Parlour Games

This week at PLC we’re going to write fiction instead of just talking about it.

NO.

Yeah.

But rather than each of us writing a micro-piece, we decided to do a continuing piece of fiction round-robin style, with a 500 count word limit per part. For some strange reason the suckers that host this blog with me my associates elected me to kick things off, so without further ado, I present,

PART ONE

As soon as I put the trans in my mouth, I knew it was a mistake.

It felt like a hot poker on my tongue. It tasted like a hunk of iron that had been marinated in a garbage can. I gave Tensen a tear-glazed look of panic. She grinned, her teeth smeared with silver. That metallic smile was the future. It was us, or would be, if I would stop being a chickenshit and just eat the damn thing.

I swallowed. It dropped down my throat with a sizzle, sending electric shocks through my body. First my left arm twitched. Then my right leg kicked a warning. Fingers on my face, Tensen pressing a pen between my teeth. I gripped it, bent forward just as my torso tried to buck off my appendages. My ass rattled on the concrete.

Nothing came out though, thank God.

Tensen gripped my arm and hauled me upright. I spat out the pen. It bounced, teethmarks in the plastic.

“Not so bad, eh?” Tensen picked up her soda cup, popped the lid, and rummaged through the ice inside, digging out a lemon wedge. “Here.”

“No chaser,” I croaked. This much dignity I could scrape together, at least. Like a lemon was going to cut through that taste of pennies and rotten hamburger meat anyway.

“Suit yourself.” She bit down on the wedge, made a face. “Ugh, that’s almost worse.”

I looked out of the alley we were hanging out in, at all the suits squealing down Chevron Lane. No time to look at the two gutters spazzing out on the concrete, and really who’d want to look anyway? I glanced at my hands, half expecting them to be different, knowing they wouldn’t be.“So, when do you think it’ll happen?”

“Oh, soon. 24-48 hours. Least, that’s what the guy said.”

“Long enough for him to vanish off the face of the earth if it’s bunk.” I picked up the chomped pen and flexed it in my hands.

“It’s not. I told you, when Lady Cadbury-Heinz was getting ready for her Coming Out, she left hers on the vanity when she went to get her hair done. I smelled it, Shishi. I almost licked it. This stuff smelled exactly the same.”

“If you even touched it, she’d have known, she’d have murdered you on the spot.” I hated when she called me Shishi.

“You can smell something without touching it.” She leaned her head back against the brick wall. “Don’t be a crap.”

“I bet you’ll get wings,” I said. I knew that’s what she wanted. To fly up out of the Artificial Levels. To see the sun. Not that you needed wings to get out of the AL. You just needed trans.

“Who knows what we’ll get.” She flashed her quicksilver smile. “That’s half the fun of trans, right? Angels, weres, spooks. We could turn out to be anything.”

…TO BE CONTINUED