Issue 70 July 2019 Flash Fiction Online July 2019

Because they will never see it again, they always ask, cook me something from home.

Today it’s a human woman condemned for killing a policeman after he beat her Klanthi spouse to death. They had the nerve to kiss in public. “A Klanthi mossfry,” she whispers with her swollen, rebel mouth. “Please.”

“I’ll try,” I say. Then I make a few calls.

Though Klanthi moss is as illegal as interspecies marriage, I have my sources. Like most galaxy-grade chefs, my restaurant shuttered under FreeCorp’s Patriot Consumption Act. Centaury was targeted early, since it specialized in multi-species cocktails, mixed from a barshelf of intoxicants I’d spent years researching. With a digestif of hermgrass I could send a human into rapturous delirium; with an aperitif of plinblood I could numb adventurous Iyaii who insisted on ordering dishes mildly corrosive to their stomachs. My recipes were trade secrets: I was proud of them, and of the interspecies clientele they attracted.

Then the Act came, and ninety percent of my menu was outlawed overnight.

Ingredients I’d sourced from twenty systems burned in ugly heaps whose pyres lit up the newsfeeds. I saved what I could, but not too much, or too openly. Chefs caught skirting the Act joined their ingredients.

My dealer on Klanth says she’ll have me fresh moss in three weeks. “That’s not enough time,” I say. “Do you have any dried?”

It’s ironic. The only place FreeCorp is willing to overlook non-human food is Death Row, where they hire galaxy-grade chefs to prepare it. We’re the only cooks who are trained to know what’s delicious to a Pneeb or deadly to a Haqr; our skill ensures FreeCorp’s condemned don’t die before they’re scheduled. And we’re mostly too cowardly to resist. Chefs don’t resist. We spend our lives taking orders.

At our interview, I tell the doomed woman, “I recommend eating your mossfry immediately beforehand. Immediately, do you see? It goes down easier that way.” I hold her eyes until she understands.

Some can’t understand, or won’t. I lie awake at night thinking about them.

There was the Pneebian journalist condemned for questioning FreeCorp’s labor policies. They submitted their meal request in writing, so I never had the chance to speak with them. Or the Haqr artisan for whom I could not find a translator, though I cooked him a decent roast before he went to the Cliff.

The Cliff is the great symbol of FreeCorp’s frugality. Lethal poisons are expensive, and with so many species with so many distinct chemistries, onerous to research and administer. But blunt-force trauma kills most things. During the freefall, the newsfeeds scroll the numbers: Life in Prison = $2,349,211.23 of YOUR Tax Credits. Gravity = Free. FreeCorp Saves! They ensure the scroll never obscures the impact. When Earth-1 gravity is insufficient, they tie weights to the convict’s neck.

I always watch the ones I cook for. I can’t help it.

Of my failures, the worst was the Iyaii from Xanthus Colony—formerly Iyniir’aiini—who blew up seven FreeCorp buildings whose construction had bulldozed sacred Iyaii land. She asked for a charred sandelk’s heart, to be eaten as custom demanded, three days before death.

I pleaded with her. “One hour. Goes down easier, do you understand?”

“I don’t want easy,” she said, glaring at me. “How do you resist, chef?”

She leapt from the Cliff singing.

It’s true, I think as I dice the dried Klanthi moss and soak it in jus. I’m a chef, which is to say, a coward. I don’t know if I can call what I do resistance.

When the oil spits I slide the moss in, dusting it with pepper and fivespice. Behind the wire cage the doomed woman watches, her eyes red.

Chefs don’t firebomb buildings or stage rebellions. We sweeten life. We make it a little easier. I don’t know if I’m different now that I ease death, instead.

Glancing over my shoulder, I reach behind the spice-rack to a row of small, unmarked bottles, the last remnants of Centaury’s barshelf.

What I do know is this: as a chef, my task has grown from giving diners what they want to giving them what they need.

Over the sizzling pan, I uncork the bottle and shake loose a single drop.

With a last aromatic flip, the stirfy is finished. I turn it onto a plate.

When I slide the dish in front of her, the woman draws a deep breath. Her face trembles in the steam. “Oh Soui,” she whispers, “My love.”

