June 2009 – Of Warmth, Of Dragons

My new digs are proletarian plus. A mattress, a chemsink and toilet. The plus part is one grimy synplas chair, faded from black to dingy gray. I don’t want anything that even reeks of habitation since I don’t expect to be stranded here more than a few dozen sections before I finish whatever job they want done. In the meantime is a whole lot of waiting going on, not one of my talents. I only hope none of these crawly creeps manages to piss me off in the meantime. They confiscated all my weapons on docking, but that never slowed me down before.

On my way to my first meeting with the local officials, I notice how clean everything is. It’s unusual not having to dodge excrement or trash on the sidewalks. There aren’t even the ubiquitous piles of DisPlas^TM, those containers that are supposed to self-destruct but never do, usually only collapsing into lumps of colorless synplastic, ugly wherever they litter the landscape.

A sign glimpsed out of the corner of my eye stops me. Cold. There in the middle of the street is a grimy container kiosk, faded plastic windows and scratched joins holding together cheap synplas walls, nothing remarkable except for the signs and menus in Twencenglish, the language of my birth parents. It’s closed. A flicker of hope courses through my breast at the thought of a cup of java or something stronger for those hours when my body and soul ache for your touch, and sleep dissolves into memory that hardens my stomach into oven-baked clay.

I swagger into the meeting room. The formal arrangement includes chairs, no table, and a ventilator in the middle of the room to take away unpleasant human odors. They have a problem with my smell? I wait, butt scraping the edge of the chair until they finish their mind feelies with each other. We get down to business. They lay out the contract for me. Neat and easy. Disgustingly so. I agree and that’s that. A few credits and a free ride to my next gig is all I ever ask for as payment. And all I ever get. Fuck, it’s all I ever deserve so why change it?

Everything as usual. I do my thing and go on to the next job. Just like shuffling one foot in front of the other. Well, almost anyway. Life goes on.

Except without you there’s no point in it.

My mood perks up when I realize I can schedule the job to dovetail with my plans for the evening. I retrieve the supplies I demanded for completion and go back to my digs for a long nap and a few forbidden smokes. Around about section twelve, I head over for that cup of java, hoping none of them antenna waving jerks are hanging around to check out the scene. Things are bad enough in this life without witnesses to my disgrace.

I sit right at the bar and there she is. Nothing remarkable, but that is what they do. It’s who they are, alright. She serves me up some remarkable beans — I will give her that. We get to talking. I just let her do what she does, knowing it won’t take more than a half a section.

I switch to something stronger. She begins shifting. It’s decent of her to wait. I begin to have second thoughts. She picks out a few faces from my past to feel me out. Relatives, friends. I sip clear grain. It happens fast, sooner than I thought.

You come back.

I let the feeling wash over me like remembered rain. I smile at you, ask how you been. You pull stuff out of me, make me laugh. Just like old times. Just like every time. For a few minutes, I even forget why I’m here.

She shouldn’t have done that.

Your beautiful face is always the last thing I see.

It’s a face that I never escape from. And those warp-holed shapeshifters pick up on it every time. That’s why most of the known worlds hate their kind.

That’s why I have to kill them.

Don’t you see, it’s all I have left and it’s what I do best, my livelihood and my curse. So take that as my apology, and I’m gonna lay your ruined head down now.

I fold your hands on top of your breast before I leave but don’t dare kiss those cold but perfectly curved lips. That’s why I need to keep moving, taking any job I can.

I can’t live with you because you’re not really there. And without you, I travel anywhere in the Universe I can call vengeance my home.

Sharon Kae Reamer is an American seismologist working at the University of Cologne, Germany. Her dark Iron Age fantasy short story The Raven’s Curse is scheduled to appear in The Phantom Queen Awakes anthology to be published by Morrigan Books. Sharon writes speculative fiction and is working on her third novel.  She lives with her husband, son, and Ramses the cat on the outskirts of Cologne. In her spare time, she also works as an assistant editor for the ezine Allegory.

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