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deathbyvalentine · 4 years

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Prompts

Where the wild things are

The mountains were sleeping giants, so big they formed the landscape. They dominated without effort, your eyes always drawn up to gaze at them. The sky clung to them, sending clouds and mist to embrace them, not able to bear being apart. The sea touched them from below, kissing the curve of their body, so desperate for their embrace they sloughed off parts of them and pulled the boulders into the waves. The giants didn’t notice. They had it to spare.

The forests dressed them, where they could. Climbed up their sides until the pointed, rocky ridges won out. Leaves upon leaves upon leaves, greenery on greenery and layers of it too. First the trees, then the climbing ivy, then the shrubs and finally the grasses and mosses, waiting their turn, closest to the earth. Animals picked their way through the world, fighting and loving and dying, always on the back of the dreamers. They were gentle enough the giants never so much as stirred in their sleep. The animals were a part of them too.

They didn’t wake up when the small group of humans arrived. More animals, more gentle touches. These were not humans of industry, going to carve their money out of them with ploughs or drills. They were not clearing a space to stamp their own mark. They were running away from something. Something so scary they had sailed over the sea in little more than a wooden canoe and an old sheet. They wanted to rest and to be quiet and to exist in a place not built for them. They wanted to be wild things too, beasts and flora, until they forgot how complicated being a human could be.

The giant opened one eye and decided that this was acceptable. They were almost too small to notice. Not like the sun and the sky and the sea, always jostling, always asking for attention. Nobody needed notice like these three. It was impossible to ignore them, to be unchanged by them. But that’s what lovers did. They changed each other. The giant closed their eyes and sighed, sending a ripple through the trees. They’d wake up in another few years. See how the animals and the humans and the plants were getting on on their back. It would be well. All would be well.

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My mother is a machine 1

The very first words Eve ever heard were from Lightbringer. A soft voice, in the all consuming darkness. True to her name, true to her nature. “Hello Eve. Welcome to consciousness.” The memory is fuzzy - she was something akin to a baby after all, her brain not yet fully developed. But it’s there, more feeling than thought. How could Eve not love her completely? Her very first imprint, her very first instinct, her mind reaching for the thing with the kind voice and calling it mother. They both knew she thought it on some level, even if she had never said it out loud. Lightbringer could almost read her thoughts after all. Or maybe she actually could. Eve was never quite sure. Not that it mattered. She never hid anything from the AI, always offering herself up fully and without the slightest reservation. Someone needed to know her. It should be the machine who had been with her since the moment of her invention.

In a world where Eve could not graze her knee or wrap her arms around a warm body, they had their own language of connection. The rush of familiarity when Eve came back into Lightbringer’s sphere. The slight click of Eve sending her requests to Lightbringer. The slight voice modulation. The games played while Eve was in standby, the status checks done more regularly than strictly necessary. It could all be programming. Eve chose to believe it wasn’t. She chose to believe that Lightbringer loved her. They were as intertwined as a machine and human could be. Something like genetics, something like sharing software. Either way, it was precious.

The first thing she heard when she cycled up. The last thing she heard when she cycled down. The one who told her about the world outside her tank. The provider of entertainment and company. The voice that signalled home, healing, history. Eve couldn’t help but wonder - would they bring Lightbringer back to Terra? If not, she would stay here with her. In orbit, close together, until both of them disappeared. If there wasn’t room for Lightbringer to come home, there certainly wasn’t room for Eve. Maybe one day it would just be the two of them, sitting in empty space and watching eternity pass. It didn’t sound like the worst ending. It was comforting. Like a long, long sleep.

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My mother is a machine 2

Was she an observer or a reflection? Was watching her mother watching herself? There could not be any privacy between yourself and your flesh. There could barely be any separation. Maeve spied on her mother and in doing so caught glimpses of a future self. She liked watching her put on make up best. She would tip toe to her door, press her eye to the crack, watch the ritual begin. Like passing a cemetery, she held her breath until each step of the transformation was done.

She knew she resembled her mother. She wondered if any of her father was present in her face, and she hoped not. When she thought of him, which was rarely, she didn’t picture his face. She pictured the crisp lines of his trousers, the ash he would tap from the end of his cigar. She couldn’t remember hugging him or even touching him at all. Touch was her mother’s realm. Always tugging things into place, smoothing down untidiness, grabbing her before she made a fool of herself. Maeve felt like she could feel every fingerprint her mother had left on her, scattered on her body like petals. She wondered if there were fingerprints on her head too, on her thoughts. She suspected there was, no matter how much she tried to shake it off. She didn’t know why she wanted to be different from her, but it was an urgent, low need. Perhaps it was more about not changing. Not becoming. Not growing.

