Polite Fictions

Envy

Her fingers arc out, stretching. Trying to span the distance between who she's been and who she's becoming. To hold it within her hands, to feel the weight of this new world and know she will be able to bear it as her own. She closes her eyes, feeling the brush of cotton against her fingertips, imagining it skin on skin... 

A tiny shudder. We both feel it. Excitement and revulsion. The ecstasy to come.

A ghost of a smile flutters across her lips - an unspoken promise, the tiny half-crescents that carve her cheeks translating the primal elements of language into the gentle, rhythmic pulses of galvanic response - and her shoulders press back, deep, against the welcoming slope of the bench. She works through the groups, one by one: neck, shoulders, upper and lower back. Abdomen. Quads and hamstrings, long and limber, tapering into calves that seize and clench, tight and strong, then flow loose — muscle memory vivid with years of long runs, how the miles slipped away with the steady course of blood and breath, impact and release. And her fingers, arcing, farther and ever farther, feeling their way across this undiscovered country, tracing the anatomy of hope and desire blindly, carefully, protectively.

It is an intimate braille; a mother tongue coded in protein chains and the silent barter of oxygen. A syntax of pheremones, there to be heard and understood by any who might listen. Who might learn it as their own, capturing nuances and inflections. Studying. Absorbing. Preparing for that moment of recognition: a native speaker?

A tiny shudder. I wonder if we both feel it. The anticipation of something wonderful drawing near.

She luxuriates in this thin shard of sunlight, the oblique angles of late October belying the warmth of a summer that lingers, reluctant to let go. She closes her eyes as her lungs fill, air tasting of pinesap and distant woodsmoke. Breasts swelling taut beneath thin white cotton. Saturating with warmth, and the knowledge of loving and being loved. Her fingers, stretching, arcing along with the lunar curve. And then she smiles - no ghost, this - and whispers, "A harvest moon" and the sugar maples tremble their leaves, a fluttering of wings in the warm autumn breeze, and the sky is a tumbling riot of reds and golds and in that moment ripeness is all and she cannot help but laugh and her voice

rises

twisting along the dry edges of falling leaves, leaping upward from one to the next, spiraling and spinning and soaring, joy lighter than air, and

I shudder, chilled by the breeze and this deep shadow, secreted beyond the sun's reach. But I do not make a sound. I never make a sound.

A crow settles in a nearby tree, and cries once. It listens, carefully, for a reponse, and she honors it by doing the same. It is quiet, save the rustling of brittle leaves.

We wait. For now, we wait.

Lust

He craved touch. The feel of hot, supple skin sliding against skin. If he only closed his eyes he could feel it. The invisible rasp of tiny hairs bending as nerve endings lit up like a pinball machine on tilt, blood vessels singing as they pumped harder infusing a warming flush, it made him dizzy just to consider.

Then again he felt the same way about waffles. He really did, though his friends laughed when he tried to explain. The feel of hot batter in his mouth, mixing and playing with the cold syrup and melting butter… it was too much for him. Everything was far, far too much. Always had been, truth be told. So he went to doctors and sought professional help only to be told the problem was in his mind. More doctors, more tests and experiments and he learned, over the years, to expect the sad shake of a head that doctors tried to hide from him right before they shrugged their shoulders and sent him to talk to someone else.

He tried to live alone for a while, eliminating as much of the world as possible. He tried to control his urges. Even then, he would get out of bed in the middle of the night to pee and the feel of the chilled hardwood floor under his bare foot - the grain of the varnished wood just hinting up along his heel - sent chills through his spine.

Blind desire filled his every waking moment and yet somehow, maddeningly, never dulled to the point of the far-too-well-known. Twenty years into his personal hell he gave up. Five years after that he gave in. The doorknob's smooth brass slid against his palm like the whispers of the universe and he grabbed it tighter, turning it. The door opened and a warm breeze licked at his neck, making him swoon. The sun prickled along his face, like the kisses of a thousand needles and he smiled into it, stamping down the urge to run and hide. Where could he go, anyway? Bed? With its soft sheets and warm covers? That wouldn't be better so why not just enjoy it, embrace it and run in the grass?

And so he gave in. To all of it. He made it as far as the driveway before dropping to his knees and rolling around in mindless pleasure and desire. They found him that way, two days later - dew covered and sleeping with a huge smile on his face. Back into the house he went, drugged so that he wouldn't wake up and feel the hands of the people carrying him. Back into the fake house, past the fake lawns and neighborhood he could have seen if only he had been able to take twenty more steps. But none of that would matter in a while.

Their experiments were almost done, after all. Soon they would know enough about how these desires worked in humans, to launch the first attack wave.

Soon.

They couldn't wait. They wanted nothing more than to board their attack ships and feel the smooth Hrnjds-skin seats against their backs while engines purred like lovers and…

"Wyksboh?" Gskri asked, "Did you spill the klrtht'ing formula on us? Awwww jhraso!"