When I was six years old, my father left me in the family car to pop into a shop real quick to grab us some snacks for our road trip, but he forgot to apply the parking brakes, and while he was in the store, the car rolled backward and over the edge of a three hundred foot ravine. Instead of losing my life that day, I gained an ability.
I could relive a dead person’s murder.
You’ll notice that I called it an ability and not a gift, because living through the experience of dying was no day at the beach. From a young age, all I had to do was physically stand in a crime scene and I knew what it felt like to be shot, stabbed, strangled, drowned, poisoned, immolated, crushed beneath a rockslide, mauled by wild animals…you get the picture. And if I ever got sick, a hospital would be the last place I’d ever go to. Worst experience of my life.
I tried all manner of drugs to dampen the ability, legal and otherwise, to no avail, so I learned to live with it as best I could manage, and decided to turn lemons into whiskey lemonade by becoming the first and only afterdeath scene investigator. The guy you hired, when all the evidence led to a dead end, to tell you exactly who offed your favorite aunty, philandering spouse, or even your precious little pooch. And yes, I also felt animal murders, as well. Lucky me.
In this line of work, I got my fair share of skeptics, people who doubted that I could do what I claimed I could do, but hired me out of desperation. Such was my current client, Mrs. Marjorie Lydell, whose husband was found dead in a hotel room, in an unsavory part of town, nowhere near his home or place of employment.
Mrs. Lydell asked me to meet her at the hotel room, which she rented, after it had been given the once over by crime scene cleaners and reopened for public use. It was a small room filled with the almost imperceptible cheap hotel scents of old sex and distant natural death, to which I was gratefully immune, both emanating from a bed that dipped in the center like a swayback horse. On a table beside it was a wash basin and pitcher that passed for the en suite bathroom.
As I looked at Mrs. Lydell, a handsome woman in her late forties, I was overcome with a sensation, and for a split second, I thought I was in love because my body got tingly all over, goosebumps sprouting everywhere, and my pulse crackled like lightning. Then I glanced over my shoulder and saw the ghostly after image of Marjorie Lydell, dressed in different clothes and I realized before I passed out, that she was holding a translucent live wire. I, or rather Mr. Lydell, was being electrocuted.
“Where have all the living people disappeared to?” Sally asks and I’m not quite sure whether she’s addressing the question to me or merely ruminating out loud as she is sometimes known to do. “I mean the real-life people, not the walking dead with their heads buried in electronics that fight to live in overcrowded cities only to isolate themselves in public and form fake surface relationships on the internet.”
I make the assumption she is talking to me and I’m about to reply, but either I’m wrong in thinking the conversation included me or I took too long to speak up, because she continues, “I am so tired of dealing with avatars,” this is the name Sally applies to all sentient lifeforms capable of effectively communicating with her who ignore her for text messages and Instagram videos. “There must have been some shift in the social axis that I wasn’t made aware of that suddenly made every avatar I encounter uber unfriendly, discourteous and unkind. It’s like I’ve suddenly become a stranger to my neighbors, the city—hell, the whole goddamned societal globe. How is a person supposed to exist today without someone, anyone, offering up a bit of emotional support or maybe even just a helping hand? Am I the insane one here?”
I don’t answer, chiefly because my truth and her truth are rarely in alignment and I have no desire to hurt her feelings or open up a can of worms. I decide it’s a safer bet all around to allow her to vent her frustrations.
“And now everyone tosses the term friend around so haphazardly,” Sally gestures broadly into the open air as if delivering a sermon to an unseen congregation. “Slapping it onto a multitude of undeserving random strangers so that the original meaning of being someone that shares trust, confidence, and support, despite the odds and no matter the situation. And if an expert were to examine current day friendships, they would find that the relationships only last as long the favors derived from the friendship continue to exist.”
“Well, I’m your friend,” I finally chime in. “And none of that applies to me.”
“I’m not talking about you, of course.”
“You’re not talking to me, either. This is the verbal equivalent of a thread rant and I’m not saying that I don’t understand how you feel and agree with what you’re saying in part but I’d like to address this topic in a broader sense, if I may?”
Sally is visibly put-off by my interruption but gestures, “By all means, fill your boots.”
And I explain to her that one of my pet peeves with social media profiles and posts is the rampant negativity that prevails. After touting how happy, friendly, down to earth they are, individuals will proceed to run off a list of don’ts and other things that they absolutely positively will not stand for.
“But why not simply concentrate on the positive? And that includes you,” I pause to gauge her reaction. Her face is expressionless, perhaps I should stop but to be honest I want her to hear what I have to say, so I press on.
“As overused as the Gandhi quote is, why not try to Be the change you want to see in the world? Which means, perhaps instead of expecting people to immediately conform to your desired way of being—”
“Desired?”
“Yes, desired. Are you really being the type of person to the avatars that you want them to be to you? Why not pay it forward and set the example by walking the walk in addition to talking the talk? You want people to wave Hi to you on the street? Try waving first.”
“So, the responsibility rests solely on my shoulders?”
“Do I even have to answer that, Sally? If you want the people within your sphere of influence to treat you differently, who better than you to take on the responsibility?”
Sally opens her mouth, closes it, then opens it again but says nothing, obviously attempting to formulate her response. In the silence, I continue.
“What if all the avatars you pass every day, the ones who somehow seem familiar for no apparent reason, the ones who brush past you without so much as an Excuse me, were all meant to cross your path for a reason?