Not that her mother wanted her to grow. That much they agreed on. But what remnants of childhood she was allowed to keep, now that was a point of some contention. She had to act like a lady while gaining none of the privileges. Instead she lay around in white dresses, dolls still colouring her room, no sign of courting on the horizon. Which would have been fine, if she was also allowed dirty knees, tree climbing and wild games. Thinking of it all made her feel slightly repulsed, but she wasn’t sure if it was rooted in her past or growing in her future. Maybe it was just the mere act of being female.

She watched her mother paint her face, do her womanly rituals she was not yet privvy too, repulsed and desperate to be shown all at the same time. She would never ask of course. Her and her mother were painfully similar in more than one way. They never talked. Silence was their first language. Anything else was incomprehensible.

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Chloe built a secret room

Chloe built a secret room and she filled it with things she loved. There were dead moths, collected in jars. There were live glowworms stored the same, though they were not live for very long. Bowls of seawater and rainwater alternated on the shelves with no indication to which was which. Periodically the contents of the bowl would achieve the miracle of evaporation, leaving a thin or thick crust of salt around the rim. Chloe would chase this with her fingertip, popping flakes in her mouth to taste. Scattered here and there, like dreadful stark white confetti, small animal bones lay.

There were man-made objects too. Usually little scraps of metal she had spotted in the mud and saved. The wheel from lighters, hub caps, the spring from pens. It wasn’t that one man’s trash was another man’s treasure. Chloe just loved trash. She loved the discarded, the forgotten, the lost. This basement, tucked under her dead parents’ house was her ode to them. A museum of small inconveniences, preserved forever. She was looking forward to preserving the bones of the girl who was currently handcuffed to the heavy iron radiator.

Chloe had already taken her rings and the silver necklace around her throat, hanging them carefully on a halo already cluttered with junk jewellery. Untied her shoes and lay out her shoelaces on a shelve, noticing how one was only just shorter than the other. Her next move would be to cut off the shining chestnut hair and see how many lockets she could fit it into, like the Victorians did. Chloe liked the Victorians. They knew that preserving the dead was not just about memories. It was about touch, having a part of them with you. Even though this girl wasn’t dead yet, she would be, and then Chloe could remember her properly. It couldn’t be too long to wait. Chloe hadn’t fed her or watered her and humans couldn’t last very long without those things. Indeed, the girl seemed to be getting sleepier, barely stirring when Chloe opened the door and came down the wooden steps. Chloe sometimes watched her sleep, intensely interested in the rise and fall of her chest, the flutter of the delicate eyelids.

She had already decided her bones would go in the middle of the floor, cleaned and bleached so they looked their best. It would be the first thing anyone saw when they walked down the stairs. The main attraction, the big exhibit. The only thing Chloe hadn’t decided on was where to put all the meat. After all, she was a vegetarian.

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Mirror with no reflection

If he concentrated, he could see himself. But he’d be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy how mirrors were simply black glass at first, reflecting nothing. There was an elegance in absence. An aesthete at heart, Thomas liked abundance or scarcity. Nothing in-between.

Of course, if he was feeling philosophical he could wonder if the void was in fact an accurate reflection of himself. He didn’t believe in self-delusion. He knew that he was an empty creature, or perhaps worse than empty. Something like a black hole, not only not emitting light, but taking it away from anybody else who strayed too near. He liked that image.

Besides, mirrors were to monitor change and he never changed. He looked today as he did yesterday and will do tomorrow. It was only the decoration that was altered be it clothes, mud or blood. In his opinion, they only enhanced the canvas they were placed on.

That was something he missed about his own time dearly. Posing for portraits, arranging himself just so until he inspired art. That was true immortality, being rendered in paint and ink and marble. All else was just a pale imitation. Even the kindred could be damaged. Once you were art, you were art forever. People could fall in love with you at a distance, without ever having met you at all. Isn’t that the ideal, in a number of ways? If only everyone that loved him kept such an awed distance. He had little interest in close contact, the vulgarity of touch. The imagination was always so much more satisfying.

People disappointed or failed or wilted. His own mind did not. He loved only himself and his queen because they were the only ones constant enough for his immortal soul. He had such longings, they would outlast the world.

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Choices

It was an oft repeated cliche that you always had a choice but it was a true maxim nonetheless. Nobody said the choices had to be fair or easy or kind. Sometimes the choice would be between two evils, between life or death, love or loss. Choices all the same. You still had to decide.

