I'd love to say if you can't remember doing that embarrassing thing that it doesn't count. It was on account of thaumaturgy coupled with a fungal dust to activate part of the brain to make a victim suggestible. Stronger than hypnotism with induced amnesia. Incidentally, a capital offense.
Is "I woke up" the right phrase?
Or that "I became aware of myself?"
In any case, my memories started abruptly, and I found myself intwined in bed with an elite classmate. She'd been subtly hitting on me since the day I'd hurt myself to keep from hurting her during a practicum she'd been T.A.ing. Top of the class, aggressive, a bit of a bully—to keep people from knowing how needy she was because of her neglectful mother—she kept finding ways to "apologize," some of which entailed her getting drunk but not succeeding with me. Dragging her home was embarrassing, but not it.
The last thing I remembered was the Boss ordering me to find a way to sell product to my "friend" and me telling him to pound sand. Another gang member had spotted me with her when she'd been doing said hitting.
There I was, sweaty, lying on tellingly moist gold satin sheets with her, having unwrapped a kerchief filled with a taste of an intelligence enhancing "weed." In that moment, I felt certain I'd ridden her, though I preferred men.
The drug horrified me. Went against my principles to sell product. I was an enforcer, not a dealer.
I shrieked and flung myself out of bed, taking sheets with me. I hit a lamp, shattering it and cutting my butt with a shard, before tripping myself with the sheets and stumbling around.
The girl was stunned a total of two seconds, then fell over cackling, laughing hysterically, unable to catch her breath.
To this day, I don't know if I'd /actually/ ridden her. She never admitted one way or the other, even now when we're good friends. I still think that the Boss was so successful with his mind control attempt (I figured out what happened months later) because, deep down, I /had/ wanted to ride her.
Fruits, veggies, grains. Most humans are vegetarian. My devil-girl doesn't mind eating fluffpa when she can't afford to buy food, like when she was homeless. It grows everywhere in every season in every climate as a weed. The pods taste like gummy cucumber mochi, and it is extremely low brow to be seen grazing (though she'll snag a pod if nobody's looking). Because of the protein demands of when she was prizefighter and an athlete, she's also pescatarian like most day angels. She is always up to sharing fish and chips with her friend Bolt! (Bolt won't eat fried kippers and onions, but my devil-girl will.)
The main antagonist has fancier tastes in general, and prefers sweets and things like High Tea. However, she's lived through bad times when rebuilding her body was paramount. She's made weapons, hunted, cleaned, cooked, and eaten forest fowl. As an aside, she spent the resources during her first few centuries to hybridize and genetically modify plants to create the fluffpa to ensure no human need go hungry again. She hates the stuff herself.
[Bolt's just let her author touch her wiry blue plumage on her wings. It feels like metal Christmas tree tinsel and silk at the same time. The day angel has wings /and/ arms. Having lifted RS into the air by grasping her author with her legs to demonstrate her strength, her author in turn is showing her an iPhone.]
Bolt: "Tha pictures on that their phone are really nice, if a bit flat looking. I've heard some science-types capture pre-cise images using sensitive chemicals, but it seems inconvenient to me when there's plenty of horns that'll etch you pictures for just a little coin /and/ vapor-deposit color for just a bit more, no machine needed. That you-phone thingy looks ex-pensive, a? But when you turn it off, ya see nut'tin."
Me: "Do you have favorite, um, etchings?"
Bolt: "I left home soon as I could leave; didn't grab much. Mother didn't much like I'd decided I like hauling long and hard, rather than going to school to earn me a proper profession. I understand when she says she worked hard to give me an easier life, but we greatly disagreed that if'n ya don't end up do'in what you like then what kind ah life is it?"
Me: "I've always wanted to be an author, but I've done a lot of other jobs to make a living I'd rather not have done. I get not wanting to compromise."
Bolt: "I wuz ten when I'd gone through this growth spurt. A grandmother pooped out and she needed ta get her wagon lifted to the landing pad atop the tenement. I hitched up when she was chatting with mother, aligned the waveguides to my just finished growing permanent flight feathers, and lifted it into the air before they could stop me. I surprised even myself. The wagon alone was 3 times my weight, and the load of a sofa, bed, and a dresser likely 4-5 times more. Woosh! Up! Defying gravity by applying my own. Mother's daemon friend had kept her eye on me. She caught this..."
Bolt pulls out a circular piece of fabric the size of a small plate. It flattens into what resembles a hand-painted daguerrotype, but the waxy surface displays the qualities of a dye-sublimation print. A diffraction rainbow reflects back as I tilt it in the light, confirming it probably is an etching, almost holographic in quality, which explains the three dimensional quality of the subject.
It is bright, but the black and white underlayment is contrasty. Soft pastel colorization makes it seem like Bolt's variegated cyan and indigo plumage hasn't changed much in sixteen years. The golden glow of eldritch energy that pervades the image makes the red sofa luminous.
The broad-shouldered girl with brown but faintly cyanic skin has a button nose, rosy lips, and midnight blue pigtails tied with red yarn. She's caught with her wings flared and feathers splayed in a classic angel pose, towering twice her height above her head. (They aren't bird wings, but human ones, with two extra joints and obvious strut ligaments.) The tack, straps, and traces are taut as she levitates an overloaded two-wheeled meadowbrook wagon of furniture. She's lifted higher than her mother is tall—likely the long-haired brunette who can be seen spinning, shocked, to look up at the very edge of the picture.