“What if a soulmate—yes, I believe you can have more than one—someone who held a message for your life and possible insights into your future, was lost because you were too deeply into your righteous indignation to catch their gaze?
“Or better yet, what if every bump was meant to be a chance for an avatar to share something they know that might help you on your path, or maybe even better still, you happen to be one of those people holding onto a piece of their life that needs to be let go or needs to be passed on like a story you need to share?
“Think about it, haven’t you ever come across people in your life you think will be there forever, and then they just fade away? Moving onto their own journeys, their own paths only to find them in your life again, stronger and more beautiful?
“And speaking of beautiful, this is a crazy, beautiful world, but you only get to see how wonderful it all is if you take chances. Don’t let opportunities pass you by. You do you, live your life and stay angry and vigilant if you’re comfortable with that but pay attention to the signs that maybe there are messages out there for you. Maybe there are people you need to meet, souls that can add to your journey through life. Souls to help you grow, souls to make you cry. Adding strength to your life and your soul. Just maybe for everything, there is a reason.”
“And you accused me of going on a rant? What the hell was that and where did it come from? That’s the most you’ve said to me in the two years I’ve known you,” Sally says, raising one eyebrow, then lowered them both suspiciously. “Wait a minute. You mean you, don’t you? You think you’re the person that’s meant to be my soulmate?”
I can feel the blush rising from my collar, up my neck and enveloping my face and I am powerless to stop it.
“Is that such a crazy idea?” I ask in a voice that cracks like I’ve regressed to puberty.
“I-I don’t know,” Sally shakes her head like she’s trying to shift the idea into place. “This is all so left field. Maybe we can discuss it over a cup of coffee?”
I pull my phone out of my belt clip, unlock it and begin scrolling, “Um, okay, friend, but just let me check my messages to see if I missed an important text or something.”
Sally’s face flushes with anger but before she can rage at me, I throw my hands up in surrender.
“Just kidding! It’s a joke! I’m joking!” I smile as I put my phone away.
Sally whacks me on the arm hard enough to sting, but she’s smiling, too, so maybe, just maybe, things might work out for the both of us.
We hated each other from the moment we met. No logical reason, just something at our mitochondrial levels, some cellular vibration or preternatural instinct caused a repulsion between us instead of attraction.
But a cool current ran beneath our fiery surface feud, a sameness we hadn’t discovered until we accidentally had a civil conversation and I realized just how interesting she was. She must have felt something similar because during the conversation she made me promise that I would not sleep with her under any condition. The request caught me off guard coming out of left field like that but, to be honest, the thought had not crossed my mind, so I agreed without a second thought.
The following day we were back to normal but every once in a while we shared a pleasant conversational moment. When the holiday season finally rolled around, a bizarre set of circumstances led us to being alone in her home. She had been drinking but was far from drunk and I supposed it allowed her to feel a little more at ease with me so we talked and talked and talked and talked. It had been a long time since I held a woman’s company in conversation alone until the break of dawn.
She mentioned she was getting tired and I took that as my cue to leave… when she stopped me. Producing a crochet blanket from behind her leather couch, she told me how comfortable it was and how she had fallen asleep on it many times. Then she laid down on the couch to demonstrate and invited me to come see for myself.
So I did.
I slid behind her, the big spoon to her little one, with the scent of her perfume, shampoo and even the liquor mixing in my nose and making my heart race. I held her and we talked, soft, slow and sweet. The opportunity was there and if I said I was not tempted in the least, I would be bald-faced lying. But to this woman who was in so many ways out of my league, this woman who whispered “I love that way your mind works,” I had given my word and I kept it and I have kicked myself every day since.
I refuse to admit I love her. Chiefly because I don’t, or at least not in a way I’d like to. Not in a healthy way. I am infatuated with her, but it is different from any infatuation I’ve ever felt to date. I see her everywhere and in nearly anyone who comes close to her hair coloring and body type. To be clear, I do not fantasize about her nor can I picture a future in which we share a life, but I cannot get her out of my mind. I know exactly where she is but I will not contact her. On the rare occasions that she contacts me, I sometimes do not respond. I do not know why I do this.
Her last text message read:
Are you ghosting me? Something I said? Whatever the deal is, when you know what you want, contact me.
I will never tell her what I truly want because she cannot give it to me. I do not desire her, but I do miss her. No, not really. Not in that way. I want her attention and possibly her affection but not all the time. I guess all I really want is the ability to travel back in time and relive that special one-of-a-kind night when all the pieces fell into place…
The following is an excerpt from a police interview with Imogen Debenham conducted by Detective Sergeant Ellis Oxley on 14 March 2019:
DS Oxley: Do you have any idea why you’re here?
Debenham: Your sniffer dogs…
DS Oxley: Cadaver dogs.
Debenham: Made sure to get that little detail in, didn’t you? All right, your cadaver dogs found something in my rose garden.
DS Oxley: The investigators unearthed a box…
Debenham: Made of four-inch thick cedar planks. It measured 1.143 meters long by .381 meters wide.
DS Oxley: How do you know the precise measurements of the box, Miss Debenham?
Debenham: Call me Imogen, and I know the measurements because I built the box, as you call it, with my own hands.
DS Oxley: And what would you call the box, Imogen?
Debenham: We both know what it is, don’t we? It’s a coffin that I buried just shy of 23 years ago, which makes me wonder why now? What sort of tip could you have received 23 years after the fact and from which of my neighbors?
DS Oxley: That isn’t relevant at the moment, Imogen…
Debenham: Then what is relevant?