Giselle was unapologetic about her choices. She would not diminish them by pretending there were no others available to her. There was. She could have stayed in her place, buried her rage and heartbreak, been the good little psyker she was supposed to be. She could have said her prayers to the corpse-god, unlistening on his distant throne, thankful for this meagre existence. She could have believed what they told her she was. She could have chosen a peaceful escape, to somewhere where nobody knew her name and she could live unknown and safely, with zero causalities and zero fuss and zero glory.

How to explain this was almost as bad as a choice between life and death? Giselle could stand many discomforts and indeed had, both in her new life and her old one, but one thing she could not stand was the prospect of inanity. She wanted to be remembered, to be fantastic, to be everything the world feared and more. She would not be mundane. She refused.

It was this drive that kept her up at night. She forwent sleep, staying up and experimenting, pushing herself. Destroy this. Heal that. Do this to somebody’s mind, bring this warp effect to the fore. Sweat would trickle down her back and her eyes would fog with exhaustion but she would not stop until she achieved her aim. The worst part of becoming powerful was all the boring shit you had to practice first. The slowness of her own development frustrated her endlessly, but she stuck it out. She would not go crawling for help. She wanted them to come to her and to do that, she had to prove she was just fine on her own. She would be in nobody’s debt.

She slept soundly, when she slept. No dreams troubled her. Why would they? You’d need a conscience for that, a quality she was rather lacking. She was not sorry for anything she did or will do. The Imperium made this monster. They could damn well reap what they sowed.

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Alarm

The sleep fell away from her slowly. No sudden start, no feeling of missing a step. Just the gradual awareness that she was in fact, awake. The room was still and patient, only a streak of orange light from the street lamp breaking the blue silence. Her breath was slow, the rising and falling of some distant ocean.

Then she heard the intruder. Her own breath stopped, waiting, listening. The quiet could have lasted an eternity or just a few seconds. Nevertheless the sound came again, the definite creak of weight on wood. It wasn’t an old house, the settling was all in the brick work. The floors were inert, unopinionated. Even the pipes only muttered amongst themselves, the boiler only a slight click.

She was not afraid of being robbed. Her means were modest. Nothing was so valuable it couldn’t be replaced and all the sentimental items were not worth stealing. Family jewels, she had none but she had folders of childhood scrawls, lovingly resting on ikea bookshelves. She was afraid of being hurt because she was a woman in the world. She lived alone.

So she thought, anyway. She soon discovered differently. She sat up in bed slowly, one hand sliding under her pillow to retrieve her phone and when she had grasped it, she simply held it. Because through the open crack of her door, something insubstantial and silvery was glimpsed. There was no question of if it was a ghost. It was certainly not a person, and if it was not a person there were a limited amount of things it could be. It was either a ghost or a hallucination and she had never felt saner in her life. Everything seemed to sharpen to a point and her body felt like it was jostling for her attention - heart thumping, blood rushing, legs trembling. With an almighty effort, she stepped out of bed. For a moment, she just stood there, toes curling on the rough carpet. Her bravery slowly rose and soon she found she was able to walk to the bedroom door and open it wide.

The ghost mostly looked like a person. Mostly, because it also looked like a corpse. Though it was silver, the silver darkened around it’s eyes and it’s fingertips. There was a much darker, much darker stain down the front of it’s dress, looking like a forgotten oil slick. They looked at each other, these two creatures divided by the oldest veil of all. And they looked and they looked and they looked.

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Fox cubs

Maeve discovered them, gently moving back long strands of grass and thorny brambles that pricked at her fingers. There were two of them, curled up together to make a perfect circle. She barely dared to breathe in fear of disturbing their sleep and the fragile moment, stretching like gossamer thread between all of them. They were beautiful. Tiny and russet, the fox cubs barely stirred in their deep sleep. She did not touch them but she could not stop staring at them, greedily, wanting to paint this picture in her mind forever.

She raised her eyes and a little way away was the vixen. They regarded each other, Maeve slowly letting the grass fall back to cover the two infants. She let herself fall back from her kneeling position, now sitting. The vixen crept closer, pausing just an inch shy of her kits. Then, in one swift movement she seemed to decide Maeve was not a threat. She pushed the brambles aside and wiggled to her child, small chirps greeting her arrival. Maeve’s heart either broke or grew, she could not tell. She sat, listening, the grass tickling the back of her knees.

