A collaborative story by The Parking Lot Confessional
(Pt 1: Amy McLane, Pt 2: Amy K. Nichols, Pt 3: S.C. Green, Pt 4: Michael James Greenwald)
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.”
Tensen looked past me and her smile dropped. “Come on.”
Before I could turn to see the trouble, she’d pulled me to my feet and we were scrambling further down the alley.
“What’s wrong?”
“Sentries.”
I’d only seen a sentry once, when I was like four or five. I was walking down Capshaw Canal with my parents. A scruffy man ran through the crowds, pushing and yelling. His clothes were torn and his face panicked. My mom put her arms around me and turned me away, but I wiggled around to see. I watched the crowds move out of the sentry’s way. I saw the eye search the man out. Saw the long arms pluck him from where he crouched. The man hung like a rag in the sentry’s grip. My dad put his arm on my shoulder. Don’t worry, honey. They wouldn’t take him if he didn’t deserve it.
I choked. “How do they know?”
Tensen’s voice remained cool. “Maybe they don’t.”
We ran into the shadows, around the bend and beyond the reach of their torchlight eyes. Tensen led the way. I’d never been down this far before. The alley’s walls gave way to blackness. The pavement grew soft under my shoes. I didn’t want to know what coated the concrete.
“Wait here a sec.” Tensen let got of my arm.
I clutched after her but my hands grasped only air. “Why? Where are you going?”
“Toughen up, Shi. I’m just going to make sure it’s safe.”
With her gone, I felt the darkness slink around me. I reached out, taking halting steps until I felt the solid safety of the wall at my back. As my eyes searched the dark, my fingers traced the mortar grooves. The chiseled sound of my fingers against the stone sent shivers through my arms and up my neck. The more I heard that sound, the more I felt my fingers against the stone, the more I wanted to dig. The more Ihad to dig.
I turned my back to the shadows and pressed my hands against the wall. My eyes saw nothing, but my fingers scanned the surface, felt the pockmarks and crevices. I curled my fingers and the stone gave way, crumbling into piles at my feet. Then the urge overtook me. All I wanted was my hands in and the wall down. I dug in. My breath came in gasps as I worked, my blind eyes blinking away the dust.
“Shishi? Oh my God.”
I stopped digging and turned.
Tensen stood before me, green as a glowmite, holding her arms up before her. I stumbled toward her, tripping over the piles of stone.
Every hair on her arms, every eyelash and eyebrow, every hair on her head glowed green. She looked at me and I held up my hands. Her light confirmed what I already knew. Claws. Pickaxe fingers. Forearms of steel.
24 to 48 hours, my ass.
“No. No. No,” Tensen cried.
“What?”
Tensen shimmered green from head to toe. No. Not completely. The light didn’t shine from her mouth, but it did reflected from her metallic teeth. She spun around and looked over her shoulder.
“Is there anything?” Desperation in her voice.
“I don’t know,” but I did.
Tensen’s hands swept over her back and shoulders, searching for the wings that weren’t there. I tried to comfort her. I reached out a hand, but she shrunk away from my claws.
My claws. I touched a fallen stone, leaving a groove where my finger -no, talon- scored it. How was I supposed to hold Tensen’s hand in mine? Countless nights laying in the dark, festering over the next day’s work and humiliation, Tensen’s hand would find mine. In that tight grip, I knew tomorrow would come, and we would survive. She took another step away from me.
I didn’t know which hurt more, Tensen’s disgust in what I’d become or the possibility of never feeling someone’s touch again. She felt her insides hollow. She needed to know.
“How long is this supposed to last?” I asked to Tensen’s back. She slumped onto a pile of stone and shook her head.
“I thought forever.”
“What do you mean thought?” I wiped away a welling of tears careful to use the back of my wrist. “Does it wear off? Can we go back? How do you know?”
“I… I…” She took a deep breath and drop her head into her hands. “I’ve taken it before. Lady Cadbury-Heinz.”