DS Oxley: We found remains inside the coffin, which included bones.
Debenham: It’s interesting the details you leave out.
DS Oxley: What do you mean?
Debenham: What type of bones did you find? Animal? Human?
DS Oxley: I’m not at liberty…
Debenham: Detective Sergeant, I intend to cooperate fully with your investigation. I have agreed to this interview without a solicitor, and will answer any question put to me truthfully, provided that there exists a level playing field of honesty between us.
DS Oxley: A quid pro quo situation?
Debenham: Always been a fan of the Thomas Harris novels, I have. So, let’s look at the facts, shall we? You’ve found remains on my property, and although you suspect foul play, I have not been formally charged. So, what type of remains have you found?
DS Oxley: (clears throat) Our forensic team have determined that the bones are not quite human, but they bear certain similarities.
Debenham: Here is where we run into a bit of difficulty.
DS Oxley: How so?
Debenham: I can tell you exactly what they are, the remains, but you won’t believe me.
DS Oxley: You have no idea what I’d believe. I’ve come across things in my line of work that would make a madman’s head spin. So, let’s have it, then.
Debenham: You wouldn’t think to look at me now, but when I was younger, I caught the eye of every man I came across, and I enjoyed the fruits of my beauty and pursued all manner of pleasure with reckless abandon.
DS Oxley: What does this have to do with anything?
Debenham: I was careless. I became pregnant. No idea who the father was, and out of all the men who claimed to love me, who’d do anything for me, only one stepped up to take responsibility. He was a kind man, not the sort I was usually attracted to, but he was attentive and saw me through the pregnancy…
DS Oxley: Imogen…
Debenham: It was a stillbirth.
DS Oxley: I’m…sorry for your loss.
Debenham: The funny thing was I hadn’t planned on keeping the baby. After it was born, I was going to put it up for adoption, and let the kind gentleman and myself off the hook, because I wanted to return to my lifestyle, only a little bit wiser as not to repeat this mistake. But, as soon as I saw the lifeless body of my newborn, I became inconsolable.
DS Oxley: The remains we found were not consistent with that of a newborn child.
Debenham: Of course not. My biological son, it was a boy, in case I hadn’t mentioned, was offered to a family who excelled in the care and raising of dead children, and in exchange, I was given Qomal.
DS Oxley: I need to stop you there, Imogen. Are you saying this family raised your son from the dead?
Debenham: Don’t be absurd. The family was from a race of the embalmed dead, who would embalm my boy and care for him as only they could. They were in a similar situation with a living being on their hands, with no means to care for it.
DS Oxley: So you swapped a dead baby for a living one?
Debenham: I swapped my son for Qomal. So much like a child. All it ever needed was a cup of milk with a few drops of my blood in it every morning, some toys to play with, and sweets and biscuits to eat. To keep the contract intact, all that was required was lighting a black candle every night, burn some incense, and recite a mantra.
DS Oxley: What sort of contract?
Debenham: A Qomal isn’t forever. They’re meant to help you through the grieving process for the loss of a child. It’s like a toddler, you see, except its skin has a greenish hue, its eyes are red and clouded, its ears are pointed, and it has rows of sharp teeth. But while it was alive, I saw none of this, because I was its mother and only viewed my Qomal through the eyes of love.
DS Oxley: And when the contract expires…?
Debenham: You mean when my grief was manageable? The Qomal grows weak, calcifies and dies.
DS Oxley: How did you know to do all this? Making the exchange, observing the terms of a contract?
Debenham: I didn’t. It was my kind gentleman who introduced this world to me.
DS Oxley: What is his name?
Debenham: That I will not tell you. I made him a promise and I intend to honor it.
DS Oxley: Are you two still together?
Debenham: No, we parted ways when Qomal died.
DS Oxley: Why?
Debenham: I was meant to cremate Qomal, place the ashes in an urn and bury it beneath a flower bed, but I couldn’t bring myself to burn something I loved, something that helped ease my pain and nurse me back to sanity. The gentleman said there would be consequences, and I have waited 23 years for them to arrive.
At this point in the interview, loud scratching noises can be heard on the recording, as well as the sound of footsteps and a door being opened, followed by the guttural snarls of an unspecified animal.
DS Oxley: Holy Mother of Jesus!
Debenham: My baby?
The recording concludes with the sounds of screaming amidst a great commotion.
The current whereabouts of Detective Sergeant Ellis Oxley and Imogen Debenham have yet to be determined.
Lolsy never believed in infatuation at first sight. To her, attraction had always been a mental process. Physical beauty was a temporary thing, a pretty wrapping that often disguised an ugly package. Then she met Marleton, a new hire at work, who, at first glance, awakened an inner poet she never knew existed.
To her, this man was that magical type of handsome that seeped into the marrow of her bones, that drew her into the depth of his eyes, which would have been beautiful in any shade, with the siren song of his gentle voice. When he spoke her name, her mask slipped, the one she wore to keep the world at bay, her heartbeat quickened, and she became lost in lurid fantasies of how she would please his body all over the conference room, on the floor, the chairs, on top off the table, all while her coworkers watched with envy.
She caught herself locking eyes with him constantly, where he would smile and patiently wait for her to initiate conversation, but her vapor-locked brain turned her mute, forcing her to turn away in embarrassment. At night, she pondered how she could have fallen head over heels for an absolute stranger who was eight years her junior? She had never been interested in younger men before and sincerely doubted they would have had anything in common, so she made it her business to avoid him, but the office was too small for that to work effectively, and all it took was for him to laugh at her weak attempts at humor to be sucked into fantasies about having him on the copier machine, in the break room, in the elevator, and in the parking lot, on top of the cars, again, so all her coworkers could bubble over with jealousy.