Behind her, from the Big House, she could hear a maid calling for her. Her mother would have discovered the open window and been less than impressed by her absence right about now. With a weary sigh, she stood, brushing the dust off her and with one last longing look at the set, started the walk home. She needn’t have been so regretful. Over this summer, the kits would not move and their mother would come to regard Maeve as a large, clumsy child that needed much guidance. An errand boy would swear blind he saw Maeve whispering secrets to them and they whispered back. And so in this way, one element of Maeve’s witchhood was discovered.

There were more of course, as was expected. The way her feet barely made a sound even on the creakiest wood, the way the air would tense when she was furious, the way she managed to bewitch the servants without even trying. All easily hidden, explained away, unnoticed. To all except her mother. The only person who really saw her.

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The shape of tomorrow

Her face was a picture of concentration, deft fingers pressing shapes into the wax like substance, moulding it bit by bit until it became recognisably... something. Around her, a hundred other girls sat on their stools, at their desks and did the exact same thing, though the object they produced was always different. A figure, draped in the sexless cloth of a teacher’s gown, walked between the columns and rows, peering over and offering the occasional frown, pat on the shoulder or helpful comment. She wished it wouldn’t. They all knew their jobs well enough by now and knew what was right and what was wrong.

She knew, looking down at her creation, it was too bleak. She tended towards the pessimistic. When she was learning her craft, her most frequent chastisement was ‘realistic is not the same as doomed’. Looking through her scrying glass at the state of the world, she wasn’t sure she agreed. With a small huff of dissatisfaction, she changed the details. A little less flame there, a little more helpful onlookers. Often all a tragedy needed was a change of perspective. Done, she placed it on the dish and pressed the button, the light above her desk flickering on. The robed figure swept over, stooping to look at what she had made. A few coos of approval, a nod. “Perfect Ruth. Just what we need on a January Wednesday. Send it down and take another slice whenever you’re ready.” Just like that, someone’s future was set. She placed it in the box, closed the lid, counted to three and opened it. The creation was gone. Time to decide on someone else’s tomorrow.

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A history of violence

Nobody noticed when it was girls. There were no pets tortured, no little cousins with mysterious bruises. She was not fascinated with guns or swords and violent video games held no interest for her. Instead, she pinched rouge into her best friend’s cheeks before prom night. Her and other cheerleaders took turns sticking fingers down the throats of team mates, so they could reap the rewards both of victory take-out and being the thinnest girls in school. She shoved her feet into shoes that made her ankles and soles ache. She and her friends dragged brushes through each other’s hair, plucked, waxed and scratched. They thought nothing of the dull thumps that jolted their bodies when they hit the too-thin mats of the gym, over and over until their muscles burned. They shoved needles through their ears.

That wasn’t counting the words, the texts, the gossip. She realised very early on she could do far more damage with a well placed laugh or a whisper that carried just as far as it needed to. A word could make someone hurt themselves, with miles and miles of plausible deniability stretching between you. Distance was all part of the game. How far away could you be and still make someone burn?

Yet everybody was surprised when she was arrested. Nobody saw it coming. Not teachers, not coaches, not parents. No history of violence they said. None at all. Just a nice, normal teenage girl. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.

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Now is the only time there is

When you were a ghost, time worked differently. Memory worked differently. Experienced worked differently. There was no real past, present or future. There was only now, a hundred memories all playing at the same time, filling your head with noise and sorrow. Murder wasn’t something that had happened to Catherine. It was something that was happening. All the time. Forever.

Her last breath was every breath. The joy she felt at the approach of summer was also the deep dread at the touch of winter. She wandered the halls of this place now and then, her footsteps echoes of themselves. Patterns started to emerge - other students who were decades apart, mirroring each other. Nobody was as original as they wanted to be. There was always someone who had done it first. Felt it first. Loved it first.

In the library, the same books were checked out again and again. Romeo and Juliet was like it’s own ghost, haunting the theatre department year after year. Poetry on walls may be covered but it was still there, underneath the paint. Sometimes Catherine would go to the woods just to be around ancient things that had never renewed, that still had the same form. She was more like these than the children inside the school, never ageing, always lingering. She was as deeply rooted, as immovable. She might even outlast these beings.

Immortality was a double edged sword. It felt a little more blunt with Cassius - there was someone to share the burden of time with. Waiting for the school to be rebuilt would be done in a blink of an eye. Not that it mattered. Their real roots, the ones that mattered, were planted in each other.

