Cliche

Dystopian view of a world that thankfully will never be: Society is ruled by the brands burned into the shoulders of each resident - inescapable, unavoidable, unchanging.

Cliché

 

        “How many angels you think can dance on the head of a pin?” he drawls twirling a small knife slowly round and round on the tip of one calloused finger. Occasionally, it catches the light just so and hurls daggers of sunlight straight into my over-sensitized retinas.

            Turning more fully toward the window, I sigh and ignore him as my eyes water from his unwitting assault. If I reply, then he’ll only take it to mean that I care what he has to say. Besides, who the hell gives a damn about angels and pinheads anyway? Religion is tired and boring and something for old men who can see their ends swiftly approaching to crone over! That said, I have no time for it. I’ve got a job to do. A corporeal concern to fulfill so that I might fill my grumbling gullet once more.

            Normally, I’d take care of this myself, but for this job, I need a partner. Unfortunately, Mr. Cliché over there lounging languidly against the rafters in artistically artificial disarray is it. Gods, help me…

            It’s not even that this job is difficult " quite the opposite, really. It’s a simple re-snatch. Someone had snatched someone else’s bouncing bundle of babbling blah, and I’d been given the tantalizing task of snatching it back and returning it to its spawn-master. Oh, the joy! I understand the importance of children, really I do. Our society wouldn’t survive another century without them with the way the population has been on the decline thanks to the environmental faux pas of the past. And to ask the kid’s parents to start over again…Yeah, I can see why they’d forgo the ransom and just get someone like me to do the job. Police don’t work the wastelands, and I cost a fraction of what’s being asked for the kid’s return, I’m sure.

            So, I stand and wait, my eyes skimming and skipping over the barren landscape of what once must have been a booming town as the ghosts of my partner’s sunfire daggers dance merrily amid the dirt clods. There’s nothing but dust and tumbleweeds blowing over wind-carved rock and the sun-scorched remains of a once-upon-a-time town. There are only a few buildings still standing, giving them the smell of long sealed mausoleums " dust and decay. Whenever the hellwinds blow through them, the voices of fallen giants, still hungering for living flesh, whisper along my skin. Maybe that’s just me. My parents used to tell me stories of the things that could live out here amongst the waterless wastelands beyond the town bounds. Every parent tells them to their children to keep them from these death-planes. I don’t believe them anymore, but I guess a part of me just can’t forget them.

            “Yo! Chica, you listening?” the Adonis wannabe asks as he finally puts away his oh-so-plainly phallic pastime. His slightly slanted green eyes glint with something I’m sure is akin to annoyance. His hair " auburn streaked with ebony " hangs just below his ears bringing your eyes back to his face " his sculpted, stubbled jaw, clean well-wrought brow, and narrow mouth rimmed with what looks suspiciously like rouged lips. His face, every inch of it, seems chiseled and perfect " too perfect. He looks like he’d been carved from stone, but it’s probably more plastic than anything. It’s pretty to look at, but there’s no substance to it " or him, I suspect.

            Ignorance is bliss, I’m told. So, I keep on ignoring the pretty prick hoping that he’ll magically turn into a professional any moment now…

            He huffs like a spoiled two year old, and the wood beneath him creaks as he settles himself back down to continue waiting. The building gives us some protection from the winds and the sun, but it’s little help against the heat and dehydration of this place. Even we can’t stay out here long; I'd already gone through half my saline injections waiting for some sign of our mark. Sweat drops slither precariously between my shoulder blades beneath the black uniform of my calling making my skin itch and crawl disdainfully.

        It’s a good place for an exchange, hard to ambush. No one can lie in wait too long without shriveling up and heading for a nice comfortable trip to delirium followed shortly by death. The building across the way must once have been a saloon. I only know this because my favorite haunt happens to look almost exactly the same aside from the eerie lack of life and wind-stripped lacquer.

            Our happy little hide-away was probably once a grain mill making the now-pathetic little dirt strip separating us Main Street for wherever this shadow of a town once was. I suppose that doesn’t matter much now. All that matters is the fact that we’re stuck here waiting for the dumb snatching someones to give some sign of existence. The drop time for the ransom had been noon, so the snatchers should be around to check before long. They won’t wait for nightfall since the only thing worse than the hell-days out here are the arctic nights. There’s a reason this is part of the wastelands. The environment is just too unstable, too extreme for anything to survive in. Hopefully the kid hasn’t already died from dehydration. It wouldn’t take long out here, and it wouldn’t be gentle. It doesn’t really matter either way to me. Dead or alive and drooling " I still get paid. I wonder if the parents have picked out a tombstone yet or if they’re still hoping.

