen, the old man in the white suit was now standing in a fake tidepool exhibit while a group of delighted children pointed at a giant projection of an anomalocaris swimming in circles.
One kid shouted, "It's beautiful!"
Amaru rolled her eyes so hard it looked physically painful.
"This honestly the most pitiful movie, how will they be in danger!" Before Klerk he could speak. "Don't freaking agree you weirdo!"
On the TV, Cambrian Park had moved on to a dramatic sequence where tiny armored creatures swarmed the feet of screaming tourists while the old man shouted for everyone to stay calm.
The music now insisted this was the most thrilling thing in cinematic history.
Amaru watched one little bug skitter through ankle-deep water and looked deeply insulted.
"This planet made that movie?"
Klerk shrugged. "Maybe people like the idea of old things coming back."
Amaru looked at him.
That answer had actual shape to it.
Again, annoyingly better.
Before she could say anything nasty enough to cover the fact that she'd noticed, the mood in the room changed.
Not because of the movie.
Because of the steps.
Heavy.
Slow.
Coming up the stairs.
Klerk went rigid.
It was immediate. Shoulders up. Chin down. Breath held.
Amaru felt it before she fully understood it, the way an animal felt storm pressure. The air in the room tightened. Not with cosmic energy. Not with Horror instinct.
With familiarity.
Fear lived here.
The footsteps dragged along the hallway outside the room.
One step.
Then another.
Wood creaked under the weight.
A bottle clinked faintly against something hard.
Klerk was already moving.
He crossed the room in two fast steps and hissed toward the window, "Hide."
Amaru did not move.
"What?"
"Hide," he whispered again, much more urgently now. "Please, just— not here, not where he can see you."
Amaru's eyes narrowed and lick the air.
Alcohol
Angry because of hate
Amaru wall crawl outside but close to the window
Amaru leans just a bit to see.
It was Klerk's father. A Big man. Farm-big, not soldier-big. Thick through the chest and gone a little soft in the gut with age and beer. His undershirt was stained. His jeans were half-buttoned. One boot was unlaced. His face looked weathered in the mean way, like life had sandblasted the softness off him and he'd decided to take that personally.
The smell of liquor, sweat and Rotting temper.
His eyes found Klerk immediately.
"There you are, you worthless little shit."
Klerk stood very still by the bed.
"Yes, sir."
Amaru, above the window, felt every limb go colder.
Not from fear.
From anger.
The father took two uneven steps into the room, one hand still hanging at his side with a half-empty bottle by the neck.
"I come home, trash is still sittin' by the back door, sink's full, dog ain't fed, and you're up here watchin' cartoons?"
His voice was not loud in the theatrical way violent men sometimes imagined themselves. It was worse than that. Casual. Used to itself.
Klerk kept his eyes down.
"I forgot."
The father laughed once without humor.
"Forgot."
He looked around the room, at the TV, the blanket, the books stacked by the bed, every harmless thing suddenly made guilty by his stare.
"You always forget. You forget chores, forget sense, forget you got hands." He stepped closer. "Need I remind you again? Like the last time?"
His father removed his belt and slammed it on the desk.
"This…oh this helps you not forget boy. Now, get your ass up. TAKE OUT THE TASH!"
BAMB!
The crack of belt broke the mirror that has experienced and learn every awaken moment when Klerk's father came in under the influence or without.
The father's lip curled.
"You got something smarter to say?"
"No, sir."
"Good."
Then he slammed the door hard enough to rattle the window.
The whole house went still.
The footsteps dragged away down the hall.
Then down the stairs.
Then into the lower dark of the house.
Only after the sound had fully gone did Klerk move.
He stayed standing for a second, shoulders locked, staring at the shut door like it might open again just to prove hope stupid.
Then he exhaled.
Small.
Controlled.
Like even breathing too loud could restart something.
Outside, Amaru clung to the wall and stared through the glass at him.
Amaru dropped silently back into the window frame and crouched there, all hard edges and shadow and eyes.
Klerk wiped at his face quickly before looking up.
He tried to smile.
Amaru hated that too.
Not because it was weak.
Because it was fake.
"Don't do that," she said.
Klerk blinked. "Do what?"
"That." She pointed at his face. "That 'everything's fine' thing. It sucks."
He stood very still.
For once, he did not agree.
He just looked tired.
Good.
That was real.