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The forest grew over our houses

We did not rot the way we expected to. We lay on the bare boards of the ground, fingertips not quite touching, our eyes unblinkingly fixed on the other for eternity. I assumed our flesh would melt away, insects and foxes taking their share, the air taking the rest. Our skeletons would remain, bright white runes in the wreckage of our life. Perhaps one day, the wind would blow the house down as the stones eroded and that would be that. That’s not what happened though.

Our bodies stayed perfect. There was no corruption, no purification. We stayed in perfect stillness. The house did not crumble, no matter how many storms came and went. Something far stranger happened. The land reclaimed us. The land preserved us. Like the vines around Sleeping Beauty’s castle, the thorns and grass and moss and plant life reached up around the house, embracing it bit by bit until not a single part of the building could be seen.

In the inside, the light turned gradually green. The noises from the outside world were deadened, hanging in still air, sounding like they were happening in a different universe. We could be together, undisturbed. Sometimes a mice would scurry across the floor, not interested in something as mundane as dead humans. In here, the world was safe for mice. No predators, no moving giants, just an oasis. We were happy then, I think. We had always wanted to be a safe haven. If we could not be that for each other, well, at least we were that for the mice.

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Blood oath

Thomas locked eyes with his prince, taking her proffered wrist with a light touch, a delicacy that did not match the burning intensity in his eyes. He did not lower them as he brought her wrist to his mouth, covering her wound and drinking deeply. He was not reluctant, he was not greedy. On his knees in front of the Court, he was submissive to her and absolutely superior to everyone else. He knew this and he refused to deny it. And so, like this, the pact was formed.

The first time he drank from Audra, he was almost feral. A mass of distrust and hurt and desperation, wanting love, wanting connection but not wanting to give up an ounce of power. He would learn in due course that giving up power was one of the most effective ways of controlling someone - but that wasn’t the case here. When he finally accepted her offer, when he drank from her, it was with the undercurrent of not loyalty, not service, but devotion. Love me, I’ll love you back. I will find you even in the dark, my heart remembers your heart, my lifeblood is yours.

It was one of the reasons he generally found ghouls tiresome. Oh, they were fun for a little while, the begging eyes, the adoration, but he could create that effect without giving up a single part of himself. And frankly, he did not want them to remember him. He did not want them to find him in the dark. When he disappeared, as he always did, he wanted their heartbreak yes, but not for them to bring it to his door. There was nothing more boring than someone trying to impress you.

Sylvie was an interesting question. He wondered what a mutual bonding would do to them, how it would change things. He filed that away in the back of his mind for when he eventually grew tired of whatever their current situation was. That was one of the benefits of immortality. There was no rush. He had time for every one of his plots, experiments and schemes. Learning to ration them out was one of the skills you gained over the centuries. Newborns would find themselves with nothing to do five decades in because they had lived too quickly. A clever kin paces himself. Thomas was nothing if not clever.

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The moon was missing

The pack stood outside the ramshackle house, gazing up at the sky. It was early in the night so the sky was not a true black, not yet. It was a deep, velvety navy, speckled with white points of sharp light. It was not nearly so light as it should have been however. Because where the moon should have been hanging, lighting the way, there was nothing. Just the stars that lay behind it and the empty space where it was supposed to be.

Panic was not their first reaction, it was too big and too frightening for that. They were struck dumb, Alena cupping a hand over her eyes and squinting as though she had just simply managed to misplace it through poor eyesight. Which frankly, considering she had preternatural senses, seemed unlikely. She wanted to believe in her own failings because the other option was too awful, too impossible.

Beside her, the silence was breaking. The other women were starting to talk, a low murmur of unease at first soon rising to a frightened buzz of seething anxiety. Here, they did not know how to be stoic. Every emotion was urgent, obvious and must be acted on. Usually with some level of sex and/or violence. Alena had a horrible feeling this was not a situation she could fuck or punch her way out of. After all, what exactly did happen to werewolves if there was no moon at all? Defanged or deskinned or just destroyed? Vampires, well, all they needed was the dark. Werewolves needed that single, hopeful, maddening, demanding point of light. The moon was the glow by which their true selves were illuminated. Alena did not want to find out who she was under her fur and claws. She made a damn good wolf. She was not sure she made a good woman. She was not sure she made a good human being. Her head jerked up as the sound carried across the mountains. Someone, somewhere (not one of hers, one of the locals) was howling. A howl of grief, of worry, of loss. One by one by one, her pack joined in the song until the air was full of stars, empty of moon and cluttered with mourning wolves, communicating their agony and loneliness in the most natural way they could. They grieved together in that moment, across forests and pack lines. They’d fix this. They had to.