            Another wind howls amid the dried plains of nothingness like some lonesome beast calling for a mate, and I nearly miss the distant beat of hooves. Wetting my lips, I taste decay. The snatchers are coming. I move closer to the window and kneel to keep out of sight.

            “You know your part, right?” I ask the pretty boy as he once again plays with his pseudo phallus. Maybe he can afford a date after this and leave his knife alone for a moment.

            “Yeah, Chica. I got it.”

            I roll my eyes and open my mouth in distraction, “I have a name, you know.”

            “Sure you do, Chica. But, I do believe our mark has just arrived. So sing it to me later.”

            I nod and slip down to the ground floor where it’s a little cooler but there are no windows. The wind is still, and I can feel sweat gathering in the creases of my gloves. I sidle up to the door and wait for the clamor of horses to pass through the screeching howls of rusty hinged double-doors. If they leave the horses outside, they’ll have no rides home.

        I feel nothing like an old-time cowboy as I slink through a side door and around the back of the shambling building. There’s nothing heroic in what I’m doing; it’s just a job, and this building, it’s like some kind of relic wrung from an old history book " dry and dust-ridden, cloying.

            I wait at the back by a scarred and shuddering door which looks as worn and tired as the grave. I’d only heard three or four sets of hooves thunder past us earlier, so the defenses shouldn’t be too much. All’s silent now while they search for the money which should be there. They’re not expecting an ambush or a double-cross. It’s an easy job, but it requires two people to be done properly. I’ll let Adonis have the glory so long as I get paid.

            The roar of nearby gunfire shatters the suffocating silence of the place like a stone through a church window. Hell travels on the winds in the form of inescapable heat and tiny leaden messengers of Charon. I’ve no doubt that several ferries will be required before the night is through. The sound of the door breaking is overwhelmed by the gunpowder crescendo erupting from just behind the bar. There’s only one snatcher in the room with my mark. He trains his gun on me reflexively, but his eyes can’t leave my chest; he hesitates. A swift round-house to the jaw, and he slumps to the dry dust-laden floor with a broken neck.

            “Nice tits, huh?” I mutter as a perverse eulogy to no one reaching down for the mark.

            I snatch the kid back, throwing him over my shoulder as I retreat the way I’d come. Just outside the remains of the backdoor, a bright white rosebud of pain blooms in my left kidney. I muffle a curse and jostle the kid around until his trunk is at my back. I don’t enjoy pissing blood. I’m sure the kid is scared and angry and twelve kinds of uncomfortable, but I’ll check on him later. Once the threat of lead poisoning isn’t so imminent.

            I return to the mill wherein Adonis is still shooting succinctly and intermittently through the open second story window. He pauses to let the snatchers get a few shots in and reload before he returns fire interlaced with pseudo-elegant ramblings. I stay on the first. It’s still cooler and less likely to be perforated. I doubt the remaining snatchers had noticed my arrival or hasty retreat. I drop the mark to the dirt floor unceremoniously, and the muffled curse he emits falls on purposefully deaf ears. The smell and taste of his fear-sweat clings to me like rotten taffy for a moment longer until a few thick lungfuls of dust chokes even that away.

        Kneeling, I turn the kid onto his back and pull the blindfold away from his small face as he writhes and whimpers wondering what will come of him. Eyes like emeralds glare up at me accusingly. His tussled pale hair is plastered to his face and neck in sweat-sodden clumps. I almost feel for the boy when I catch sight of the cruel sigil burned into his tiny pale shoulder. It’s mostly healed now " a pinkish-white welt still raised well above the surrounding flesh. He’s probably only a year or two past his branding birthday. He’s probably filled with rage towards his parents, the world, and maybe even himself. It doesn’t matter though.

        It isn’t pleasant to wake to the thought of friends and revelry on your sixth birthday only to be brought to a sterile white hospital room where people in sterile white hospital garb tell you in their sterile monotonous voices that everything is going to be fine, and you’re finally going to grow up. They say that as they drug you so you can’t run and can’t scream and can’t stop them as they heat a chunk of iron that looks frighteningly familiar. You know you’ve seen the design of it somewhere before. You know you’ve seen it a thousand times and wondered what it means. Then, they come with their sterile white gloves and press that glowing-red lump of steel into your arm until everything fades to sterile white.