Bolt's light blue eyes are on us as she displays for us the broadest imaginable grin. It's the same contagious grin her older self displays now as I look up at her angelic self.
[Not sure if this description, her dimensions or bone structure, or the image-forming mechanism will end up being canon. It's a first hack at angel anatomy. Author retains copyright.]
I drummed my fingers on the table beside her open grimoires. Not facing the bully, I turned my eyes toward the blonde, taking in her arrogant smile. She'd gotten me to do what she wanted. She held her wand steady, and the tip glowed like hot iron. "And that's all I need to do? I can't believe you're helping me like this after all we've been through..."
The bucket-full of water and me being hit by said bucket falling off the shelf above the door. The vanishing ink pen I used on a test. The worms in my box lunch. Other things. But I was also a T.A. Some responsibilities where inescapable.
I did volunteer to help Jill.
I wanted to laugh at the "we" in that last sentence, but sighed instead. She was predictable. Very predictable. "The mnemonic, the equations, the visualization. Spot on. It balances and your wand indicates that."
"So all I have to do is say what I want to conjure?"
Predictable. I didn't grin. Instead I switched to French, hopeful. "/Tu m'emmerdes avec tes questions!/"†
She blinked. "Merde? Isn't that French for—"
With magic you really need to be specific about where to target a spell affect and what you're asking for. She'd been specific about neither.
Where your wand is pointing is the default. Her's pointed above her head.
The spell understood what she wanted enough that the closest source proved to be the horse stables. I could see it out the dorm room window. The spell mucked every stall.
A load of small round spheres crashed down around her, bouncing off her head and bounding around the room. I squealed reflexively and jumped away.
I doubled over leaning against the door, laughing despite the smell. For her part, the bully sat stunned. Her expression wanted to be a smile. She had succeeded, after all. She also knew she'd been made the fool.
Exiting out the door was the better part of valor. I grabbed the nob.
"/Amélie/," came a growl.
=-=-=-=-=
† "You're so annoying with your questions!" Literally: "You're shitting on me with your questions."
We bounced and jostled over what could be loosely considered a road in the Land Rover, the low reddish green plants of sheep country rolling by and very recognizable waddling silhouettes growing larger ahead. I can't say that I'd come to the Falkland Islands just for this because it was just a stop on a 21 day cruise, but I'd waited for this specific penguin adventure almost but not quite as expectantly as I'd waited for the Cape Horn passage. Silly me; I was positive it would be a bust, that I'd the 400mm lens to get black thumb-shaped blobs, if we saw the birds at all. Hope springs eternal, right? I'd taken to saying "peng-ees!" when I hoped nobody was listening. But, shipboard, everybody hears you chortle.
The excursion sales pitch stated we'd get close to a gentoo penguin flock. They're a smaller-sized species with a white breast and black feathers, with a yellow beak and brush stroke of white that spreads upward from the eye toward the back of their head like eyeliner. Not at garish like their royal cousins, the kings and emperors, nor interestingly decorated like the rockhoppers. At only three foot tall, they were in no way imposing...
I'd thought.
The guide led us over the uneven ground towards them. I'd grabbed my 28-105 lens for the short hike, figuring the shorter telephoto would be what it take. We'd stop where we'd not disturb the animals. The Falklands were serious about their conservation efforts.
I'd taken the 16mm with out in wild-ass hope, though the sucker weighted too much. I already carried a very heavy tripod on the trip; I'd vowed almost two weeks earlier when I lugged the thing through swampy jungle I'd never make that mistake again. It was the only one I had on the trip, however.
We kept getting closer!
The little munchkins turned their beaks toward our little party, alternately showing one beady black eye, then the other. We kept getting closer.
Suddenly, they started marching.
As a group. Maybe fifty of them.
Waddling right toward us, making pengi-noises and squawks of interest.
Rapidly, not only didn't I need the telephoto, I'd not be able to use it!
The guide said to wait. I rapidly screwed in the 16mm, though if the guide kept us separated by even 10 feet, it's be useless. All he said was, "Don't touch them. Just let them be curious," or something to that affect.
I mounted the camera on the tripod, spreading the legs wide.
I looked up at the raucous. The flock had spread out. My companions realized what was about to happen and stepped back, I realized, almost as the smell of rotten fish punched me in nose. (Yeah, if fish is what you eat, the oil is what is on you, you smell really bad.) Before I knew it, I sat down hard, isolated, surrounded, gripping my tripod with white knuckles. Their beaks faintly resembles a yellow-hilted daggers, with the blade and the handle illogically the same.
I had them squawking 360º around me, waving their little flippers, so very palpably excited.
I almost forgot to take pictures.
Soon, even with the 16mm, I couldn't take anything good! One after the other they approached. My hat got flipped away. They crowded in, looking with one eye or the other. Peering at the lens. Pecking, but not poking.
Then I got it. Wearing a coat that neutralized my outline...
I looked vaguely peng-ish. All I needed was a tiny brown cigarette burning in a long black cigarette holder gripped in my teeth! I tried to scoot back, to get perspective. Any perspective—but they insisted.
Who was this strange penguin with the big glassy eye!?
I had a feeling the guide would be laughing his ass off tonight at the pub. Sometimes you get what you ask for.
The day my world desaturated completely, leaving me living in the shadows, I thought my life was ruined. Doctors said I'd had a stroke, but they never found the damage. I would not learn for years the extent to which my acquired colorblindness left me cursed.