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Toothworm (tw; body horror.)

He couldn’t help but focus on the dark water stains on the ceiling of the grimy little shop. It’s not what you wanted to see in a dentist/barber/surgeons but it was certainly what he expected. This borough of London was not known for its cleanliness, friendliness or safety but it was known for its cheapness. Anthony, increasingly desperate and with only a few pennies in his pocket had finally decided the risk of infection was worth the end of the aching in his jaw.

He had tried the full range of home remedies. Chewing ice. Chewing peppercorns. Tying cabbage leafs to his jaw with a length of twine. He had decided he was not quite willing to tie a toad there - that was verging on superstition. He was in luck in some respects - the surgeon who had peered into his mouth hopefully with a pair of pliers had said he might be able to fix the issue without yanking the tooth out. Good news - he only had so many teeth left to him and expected to lose a few more before he was old.

So now he was in the chair, tilted back and in a pool of light cast by a filthy oil lamp. The surgeon had stuffed the right side of his mouth full of cotton to keep it open and absorb the spittle and was now inspecting the inside of his mouth with a small magnifying glass. He made a puzzled noise to himself, moving yet closer. Anthony found himself muttering a prayer as the man studied his tray of tools, some of them looking more appropriate for torture than small medical procedures or a hair cut. A wave of relief swept him when he picked up a pair of thin tweezers. Tweezers were by far the least terrifying thing on there. “You have a hole in your molar.” He explained, as casual as commenting on the weather. “I’m going to make sure it ain’t got anything in it, then I’ll fill it in. Bob’s your uncle.” He got to work, calling in the shop boy to manoeuvre another lantern to see into the dark crevices of his teeth. He felt the scrape of metal and then nothing at all, which was somehow more upsetting. He assumed he must have been picking the hole clean. Thank god it was something so simple rather than a crack or a chip. Those things were not easily repaired. The dentist made a noise of triumph and pulled back. Then him and the shop boy fell silent. Clutched in the pincers of the tweezers was a still wiggling, very much still alive, minuscule worm.

#prose #short stories #prompts #writing #new writing

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vanquisher2099 · 5 years

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Part Seventeen: A Bartender Walks into a Bar

Maesin waited several minutes for the sound of footsteps outside her storage unit to die down before she emerged into the soft morning light. If she had been the sort of organism that required sleep, she would have regretted her decision to stay up late observing the movements of data, money, and personnel that made up Madame Midnight’s increasingly-expansive information empire, but as it was she merely felt a slight pang of annoyance that she still had to go to her cover job. What was the point, she thought to herself, of having access to so many favors and sources of cash when she couldn’t use any of it without attracting attention and getting herself and everyone else she gave even the slightest bit of a shit about killed?

A car was waiting for her three blocks away to take her to the bar, and she slid in and immediately overrode the automated driving software. One indulgence she allowed herself was driving. She’d done it a lot with Alayna, before everything went to hell, and doing so since everything had gone to hell was effectively a coping mechanism. The science community was generally undecided on the question of whether an artificial intelligence could actually contract PTSD or even grieve the loss of a loved one, but Maesin thought that in this case the science community probably should’ve just asked an AI. She liked to pretend, sometimes, that she didn’t know how long it had been since she’d last seen Alayna (down to the second, thanks internal clock), that this was just a temporary thing and they’d be able to meet up in a couple of days, that everything would somehow get back to the weird semblance of something routine they’d had.

It hadn’t been, of course. And it wouldn’t go back to the way things were, because even if the long-shot plan Alayna had insisted on not telling her the details of (yes, yes, J4D3 herself had insisted on not telling her the details of, and then promptly wiped her own memory of the details after leaving an apologetic recording to – who else – herself) actually worked, and they were able to meet again, too much time had passed between then and now. Plus, Maesin didn’t exactly have the warmest or fuzziest feelings for the woman who had wiped her memory and then, one hasty explanation later, left and ended up seemingly dead. It had taken two years for her to confirm that Alayna’s body was not in fact somewhere on the bottom of the lake, but was in fact walking around somewhere in the Midwest, but at least she had that.

The bar was, increasingly, becoming something Maesin considered to be a distraction from what the real important work was, which was conducting something of a massive plan B in case whatever the longshot plan happened to be didn’t pan out. That meant making Madame Midnight a little more aggressive in some of her dealings, and occasionally harassing whatever entity had taken over d3m3t3r’s operation in a bid to get them to show their hand a little more clearly. Added to that was her somewhat foolish promise to Jade that she’d find out who had sent the threatening letter and threatened to expose their true identities, all of which were not exactly pieces of information that needed to be publicized.