“But she would’ve murdered you on the spot.”
Tensen shook her head again and sat a little straighter.
“She made me.”
She read the confusion in my face.
“I didn’t lie about her Coming Out, but she needed a backup in case she didn’t like what she got. Really I thought I was being rewarded for good service. I swear I did. I heard the screams, I screamed myself when she returned to the chambers.”
“What did it do to her?”
“There were bones where shouldn’t have been.” She motioned to her arms and chest as she rocked back and forth. “She tried to reassure me, but her teeth kept falling out while she spoke. She said to take the pill. She put it in my hand and smiled at me.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
Tensen kept talking as if the words wouldn’t come out fast enough. “I swallowed it and she waited for me to change. She told me she needed an active pill to turn her back. I started to glow. She pinned me down. I grabbed the plate and it shined too. I swung it at her head. I just wanted her to stop. Not to hurt her. I don’t want to hurt anybody. It caught her head and burst. She fell on me. I pushed and pushed. Something fell from her mouth into mine. I choked, and the green was gone.”
“It’s okay Tensen.” I tried to move closer again, but she stood up.
“No it’s not.”
She turned around with a glowing fist-sized stone raised above her head.
“I need my wings Shishi.”
Tensen kept talking as if the words wouldn’t come out fast enough. ”I swallowed it and she waited for me to change. She told me she needed an active pill to turn her back. I started to glow. She pinned me down. I grabbed the plate and it shined too. I swung it at her head. I just wanted her to stop. Not to hurt her. I don’t want to hurt anybody. I caught her head and burst. She fell on me. I pushed and pushed. Something fell from her mouth into mine. I choked, and the green was gone.”
“It’s okay, Tensen.” I tried to move closer again, but she stood up.
“No. It’s not!”
She turned around with a glowing fist-sized stone raised above her head.
“I need my wings, Shishi.”
“But we’re friends!” I scrambled backward across the cobblestone alley, talons tearing up bits and pieces of stone like one of the sentry’s skid loaders, making that horrible scratching sound I’d woken up to that morning, which was really four years, yet seemed like eons ago.
“We have orders to take your house,” the lead sentry had said, not even providing my father the dignity of dismounting from his perch in the cage of the skid loader, just flinging the written documentation at my father, then whistling and yelling, “Let’s go, boys!” to the platoon of skid loaders and cranes and bulldozers lined-up behind him, as my father scrambled for the papers in the dirt.
“But wait!” My father paged through the three stapled pages, but I know he couldn’t read them, not without his seeing glasses. ”You have to let us get our things out.”
My mother, the twins, and me stood about halfway up the driveway as the lead sentry peered at my father so peculiarly you’d have thought my father had asked him for a ride on his back out of the Artificial Levels.
“I don’t have to let you do anything!” the lead sentry roared. He shifted his gaze to his platoon. ”Can you believe the knocks on this Double-Eye?”
“But I work for the government. I’m a scientist.” My father held the pages in the air, shook them, as though the papers somehow justified his claims; and they might have, for all he knew, for all my mother knew, for all the one-eyed sentries knew–the later born without and the former passed the age of natural sight.
“I don’t care if your the cragging Lady Cadbury-Heinz!” said the lead sentry, belly-fat shaking with laughter. All the sentries by this time losing it, one of whom laughed so hard he jammed the shifter on his skid loader and nosed into the dozer. ”Now, look what you’ve done. Get back! Get back!” The lead sentry spit at my father’s feet. My father stumbled backward and the lead sentry spit again, my father backpedaling, lead sentry lofting spit balls, until my father collided with me.
“Ouch.” I clutched at my chest where he’d knocked me.
“I’m sorry,” my father mumbled, putting a hand on my head.
“Onward!” yelled the lead sentry and the platoon of destruction rolled forward.