My solution: I drank whiskey, the cheaper the better.
It's not as properly-sighted geezers tell you: "Watching black and white TV, you see the colors." No. They might think so, but tests for a trucking license prove you don't. Pa and Son trucking, kaput. For being a hard-ass, Pa proved infuriatingly supportive, dragging me home puking up my liver, to getting my GED, to enrolling me in trade school, to finding me a job at a friend's convenience store. You'd think you encounter enough disreputable types on the night shift, it would have started there, but it didn't.
It was midnight when I walked home on a dark mid-city street. Loud barking caught my attention, but the rising crescendo of outraged yowls made my skin crawl. The grey-faced Rottweiler framed in a street light had seen better days, but big orange tabby had seen far fewer, missing teeth, squinting while yowling. A yellow bowl of food sat between.
The cat swiped, claws out.
The dog yelped, fell on it's ass, scrambling back. Whining, he watched the tabby leisurely eat. I saw a faint blue glow, like a gas pilot in a dark room, surrounding the Rottweiler; the tabby evidenced one like hot iron.
The tabby eyed me malevolently and hissed.
"Fuzzy thief!" I muttered. I felt bad for the dog four times its size.
In months that followed, I spotted blue and red gleams in stores, later at my exams. I ignored them, certain my brain made things up. I'd been working as a radiologist months when, walking to the subway at dusk, I noticed a gleam. A punk with a reversed baseball cap red as an electric stove burner stalked an old woman enveloped in blue mist.
Blue and red flares in a sea of grey shades, black shadows, and colorless gleams; I had to follow.
Near the bottom of the stairs, he snatched her purse, knocking her down. Everyone looked when she screamed, not spotting the punk. He didn't run until all eyes left him. Unsure what possessed me—memory of Gran who died when I was 8? I stepped closer to the top of the stairs.
"Hey!" I cried.
He didn't hear and barreled into me at full speed. I barely avoid striking his forehead as spun. We hit the wall together, but I knocked over the trash and rolled into the spilt mess.
The guy cursed, scrambled up, and dashed away.
Stunned and bruised, with a ripped shirt, I sat by the trash. The old woman stepped up cautiously. I blinked and focused up; in my black and white world, electric blue crackled around her. She eyed me suspiciously, leaning forward. Instead of offering a hand, she snatched her purse to her chest and rushed away.
I realized later she though me homeless; probably expected cash.
Life sometimes gives you clues. Years after losing my color vision, I had a great job as a med-tech. I enjoyed the work far easier than long-haul trucking, paid far more than Pa ever dreamed. My coworkers where friendly; we got lunch off and we weekly went for drinks after work.
Crimefighting? Knocked over into the trash, shirt ripped, nose bloodied, with naught but the memory of a Gran giving me the stink-eye.
BIG CLUE!
A grey life wasn't bad. Color warned me where /not/ to look. Ok, occasionally I pointed out a red-glow shoplifter to Ol' Bob at the convenience store. The blue or red glows I saw in crowds, shopping, or in the park... those I did ignore.
When I saw a cop standing on a street corner, glowing red, I became really uncomfortable. Not a stereotypical donut eating f—up. He looked like an all-American football star from a decade or so ago, grey starting at his temples. Teeth: sparkling. Uniform: immaculate...
An unhappy Pakistani walked from /Layla Tailor/ and shook hands with the officer. The cop walked away putting his hand in his pocket.
Why did I follow?
Because of the blinding red glow?
I noticed the man haunted the downtown district. I saw him greeting faintly red chain-wielding gang members. Once he gabbed with someone dressed like a clown; you could extort protection from anyone, except, the clown had a red nose. Red. Definitely red.
I got myself a portable camera because raising a cellphone to my face felt too obvious. A bit late, I discovered why the black case Leica was slightly more expensive than the silver. Reflections.
I called him Proper. Mr. Proper if I referred to him.
He was a meany, infuriatingly unflappable, and didn't let me do anything I wanted when Mom was on the road with her manager. Our butler could smile when necessary, but never for me. He walked into the library, expression unaccountably stiff, wearing black—not his usual brown livery. Shiny, our maid, carried a little black dress in her hands. Her eyes looked puffy and red.
I closed the grimoire and the toothy thing latched loudly. I self-consciously let it settle to the table in a cloud of sparkles. Proper's caramel eyes watched my wand moving and I quickly hid it up my sleeve. Magic wasn't "lady-like," despite how much it pleased Mom.
"Why are you crying?" I asked.
Shiny looked to Proper, stepping behind him. He said, "Your mother, Lady Black Midnight, has passed—as has her consort."
At almost 5 years old, I new many words, especially if they let me do magic, but I could recognizes words designed to /not/ say things, to make them "softer" and "kinder." My heart beat faster, suddenly, and I got flutters in my tummy.
That day I learned the word /intuition/ and that I could trust it.
Did you know... That... When you realize someone will never return home—that you feel them not being there? There's a vacuum. Nights become quieter. Your bed becomes colder. The dark shadows become denser. Certain special touches become harder to remember. Black becomes a nice color because the absence of color makes the loneliness feel better.
I gathered up my copies of Mom's albums, holding them away from me. You figured out she was Lady Midnight, the big popular opera star, right? I dropped them on the wide table in the salon, covering them with a throw pillow so I didn't have to see her face. I knew I'd cry if I saw it and I'd vowed never to cry again.