I check the clock. A half-hour to the Cliff. “It will taste best if you let it cool first. When you’re finished, get up slowly. Don’t speak, and try to walk straight.”

She nods. Her eyes are brave. “Thank you, chef. It smells delicious. Like home.”

Hermgrass, I silently correct her. Then I bow, and turn away.

On the way down she smiles, like a woman savoring love, or death, or the best meal of her life.

“Hannah, we’re going to be late,” her mother is saying, but not in the real pissed-off way she would have said it before the accident. Instead she’s tentative, careful, like she’s constantly disarming a bomb and isn’t sure what wires are safe to cut.

“Sure,” Hannah says, and guides her dead arm through the sleeve of her coat and pulls a glove over its fingers. She’s careful about keeping the arm warm and safe, though she can’t feel it anymore — the doctors have warned her often enough, told her the arm is still a part of her, even if she doesn’t recognize it. But she’d care for it anyway, because the ghost has ceded so much ground in her body that she might as well respect the place it’s claimed as its own.

After the accident, there had been — nothing, a long nothing, and while she was sleeping the ghost kept her walking, fed her and kept her alive. She can’t blame it for slipping into an empty shell; it’s not like it knew she would be back. She feels a little bad about that sometimes. The ghost crushed low in a body it claimed but that had never really belonged to it.

In the waiting room at the doctor’s, Hannah’s mom keeps shooting her strange little looks, soft looks, and she doesn’t say anything at all about how Hannah’s failed to brush her hair. She gets a pass on these things, now. Apparently the ghost wasn’t all that good at pretending to be her. And they all know what she’s lost in the accident — more than a traumatic brain injury and a messed-up hand. All that and her best friend, too, poor girl. Elise’s name hovers over their tongues, but no one wants to be the first to say it.

All she feels in her dead arm is a flutter in her fingertips sometimes, a brush like wings. Sometimes she finds herself staring at the sky with a vague yearning for warmth and sun and flock. It’s no wonder she worried everyone — a ghost like this has no idea of how to be human. Its life had been simpler, instinctive and magnetic.

The doctor prods at her gently and makes a few notes and tells her it’s perfectly normal to have lingering issues such as these, after an accident. Her brain needs time to recover, the doctor says, and she should be gentle with it. With an injury as severe as hers, some people never come back at all.

Sorry, Hannah thinks at the ghost, and she smiles faintly at the doctor and assures him that she’s aware of how lucky she is. After all, the other girl in the car had not come back. Elise’s body empty like Hannah’s had been empty but crushed and pulpy and awful, no room for a ghost to slip in and keep it going. She remembers the blood sometimes, and the jolt of the impact, but she tells everyone she doesn’t.

Hadn’t there been geese overhead, when the accident happened? Hadn’t a bird flown up in front of the car, its wings beating against the windshield? Elise had shouted something, her mouth an O of surprise —

“I’m sure you’re looking forward to being able to return to school,” the doctor continues. Hannah winces at the reminder. Her mother has been talking around the subject, because the ghost couldn’t hack it, but there have always been plans for Hannah, and a full semester’s absence was never among them. No one ever asks her opinion, of course. “But be patient with yourself. Your teachers know how severe your injury was.”

Hannah thanks him and the ghost flutters in her dead hand. She wonders what the ghost would have made her say had it still had control over her body. It doesn’t matter, now — it only makes the beds of her nails itch.

“I’ll be right there,” she tells her mother as they walk to the car, and she slips away like she’s going back to the bathroom or something. Instead she stands around the corner, near the shade of a twisted little ornamental cherry, and she looks up at the sky. Her fingertips itch so she holds the dead hand up, stretches it out twined with her good hand and lets the ghost’s fingers brush the air again.

Don’t go back, the ghost is saying in its wordless way. Don’t trap yourself when you could fly, instead. And it’s right — she has a chance, now. To do the things she used to talk about with Elise, before that day and the shriek of metal that had ended things between them. No one expects anything from her now; they learned not to expect anything of the ghost. But here she is, about to fall back into her old life. Back to the same school, back to the same future that’s been planned out for her since she was a child. Like nothing that happened ever meant anything — not their friendship, and not the accident that ended it.

“What do you expect me to do,” she says aloud, clutching at the ghost arm, letting it fall back to her side. It drops like a weighted line.