And she knew the sex would be spectacular because she was an Aries and he was a Sagittarius, and everyone knew that Aries was ruled by Mars, that red hot passion planet, and Sagittarius was ruled by Jupiter, the planet of philosophy and luck. Their signs tended to look at the world in the same way, and his Sagittarius liked to take risks under Jupiter’s indulgent influence, and her Mars was all about initiative, and taking aggressive action. So, why then was she stalling? If she simply took what belonged to her, she knew he would be ready and willing to go along for the ride.
And that was all it took. Lolsy made her mind up to pop the latches on her restraint, as she damned the torpedoes, and went full steam ahead. The following day at work, she marched up to Marleton and told, not asked, but told him that they were going out on a date, and as she suspected, he offered absolutely no resistance with anything she planned for their night together.
When they met at the restaurant, Marleton arrived in casual wear, while Lolsy dressed up sexier than sexy, because she wanted to make her intentions clear. You don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. This man was going to have to step up his game. She was going to burst onto the scene like a crossfire hurricane, and run him through his paces, and make him feel the way he made her feel from the very start.
All that changed the moment he greeted her and pulled out her chair at the table. Her bravado evaporated, making way for sweet happiness, as they talked and flirted their way through the meal. The chemistry between them was undeniable, and they effortlessly progressed from laughter to kisses, to sweet whispered exchanges, to an Uber ride back to his apartment.
The time for pretense had long passed, so they went straight from the front door to the bedroom. In his presence, in this place, all Lolsy’s foolish notions of being in control melted away. The nearness of Marleton, filled her nose with a scent that let her know instantly that he was her drug. His arms wrapped around her back and in one gentle pull, their lips touched and his tongue probed her mouth and she was intoxicated in an instant.
“Whatever you want, you can have,” Lolsy said, trying her damnedest to focus on getting the words out clearly through the heady trance he put her under. “There isn’t a thing I can do to stop you, and I don’t want to stop you.”
With a laugh, Marleton lifted Lolsy off her feet, carried her to the bed, and set her down gently onto the mattress. He stripped her expertly, gingerly, before disrobing himself, and climbing in the bed beside her. His fingers combed through the softness of her hair, before moving along her cheek, down to her neck, and every inch of skin he brushed, his lips blessed that area with a kiss that sent electricity through her body. He went down one side, and came up the other, and when they were face to face, they locked eyes. He silently asked for consent and she granted it gladly with a nod. Then he was all business, moving atop her, slotting their bodies together as if they were missing pieces of a puzzle that had finally become whole.
They engaged in amorous congress for hours that seemed like days that seemed like years. When all was finally said and done, a weak and breathless Lolsy smiled and said, “I knew it would be like this.”
“You did?”
Lolsy nodded, “Of course. You’re a Sagittarius.”
“Far more than that, I’m afraid,” Marleton chuckled. “I’m also an incubus.”
Off her confused expression, Marleton explained that he was a demon, of sorts, who engaged in sexual activity with women in order to prolong his life. If she understood, or objected, he could not be sure, for Lolsy was too feeble by this point to effectively communicate, but although a demon, he was not a monster. He made her as comfortable as he could manage, as he drained her of every iota of her life force.
Shinichi Mochizuki’s solution to the ABC Conjecture
One of the major downsides to tech advancement on Earth, after our biggest brains finally made faster than light interstellar space travel a reality and we opened our planetary borders to all friendly offworld visitors, was that the human dating pool became oh so very shallow.
Bored with the same old same old, curious and adventurous single and married people began dipping their toes in alien waters, some for the experience, others for committed relationships, and the rest simply for bragging rights. It had gotten so bad that finding a partner interested in a same species relationship became near impossible. And those not willing to get it on with an extraterrestrial, chose to marry their farm animals, automobiles, cartoon characters and even holograms, rather than share intimacy with another human being.
I tried to fight the good fight and preserve the human race, but there’s only so much rejection a man can face before throwing in the towel. I resigned myself to a fate of hermitry, and searched for hobbies to occupy my mind until the day my card was punched for the final time.
But the universe wasn’t done tormenting me yet. On my birthday, I received an anonymous gift in the mail: an all expenses paid trip to an orbital platform that was hosting a speed dating event. My first reaction was to chuck the invite in the trash and return to my 40,000 piece jigsaw puzzle of the notorious math problem, “The ABC Conjecture.” What stopped me was the 7 course meal and open bar, guaranteed, whether you successfully found a match or not.
Shinichi Mochizuki’s mathematical solution could take the back seat for a night, while I stuffed my face in space and got absolutely pie-eyed.
I made a half-hearted attempt at looking decent, no sense in getting turned away at the space jitney depot for improper attire, and got a jumpstart on the festivities by knocking back as many complimentary cocktails on the flight up to the orbital platform as I could manage.
The plan was to make a beeline for the food and bar, and when I had my fill, catch the next available jitney home. The catch was that I had to complete at least one round of speed dating before having access to food and drink. The second disappointment was absolutely my fault for not reading the invite carefully. I was one of ten humans in attendance, all of them male, because this was an interspecies speed dating event. How in the world did I overlook that detail?