Beside the phonograph, I found a few records her "consort" had collected with songs that talked about sad and unfair things. They made sense, suddenly. I played them on my perky pink record player, after I wrapped a black blouse around it.
When my magic friend climbed over the fence that afternoon. We listened together and floated autumn leaves in the air. He was a boy, but he kept the stupid things a boy can say to himself and snugged next to me to keep me warm on that blustery day.
People from across the nation started arriving late-morning the next day. I hid in my room. Mr. Proper insisted I eat, that a lady did not faint because she didn't take care of herself. Gentle Shiny took me to the servant's kitchen and I ate with the grounds keepers, stabler, temporary wait staff, and event magicians who came and went. Everyone smiled but said nothing as we ate together.
I learned the word /camaraderie./
I didn't know that I could get a thousand adults to quiet in my presence, but the softly chatting crowd—a muted roar by any other name—silenced in a wave washing out from the driveway and across the lawn. White linen strung between poles with black piping fluttered in the breeze. I could, for a few moments, hear the colorful autumn leaves rustle in the woods beyond.
The High Lady cleared her throat.
She ruled our little state, but I'd later learn many thought she actually ruled the world because she knew so many people and their little secrets. Everyone looked her direction. My mother and her manager had died two days ago. No bodies were laid on the pyre, and never would be.
Turned out my mother had been the High Lady's friend.
I'd taken a few hours to look up /funeral/ in the library. Such events were for the living, not the dead. Yet, the High Lady never tried to comfort me despite all the High words in her elegy. Mom had been a spy who'd prevented a war, and was now a hero of the nation. The High Lady talked about "connections," how we were stronger.
In the end, She put two gold medallions around my neck. Mom and her "consort" received titles and lands, so I instantly inherited everything within one day's gallop from our town.
The High Lady whispered in my ear that she "liked" my magic. She told me, "It is better than your mother's," while slipping something into the pocket of my black robe. "Please keep practicing."
Everyone left and Shiny put me to bed without supper because I felt sick to my stomach.
That night, I cried under the covers because I wanted nobody to see.
I'd learned what /power/ meant. I wanted none of what I'd gotten. When the High Lady had approached me, all I'd really wanted was for Mom's friend to hug me and tell me everything would be okay.
I'd found a wand carved from a human bone. My next word I'd truly understand was /hate./
The dron displayed the body of a hairy black rat without the redeeming qualities of a rat face and dentition, or the comfortably familiar body plan even humans shared with rodents. My opponent slashed with a newly-formed clawed arm as I dodged its kick.
That's when the bright flashes started.
Transparent sections of "sky" ran the length of the old McNeil colony, between the three greater sections of overgrown green belt and decaying cityscape. Much of the automation still functioned, as did the meteoroid defense. The blue light reflected and refracted all through the space vessel.
The dron bent its eye-like surfaces and thus its body toward the light. Essentially, it flinched.
I didn't.
My bat hit the clawed limb. It burst like a waterskin of blue ink, making a mess as it splashed a light pole. My roundhouse kick with the side knife of my rollerblade slit it open enough that it could no longer maintain turgidity. The ameboid creature splattered into—let's call it a "chunky stew"—across the pavement.
Dron are intelligent, despite having a high-kill lifecycle like rabbits. They passed their experience, fight skills, and determination to conquer to successive generations. Like cicadas, they came back in waves. We'd wiped out their "captain" cast over a century ago. The grunts, however...
I bashed choice bits in the "stew" and spread out the drying liquid to guarantee it couldn't reconstitute, then hobbled away from what smelled like a combination of pine solution and the scent of a bloody nose. If a sprain was all the damage I'd taken after an ambush, I counted myself lucky.
I sat on a corroded green metro bench and sounded my pipe whistle. Coded /squees/ echoed around the neighborhood. I sighed as everyone checked in safe. I was going to have to clean the rollerblades, but I looked as the flashes above intensified.
Actual strikes we rare; once in my lifetime. The dron had gotten in by crashing through a pane. The colony security had repelled them from the axial docks multiple times back then.
Suddenly, I saw beams of blinding electric blue converge from either end cap before a fountain spouted from Sector 16 of Clear 3. Broken glass sparkled in the sunlight as a dark rod trailed condensation a quarter of the way to the central null-g cylinder. A bang followed as it was only a few kilometers away. A whirling storm formed quickly.
My heart raced. I found I'd shot upright, and my right pastern complained with repeated pangs. I kept my eyes on the invader, stubbornly. Back then, the dron had used a planetary reentry vehicle that had passed through to crash on the opposite side habitable zone, striking the central pillar, causing the "Ding."
The "rod," in contrast, grew wings and over the next minute as I watched, righted itself, and glided along an unpowered path toward Rogeant Township, within my district.
/Not dron. Please, let it not be dron./ I couldn't allow the thought pollute my head that, after more than a dozen decades, the invaders could have defeated Earth. If even one dron captain made it in to genetically transfer what they'd learned fighting humanity, we might fail to fight the horde off.
I had hyperventilated. I felt dizzy. Not very professional, considering all I'd worked to get to my position in the last weeks. When I lost view of the glider, I lowered myself to the cold metal bench, controlling my breath.
In.
Out.
I rubbed the area above my hoof, getting further pangs. Nothing broken.
"Get it together!" I growled at myself. I had a team I was responsible for—and now had the first new work any of us had had to deal with in a century. We might even meet unmodified original humans. Second wave chimeras had populated this colony. I stomped my rollerblade down. /Bang! Bang!/ knocking off the gore, then rolling each wheel to see if it needed lubrication. I wiped the wetness from my fingers on the cement.