        I rub the long-healed, flat brand on my own shoulder absently. It ain’t a pretty process, but it happens to everyone once they’ve reached the age where they’re felt to be safe from child mortality. They make life easy here by erasing your dreams early.  The brand is passed from mother to child and damns the offspring to her profession. It eliminates any wonder on the child’s part as to what they’ll grow up to be. They may fight against it at first " for a year or two " but then, like everyone else, they accept it. And they begin to train for it and maybe even to like it. The brands make life neat and orderly and easy. You just look for the sigil to match your need: banker, merchant, mercenary, w***e… No choices and no options. Everything nice and neat and horrifyingly simple…

        I shake the images from my mind as he tries to sit up; bound hands are not helpful for this. I watch him flounder for a moment and know that the fates won’t be kind to him. Finally, I pull the sopping spit-soaked gag from his tiny rosebud mouth with a grimace. The boy’s face has pale red trenches carved into the flesh of his cheeks. He opens his mouth and closes it without uttering a word until he coughs and swallows and looks away from me, his cheeks burning in childish shame.

        I’m stricken for a moment by the vision before me. He doesn’t cry now, but the stains remain carving rivulets of clean skin amid the filth. His face, wrought with living conflict, reminds me of the old winged statues I’d seen a lifetime ago in the graveyards of the past. The stone wore, and filth overran their beauty until the rains came. I used to sit under the shelter of their wings in the rain and watch it carve the foulness of life away. Everyone is cremated now; the cemeteries are fertile farmland " human fertilizer. There are no more angels.

        “What took you so long?” he spits hoarsely sounding far too old for his seven or eight years.

        Nope, not an angel, I decide, so I shove the gag back in and leave him for a moment in his mortal woe to check on my distraction. He seems to have worked out quite well; nary a bullet had come my way. Maybe I’ll stomach his flamboyance and call him again someday. I climb the rickety ladder back up to the rafters where I’d left him sniping for snatchers. On the last rung, my fingers find foul and sickening purchase. The scent of copper and iron and baser things soon assault my senses even as the dust tries adamantly to choke me. A tired sigh escapes me as my eyes rise up over the last rung and the last division between us.

        He’s slumped against the sill of the window, crumpled upon himself like a broken doll. The soles of my boots cling to the blood-grimed grain as his breath rattles through his broken body. He opens his eyes at my approach.

        “It would’ve been fun,” he gasps and holds out his hand. “So what’s your name, Chica? I’m Aiden.”

        Reflexively, I grasp his hand and fight the bile down. My throat is suddenly dry, sandpaper against steel wool. “V-Valencianna.”

        “Lucky f****n’ p-potshot,” he murmurs choking on his own blood. It stains his lips a darker red and gives him the look of a shattered angel. The coughing fit seems to last a lifetime, but it’s over instantly. The arrogant light of perfection is fading from his eyes. He holds his gun out to me wanting some part of himself to escape from this place. “It would’ve been fun,” he says again.

        I close his eyes and relieve him of his gun. I look at him for a moment trying to etch his pretty features into my mind’s eye. I know they will fade, and by tomorrow the hellwinds will have taken any trace of elegance from those pompous features, leaving only skin, bone, and silicone. I leave that thrice damned knife glinting between his slack fingers and drop back to the ground floor. I still have a job to do, and now, I don’t even have to split the pay.

        The mark’s muffled mutterings tell me that he’s fine as I again move through the door like a shadow leaving him on the ground to wonder a while longer. I use the corner of the mill as cover and drop to one knee before emptying the remainder of the Adonis’s clip into the saloon. I wait a moment longer, keeping myself low and out of the line of any likely shot, but there are no more leaden messengers for tonight. The ferries are all full.

        I borrow a horse which actually hadn’t managed to get itself shot or break a leg in fright and return the not-quite angel to his doting sperm donor " wrapped up just the way I’d found him. His father gives him a cursory glance and doesn’t even ask about my partner. He’s already forgotten.

        My pay is immediate, and eighty percent of it goes straight into my retirement-dowry fund. I have no say in this. I’ll have to settle down soon and either pick a mate or have one selected for me. Both possibilities make me ill. I’m not an animal, and I should be able to pick when and with whom I propagate my species and my profession! I’ve already been awarded two stays of marriage due to my record, but I doubt I’ll warrant a third. I’ll still apply, but I know that the longer I wait, the smaller the pool of potential mates will be. I sigh and rub my brand again.