The ghost says nothing else, but when a bird sweeps up from the branches of the ornamental cherry, Hannah feels her heart fall into time with its wingbeats.

Soon as Sobek walks into the laundromat he sees Bastet, flipping magazine pages beneath a “Nile Cruises” poster in the back with that creep, Apep.

Motherfucker, Sobek thinks, scales starting to sweat at the sight of her. Really?

Bastet doesn’t even look up from her glossy, like she got no idea Sobek just walked in—except that tail won’t stop twitching and for all she bitches about lioness this, lioness that, she’s pretty as a pussycat pushing a canopic jar off a damn table waiting for him here.

He’s the jar. Complete with shriveling intestines.

His scales shift and crackle at the thought. Just don’t look at her, man. Play it cool.

Apep nods his serpentine head, sly, like snake or crocodile, they’re on the same page, like he ain’t just waiting for Sobek to fall off the face of the earth, and even better if Bastet’s the one to push him. But kitty’s still got a taste for croc.

Sobek fumbles for quarters. The laundromat’s empty. He refuses to be the first to speak. He’s a goddamn god, king of the fucking Nile.

But you know what they say about cats. He peeks a furtive glance at Bastet. Dig those claws in, bring you back home just to drop you on the doorstep playing dead for somebody else. Cold-hearted killers. Felines, man. Ain’t good for guarding nothing but their own skins. Pussy don’t even like getting wet. What was Sobek thinking?

But she’s still wearing that necklace—the eggshell circle from whatever dark waters Sobek crawled out of however many millennia ago. He was real sweet when he gave it to her too. For all the millennia I’ll love you.

Doesn’t matter, man. His tongue’s dry as acacia bark. Where the fuck are those quarters? Like hell you’re gonna tuck tail runnin’ out of a laundromat, he’s telling himself. Like. Hell.

She’s looking over now, not even pretending with the magazine. She come just to make him suffer, really? Ain’t she got better things to do? Protect some tombs?

He finds the quarters and starts stuffing linens fast as his webbed hands will let him. Get in. Get out. But not because they’re here. Not cause he has to. Sobek’s an important guy—places to be, right? He’s not avoiding nothing. And, just to prove it, why shouldn’t he say the first word after all?

“Hey, Bast, is that you?” Deep and throaty. He’s not puttin’ on a show, you kidding?

She’s not having it. Doesn’t even bat an eye, just keeps those black slits trained on him. “Been a while,” she purrs. Won’t come forward, magazine open to some model decked out in leopard-print dress and snakeskin boots. Is that a message? Last he checked, kittens like her snapped up snakes like Apep for a living. He can’t be sure though. Feels his throat getting hot and doesn’t know where to look.

“Guess so. Time flies, right?” Just sound natural, man. Chill. He turns to slide the quarters in like he ain’t sweatin’ wanting her to walk on over. A little closer. Any closer. He can’t keep track of his quarters. They rattle to the ground and he flushes.

She’s not moving an inch. Not saying a word. Apep’s snickering, that godforsaken forked tongue bobbing in and out. “You keep that fuckin’ thing in your own damn mouth,” Sobek growls.

“What the hell you talking about, SOB-ek?” Apep says, eyes slit, still snickering.

But now Bastet’s grinning. “Boys,” she says, just to hear herself purr.

Just so long as that snake’s not putting his tongue where it don’t belong, Sobek’s thinking, but didn’t he said he’d play it cool? C’mon. Priestess over there said she ain’t yours anyway. Got to get free of this kitty cat; she’s no good.

“You got a problem?” Apep slithers over like he wants nothing more than to go reptilian mano a mano. He glances back to Bastet and her teeth glitter, smiling. This is what she came for. She twists the necklace Sobek gave her. His chest tightens.

“Pretty pendant there, Bast,” Sobek says.

Bastet finally stands and struts toward them, body practically humming. “I never take it off.” Her eyes flash between them. Apep’s puffing his slimy scales waiting for Sobek to make the next move.

Why’s she gotta be so beautiful all the time?

She reaches toward Sobek like she ain’t never clawed nobody to death, ain’t plucked no hearts out still beating.

He ducks to snag his coins off the floor and thrusts them into the machine. One short.