I heard the first worried squee. Another followed. Alexander Rent, then Portius, then others. We were all shocked.
I stood. I straightened my uniform, then tilted my black name plate so I could read it. I'd been an officer for a week now, replacing that screwup Lodge Crandon, and, hopefully not a moment too soon. I read, "Commissioner Molly Brown," as I wiped off a drop of blue with my thumb.
I felt rather proud standing there, and afraid, which oddly also felt good. I put out of my mind speculations of whether we'd meet a dron or Earthers. I brought the whistle to my lips and ordered a meet-up at Flags Plaza as I thrust out my skates despite the pain, pumping for speed, and raced away.
"A type of fairy," she corrected, stowing the air tack, replacing it with rods more appropriate for pulling a wagon. "I felt your eyes undressing me."
My face heated up—ridiculous! "I was trying to figure out how you flew your—"
"My air taxi." She tightened a knot, then jerked the wheeled vehicle out of the mud.
"Without wanded magic."
"So you stared at my—"
"Did not— I'm a woman, too!"
"And I'm a fairy."
That made a difference? "Um. Okay, look. My roommate's father, Dr. Sheaves, taught me to read magic flows. Take a person's outline, draw bundles of squiggling electric blue lines through it. That's what I saw. You looked beautiful."
"Me?" Her breath caught. "My magic?"
She sounded...
I crossed my arms over my chest. "I'd say both, but you'd likely misunderstand."
"Try me."
She sounded open. I nodded. "I almost tickled out the casting, got hints of the buoyancy equations I might weave into a working. It's something intrinsic, I think. You /are/ the wand. And, alright—! I looked." I coughed, looking from the woods into the empty street, lit by gas lamps. "It's healing magic. I looked inside you. I healed your tired muscles while I was at it!"
Her silence made me turn.
I added, "You were the one who launched us off a cliff. I screamed. Of course I looked. You're lucky I didn't pee all over your '"taxi!'"
"Thank you." She gave a wane smile. She was a messenger, a gopher for the Boss. She cinched the tarp over the illegal weeds we'd traded for and smuggled, by air, into the city. "I'm a fairy."
"A type of."
"Doesn't bother you?"
"I'm a 'find the pages of the book more interesting than the cover' girl."
"Book nerd."
I grinned, tapping my temple. "My brain thinks differently than everyone else's. I've had to learn how to read people, even their expressions, to understand what they mean, to interpret what most people take for granted. It's fun. People are so... interesting. You, too."
She blinked. I was one of the Boss' enforcers, but I didn't beat people up, or kill even if they deserved it...
After a minute, she lifted her long dress to reveal...
Vestal transparent wings along her calfs. I knelt to look in the cliffside-moonlight. Like a lacewing, possibly green. "May I?"
She nodded.
Humid, but like waxed paper. She lifted the dress further until...
"You're a guy." Rather average, too.
"Both."
"Versatile."
"I'm a fairy. Since, with most people, I present as female..."
"If somebody stupid hassles you, point me at them."
"Um. 'Guys' or 'ladies', it usually works out, but, yes, thank you. I will, I mean, that's very nice of you."
I pointed to the street. We bumped over the sidewalk, heading toward Oldtown. "I prefer guys myself. I selected one to teach me how the plumbing worked; the women I knew approved of him. For a previous boss, I sometimes used it to project the boss' power when they thought they could control me instead. Men and women. I learned it's just nerve endings and connections. It still feels good."
"Your 'previous boss' is the blackmail he has over you?"
"I really want to attend the magic academy without my past returning to kill me. Yeah."
She whispered, "Back home, presenting as a girl didn't get you taken seriously when entering the hauling business. Thought I could start an air taxi here. Boss' goons got me a loan, got me to help on a job where a politico got hurt."
"Maybe hurt?"
"Who knows, except for pictures, maybe a 'witness?' I'm saving to ghost the gang, go home—"
"—start your own taxi service? Good for you."
Her face colored, lit by the light of the liquor store. "You don't find me—" /Disgusting/ was the word unsaid.
"I told you I think you're beautiful. Objectively. Intrinsically. Magically. And," I tapped my temple. "We're different and we're alike. I like learning about people. 'Blackmailed' isn't a bond, or maybe it is—"
A delicate hand cupped my chin. I looked at her. My breath caught as I suddenly felt my heart beat.
She flinched back her hand. "If you don't want—"
Consideration. Asking first, or admitting trespass worked for me. I brought her hand back to my chin, holding it there, feeling the warmth until...
Her body language shifted—for me.
He was a fairy. No, they were.
I held on to our wet kiss that became unsure, enjoying how it drifted from tentative to relaxed to expectant, to coy. I smirked at how they had difficulty walking when I led toward the drop point. Between my roommate, her father, this cute fairy—I was growing a family, again.
The Boss had other plans for our tonight, none of which would end well for any of us.
I was 13 years old when my dad crashed the Chevy and I learned that taking an airbag to the face would have been safer than teleporting into a field of corn at 25 miles per hour. If it weren't for the straight 3-foot wide corridor drilled through the green stalks directly in front of where the Malibu had stopped spinning, nobody would have figured out where I'd disappear to. With a broken arm, broken ribs, and a concussion—not to mention paper-cut-like lacerations on my face and arms from corn leaves—I might have lain unconscious and unfound until the next day.
