Rabu Rabu

After the baking pavement, it was cool inside the convenience store. There were only two people shopping at the moment, an older man and his daughter, who kept trying to sneak a bag of gum bears into the shopping basket, making the man take it out and return it to its shelf each time. Harumi bought tea and a packet of cookies. Hey boyfriend loved cookies – she'd discovered this soon after she'd run away from home, with nothing but the school uniform she'd happened to be wearing at the time, and moved into his place. She had a sweet tooth herself, so that worked out nicely.

When she approached the register, she noticed the card stand. GET WELL SOON, it said, and TO THE WORLD'S BEST MOTHER and GREETINGS FROM SUNNY MABASE and DON'T THINK OF IT AS 40 YEARS OLD. There was even one with a cat that said I MAED YOU A CHEEZBURGER BUT THEN I EATED IT :(. None of the ones was the one that caught Harumi's eye, though.

She picked it out of the stack and looked at it closely. The front showed a nervous-looking cartoon boy holding a single flower to someone outside of the picture. LOVE IS BLIND was printed above this. She turned the card over and read the back. The flower had been accepted by a girl with a vast overbite, ratlike teeth and glasses like the bottom of a beer bottle. REALLY, REALLY BLIND, this side said.

Harumi thought he might like that. The genders were sort of wrong for her to be giving him the card, but those were details and anyway, it was the thought that counted, right? It was just the sort of thing you bought and that then ended up pinned to the fridge with humorously shaped fridge magnets. And they had an anniversary coming up soon. She wondered if he remembered. Should she write it down on the card, or would he be able to guess? Better to be sure.

She borrowed the store pen to fill out the card, then threw it in a plastic bag with the cookies and the box of tea. As she left the store, she saw the old man and his daughter just a few steps in front of her. The little girl had her bag of gum bears after all. Harumi smiled at her, and the girl smiled back.
Good omen.

*

She unlocked the door into their apartment and stepped into the first of their two rooms, which was the kitchen as well as the dinning room.

“I'm home, dear,” she said, but he did not answer. Since he was not in the kitchen, there was really only one other place he could be. In the bedroom, watching the TV, which was not precisely so small you could call it a pocket model but got pretty close.

She was unpacking the tea and the cookies when she heard a door creak open behind her. She didn't turn. So, he'd finally come out, had he? The card was lying on the kitchen counter. She wondered if he'd notice.

There was a low, slobbering noise, like a whale trying to speak with its mouth full of plankton. Harumi turned around.

*

The first impression was that of a massive overgrown slug. It was raised half upright, and the bottom was covered with fleshy pink legs, like boneless fingers. Several smaller mouths flanked a single large aperture that began somewhere halfway down its belly and proceeded upward to the head. Mandibles and manipulatory tentacles were thick around this primary mouth, pink and purple and swollen with veins. from the center of a pock-marked stared a single massive, yellow eye that grew orange toward the edges. Along its back grew a bony ridge like scattered teeth.

It moved toward her ponderously, taking great care to balance a massive, heavy body on its multitude of pink feelers. It extended the longest pair of mandibles, wrapped them around her waist and pulled her towards it. The yellow-orange eye stared without blinking. A blue-veined tentacle seized her left arm.

“I bought you a card,” Harumi said.

The monster looked inquisitive.

“You forgot!” Harumi accused.

The yellow eye widened in realization. Another deep, oceanic rumble came from deep within the creature. Then it gave her a peck on the cheek.

“Well,” Harumi said, “You had better make it up to me then. Take me out dancing.”

The monster swept her off her feet. Love is blind.

Valley, Road and Tree

Sometimes people are so stupid, Mary Tetsuya thought.

She was standing in front of one of Father's paintings. Valley, Road and Tree it was called. It gave you exactly what it promised. There was a road, and it led past a tree and into a valley. The sky was summer in the painting and the clouds were too.

She supposed it was a good thing they were so stupid. If they bought Father's paintings, then Father would be happy and maybe buy her something. That would be nice. But it was still stupid. She watched a fat old man in an expensive suit blather about Valley, Road and Tree. He was talking about the composition. He thought it showed promise, but that Toshiro Tetsuya was being overtly bombastic.

Mary Tetsuya stared at him the way she would have stared at a retarded kid who'd sat down in the middle of a busy road. Was he actually complaining about the way the tree and the road and the valley were placed? Was he actually, really doing that? He couldn't be. Surely nobody could be that, that...stupid!

*
A memory. Mary, Father and Mother are eating rice waffles slathered thickly with peanut butter, in the real summer which will eventually become the summer of Valley, Road and Tree. Then they play catch. Mary is actually too old to play catch, but she indulges her parents and plays along, and it is fun.

Mary, running down the road. Mary hiding behind the tree which will later become the Tree. Mary peeking from behind the Tree, seeing her father, Toshiro Tetsuya, chase her new mother, then Pauline Smith and now Pauline Tetsuya, (happy days), and Pauline trips and Toshiro falls on top of her and then they are no longer Toshiro Tetsuya and Pauline Smith, they are Father and Mother, and Father and Mary see each other and smile, and this is the moment that is captured in Valley, Road and Tree.

The painting shows an empty road and a solitary tree. Father told her that he and Mother are rolling in the grass just below the canvas, and she, Mary, is hiding behind the tree and thus can't be seen.