        The remainder leaves just enough to cover the necessities of life " food, booze, a bath, and a lay. I’m not a hard woman please " steak, wine, and a red head to share a bubble bath with. I’ll be happy as a clam.

        On my way to The River Styx, I pass the city’s temple fountain where all the religious wombats of society gather and pray to whatever they call the great f*****g force of the universe " Brahma, God, Enki, Quetzalcoatl " I call it Irony or Lust depending on my mood. But I’m a heretic apparently. Normally, I’d continue on without a thought; the zealots are not fun to play with"no fear of death, go figure. Oblivious morons... Today though, I stop for a moment and fling two coins into the gurgling depths of undrinkable water " tithings for the dead. Now Adonis can get himself a ferry and ask about them damned angels and pinheads he’d been going on about before. Now, maybe he won’t haunt my dreams tonight.

            Inside, the place is crawling with its normal triumvirate of life: mercenaries in black, w****s in as little as possible, and customers in everything in between. The last tended to huddle in the darkened back tables, out of sight of whatever genteel society might wander through these parts. I laugh; they’re as genteel as it gets. They’re waiting for just the right looking merc or piece of meat to pass by. I’m not interested in being hired again today, so I’ll just ignore their cat-calls. I’m not just another piece of a*s anyway. I’m a dangerous piece of a*s, and I’m looking to hire something similar.

        The cold air of the environmental unit makes the sweat on my skin congeal and goose bumps rise on my flesh as I survey the offerings of the day. I hear that the eunuchs are very talented and pretty in an androgynous way, but I want my boy to have balls. I don’t mind having bigger one, metaphorically speaking, but they are a requirement.

        I take a seat at the bar as a heady mixture of alcohol and perfume overwhelm my senses for a moment. The wastelands disappear from my mind. This is a place of decadence as much as decay. I want the former today. I want to forget about decay for a few sweet moments. I survey the offerings littering the place looking for something worth warming my bed. A sea of pretty bodies flows to and fro around me seeking their marks as I look for one of my own.

        I’m not surprised to see the prettiest seeking the least horrifying of us all. I suppose they can be picky, for another year or two"if they’re lucky. The boys stay to themselves, eyes cast down and waiting for the horrors of another sweat-soaked night. They’re gathered around one small table like sheep at an altar; their eyes are dead.

        One particularly pretty little ginger looks up and catches my eye. His eyes still have a few shades of life; maybe it’s only a trick of the light. He bites his lip adorably and, surveying the crowd, deems me less than atrocious. Peachy. He approaches, but the scar on his shoulder seems to glow fluorescent white against the pink of his flesh"untouched by sunlight due to long nights in dark chambers. The same brand and the same baby face as the wannabe-angel I’d just gotten rid of. I sigh and wave him off, my libido whimpering at my feet like a beaten dog. I’m glad that I’ll be retired to my family-bearing drudgery when he comes of age in a few short years.

            I swallow on a dry throat, and I’m reminded of the fact that fear, blood, sweat, and dust still compete to choke me. It’s been a long day; I need a drink. Then, I’ll worry of which dead-eyed pretty demon to bring to bed with me. No innocence tonight; I can’t stomach it. I hail the barkeep who normally stays huddled under the translucent glow of his little television set as though it might bestow upon him some divine blessing. He doesn’t look away, but he moves towards me. It’s uncanny the way he can be so unassuming. I guess it’s as much a requirement of his profession as apathy is of mine.

            “Whad’ll ya ‘ave?” he asks with one of the few remaining accents in the world: non-committal.

        I sigh noticing that the dead man’s blood is still on my fingers as well as my tongue. “Nepenthe,” I say.

Author's Note

Any feedback is welcomed. This was my first attempt at a genuine short-story. Please let me know how you feel about it.

Thanks!

Reviews

[Wolfwind]

I liked this. It captured me into the tale and kept in in the scenes as they unfolded throughout. I was mesmerized by the detail and descriptions you wove wonderfully within the story. It made for a very enjoyable and powerful flow of ink.
I think the micro plot went smoothly and carried it's well.
The charcters, even the young boy in the end had their riviting and memorable qualities.

I think the only suggestion I could make would be... when's the next installment? =D

Great Ink!
Aaron - Wolfwind