As it was, I lay unconscious in the hospital. My parents and the police concluded I'd gotten ejected through a window that closed after the impact. Would it ever occur to you that your kid could teleport?
No; didn't think so.
A week later, I rode my bike to the corn field. I swatted away the bugs, seeing the still battered stalks. It didn't take a math or science wiz to see something had hit at high speed. Had I been thrown 30 feet, the impact would have curved downward and been less dramatic. Hitting the ground instead of cushioning plants would have broken my neck.
The truck had darted from the side road next to the corn field. I remembered wanting to be "there" not "here." Sometimes you get what you wish for, then regret it completely. My recollection, fuzzy as it was, was that I'd died, followed seconds later by smashing into stuff before a second pain-filled darkness enveloped me.
I had a superpower.
Obviously.
It didn't trigger again until I encountered a copperhead in the woods. Maybe treeing oneself is instinctual? The world faded, like a shut-off fluorescent dimming over seconds, as a sphere defined by jags of lightning grew around me until I floated in frigid vacuum. For seconds. My lungs emptied in a painful cough before I found myself hanging, head downward, hips snagged in a tree fork 50 feet up. It felt like I'd died. Like suicide. Teleporting felt bad like that.
The copperhead slithered away. Climbing down took hours.
Practice made it slightly more reliable. I toyed with becoming a firefighter, a rescue paramedic? But letting people know I could do it? Nah-uh. X-files reruns and popular TV disabused me of sharing. Having trouble getting a job and paying tuition, I thought up a novel profession. Stupid. Embarrassing.
I got a safety-deposit box to "case" the inside of the vault. A week later, I built the nerve to teleport. Into darkness. No lights. No ventilation. Disorientation, walls-closing-in claustrophobia dropped me to the floor. It took minutes to remember where to teleport out, because teleporting always failed if something was in the way.
The next day, the bank clerks would find a puddle of piss. Could the FBI trace DNA in urine?
Useless superpower!
It wasn't even fun. My idiocy scared me straight, anyway.
I was 25, helping out the summer before med school on a family friend's farm. They'd demolished a burnt down barn, clearing away 100 year old fire-hazard outbuildings. I was buffing my physique, truth be known. Despite the slash scar across my face from the corn field. Noreen would attend the same college and I harbored delusions of making her more interested in me in a less platonic fashion.
Tisha was a cute kid. Agile for her size, with obscene energy levels. Way too inquisitive to be left unsupervised. Listening to the news, you understand that wells and little kids attract one another like magnets. Finding I had a superpower made it all the more plausible. I'd helped pry the rotted boards off the wellhead.
I heard her wailing. I grabbed her uncle. The kid had slid into water to her chin, 20 feet down. She screamed unconsolably. Intelligence overrode simple valor: I got left to watch the well as the uncle rushed to fetch the paramedics and police.
His intelligence, not mine.
White knight fever transformed me into an idiot. I shined down my cellphone flashlight, chose a landing spot, and, excited, succeeded on the first try. I held my breath; I was that smart, at least! The space jammed my shoulders. I bruised my knees splashing down, failing not to kick the kid. It smelled like a sewer. Claustrophobic panic left me gasping, but that made teleporting easier. I pressed the child's face against my chest to shield her from the vacuum and found us in frigid darkness instantly.
We fell beside my red Ford Fiesta. The kid screamed, beating me with her fists. Scratched and bleeding up and down her body and face, she ran, wailing.
"You're welcome," I called after her, grinning.
I changed my bloody shirt and soaked jeans, so nobody'd ask uncomfortable questions. I felt rather happy with myself.
Whilst Feliz could easily pass as a Kenyan woman cosplaying an elf with cyan-dyed skin—she'd bled copper—Buddy was a whole different can of worms.
He groused, arms crossed. "I hate wearing clothes."
I appreciated he did. A lot.
In West Hollywood, they'd likely appreciate it, too. The last Halloween Carnival I'd attended, before COVID, I'd seen plenty of costumes—and captured willing photos of the same—that would get a person arrested.
Any other time.
Come to think about it, police patrolled the event. He needed clothes. Some people, men and women, didn't agree that no costume was no costume. Buddy didn't understand the concept of clothing, except for a spacesuit. He was Feliz's pilot. He'd obviously never been trained in first contact.
Buddy might get away with going undressed, though. That his "simulated" mammalian parts would appear so detailed as to look functional might not be considered over the top. To some.
Certainly not to me.
Feliz wasn't mammalian, but my sister had been a volleyball player. Her gold prom dress made for an elegant elf.
If Buddy got me and Feliz arrested, it would spark an interstellar incident. Especially, if the non-existent Area 51 got taken out of mothballs. We're humans. It could totally happen. That level of stupidity, I was pretty sure, wouldn't end well for humanity.
I was a big believer in human nature. For example, I understood how hormones worked. Mine were—
I took a deep breath. Buddy was—
My skin burned and I looked away.
This was so stupid. Whilst I suspected the plumbing would work and his "fluids" wouldn't prove corrosive or disgusting—
Okay, I'd kissed him, deeply, explaining it was a type of human greeting.
It had been a peak experience—
—my stupid hormones insisted I would repeat.
One day. Very soon.
Someday, a general would call me to task when first contact actually got made. /"So, you're the idiot who told the aliens that French Kissing was protocol? And you kissed/ him /to demonstrate?"/
I blushed hotly.