*
“But why didn't you paint us in?” Mary asked once. “We were there, but you can't tell that from the picture.” Her finger is pointy, accusatory.

“Well, that was our moment, wasn't it?” Father smiled, ruffled her hair. “Let 'em find their own moments.”

*
And that is why the people are stupid. Buying Valley, Road and Tree won't give you summer. Valley, Road and Tree is not summer. It is not that moment when Mary finally saw that Toshiro had gotten over the death of the mother she could not remember, that he was ready to be Father again. It is not all those days that followed in the sun. It can't give anyone those days, not even to Mary.

But Mary knows where there is a real tree, not a Tree but a tree, and she knows there are summers there without number. She knows Father will take her there again, and other places. Paintings can't compare.

And now, a real actual story, as opposed to lol random

The setup is simple. There are a couple of bushes to conceal him where the forest begins, and he has an absorbent veil besides - it keeps him away from the scanners. And he has one more thing besides, of course. The laser carbine rifle in his hands.

The driveway is in perfect view. It is a quaint suburban house without a suburb to go with it – the Mayorlees have enough money for a plot of land outside the sprawl, but not the arrogance to build a mansion. And that confuses him somewhat. What have they done to earn Charlene's ire? Looking at the house and the single solitary sec.drone patrolling the estate, Lloyd Mayorlee hardly seems an enemy of the people. Where are the spoils of the masses he has exploited? Where are the armies of trophy wives and underpaid servants, why is there no proof of the insane, decadent drive to own expensive things for the sake of proving you are rich enough to own them?

He moves the rifle a bit, looks away from the front door and at the sec.drone, which is currently passing by a tree with a swing hanging from a jutting branch. It's not an old model, precisely, nor is it precisely cheap, but it is nowhere near the kind Mr. Mayorlee can afford. The S 2300 Guardian Spirit is a streamlined egg-shape on three stilt-like legs. Middle class people buy this model. He's seen the obscenely rich, surrounded by swarms of the S3 7800 Praetorians like shadowy auras, with their designer black carapace and elegant menace. Why doesn't Lloyd Mayorlee own a dozen? Charlene has shown him the reports, the hidden printouts of their man inside the Imperial Bank. He knows Lloyd could afford to surround himself in Praetorians if he wanted to. But he hasn't. Why?

And more importantly, why does Charlene want him dead?

He and Charlene have had...talks. He likes to think she trusts him, inasmuch as she trusts anyone. He understands that the Revolution is her baby, the only lover she will allow herself. Sometimes they lie on their backs on the roof of the vast, sprawling housing projects and gaze at the night sky where the moon is sometimes sensed like a ghost through smog, and she tells him about the Revolution, and the words make him dream. Sometimes the words make him want to touch her, but Charlene does not want to be touched. What she wants is a world where children do not starve because of the greed of reactionary conservatives, a world where the princes have been swept away, where hate and fear and all the other old chains the rich have used to enslave the people have been broken and forgotten.

Charlene is willing to forgo being a creature of meat in seeking that world. That he cannot, that he can still think of her as a woman instead of as a comrade and revolutionary...does that make him a bad person? Sometimes he wonders.

Charlene has told him the Revolution won't be bloodless. It's the only way, she's told him many times. You can't change the system from within. It can change you faster than you can change it. We have to prove we're worthy of freedom through blood.

But the question remains – why Lloyd Mayorlee? Not extravagant in any way. There have been no outstanding rumors of exploitation in his factories. Certainly he has bound wage-slaves in his service like all men of his class, but there are many who treat theirs much worse. Why must he be the first victim of Charlene's revolution?

Then the door opens and Lloyd steps out. He is a middle-aged black man with the toned body of healthy food and geneboosted vigor. He kisses his wife – she's younger than him, but not that young, not as young as he could have bought, could have had grown. Lloyd Mayorlee is blissfully unaware that a crosshair has just come to rest peacefully over his heart.

He thinks of Charlene again. Of Charlene's world, the one after the Revolution, the one she whispers off while they look at a hazy moon and hope to catch a glimpse of stars through the glare of the city. He doesn't know what Lloyd has done to stop that world's birth. But he does know (suddenly, without warning) that he's decided he doesn't need to know this man's sins, that the world Charlene whispers of if worth this death, this price in blood. He knows, amazed deep inside, that he can kill for the Revolution. That he will kill and always count the cost worthy of the prize it buys. A single step closer to Charlene's dream.

He knows this, so he isn't surprised when his fingers tighten calmly on the trigger and his hands hold the rifle with the steady serenity of a master.

He's plenty surprised after the rifle doesn't fire.

Charlene is on the roof when the signal from the transmitter built to look like a rifle reaches her. There isn't a moon, and for good reason – it's morning. She is content to lie there, among the pigeons and her comrades, when there is a buzzing in the pocket of her jeans. She retrieves a sleek, white commlink.

“What is it?” someone asks.

Charlene smiles as one of the names on the status display turns from yellow to green. “It's Nathan,” she says. “He's in it for real, now.”

The sheer stupidity of some people

I say, "I just don't understand why people do it."

She says, "Why do people enter ANY building?"

I say, "But why do they pretend to be surprised? They must have known what would happen."

She says, "You can't just assume any poor old man living alone in a castle is a vampire."

I say, "BUT HIS NAME IS DRACULA!"