She’s cute, the way her cheek dimples, only on the left side. Her eyes a bright violet, the colour you can only get from injections. The skin crinkles in the corners when she smiles, where people used to have laugh lines. Proof of previous laughs, happiness etched in skin.
Says her name is Petal, and I doubt it, but I roll with it because I’m working now, but I want her later. I only have a few more minutes to flirt before I have to move, and I want to move with her number secured. Later, I want to find out if her cheek dimples when she moans.
I down the rest of my cloffee—stupid name, but coffee plants have been extinct for thirty years and the cloned plants are better than flavored crystals—and make a show of smacking my crimson-stained lips.
I’m ready to go in for the kill, charm Petal’s creds out of her so I can continue to charm her while we’re apart.
There’s something on her face. I resist the urge to reach up and brush it off. Too much contact too fast scares folks off these days.
She doesn’t react as the something grows, a tear in that perfect dimpled cheek, skin curling off, spiraling and festering, unwrapping a morbid present of viscera beneath.
Shit. I’ve been hacked.
Petal asks what I do for a living, and I have to stay cool as her eyelashes sizzle and her lids split, torn above oozing eyeballs, a lavender gunk parade sludging down the sides of her nose.
Nobody untrustworthy knows about my mods, nobody would squeal because if one of us goes down all of us go down. Saw open our skulls with extreme prejudice, scoop out every last copper giblet from our brain stems and toss them in the incinerator.
I tell her I work in finance, which is less sexy than I can usually come up with but it's hard to think straight while her lips blister and boil, a mouldy forked tongue running over them, what would have been flirtatious just smearing pus like putrid lipstick.
Might not be the feds, maybe it's someone fucking with me. Maybe Sol is still pissed I stood her up last week and she's digging her claws into my augments to make sure I never get laid again.
My stomach lurches as Petal's fingernail grows teeth, gnashing at her pretty slender digit, blood spattering all over her yellow sundress. Is it sick that I still want her? I know that what I'm seeing is an illusion, beneath the gore is still the pretty little thing I want riding my face.
The back of my neck warms as my defense systems run on overdrive. I might have to find a quiet place to lay down and focus, if my automation can't deal with it.
I run the back of my hand along Petal's shoulder, still smooth and unfazed, but before I can wrap up our conversation and get her details for later, the flesh splits and a tentacle shoots out, taking my wrist in a viselike grip.
It's smooth and slimy and strong and it takes me a second to register I shouldn't be able to feel an illusion.
Petal's asking me what's wrong, but her voice sounds far away, garbled, and I'm trying to back away because if someone is so fucking deep in my augments that organ tentacles can hold me—
I wrench myself away, the floor is muck and everything is too loud and how am I supposed to—
Outside is worse, the sky's gone piss yellow and there's a foghorn right next to my head and the people, the people are abominations and I can't vomit even though I want to, my muscles won't cooperate and it's stuck in my throat, stomach acid searing napalm fuck.
My brain/what is brain/is—not—my
Floating, maybe. I can breathe. I can't see, it's too dark. I was on the street. Am I still? Am I trapped in a puppeteer's hands, now? Someone else controls my senses? Would I know if my body is being moved to another location? Will they plug me in or just empty me out?
I need to get out, need to get home. My wife is waiting for me. She'll be so worried. Sol, I can see your face, I can almost smell your lavender/no wait whatthe—rose perfume, the soft curls of your ebony hair dancing over your shoulders, my god you're so beautiful I need to get home to you.
It's a gorgeous day, the birds are chirping and/im supposed to be working/I don't have anything else to do on this beautiful afternoon than buy flowers for my wife. Sol loves roses, the expensive clones not geranium knockoffs, only the best for my lady. I can hear her excited squeal as if she were next to me, I can't wait to see her face when I come through the door with them.
help
She's my everything. Sol, I'm coming home to you.
wtf!
this is so fucking dope.
it's like demolition man meets total recall (that's where my head's at).
cool, af.
but, like... did you just write this? cos that's fucking impressive that you had this just at the tip of your fingers ready to go.
sick work.
At the intersection between cyber punk and horror. I love this piece. Loss of agency is one of my top fears and you tapped into it here.