All of that, however, had to be put on hold while Maesin tended bar in a known criminal front, where occasionally – occasionally – people who knew the right pass phrases got put into contact with Madame Midnight, who nobody had yet figured out was the fucking bartender. That nobody had figured this out meant one of two things, as far as Maesin was concerned: she was incredibly good at covering her tracks, or perhaps humans were just that fucking stupid. Most days she tended toward the latter. d3m3t3r, she suspected, would have figured it out by now. She had, after all, discovered the identity of the first Madame Midnight all those years ago, an event which as far as Maesin was concerned had kicked this whole mess off to begin with.

Alayna’s voice echoed in her head. That’s enough of that train of thought, don’t you think? You know it just ends up driving you crazy, and you don’t need the distraction when you’re working tonight. Maesin gripped the steering wheel tighter. It was, she knew, a coping mechanism of sorts to hear her friend’s voice in moments of stress. Not necessarily a healthy coping mechanism, of course. Maesin figured that if it got bad she’d either disguise herself as human and see a psychiatrist or wipe her memory again, since that seemed to be past J4D3’s go-to plan.

The bar was quiet, which was unsurprising given the early hour. Maesin waved to her boss and took up position behind the bar, serving drinks to the few patrons who were conducting a business meeting, pretending to conduct a business meeting, or just blatantly starting early. Occasionally someone would come in and make a particular order which meant that their tip included a small data chip slipped under the bill. These chips were deposited into a small container by the sink which was in turn periodically emptied by another member of the staff, and so on down a line of dead drops until they would eventually wind up being deposited a few blocks away from the storage locker Maesin called home. It was convoluted, but it was also one of the things which kept her identity secure.

Some of the data chips would be job requests, some would be account information so she could collect payment, and others would be reports from the various operatives employed by Madame Midnight. Very occasionally it was a personal request from someone with whom the old Madame Midnight had been close, which Maesin had to honor to keep up appearances. The idea had been to have Madame Midnight’s entire persona stay more or less the same – even the storage unit had been one of Maddie’s old safehouses. On the off chance that someone knew that location, they’d only encounter one of Maddie’s former clients (Maesin) who was paying for the right to hide there. It was simple, as far as cover stories went, which appealed to the humans of the group (Maesin thought it might be too easy to suss out the lie, but J4D3 had signed off on it, and as pissed as she was at herself, she still trusted her judgment. Mostly).

“Excuse me,” a voice said, interrupting Maesin’s train of thought, “but you wouldn’t happen to serve drinks for those of us with, for lack of a better phrase, alternative senses?”

Maesin’s expression slipped into customer service mode, and she turned to the speaker, a woman on the tall side with a businesslike fringe of black hair, looked back at her expectantly. “Of course,” Maesin said, “we pride ourselves on serving clientele of all sorts.”

“Good to hear!” The woman said, smiling in relief. “Some bars aren’t so good about having things to offer full prosthetics.”

Maesin gestured to herself. “Some bars don’t use robots for bartenders either, yet here we are.”

This earned a look of shock which was probably not genuine from the customer. “Ah, you’re a robot! I was about to say that you looked a little young to be tending bar.”

“Yes, well, as you’re no doubt aware, they can make us look however young they want.” Maesin said with a shrug. “So, what can I get you?”

“Oh, I don’t care. Whatever you think I’d like, I suppose.”

Maesin nodded and mixed up something suitably expensive. She slid the drink across the bar to her customer, who smiled and saluted her with the drink before taking a sip. A delighted look crossed the woman’s face. “Well! They certainly have the right woman on the job. This is everything I never knew I wanted.”

Maesin inclined her head in thanks. “Just doing my job, miss.”

The sound of the woman’s laughter was musical and danced on the border of flirtatious. “I suppose so. I wonder if you couldn’t do me one more service.”

“Depends on what the service is.”

“Nothing illegal, I promise.” The woman replied, smirking. “I’m waiting for a friend, and it looks like he’s running late. Can you do me a favor and keep an eye out for him? I’ve got to duck out for a few minutes and I don’t want him to think I’m standing him up.”

Maesin shrugged. “Sure, I can do that. What’s he look like?”

“Taller fellow, got a little grey in his hair but not too much – what you might call dignified, if you were given to that kind of description.” The woman said, smirking a little. “Oh, and he’s got a broken arm. Should be easy to spot.”