We stood in our driveway all morning and watched them demolish our house with all our things inside. It wasn’t until the equipment and sentries rode away that my mother began to weep. My father slung his arm around my shoulder, “Oh, it’s going to be all right. Don’t cry, honey, don’t cry.” He held the stapled documents inches from his nose. ”They wouldn’t have done that if we didn’t deserve it.”
A smack to the back of my head drew my concentration back to the present, where I quickly realized my lack of focus and desperate scrambling had led me down an alley with no opening. A dark brick wall stretched higher than I could see. Water dripping from a non-visible ledge into my hair, down the bridge of my nose and over my lips. Some moisture seeped through and tasted foul.
Tensen rounded the corner and her whole bright body flashed brighter when she saw my predicament. She opened her jaws wide and snapped them shut, stepping forward, evidently in no hurry to advance upon me.
I turned to the only rationale I’d thought of so far, bleating out, “But you’re like mybest friend!”
“This world won’t suffer friends,” Tensen said, her voice, hollow and dim, as her features were bold and iridescent; nearly beautiful even–if the alley hadn’t reverberated a clanking sound from her gnashing sets of metallic teeth. ”And when I have my wings, I’ll be so famous, everyone will want to be best friends with me!”
“Like Lady Cadbury-Heinz?”
Tensen aura dimmed. ”Don’t you talk about her, Shishi. Don’t even mention her name.”
In the dim-light, I became aware of the walls that surrounded me on three sides. They were stone in some spots but in others I could see brick, sections of which, were decrepit and crumbling. I stared at my chisel-hands. It wouldn’t take much. But Tensen appeared to decipher my thoughts, her body illuminating even brighter and hotter than before. The walls around me faded to black in the glow.
“But that’s what she wanted, wasn’t it? Wings.”
“Shut your mouth.”
“And think of the irony there, too, the woman who merged the two oldest old-money families in the world.” I grinned. I was enjoying this. ”And birthed the brainchild of the Ketchup Cadburry Bunny, too!”
Tensen’s body grew brighter and brighter, her circular aura growing wider, like a green bubble around her, growing and growing, and a voice, no longer recognizable as Tensen’s, deeper, darker, sinister, emitted from her mouth. ”Don’t. You. Say. One. More. Word.”
I thought about shutting up, I did, I swear, but the truth of the matter, the greenmatter, is I no longer felt much like myself. I didn’t know much about transing. I was a transing virgin up until this afternoon. And I don’t know why I took it. Transing was highly illegal. If caught the punishment was harsh. Tensen told me stories about people she knew, other runaways, addicted transies, who’d gotten caught on the trans by the sentries and been sent away to concentration camps.
Shutting up was certainly in my genetic disposition, but as I clicked my talon-hands together, I didn’t feel much like my father’s daughter anymore. So, I grinned and said, “Yeah, Tennie, I see what you’re saying, cause Lady Cadburry-Heinz was the most famous woman in the world, right?”
Tensen’s orb grew brighter.
“She couldn’t have made up the whole wing theory.”
Brighter.
“She couldn’t have been transed out of her mind and crazy.”
Even brighter.
“There was no way that Lady. Cadburry. Heinz. Was just some scum-suckingtransy.”
There was an explosion and a beam of light shot up from the ground like a neon green lightening bolt through Tensen’s body and out the crown of her head. Her limbs jerked horribly, as though skewered on the electric charge, and I smelled a smell like pancake batter; then Tensen’s head snapped so her eyes were facing straight up, and she smiled. I ran my eyes up the beam’s upward trajectory, seeing the green beacon extend into the swirling black clouds of our atmosphere, piercing them, appearing to burn them away in a ten-foot circumference around it, then rising even higher, where the sinister clouds retreated and for the first time in my life, for the first time in anyone’s life that I knew, I could see a blue sky, white clouds, and a sun.
“Beyond A.L,” I whispered, then darted my eyes around, as though wondering who had just said something so insane.