I blamed Saturday morning cartoon reruns, anime, and a whole genre of furry alien SF. I wouldn't play the victim card, though. I knew what I wanted, even if foolish.
Buddy...
He was mammalian enough, and I wouldn't get pregnant.
Maybe certain types of evolution just happened. Feliz, if you looked beyond her African features and included what I hid with the dress, resembled a Mosasaur, especially smiling. She adored salmon, raw; a hat handily hid her second set of supracranial nostrils.
Buddy, however...
He noticed my gaze and quirked a feline grin. That he might find an ape that wore clothing attractive in that way, I didn't know. I hadn't asked. I suspected that if I found the nerve to ask, and this time explain what was happening, not scamming my way, I would regret it.
He could go naked. He resembled a snow leopard—white-furred with black spots and hypnotic blue eyes—in a very Star Trek humanoid sense. But, real life wasn't TV. He was anatomically correct.
To my dismay.
Or enjoyment. You choose.
Which meant: Female cats got a rude awakening when they had sex.
I sucked in my lips. That wouldn't be fun. Might actually do more than hurt. I had to Google that ASAP to understand the physiology. No guarantee his... worked that way.
I had to ask.
Clothing. If I could just get him into clothing— "Fuck!"
I started giggling.
I threw aside costume pieces from our family box. Dad had worn this one: A polyester bikini onesie. Red. Yellow plastic utility belt. Yeah, embarrassing to see on your father, but he had worn it over tights. I dug out the gold cape and the black mask.
"Here, put this on."
Buddy crossed his arms again, which I found charming and human.
"Do it!" I ordered, frustrated for /many/ reasons.
He wrinkled his nose. Dangerous and cute at the same time.
I looked pleadingly at Feliz. "If he doesn't wear something, I can't take you guys to the event. You'll learn more about uncensored human interaction there than anywhere else on the planet, and I can totally safely take you there. /Dressed./"
I thanked all that was sacred that his spacesuit had been ripped in the crash. The scar on his arm added verisimilitude.
She gave him /the look/ with bright purple eyes.
He growled, ears lowering.
I had a cat woman suit; I could do justice to the black tights, especially if I didn't wear underwear. Wasn't planning to.
Unless I lost my nerve.
I looked at his bikinis, which barely fit. And bulged. Nicely, too.
Catgirl and Robin. In West Hollywood! Where almost anything went. I wouldn't wear the underwear.
I bent over to examine at the three-lobed leaves and I got shoved into a tree. Windmilling, I bounced off rough bark and rolled into smelly wet leaves, smashing and tearing foliage. The two older boys jumped back. Brother's new 7th grade friend drew him uphill, laughing. "Let's ditch her."
As I struggled up, looking at my scratched arms, Brother shouted, "That's not poison ivy, anyway!"
I stuck out my tongue. I wanted to learn about exploring the woods, but Brother wanted to look grown up. That meant being a stink-face to his 6th grade sis. Blinking tears, I stomped home.
Four days later, I developed blisters. On my arms and legs, and I'd scratched unmentionable places Brother heard about, then repeated enough times to friends that kids at school found out. I was there when Mom confronted him about it, him sitting in front of the game console.
"Did you push her?"
He paused the Mario, sighing loudly. "I pointed out plants."
"Doug..."
He answered, looking at me not her. "You don't wear shorts in the woods." He angrily glanced at the red angry rash all the way up my thighs. "No, Mom. Why would I push Sis? I was being nice, taking her with."
I started, "Your—"
I didn't get out /friend./ His eyes hardened: His precious year-older edgy friend who made him cool by association.
Mom asked me, "Did you trip, Susan? Are you blaming him?"
I groaned, balling my fists. So unfair! "That's right, I tripped. I always lie. Nobody believes me!" I stomped to my room, crying. I caught myself before throwing myself on the bed, which would hurt and itch. I hugged my plush leopard instead.
Okay, maybe Brother hadn't actually pushed me, but Les had a sneer, cool clothes, a fat-tire bike, and game carts. I could believe he'd do it.
Next time I saw them, I asked Les to apologize. He whispered, "Little girls should be seen, not heard, preferably neither."
I followed them into the woods, wearing pants, intent on pushing him. I'd hit my growth spurt. Could happen. If he didn't hear me first and trip me.
I got a better idea. I'd read everything about urushiol, which was an oily sap, and about sumac. And treating getting it on your skin. I returned with plastic bags, plastic gloves, a trowel, and a long-sleeved blouse.
I found plants with white berries.
A week later, the two sat in the living room, playing on the console. I snuck in with a plush beagle, sitting to his right until he went, "Gah!" followed by bad words. Brother laughed.
"My living room, too." I wagged the beagle at him.
He grabbed its face and threw it across the room. It only hit the drapes.
"Stupid boy!" I said, sticking out my tongue as I retrieved it.
Carefully.
As he grabbed the control, I rushed him, thrusting the toy at him, barking, rubbing his neck and cheek before dashing toward my room, shrieking as he swatted at me. I detoured to the bathroom. I dropped the toy in the tub, put on gloves, and "degreased" the toy, later the control.
When I started middle school, I found I already had a nickname: "Poison Ivy." It pleased me, as I now grew /Toxicodendron/ species as a hobby. My friends called me Sue Mac, and I insisted on that with everybody.
I got beat up on my third day.
