Riff dreamed about sex with people she didn’t know. Strangers with gripping fingers and reddish pinchmarks blooming pink after white. Warm and close, but never quite there. Never to full throb and burst.
She dreamed about a beast with plasticine curls that walked on all fours with eyes the size of human mouths. It ducked its great head that rattled soft like green Easter grass, and she climbed on its back, stepping on its great obsidian tusks and clinging to the prickly hair. It shimmered from purple to black under a two-sunned sky and took her to an icy beach. Snow floated around her and clung to the beast’s mane in large flakes. A woman stood in the steaming slush, naked, and Riff felt that familiar heat.
She slid from the beast’s back and went to her, the water squeezing her calves with cold. The woman’s face was an amalgam of Gram and her own, irises dappled with dark green, like tree shade over moss.
She flicked around in her own dream space until she was by the woman’s side, clinging to her and finding her mouth with her thumb. Her thumb changed into one of those birds. Yes, that was what they were called. Big and black and pulling strings of flesh off the bones of friend animals. Animals that lived in their yards. In their houses.
Then it was just a feeling. The feeling of the boat moving so slightly under your feet, the water crumpling around you like tinfoil, until the bile rises hot and bitter in your throat, and your mouth fills with saltwater. Sea sickness. See sickness? El mar. El mareo. So strange that the sea is masculine. Was masculine.
***
Al patted at her incisions with a scar-fading cream before breakfast. Mama had handed her a drink of cold water and told her to find The Wizard and be quick about it before ushering her out of the hidden room with an odd softness behind her eyes.
She-Al was in rare form that morning. The stress response from last night had darkened her neck with streaks of orange, and her breathing was high and rapid. Each incision beaded clear plasma that thinned the cream as Al spackled it on her arms.
The two of them said nothing until an escort robot zipped in, flashing a room number on its shiny square face.
“That’s us,” Al said.
Riff, dozy from the Anti-Ouch Pain Mask™ that rested on the bridge of her nose, stood up too quickly. Revulsion rose in the back of her throat, and her teeth chattered.
“Where are we going?”
She-Al shushed her, her eyes wide and proud. “Don’t worry.”
The escort robot ushered them deeper and deeper into the center of the cluster until they reached a coffin-sized opaque box in the center of four intersecting hallways. Al slipped her hand behind Riff’s neck and pulled her hair away from her neck, exposing the skin to the cool air. She leaned in and whispered something. Riff’s ears hummed with sedative. The front of the black box hissed open. A strip of neon blue lights around the perimeter of the box snapped on, haloing the floor beneath in a pool of cold light.
The escort robot knocked into Riff’s heels, nudging her toward this blank yawn. She paused again, feeling warmth coming from the box. Al’s teeth looked sharper in this light, almost lavender. Al looked at the floor, bending the toe of her soft boot under and over, curving the sole against the shiny floor. Her color had risen to a high red-orange and she picked at her cuticles, tearing tiny bits of skin. She could get timefined for property damage. Another 30 seconds off her already brief lifespan. Accounted for behind screens, ticked away at, proper retirement syringes loaded and ready. This one’s got your name on it.
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The screens around the room flashed images of an ocean, except the ocean was blue and people swam in it. No nadamos en el mar. Dreams in a dead language.
The escort robot whirred and rammed into her calves again. She stepped into the box and onto a slick surface. Her bare feet sticking to the cold floor, the door closing behind her, trapping her in this dark mirror chamber.
Light filtered through the cracks in the box, striping her knees and breasts in long lines of white. Her image reflected itself into infinity. Same eyes. Same teeth. A copy of a copy. The screens flashed on with an image of The New Christ, Mechoben, surrounding her on all four corners, his hands outstretched and filled with tubes of lipstick and stacks of physical Commissary credits and deep green candies laced with dope. An automated voice filled the chamber.
“Mechoben loves you and wants you to be happy. Please state your name and identification number, my child.”
“RF 8934098”
“Thank you. Please state your current occupation. Praise him for your employment.”
“Actress.”
“Breast to hip ratio?”
“.75”
“Please choose an image that represents your feelings towards your place of employment.”
An array of images flipped onto the screen like a card trick. Moving images of spaceships, knives, bowls of water, dancing women in skintight jumpsuits, test tubes, dog heads, save icons, frothy yellow drinks, whippet canisters, donuts, and mouths. The shapes surrounded her in endless stimulation. She chose an extension cord and a laughing dog head. A checkmark bounded across the screen.
“Great job, RF!”
The screens in the room flashed white, and a tube dropped from the ceiling with a face mask attached to a bag. An image of a woman putting the mask over her face appeared. The image stared directly into the east and pulled the mask over her face, her blue cartoon eyes unblinking. A green checkmark appeared over the image. The image looped, and the woman pulled the mask over her face again. Riff picked up the mask spinning from the tubing above and slipped it over her head, pressing it over her nose. Panic tugged at her chest and throat. The mask suctioned to her face with a hiss from above.
The sweetish smell of sedative gas flooded into her nostrils. A dark shape slid down the tube toward the half-inflated bag attached to the mask, scrabbling as it hit the unsteady plastic. Riff’s eyes drifted, blurring the changing screens into distorted stretches of color and sound. The black shape in the bag skittered over the slack plastic toward her mouth and nose. It extended a single needle-thin tentacle toward her right nostril, just caressing her septum. Her lungs ballooned against the sedative. Fear tore at her.
Riff reached up to break the seal of the mask, tugging at the tubes. The images around her changed to red X’s over images of the same dead-eyed woman ripping the mask off, filling her hands with blood, illustrated eyes huge, palms cupped with scarlet.
The black shape in the plastic tumbled back toward the end of the bag. Riff slowed her breathing and focused on the creature slapping its tiny tentacles against the plastic.
It reared up waving its tentacles and said, “I know you.”
Riff tried again to pull at the mask and managed to slide her pinky finger under the seal, breaking it. She waited for the blood, to feel the warm wetness pouring over her throat. The mask dangled from the tube in the ceiling, and the creature slipped from the open end. An alarm sounded in the chamber, shrill and sickening.
The creature, no bigger than a fetal mouse, dragged itself across the floor toward her.
“I know you. I know you. I know you. I know you.”
Riff rammed her shoulder against the sliding panel of the door.
Sedative gas hissed into the chamber, and heaviness pulled at her limbs. Her heart beat thickly at the base of her throat. She slumped against the wall, watching the creature inch toward her.
“I know you. I know you. I know you.”
Riff felt her own weight give into nothingness as a thin tentacle slipped over her bare knee. The creature’s eyes glowed orange, reflecting shining disks of opaque light. It caught the fabric of her tunic and crawled toward her face. It hummed high and light as it reached her jaw. Her hands were too heavy to lift and swat, her eyes too dry to keep open. The creature hooked its fingerlings into her cheek and whipped a tentacle toward her right nostril, clinging to the mucosa inside.
The room wavered, and suited androids slid through the door and lifted her from the floor. Al picked her up and brushed away the thin stream of blood on her cheek. Her pulse throbbed in her temples. The voice of the creature tipped at the edge of her consciousness.
“I know you.”