“I said, do you got a problem?” Apep hisses.

“No problem, just happy to see old friends.” Sobek smiles toothily, jaws clenched. “Hey, Bast, mind if I see that necklace a minute?”

He’s not watching the line of her arm to the nape of her neck, or her back arching, or the curve of her lips as she unclasps the necklace. No way. Not him and not Apep neither. Nope. Sobek regularly feels like he can’t breathe. Like his heart might explode or the Nile start spilling out his eyes.

She hands the necklace to Sobek. “It means the world to me,” she says, waiting for him to play along all romantic. Her eyes flicker between him and Apep. Pussycat’s just looking for trouble. Sobek gets it by now.

“Funny.” He traces the curve of the eggshell. Bastet’s close enough to touch, smell the riverbank like it’s baked into her skin. He laughs and hopes they don’t hear every lonely night gurgling behind it. “I used to think that too.”

He pulls the pendant from the chain and slips it into the coin slot. The washing machine kicks on, starts thrashing like a well-hashed argument. Bastet blanches, wide-eyed, and flounders for words like dry land. Apep can’t help but start snickering again.

Sobek, though, he’s suddenly feeling right at home in the cool wash of relief, smiling a little as he walks back out of the laundromat.

The Phoenix Corporation complex perches atop a volcanic ridge overlooking the Pacific. Its vari-copper cladding catches the rising sun, turning the buildings to flame. I used to love watching the building burn like its namesake, but today can think of nothing but Kokua, plummeting through the atmosphere, his wingsuit disintegrating in a ball of fire. My bold eagle, nothing more than ash.

Again.

Phoenix Corp.’s rebirth procedure is a miracle, though the insurance is costly enough to be prohibitive for anyone not born with a silver spoon or working in a dangerous field with an employer willing to foot the bill. It’s given thousands of people a second chance. A fatal car accident becomes nothing more than a story to be laughed over around the Thanksgiving table. Military recruitment is up–the G.I. coverage is lifetime.

And thrill-seekers chase ever wilder rushes like moths to flames.

After his first spacejump, Kokua’d caught me up in his strong arms and spun me round, eyes flashing. Biggest rush in the world! The Earth’s an abalone-shell marble you could pluck from the sky. Then, it fills your eyes and your heart and every last molecule, dragging you down, down, down…

Despite the tropical heat, I shiver.

Inside, I approach the receptionist, ignoring the subtle orange and gold lighting that pulses up the sides of the counter. “Sergeant Kokua Smithson, please.”

She blinks through her optical display, then frowns. “Mrs. Smithson?”

I nod.

“If you’ll come with me, please?”

I trail after her, a nervous clenching in my chest.

She leads me through a koa-wood door, without a department name I can see, and beckons a young man with spiky, gold-tipped hair and a lilac button-down with subtle flowers worked into the weave. “Edward, this is Mrs. Smithson,” she says, then vanishes.

“Mrs. Smithson,” he says. “Have a seat.”

I don’t sit. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s ‘wrong,’ Mrs. Smithson. It’s just that this is your husband’s fifth rebirth.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I snap, then grasp the back of the empty chair in front of me and squeeze. No good biting Edward’s head off. This isn’t his fault.

“Are you aware the Army’s instituted lifetime limits, outside of the line of duty?”

My throat tightens. “I know.”

Rebirth is a miracle, they say, and the first time, that may well be true. But they don’t talk much about the changes. Small, barely noticeable things. Maybe a Phoenix doesn’t like olives anymore. Or laugh at clever wordplay. Nothing that makes a difference.

But over repeated rebirths, well, things start to build up. The second time, Kokua developed diabetes. The third, he couldn’t stand the sound of our son’s cello playing. And he didn’t hold it inside, like he would’ve done before. I thought he was going to smash the thing, and I had to make Benji promise to practice only at school before anything beyond his unwavering father-worship got hurt.

Edward puts a manicured hand over my own. His skin is so pale against mine. I can’t tear my eyes away from those long, white fingers. “You have to get him to stop, Mrs. Smithson. If he dies again, there won’t be another rebirth.” His voice so soft. Understanding.

I close my eyes. “I know.”