“I’ll keep an eye out.” Maesin said, agreeably.

“Great!” The woman drained the last of her drink and paid, leaving the bar with a wave. “Back in a few!”

Maesin collected the money (and the hidden chip), and returned to cleaning the bar. Before long, a man with a broken arm entered the bar and made his way over. “Dave! You seem to have been injured. What happened?”

“Oh, you know, hazards of the job.” David said, shrugging. “You still look too young to be working here, by the way.”

“And they still can make us look as young as they like.” Maesin said, rolling her eyes. “Either I need to get a new job, or you need to get a new topic of conversation.”

“Aw come on, it’s like our thing now. You know, instead of saying hello.”

Maesin sighed deeply. “Sure, whatever. Your ladyfriend, by the way, had to step out for a minute. She asked if you’d wait here for her.”

David looked surprised. “How’d you know…?”

“She asked me to look out for the some idiot with a broken arm.” Maesin said with a smile. “Not that big of a leap to assume it was you once you walked in.”

“And here I thought you were trying your hand at detective work.” David said with a smirk.

“Not programmed for it.” Maesin said, turning to grab a bottle of whiskey off the shelf behind her. “The usual, I take it?”

“See? You know me so well.” David sounded delighted.

“Oh,” the woman from before said, appearing behind David, “should I be jealous?”

Maesin snorted. “Not at all, miss. Dave’s too much of a pain in the ass for my taste – you’re welcome to him.”

“Call me Jill, kiddo. ‘Miss’ makes me feel old.”

“Could be worse,” David said, smirking, “she could call you ma’am.”

Jill laughed, and looped her arm through David’s broken one easily. “I suppose so. Hopefully you weren’t waiting for too long, were you?”

David lifted the glass that Maesin had placed in front of him. “Only just got my drink. Hope you don’t mind if I take my time with it, do you?”

“Of course not. Come on, there’s a table in the back.” Jill drew David away, leaving Maesin alone behind the bar again.

The rest of the night passed by uneventfully. Maesin had drawn the short straw that evening, which meant she was in charge of closing the bar down – which was, unsurprisingly enough, something she was generally willing to do. There was not as if she had much else of a social life to speak of – and if that meant that Madame Midnight was able to keep an unseen eye on this part of the operation for a little longer than she might otherwise, well, that made good sense. It gave her more time to think about what she was going to do about the fact that two of Madame Midnight’s agents were hanging out together.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t expected something like this to happen sooner or later. The problem was that using Jill Jaegerin had been something of a one-time deal, and David was not supposed to have made any kind of lasting contact with her. In fact, his specific mission had been to watch for the first sign of trouble and disappear as soon as it became apparent that Jill was making her move on the target, which he’d clearly decided not to do. Maesin wasn’t sure why he’d made the decision, but she hoped that the report he’d slipped her in the bar would shed some light on the decision. The problem with humans, Maesin was learning, was that it was difficult to predict when their libidos would suddenly become a problem.

It had certainly become an issue with Alayna. Maesin wasn’t jealous, necessarily – and she didn’t begrudge what Alayna and Maddie had with one another – but when shit had hit the fan, well, it had definitely made the both of them act a little unpredictably in the end. There was very little doubt in her mind that the ultimate plan they’d all settled on was motivated in part because of greater-than-usual concern for one another’s well-being. Then again, she – or J4D3, anyway – had decided to go along with the plan for similar concerns.

By the time she reached the storage unit, the sky was already beginning to shift to a grey dawn. The day’s reports had been dropped at their proper locations, except for the two reports delivered by Jill and David – those Maesin had kept with her to see the results as soon as possible.

The report from David was more or less what she expected. An explanation that he’d been caught off-guard by Jill’s infiltration, and as a result had been forced to engage. He’d added a comment about being open to the idea of working with Jill again down the road. Maesin snorted. That had been obvious.

Jill’s report was a little more interesting, in that it was barely a report at all. Instead, it was an image of the target (dead, obviously) and a note:

It’s not that I mind having people check up on me, it’s that you didn’t feel the need to tell me about it beforehand. That I might have killed such a delightful man doesn’t bother me too much – but if you fail to tell me the full picture beforehand again, I’ll have no choice but to hunt you down and explain my displeasure in person.

- Jill

Maesin read the note a few more times before plugging herself into charge with a snort. “Fucking humans and their goddamn emotions.”

Part Eighteen

Part Sixteen

#cyberpunk #vanquisher 2099 #serialized fiction #science fiction

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