"Do you hear that?" Susan put down her glass. "Where's it coming from?"
"The what now?" Mark tried to concentrate, but he didn't hear anything special. They were in a bar, and it was making your normal bar noises, as far as he could tell. He finished his beer, and tried again. Nothing.
"Never mind. Maybe I just imagined it."
They ordered another round. Susan drank fast, it wasn't like her at all.
"Y-you know what I like about you?" She was stammering, but there was nothing timid about it. "You're so very easy to recognize. I can easily recognize you as my fellow human being."
"What?"
"Listen, there it is again."
Mark heard nothing. They ordered another round.
"You know, I don't think I've ever felt guilty about shit I've done on purpose." Susan's voice was embarrassingly loud. "But on the other hand, I never do much anything on purpose, so there's that. T-the things that haunt me are my accidental fuck-ups, the times when I failed as a human, at least by my own very, very, very low standards. And I also feel guilty about the failures of my relatives, hell, any adult fucking up in my vicinity is probably somehow my fault."
"I doubt your standards are all that low." Despite the beer, Mark was sobering up, small talk wouldn't do now, he'd have to find real things to say. "And you've been a good friend. Maybe not on purpose, then, but as far as accidents go, I couldn't have asked for a better one."
It was all true, but the words sounded a bit too calculated, he was better at saying random shit. Unlike René fucking Descartes, he often felt like he existed better when he didn't have to think.
Susan stood up.
"The sound." She grabbed her coat. "I must follow it."
A minute later they were on an alley behind the bar, standing next to an open manhole.
"You really can't hear it?" Susan took her cell phone and opened the flashlight app, shining the beam down the hole. "It's so full of unknown notes and shades, but somehow I recognize it better than my own life."
"Recognize it as what?" Mark tried to lighten the mood. "As a fellow human being?"
"Yes. No." Susan crouched. "I mean, you are the human being here, Mark, you have all the requirements, that's what I tried to say earlier. I don't have them, but you do, and this sound, oh Mark, you have no idea..."
"Wait, what requirements are we talking about?"
But Susan was already underground. Mark followed without thinking, because fuck Descartes, and fuck sanity, too, tonight was about loyalty.
"Sometimes it feels like I rhyme with it." Susan was taking off her clothes. "Rhyme and resonate. Other times I feel like I'm just its echo, and even that is more than enough."
The sewer was drier than it had any right to be. Beetles of various sizes skittered everywhere, but at least there were no rats. A black graffiti glistened on the wall: CHO EATERS. Mark wondered what it meant. Susan was naked now, and he was pretty sure he lacked at least some requirements for being human, because he hadn't done a thing to stop her. But she seemed so intense, whatever was going on, it felt wrong to take it away from her. She was moving again, running. Mark picked up her clothes, and followed.
When he glanced back, he noticed that the beetles had formed a massive letter E to the beginning of the graffiti.
Echo eaters.
As he ran, Mark saw more graffiti everywhere he looked. A lot of them scattered into beetles before he could read them, but there were at least three recurring words: echo, eaters and queen. Susan disappeared behind a corner, and screamed. It sounded like a scream of delight.
"Mark! Mark! Come quick!"
He did. And saw a dirty, naked bag lady. Susan was lying on the floor, her mouth wide open, and the horrible woman was pissing in.
Susan had never looked so happy. There was no doubt she was doing this on purpose.
Something clicked, both figuratively and literally. The bag lady opened her toothless mouth, and a fist-sized head of a beetle peeked out, its mandibles stretched wide.