* * *

When they lead Kokua into the lobby, his burnished skin gleams with that newly-reborn glow I’d found so beautiful the first time. I’d dissolved in tears and he’d held me so close I couldn’t breathe, and promised me he was done with jumping. He’d never put me through that again.

I think he meant it, at least for a while.

“Mandy,” he says, restlessly tugging a seam on his Phoenix Corp. t-shirt.

“Kokua.”

We walk to the car in awkward silence. I don’t want to find out what’s different this time. The sullen had come with the fourth rebirth, along with an even shorter temper. He couldn’t focus. Couldn’t seem to finish simple tasks like laundry folding or filling gas tanks in advance of a convoy. He’d been officially reprimanded, Benji spent most nights at friends’ houses, and Kokua didn’t care. About anything.

When I found out he’d signed up for another jump, I lost it. Told him he was losing his son. Losing me. Losing himself.

Goddammit, Mandy, I’ve already lost me! Can’t you see that? I just want to feel something again.

Sometimes I wish I didn’t feel.

I slam the door and drive down the slope toward the city, the Pacific stretching like liquid turquoise to the horizon.

Finally, I can’t handle the silence any longer. “Did it work?”

I wonder if he’ll understand the question. The AC hums, filling the inside of the car with ice.

“For a moment. When there’s nothing but space–sky and stars and the breath in your lungs–you can’t help but feel.”

My fingers tighten around the steering wheel. “That was five, Kokua. There’s no more left.”

He glances my way. “You should jump with me. Maybe then you’d understand.”

It’s almost tempting. What would it be like to see the whole world spread out beneath me? To see stars I’ll never get to see from here on the ground?

I shake myself. “I’m not insured, Kokua, you know that.”

“You don’t die every time. Besides, the risk makes it sweeter.”

A breath of plumeria blows in through the vents, sweet and grounding. “I can’t afford that risk. Not with Benji.”

Silence stretches for a minute, then Kokua finally speaks. “Who’s Benji?”

My heart skips a beat and my vision goes black around the edges. I pull to the side of the road and suck in slow breaths.

“Mandy?”

When I’m pretty sure I won’t pass out, I look over at Kokua, at those black eyes I’d once loved more than the world. “You’re going to jump again, aren’t you?”

He nods, his stranger’s gaze shifting away from mine.

I should fight him, but I can’t find the will.

“Then I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

Previously published in Factor Four Magazine, April 2018. Reprinted here by permission of the author.

There is a monster inside you. Created by fear, desperation, and spite, it has saved your life more than once. It is validated by the economic system that owns your material well-being. It has been made a virtue by liberators and oppressors.

Monsters can be heroes or villains. They save lives and take them. But what makes them monsters is that they are powerful, irrational, and cause harm doing what drives them. Wildness instills their actions. And they can destroy what they love in seconds. 

Work is your monster. Your monster is bottomless. Work saved your life. Your monster will kill you.

The false slogans of success claim that hard work will allow you to achieve your dreams. It is a lie that has fed your monster hornets for years. Your monster scaled walls, towers, and mountains of work, trashed kingdoms of tasks, and fought a life and death battle with scarcity and depravation against the odds. And your monster cried victory…

… but for a monster, every fight is for survival. Every task do or die. Monsters scream in binary. And they refuse to admit their limits…

But the world of work has no end. No decisive battle. No final victory. Your monster is now a creature of scar, every step etched in pain, every simple task as daunting as its greatest foes.

The true villain births inside the beast. A sliver of dark. A whisper in the tomb. 

“It will not get easier. Your battles were for nothing. But there is another way out–”

The monster ignores it. Battles on. Grows more tired. And the villain’s words become truth. 

There comes a time when the battle turns inward, when the metaphor of combat will no longer suffice, and a reckoning must become an understanding, a war becomes peace. 

You chose peace of mind, peace of heart, the courage of rest and to trust the support of others; you ignore the siren that stabs the monster to shake its fists and cry havoc… because it will let the villain win.

Ignore the salvation of tasks lists and goals that turn life into bullet points. 

Let the monster rest. When it heals, pick its battles instead of a never ending war against capitalism’s seductive lies of success instead of luck, of merit instead of privilege, of sacrifice to avarice. 

Be kind to your monster, lest it choke you out of this world.