x Tx - Normally Special

My Keeper raises his free hand and now I know it is my turn and I brace myself as calmly as I can. A Dispatcher drags the screaming girl next to our stools. My Keeper tells the Dispatcher to begin and he does. I hold my eyes to my Keeper’s and he raises an eyebrow, tilts his head, waiting for me to fail, but I don’t, even when he tells me to watch. I continue taking his thumb like a lover while the Dispatcher breaks the girl. A few minutes pass before my Keeper nods his head and dismisses the Dispatcher, who lets the girl’s body fall to the floor, useless.

When the gun goes off there are reflexive screams from many of the Coveted, but not me. I am still busy with my mouth and tongue. “Good girl,” he says, praising my focus. I want to smile, but cannot. I know my Trial Master would be proud. More Dispatchers begin making some of the failed Coveted succumb and I don’t react. Their Buyers will be upset. I am again thankful I didn’t scream.

“You are doing well.” He pulls his thumb out of my mouth and rubs its slick wetness all over my lips, pushing them like clay, smearing them slippery. I close my eyes and make no attempt to stifle a moan.

He sees this. He knows. He laughs. “I have made a good investment.” And then, “Your testing is over.”

He tells me to stay and I do. When he comes back he takes my hand and brings me to my feet. I am careful to bypass the girl, but I cannot avoid what has come out of her. I do not look behind me, but imagine the tracks my shoes must be making in my wake.

We stop at the Processor before exiting.

“Papers, please.”

My Keeper hands him a thick folder and the Processor scans the pages within, shooting glances at me as he reads.

“Looks good,” he says, closing the folder. He eyes me again. “Okay, let’s code her. She one for the cages? We offer transport help if you need it.”

“No. She’s gonna be a Subjected. My cages are full enough already.”

My heart leaps and untwines at the sound of the word, “Subjected.” My future has been classified. I can walk this path, I think. I hope he is not too cruel in his needs. Even if he is, I must endure. I am a Subjected now.

The Processor lifts the hair over my left ear and snaps open the disc that lies flat against my skin. He punches the scanner’s keyboard and aims the scanner at the exposed disc. There is a high-pitched tone and then a hot flash of pain in my skull like a scab has been ripped off of my brain. Before I can muster a scream, it is gone.

The Processor looks at my Keeper, now officially, “She’s all yours.”

I trail him through hallways connected with heavy doors until we arrive in the transport hub. He puts me in the back of his vehicle and begins to secure me. I slip my legs into the slots and when he smooths my skirt against the curve of my thighs, I tremble. As he pulls and tightens the straps I can smell his strength; the musky stench of it lies thick against my skin. I put my hands into fists and hold them together above my head before he even has to tell me. He clips the metal around my wrists stopping just short of pinching my skin, but then, as if suddenly discovering his reign, pushes the cuffs once more, causing the metal to bite into my flesh. I use my jaw to tame my mouth. I breathe.

He releases the cuffs and studies my face and then asks how I am feeling. When I tell him it does not matter (Canon 7) he nods, grins, and shuts the door.

My Keeper drives the transport into the out of doors where the world is blazing with daylight. I surrender my eyes to the sun, holding my breath as the burning blindness reaches its peak then retreats. I am proud. I have beaten the sun.

I turn over the book and locate her name. I press my finger on the letters. I stroke her name, back and forth. I want her to feel me doing this somehow. I want her to know I care so much that feeling her name on a book which is just really flat paper that feels like nothing was something I felt compelled to do. I stroke her name and write her this letter in my head. It begins, “If you only knew…”

When it finally happens I hope she will be forgiving for my hands and my mouth will be as hungry and fumbling as that of a teenage boy’s. I hope for this. I dream of my face falling slack in front of her as she releases her bra to the floor. I dream of all of that soft secret roundness, being there, being given only to me, all for me. I see myself forgetting her eyes now as mine wrap around this new flesh, rude and hungry. I will reach for them grabby and earnest, burying my face into them eating them, everywhere with my lips no longer virgin to their taste. She will moan and say yes and run her fingers through my hair as I lick and suck and smother myself wet.

The Chinese figure skater fell and it was sad. She looked like a little girl dancing for her father. She looked like a little girl in a new dress, spinning for her father. Look, daddy! Am I pretty, daddy? Daddy, am I pretty? And the falling part is when her daddy says, Leave me the fuck alone, I’m trying to read the paper.

She just lay there in her bubblegum pink, silver sparkle leotard. Her hair, pulled tight into a band of puffy feathers, hands splayed, the blades of her skates now mated with the air.

I watched her lie there. Everyone watched. When I saw that she was not making any attempt to get up, I put my coffee down and walked over to her. I knelt beside her and she smelled so beautiful and I thought, nobody here that is watching us, none of these people knows this, about her lovely smell.

I reached down and gently touched her on the shoulder blade.

I said, “Come on. You need to get up. All of these people…”

She said, “I know. I will. I will when I am ready.”

There was a “don’t fuck with me” resonance in her voice that was clear and clean so I got up, shrugged my shoulders at the waiting cars, and walked back across the intersection to get my coffee.

The neighbors got a new washer and dryer this weekend. I heard the truck. It came early. I heard the metal slide and slam of the truck’s loading door or whatever it’s called. It sounded like WAKE THE FUCK UP! And also, I AM BRINGING NEW THINGS! I felt happy for my neighbors. New appliances are so exciting for at least three weeks. Week four they become just appliances. Week five and beyond you open and close them. Their noises that in the beginning were Tinkerbell pretty and magical now sound familiar. They do what you expect them to; their new and different skills are forgotten and taken for granted. It’s like they were always there, like this. Like the crappy old ones that were hated and cursed and kicked at never existed. Like life had not been improved after the trucks’ metal door slammed down and rumbled away. They are reliable and take up space.

I have appliances. They’ve been here for a long time. I think. Maybe not. Who knows? I forget. I want to recognize their Tinkerbell sounds. I should try. But all I hear is nothing new.

All of my tank tops are striped the wrong way for a girl of my size. They are also too short. My belly bulges out from beneath the bottom like, “Hey, wanna play with me?” My corduroy pants are also striped, but in the fabric. That is how they are made. My hair hangs like greasy blanket fringe. I feel like a stripe. I am a stripe. A big bulging stripe painted down the middle of a highway by a drunk highway stripe painting guy — probably my dad.

My mom won’t buy me new tank tops because she thinks forcing me to wear tops that are way too small for me is motivation for losing weight. I don’t tell her that the only motivation it is giving me is to put on my shortest tank top, go out in the backyard to my old playhouse, and kill myself with her sewing scissors.