For four minutes at a pop, I went through the motions of engaging in conversation with an Onzuid, a Thraikket, a Brelgut, a Mellad, a Thaeqen, and a Raphoth, and a majority of those dates were spent struggling to communicate in broken english, which I had to give them credit for. They knew more of my language than I knew of theirs.
My final obstacle was a Neita, who spoke no english at all. She, the assumed pronoun because she wasn’t able to convey one herself, spoke an melodies while her bioluminescent skin shifted through the color spectrum with each note. I had no idea what she was saying but I had to admit, it was beautiful to watch.
When it was my turn to talk, I decided to sing about my upbringing, not knowing whether she would be impressed by my effort, or take offense, thinking she was being mocked, but I was only here for the food and drink, so what the hell.
I sang about being born in The Bronx, in a neighborhood that history marked as one of the most dangerous places to live in New York at the time, but on my block, everyone spoke like they knew you. We played on the concrete year ’round because there was no local park, ate free bologna and butter sandwich lunches at the public school during the summer and filled our days playing handball, riding bikes, competing in games like Steal The Bacon, Hot Peas And Butter, Ringolivio, Freeze Tag, Skelzies, and when we got a little older, Run-Catch-Kiss. Water fights consisted of anything you could fill from the open fire hydrant (pots, pans, cups, buckets, or whatever). And if you didn’t go home dirty, you weren’t having a good time. We ate whatever we wanted because no one knew a thing about food allergies (and fried chicken and red Kool-Aid was as important as the air we breathed). We fought with our hands and made up the next day like nothing happened. And if you showed disrespect to your elders, or looked in their mouth while they were talking to grown folks you would get put in your place immediately. And the universal rule was, once the street lights came on, that was our curfew. Anything left undone would have to wait until tomorrow.
When I was done, she smiled (at least I took it to be a smile) and glowed a calming shade of yellow. The bell rung and I nodded goodbye and made my way to the dinner table. To my surprise, she joined me, and we sang to each other for the rest of the night.
When the event was over (yes, I stayed to the end) and before we went our separate ways, I gave her my phone number. I wasn’t sure if she understood the gesture, if she would call me, or even how we would manage to meet up if she did call. All I knew was that love would find a way.
A man died today, a man whose name I never knew. We were given codenames, you see, and they became our identities. I was Eilonwy, named after the princess in my favorite book at the time, The Book of Three from The Chronicles of Prydain. And he was called Gurgi. I was a little girl when we met and the things I first remembered about him were that he always opened doors for me and he always carried a gun.
I never touched a door when Gurgi was around. He opened them when I approached and also as I exited. He spent a great deal of his time with me standing by doors or shooing me away from windows. I was too young to understand at the time that he was saving the life of a hot-tempered, stubborn and resolute little girl who happened to have royal blood coursing through her veins.
A fit man, ramrod straight back, dressed in a neatly pressed grey suit that he wore like a uniform, Gurgi was always polite even when I tested his patience demanding to play with his guns. He had so many of them. Mostly revolvers, with the occasional pump shotgun or automatic rifle. His belts were decorated with bullets and small pouches, compartments that held first aid kits, anti-venom and antidotes for most known poisons.
Gurgi would talk with me after the room had been secured and measures put into place so that my safety was insured. He told me of his many professions before finding employment with my father. A physician on his homeworld, he was unable to secure a medical license on Earth and forced to find work as an electrician, a skill taught to him by his father. A skill that introduced him to my father.
After being properly vetted, Gurgi was hired to rewire our home and during that time, the house came under attack and I was separated from my family. Men came to me, to hurt me, to abduct me, to possibly even kill me. Thankfully I never had the opportunity to discover which, as Gurgi happened upon the men who happened upon me and dispatched them. He took a gun off one of my attackers and shot them all until they no longer moved. A skill taught to him by his mother. A skill that impressed my mother.
On the rare occasion, he spoke about the life he left behind. His wife, whose name I sadly couldn’t remember, was famous in their colony for the roast she prepared for the Feast of Xoncha, a planetwide day of life appreciation. She roasted bamen but never relied on shop-bought, insisting instead on raising her own from pups that were well fed, cared for and loved just shy of becoming pets. Gurgi’s role in the process included rendering the bamen incapacitated, exsanguination, scalding and dehairing, evisceration and dividing the carcass in half longitudinally. The last one weighed five hundred and sixty kilos and was simply too large for his wife to handle alone.
I asked him if his wife served the bamen with its head.
“Of course!” Gurgi replied. “The tongue, cheeks, and ears were served as the appetizer with dipping sauces made from blood and innards.” I crinkled my nose and he burst into raucous laughter. It was the only time he both laughed and saddened when he reminisced about his life before me. It would be years before I understood that only love and nostalgia had the power to make you feel both happiness and sorrow at the same time.
He took breaks between the tellings to smoke. Out of necessity, not habit. In order to exist in our atmosphere, his lungs required an intake of a combination of elements that could only be found in the smoky by-product of a chemical reaction. He always made sure another man stood guard as he left the area to light his pipe, even though I told him I was quite capable of taking care of myself.
One recent evening when Gurgi stepped out into the garden to prolong his life, a number of people disguised as guards cut power to the house, slipped through father’s security systems and attempted to kidnap me. Gurgi hadn’t finished tamping down the compound in his pipe before he whirled to the sound of my muffled cries.
Glass exploded as two shots ripped through the sliding patio door and tore jagged wounds into two of the faux guards, one in the neck, the other in the eye. Gurgi crashed through the door in a shower of broken glass and before he could react, a baton from his blindside whipped down hard on his forearm and his gun went spinning across the floor.