This view sucked the air from my lungs. I’d only heard about Beyond A.L. Bed-time stories my father told me. Someday, honey, you’ll find a way to fly up beyond the pollution, to a world with blue sky, white clouds, and sun, he’d say. When I was a girl I believed him, when he said the man in square caught by the sentries wouldn’t have been taken if he hadn’t deserved it, I believed him. The sentries destroying our house, and our family wandering the country-side, squatting in house-to-house, digging in long-barren fields for morsels of food, began the building of disbelief in my father, in my parents, in all that they promised had once been good and would be again. So much so, that, after months, when we’d finally made it out of the mountains to a shelter for displaced people in the city, I’d waited until the second night, when we’d all laid on our cots to sleep, before rising in the dark to the sound of my father’s snoring, and without hesitation, without a look backward, slipping out into the night, away.
Tensen’s eyes hadn’t left the view of Beyond A.L. ”Isn’t it so pretty?” she gushed, in the little girl voice I’d first heard while scrounging through the scrap pile in the alley behind a butcher shop. ”Isn’t it, ShiShi? Isn’t it just super gorgeous?” Inside the crackling and spitting green orb around her, I saw a fleshy tone return to my friend’s arms and legs and round face, chubby cheeks with the dimples in the middle like two mini belly-buttons on her face. She tilted her head to the front and looked at me through her soft gray eyes. Tears trickled down her cheeks. ”I’m sorry,” she whispered, sounding far-away and frightened.
“I know.” I wanted to hug her, hold her hand even, but with my chisel-hands I’d hurt her, and I was afraid to even touch what could be some kind of electrified force-field surrounding her. ”I’m sorry I said those things about your mom.”
Tensen looked up again. Maybe, a realization settling on her that even if she killed me this would be as close to escaping an Artificial Level as she’d ever be; or, if I were a more optimistic person in this pessimistic world, maybe the realization had to do with what great friends we’d become, meeting on the street, looking out for each other.
Tensen nodded. Agreeing with one of my assumptions, or both? ”She would have really liked to see this.”
“You’re mom?”
“Yeah. She really believed, you know. That the world wasn’t such a bad–”
But the rest of what she said was drowned out by a scratching noise. Distant. Soft. Tensen’s mouth continued to move but all I could hear in my ears was that scratching noise. Coming closer.
“Tensen,” I hissed. ”Shut up.”
She appeared hurt. The green glow around her snapped and spit. From her neck up, her face began to flood green.
“Tensen! No! Stay with me!” I charged toward her. Wielding my chisel-hands like swords, I struck at the green field, but as soon as I touched it, a surge shot up my arms and into my brain, like two ice-picks had been jammed through my skull, and I lofted into the air, staring down at Tensen’s beady-green eyeballs, then I spun in three-hundred-and-sixty degrees and hurtled across the alley, crashing hard into the brick wall. I lay on the stank ground, chips of the wall raining down upon me.
“Never! Touch! Me!” The voice was back. Tensen possessed. My brain felt scrambled. I blinked, but my vision wouldn’t clear; I tasted metal on my tongue. And in the background the constant scratching, getting louder, closer.
“Tensen. Your mother. A.L. Tensen, listen to me! They’re coming. The sentries. Put out your light! Tensen, please, put out your light!”
It was then that inside that green forcefield my fleshy Tensen appeared for the final time. She looked at me like some dumbstruck child. ”But I can’t, Shishinnie-Anne.” She tilted her head and stared up at the path burned through the clouds by her beam of light, into the blue sky and white, wispy clouds and yellow sun of Beyond A.L. ”Isn’t it so pretty?”
In my head I heard my father’s voice: They won’t take you if you don’t deserve it.
A piercing scratch and I saw the auger appear at the end of the alleyway, then one front wheel of the skid loader. I spun away from Tensen, toward the wall, jammed my chisel-talons into the weakened bricks.
And began to dig.