Pushed from behind. I faceplanted a tree, tripped on a root, and hit a brick wall. My attacker kicked me in the side for good measure. She warned, "Stay away from Lester!" As she ran away, I heard her sneeze before I could clear pine needles from my face.
My bloody nose and scratches got examined by the nurse. The school police and my Mom got called in, but I couldn't ID anyone. I had a cracked rib. I was embarrassed and infuriated that an assembly got called on bullying.
Weeks later, I realized she wasn't Lester's friend. She had a crush on him. And allergies.
A month later I replaced her tissue box, you know, the kind with "lotion" tissue that that feels almost slimy. I'd waited until her's was almost empty. I retrieved the empty from the waste can.
She'd never been exposed to the allergen. Next week, she didn't come to school. I heard she'd gotten it in her eyes, and I'd later see she had blister scars around her nose that matched the bean-sized one on my jaw. And new glasses. The principal questioned me because of my nickname, but not the police.
Funny how my friends and I got respected at school after that.
My interest in botany bloomed into biochemistry; I later went into botanical pharmacology. And. Yes. The stories you heard about Sue "Mac" Islay are true, especially about me "helping" women with stalker and abusive boyfriends, though the police failed to prove any of it. No, I never killed anyone.
Life is unfair, but you can always even the score.
The third time my sister came to my house to dispel the darkness surrounding me, she grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the nearest clinic.
I skipped trying to explain the visible aspects of my condition, to escape our being labeled as a pranksters. They found my vital signs good and pronounced I'd live to see another day. One nurse wondered if I were becoming apathetic.
Dark cloud. Metaphorically, from their standpoint. Meant apathy?
I explained it in gory detail to my GP at UCLA medical, but our proximity to Halloween made the silver-haired man smile benignly. I couldn't demonstrate on demand. The office ran a series of blood and urine tests, then ordered a sleep study. When I reminded him my mother had had a brain tumor, he finagled an MRI.
All negative. The GP referred me to a psychologist.
Going home, I thought how it would make a great Halloween costume. I, of course, hadn't seen it. Darkness, right? My sister joked I had Ténèbres Syndrome; her husband was French. She described it as being in a cloud on moonless night. She saw circulating tendrils of fog, but not me. When she said I'd turned into a Nazgûl, without the armor, I demanded an explanation. Then I growled, remembering her first visit, and reminded her that her last visit I'd put on a nightgown.
Each time my sister took my hand, I could see again.
The psychologist decided I might actually be apathetic, that I'd grown bored with office work. I slept too much. He theorized the "Ténèbres blindness" was hysterical; I doubted my future. He referred me to a psychiatrist for medication.
My sister made a raspberry on the way home. "You're lonely." With two kids in her tiny apartment, I wasn't moving in with her and her /petit lapin/. "I think I can solve two problems," she added, "Quickly."
Darkness descended before she arrived with my new roommate. I barely registered /The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown/ now played on the TV when my vision faded to black. I grabbed for the remote, heart speeding, before I'd fail to find it. I increased the volume, maybe because my sister was right. In utter darkness, loneliness /and/ helplessness closed in.
Well...
Were I to agree to a roommate, meeting them now would ensure no secrets.
The doorbell bing-bonged. I crept along the wall to the door, then opened, saying, "Now might not be a good time."
She gasped.
A manifestly male voice said, "Oh, I'm sorry. Is something the matter?"
Flustered hearing a male voice, and that my sister would suggest a guy living with me, I sputtered. "I'm a Nazgûl."
"Oh, fun!" the guy said enthusiastically. "I wish I could see that. I don't mind Halloween parties. Apples, candies, especially good punch, and the sounds of all the people. Nice. I made a friend. Once." He petered out. "I'm Kwon."
My sister asked, "Can we come in?"
"Um. Give me your hand, first," I said, sticking out my hand.
A big, slightly calloused hand touched, then gripped mine. His touch didn't dispel the darkness.
"Um..."
"In little-sister-speak, that's, 'Please come in.' There's a step down."
The tap of a cane shocked me to my senses. She led him and he led me to the couch.
He said, "We're blind."
"No. I'm, um. It comes and goes. Total blackness."
"That doesn't sound good."
"I disagree," my sister said. "Now we can show the doctors." She touched my hand and my sight returned, showing an elderly asian fellow in glasses. He needed the cane for two reasons. When she let go, darkness enveloped me. "You're still afraid of the dark. How many nightlights do you have?"
"Less than 15."
Kwon said, "I've dealt with darkness since I lost my sight in 2003. Darkness has become my friend. I see with my ears and fingers. May I?"
"What?"
"Touch your face?"
"I, um, okay." Hands delicately brushed my cheeks, nose, eye ridges, ears—then he took my hands in his. He had me do the same to him. Tougher skin, wrinkles, bristly cheeks. In darkness, I felt kindness, patience, and gentleness.
The sudden distinct perception fascinated me.
He said, "I could show you the ropes."
My sister asked Kwon, "Do you mind crowds?"
"So long as they don't crowd me," he said, laughing. "Good with my cane, too."
"Don't worry, I'll go with you both. I bet I can find a dress or something in her closet that will be a suitable costume for the West Hollywood Halloween Carnival."
"No, no, no," I said.
Her voice raised. "Little sister, you'll be a Nazgûl with a cross-dresser as as a plus-one in West Hollywood. You've got the best costume. People will give you space... and we'll get plenty of pictures to show the doctor!"
What an understatement. My Nazgûl "costume" made the local news, then then morning shows.