He flung his arm back brutally as he spun, a wild swing — and a lucky one. His elbow smashed the nose of the attacker behind him who dropped like a stone. A heel to the Adam’s apple made sure the intruder stayed down.
Gurgi turned and locked eyes with the woman who held me by the throat and used me as a shield. He assessed but didn’t move. His stance was wide, his hands flexed.
My captor wrapped my hair around her hand, balled it into a fist, yanked my head back, and placed the muzzle of her pistol on my exposed neck. Gurgi dove, tackling us both to the ground. A shot went off before the gun skittered out of the woman’s grip.
The woman was agile, nimble. She spun away from Gurgi, and they both scrambled to their feet and faced each other, circling. The woman drew a knife from her belt and with cat-like reflexes leapt forward. The blade caught the light as it arced down and sliced into Gurgi’s arm.
I scurried to a corner of the room and grabbed a gun and aimed it in the direction of the two circling shapes in the dark, unable to get a clear shot and not wanting to shoot Gurgi by mistake.
“Run!” Gurgi yelled through a tight throat. He hadn’t smoked his compound so every breath he took now was slowly killing him. “Go!”
I hesitated, my heart pounding painfully, worried that I’d make the wrong choice. Too afraid to pull the trigger, and resisting the urge to turn and run.
The moment Gurgi shot me a sideward glance, the woman feinted to the side, then spun around, using her canted balance to put weight behind her thrust as she lunged. Gurgi grabbed her knife hand but the momentum of her pivot crashed her into him. They slammed into the wall with teeth-rattling violence, furiously grappling. The woman drove a knee into Gurgi’s midsection. He exhaled a grunt and nearly fainted.
She struck him with her free hand, a backhanded fist to the temple and followed with another knee to his stomach. Gurgi’s legs crumpled beneath him. The woman pounced on top of Gurgi, straddling him. He blocked her fatal knife thrust, but the blade bore down directly over Gurgi’s throat.
The pair were locked in a death embrace, but the woman had the advantage. She pressed her body on the blade and Gurgi struggled beneath her. Slowly, inexorably, the blade inched down until the tip pierced his skin and drew blood.
With the last of his strength, Gurgi bucked and threw the woman off balance. I panicked and slid the gun to him. The woman recovered quickly and brought the knife down on him again. A shot rang out. The back of the woman’s head exploded outward. She blinked once in disbelief, tugged weakly on Gurgi, then dropped to the floor.
I ran to Gurgi, who shivered and convulsed, as he fought every instinct to draw a breath. I fumbled through the compartment on his belt where he kept his pipe. It was empty. The garden! I raced outside and scoured the grass until I found where he had dropped the pipe. When I returned with it, it was too late. He was dead.
He will be sorely missed—both by his family and by his many friends, like me, whom he helped and inspired. But as he rests from his life’s long labor, this great bodyguard and friend should know that he made this princess proud. The world was most definitely a better place because of a man I only knew as Gurgi.
About Eulogy For Gurgi: This started as a very vague idea ten years ago, after reading a novel in which the heroine was forced to undergo a transformation after the loss of her protector. I wondered what would make someone of royal blood want to become a bodyguard? It was such an unusual status/occupation that the idea stayed with me for years.
The idea simmered in my unconscious mind as I read piles of crime novels. It toyed with me as I watched the myriad twists on the crime procedural genre play out on television. It teased me mercilessly until I decided I wanted to take one of the twenty story snippets I had laying around and finish it. The princess bodyguard idea emerged from the pile and demanded a fairy tale happy ending suitable for a princess.
I wrote fast and ended up with a first draft with a gaping plot problem. It took me a month to figure out how to fix it. I was sitting in a meeting at work when the solution suddenly popped into my head. I scribbled the idea in the margin of my meeting notes and re-wrote the first chapter that night.
It will be a novel someday.
This is the teaser I wrote to get my juices flowing.
In the midst of a tantrum burst of emotions, Robson stomped into his room and slammed the door shut so hard the picture on the wall to the right came free of its hook and crashed to the floor. It was one of his favorites, a print of a painting depicting a young boy and girl building a snowman with the caption “Snowmen fall from heaven…unassembled” across the bottom. The glass and the frame were cracked and now it was ruined just like everything else in his life! He kicked over his wastebasket, the plastic one with Captain America and all the other Marvel Avengers on it and discarded candy wrappers and other bits of broken junk he no longer had a use for skittered across the floor which only made him angrier.
He threw his head back and screamed, “Why can’t you give me
what I want? Why can’t I eat what I want to eat and watch what I want to watch
on tv? I’m sick of this stupid house and I hate you both! I can’t wait until I
get older and leave here forever!”
And the rage kept spilling out until he had expelled all the
air from his lungs and the rant became a coughing fit, but he didn’t care. He
pulled in a deep breath of new air and let out a frustrated and sustained, guttural
bellow so loud it vibrated his eyeballs.
When the red mist of fury lifted from his vision and he was left with nothing more than the fatigue of ages pressing down upon him, he heard a soft rap on his door. He had no desire to respond, so he didn’t but the door handle turned slowly and his father pushed his head inside.
“Got it all out of your system?” his father asked with no trace of anything being out of the ordinary.
Robson didn’t answer, he couldn’t answer, the fatigue wouldn’t
allow it. But as his father entered the room and surveyed the damage, the young
boy stood firm, and let his breath out through his nostrils in a defiant hiss.
His father picked up the cracked picture frame and examined
it as he walked past Robson to sit on the bed. He patted the full-size mattress,
indicating for his son to have a seat but the boy didn’t move. “Come on, it’s
not going to kill you to sit next to me. I just need you to listen to what I
have to say and then I’ll leave you alone to continue being mad at us.”
Reluctantly, Robson dragged his feet as if the gravity in
the room had suddenly increased and plopped onto the bed as far away from his
father as he could manage.
“A shame about this picture,” his father said. “Your mother and I bought this for you because it was the first thing you actually asked for. You pleaded with us and made your case so succinctly that we had no choice. At the time, we didn’t have the funds to spare but sometimes the happiness of the people you love is worth more than money.
“The reason I’m bringing this up is to talk to you about sacrifices. You’re too young to fully understand this but everybody in the world has to make them, no matter how young or old they are. And you may think the things we ask or tell you to do are unfair but that’s only because you don’t see the bigger picture and there’s no real reason you should at your age. Our job as your parents is to take care of the big important stuff so that you can live the easiest life we can manage to give you. But it’s also our duty to prepare you for what’s to come and we planned to wait until you were a little older but since you’re so eager to grow up, let me tell you what life holds in store for you.
“As you get older, you’re going to learn that even the people who were never supposed to let you down probably will and someone who has the same opinion about you…you will let them down, as well. That includes the three of us, champ. We’re eventually going to let each other down.
“You’re going to fall in love one day and your heart will get broken and it will probably happen more than once and it will get harder to love with each passing break. And most likely you’ll break a few hearts yourself even if you remember how it felt when yours was broken and try to avoid doing it to someone else, it’s going to happen.
“Despite your best intentions, you’ll fight with your best friends, blame a new love for things an old one did, complain because time is passing too fast, wish you had your childhood to do over again to get things right, and you’ll eventually lose someone you love which includes me and your mother.”
Robson sat motionless, staring at the cracked glass and
broken frame, unable to meet his father’s gaze because he felt the sting of
tears in his own eyes. “What do I do?” he said in a small voice.
“What do you mean?”
“To stop all the bad things from happening. What do I do?”
“Well, you can start by not taking the good things and times for granted but do take too many pictures, laugh too much, and love like you’ve never been hurt…because every sixty seconds you spend upset is a minute of happiness you’ll never get back. But before any of that, you should go apologize to your mother, she was really upset by some of the things you said.”
Robson hopped off the bed, turned his back to his father and
wiped the tears from his eyes with his shirt sleeve. He walked to the door with
a purpose but stopped at the door jamb and said over his shoulder, “I don’t
really hate you, you know.”
“I know, kiddo,” his father smiled. “Now, go give your mother a great big hug and kiss and drag your butt back in here so we can straighten this room up.”
The little boy took off like a shot out of the room yelling,
“Mommy! Mommy! I’m sorry!”
His father stood up, righted the wastebasket and carefully tilted the broken glass into the little plastic bucket. He caught sight of the caption on the picture and thought, Snowmen aren’t the only things that require assembly, sometimes family bonds do too.
Dean wondered how long it had been since death set in? Had it actually mattered anymore? Of what relevance was time to the deceased? Especially when there were other niggling concerns such as not being able to move a single inch in any given direction, trapped within a decaying coffin of flesh. That was the toughest adjustment to contend with. And what was the explanation? What answers could he have offered himself this night, the last of his life, the first of his death, in the wee slight moments after the coil of mortality had been sufficiently shuffled off and he lingered in the strangled silence of limbo while the haunts of regrets past swooped down like raptors from on high?
There wasn’t only the matter of kidnapping and molestation, as if he could have simply left it at that. There were also the mutilations, amputations, beheadings, and cannibalism that needed to be addressed. All sorts of mental distractions that, in the short run, served as curative methods to hush the whispers that shouted malevolence into the folds of his brain. Dean explored them all as he was never quite sure how much of which activity would have been necessary to ground him back down to normalcy.
There was also the presence of the obfuscation demons who frolicked in public places, daring the rest of society to gaze upon their putrescence, that forever clung to Dean’s flesh and flashed serrated toothed smiles from their insatiable maws, fingers tapping, awaiting the next feast. One million beasts ever at the ready, awaiting a sign or signal from him that the carnage that fueled their existence was about to begin.
Go on, they prompted, we understand what you need to do. We won’t judge you because we understand how difficult it was to treat meat with dignity. We can see it all so clearly from where we are.
They made it seem so obvious to Dean. Just one nudge at the right moment in the right direction. One glimmer of hope that the nightmares would end and he would find peace at last. One suggestion from the proper imp who offered him the precise piece of the puzzle that was needed in order to view the larger picture.
Pick your targets, that’s the ticket. The demons advised. Start small.Tiny murders can be done, they’re done all the time. Success stories abound. We can read you a list. Start today with a little ‘un and keep your focus there. Lay down a simple execution that you’re happy with. A death can be executed a thousand ways and despite how clairvoyant you think you are, you can’t predict the pleasure you’ll derive from adding this exciting little twist in the structure of your average day.
And of course, you can kill anytime. Why don’t you kill? You never kill when you get like this. Why don’t you just kill? It’s not a burden, not at all. Not killing is the burden, don’t you see? Look what happens when you don’t kill. We get to this point of crisis where nothing works. It all gets broken like a skull shattered with the claw end of a hammer and you can’t reach down to gather up all the skull fragments because you’re holding your grey matter inside your head and we’re saying let’s stop the skull from shattering in the first place. We can turn the hammer away from you and swing the claw end at someone else. But you have to help out on your end and let us know you’re reaching for the hammer.
And eventually, we’ll get to a place where you don’t take every godforsaken murder you commit personally. It’s not always about you and where your soul will visit when you die and you’re making these assumptions and it creates all this drama. All the outbursts, then the realization that what you’re doing serves the greater good, then the embarrassment from the remorse and the humiliation from the shame.An endless tug of war needlessly played against yourself until you just feel tortured about feeling tortured. And you see this as somehow easier than slitting a random throat for our bounty?
Perhaps what troubles you is you don’t believe that our words, our cause has merit. Fair play. Why should you trust the imps? We’ve never trusted anyone’s word. We’ve never followed a single command that anyone has given. And who has really? Is that ever how it’s done once you’ve been blessed with the gift of free will? The heart wants what it wants and who can deny it? What does yours want?
That was the question that ran through Dean’s mind. What did his heart want? Love? What good was that? Even if it wasn’t too late, what would it matter if the whole world lined up to love him if there was no penetration? Knowing what the heart wanted would be an unsolved mystery that would plague him in the grave.
And he would have eternity to hunt for clues. As the imps who turned on him abandoned him and found another, who in turn slaughtered Dean in much the same manner that he himself had killed so many others.
His soul should have wept as the demons tore into his flesh, but the truth of the matter was he finally had something to occupy his mind.
And that was the grace he found in death. The peace to deconstruct an unsolvable mystery.
For most of my life on your world, I have made my living working in an elegance palace. Before you ask, my place of employment is really nothing more than a bordello. I do not know who invented the name elegance palace, but I must tell you, neither I nor any of the other employees working there find anything elegant about it.
The elegance palace is hidden in plain sight amongst neighboring office buildings, yet secreted behind its by-appointment-only financial institutional facade lies a towering empire of adult-themed enterprises. From boutiques to restaurants, bars, clubs and pleasure suites, if it is something even remotely related to sex, an office is listed for it in the directory. I call it prex melata, which in my native tongue translates loosely as ejaculation building.
The thing I hate most about the prex is that it only has one entrance and one elevator. Yes, you heard me correctly. One. Elevator. When my shift eventually ends, no matter how carefully I time it, I always manage to get trapped in the elevator with potential customers who know who I am because I am the only person on the planet who looks the way I do…
Alien.
The thing that does not belong. The piece that does not fit. I have no idea how you ply your trade, but put yourself in my missionary position for a moment and try to imagine that after an arduous day of ending the lives of concupiscent individuals through intercourse, that you now have to ride in a crowded box with clients who have just engaged in the sexual practice of their comfort level or financial ability, all of them eyeing you and imagining themselves to be the one who could probably beat the odds and survive.
I hate it. I hate the looks, I hate the arrogance, and I hate the sameness of it all. Eventually, they all will come to see me. Eventually, they all will die.
At least in the elevator there is hardly any conversation. I envy the employees who do not have to speak to the clients they service. I, on the other hand, am legally obligated to strike up conversations with everyone interested in sleeping with me. I am the only elegance employee that comes equipped with a Surgeon General warning. Sleeping with me will kill you. You must be made fully aware of that and sign legal documents to that effect.
Occasionally, though, I will encounter a client that asks, “Do you work here?”
My initial response leans toward the sarcastic, but I always answer, “Yes.”
“I’d like to visit you. What’s your name? What floor do you work on? Do you see clients outside of here?”
I want to tell him not to come. Tell him that I do not want to see him. That I do not talk to, let alone service, clients outside of the prex, especially those who have not paid to talk to me.
Some clients do that, the smart ones. They come in and lose their nerve and I do not blame them. They are still contractually obligated to pay for my time but I cut them a discounted rate. And while I do not enjoy talking to people who view me as a sexable piece of offworld flesh, I take pity on the ones who back out at the last minute. It must be similar to talking yourself down off of a ledge.
If I do happen to get a talker on the elevator, I do not smile or make eye contact. I simply answer their questions as curtly as possible and walk away abruptly when the elevator doors open. This usually avoids them feeling comfortable enough to follow me onto the street. It is the thing that scares me the most about the job, honestly.
I have a friend who prefers to be identified by the gender-neutral pronouns they, their and them, well, they are more of a colleague, in the business we call them sexociates, and I do not know if it is a vibe they give off or what, but they attract more gawker stalkers than all the rest of us combined.
Gawker stalkers are the creepers who lurk around the prex exit and watch the girls as they leave the building. It’s gotten so bad that Tawni, my sexociate, not their actual name but I doubt even I know their real name, has a taxi on call that they run into every night as soon as the elevator doors open.
Gawker stalkers never do anything to the sexociates, to my knowledge, they just watch. But it is still creepy. I get chills thinking about the possibility of some strange creeper following me home. They should just commit and pay the fee and get to play a little bit rather than being a loser that skulks in the shadows and goes home alone, unsatisfied.
Surprisingly enough, I have not crossed social paths with too many prudish types. When most people find out what I do for a living, they seem so fascinated with the concept of bartering intercourse execution for currency. I almost regret letting people know because all our conversations after that point turns to them pumping me for kinky or weird-but-true stories.
And that is when my relationships begin to die.
I do not have any eccentric stories. My sex organ forces orgasm and death, and if that is not enough to interest you, then what else do we have to talk about? My life is boring, really. So boring that no one wants to hear about it.
MADD FICTIONAL 