The Outcast Hours

by Mahvesh Murad

  Frankie’s a bad actor and a worse liar. What’s stopping her from coming clean? She owes Glitterwings nothing.

  Instead, she hears herself say: “There was a fly in the room.” This is her first wilful disobedience in her professional life. She’s made mistakes before, sure; fallen foul of some regulation or other while on the learning curve, but deliberately breaking an important rule… it’s shaken something in her. It doesn’t fit with her picture of herself. Her simple, deliberate choice means that either she or the rule is wrong—that either she or the rule is immoral; there seems to be some inescapable and fundamental meaning here, but she just can’t put her finger on it. “It was bothering us, and putting us off our work. We were swatting at it and must have accidentally hit the switch.”

  “Switches,” Glitterwings adds.

  Krill purses his lips. He taps the page in front of him with the top of his pencil, glances at his colleagues and nods.

  “As for you, Mr”—he makes a show of rereading the name listed on Glitterwings’ employment record—“Heisenberg. This is your”—he pages through the file again—“umpteenth infraction of company rules and policy, and we’ve been lenient in the past. However, given that compliance is a core value of DRRC’s model, which we protect with the utmost integrity, we can no longer afford the liability your lack of performance presents to the company.”

  Frankie pushes forward on her chair and puts her arm out towards Glitterwings, as if to protect him from a crash. She’s opening her mouth already, as if something too big, too weighty, is already pushing its way out of her abdomen.

  The five fairies turn in unison to the screen, where Barry Spades’ face looms closer to the camera, the autofocus working overtime to parse the grease-shine. When the picture’s settled, Frankie sees that Barry Spades has a beautiful smile: a full set of Da Vinci veneers and several gold cosmetic dentures. “Can them,” he announces.

  “No!” Glitterwings says, grappling away from Frankie’s hold. “No… it’s was me. I did it. I’ll take the blame. Frankie did nothing! That’s not fair. That’s a load of spitshine.”

  But Frankie’s not listening; she’s weightless, and the rest of her life is filling the space beyond that TV screen.

  “You sure you don’t want to come?” Glitterwings asks Frankie. “Drown our sorrows before we find some new ones?” He’s suggested they go for a commiseratory down at the Keg and Glitter, but it isn’t six o’clock yet and Frankie might be able to see the children off if she hurries. She’ll have a whole lot more time with the children now.

  “I’m sure,” she says.

  He hesitates. “Do you hate me?”

  “Hate you?” She does have reason to hate him. None of this would have happened if he hadn’t been lax on the job. But he didn’t make her lie to the committee. “I don’t hate you.”

  “I’m sorry. Truly. You were right. We should’ve told the truth. But listen, don’t worry. We’re made for better things, you and me.” With a sardonic salute, he zips away.

  Better things. It’s a hearty notion, but they both know there are no better things. There’s nowhere else to be, nothing else she can do. Maybe she should become a bandit, live a life of crime in the underworld or go flitting out into the hinterland, making a living scratching sustenance together with short cons and wing jobs. Out there on the rural forecourts and in the mangy motels, at least she’d see the sky, a field of crops bowing to the sun out back, real dust between her toes. It wouldn’t be so bad, would it? This vision of pastoral freedom doesn’t gel with the reality of the kids and their school lunches and their self-defence lessons, their theme-day costumes and their enshrined play-date rota, of never knowing where you’d be able to nest from day to day.

  The anger comes then. An unfamiliar emotion—a human emotion. It’s just so unfair. She hits her targets every time. She’s a good employee. Exemplary. That should count for something. They even implemented the suggestions she made to HR about using drowsy spells on the Ritalin kids. She never got the credit for that, and she didn’t care at the time; she considered it part of her duty.

  She’d like to clamp down that smug, entitled face and pull out every one of those gold crowns and precious porcelain veneers just like the old woman on Wharf Street does. She’d make Barry Spades squirm and whine like the most pants-pissing of her donors.

  She buzzes back to Angelique’s desk, pushing to the front of the queue, ignoring the irritated whines from the worker bees around her. “I need to talk to Spades.”

  Angelique looks up from her paperwork and gives her an eloquent what the fuck? look.

  “Did you hear me? I said I need to talk to Spades.”

  “In your dreams, girl.”

  “Nightmare, more like,” the worker in the booth next to her mutters.

  “I need to talk to him now.” Frankie thumps a clenched fist on the desk. The room falls silent.

  Angelique sits back and eyes her. It’s the first time, Frankie realises, that the bureaucrat has given her any real attention. “Listen, chickadee. Even if Spades would deign to let you into his exalted presence, he’s not even in the bleeding country. Never is. Specially now they’ve got all that trouble in the States.”

  “What trouble?”

  “Tooth mouse union rebelling again.” She turns to her neighbour. “What was it they’re after this time?”

  “More danger pay,” the woman yawns. “Cats, innit.”

  Frankie can’t give up that easily. “He was on the screen in the room. Can you call him?”

  “Can’t help you, soz.”

  Frankie reaches for the name of one of the Discipline fairies. “What about Krill? Moshpit Krill? Where can I find him?”

  “Forget it.”

  “There must be someone I can talk to about this.”

  “Not in this life.”

  So much for her revenge fantasies; life doesn’t work that way. The weight of her utter powerlessness finally deflates Frankie, and she turns and charts a slumping course towards the door.

  Angelique watches for a moment, then sighs and pushes off her perch. “Taking a vape break,” she says, disappearing into the void behind her cubicle.

  Aware that scores of eyes are still fixed on her, Frankie drifts away. Would she be able to find her way back to the warren of offices that led to the Cell? She doubts it.

  “Oy.”

  Angelique is over by an ‘Administrators Only’ door, gesturing for her to follow. She glances to make sure no one is watching, then taps in a door code and ushers Frankie into a dark corridor that’s putrid with the scent of menthol-scented vape fumes. Angelique points to a metal door at the far end which is covered with hazard stickers.

  “More than likely you’ll find Krill having a cheeky fag in dispatch. Saw him head that way just before you accosted me. You’ll want to get your skates on, though.”

  “Thank you.” Frankie starts to scoot away, then turns back. “Why are you helping me? Is it because I always remember your name?”

  Angelique almost chokes on her vaporiser. “Ha, no. Was gonna ask you to hook me up with that fairy you’re teamed with.”

  “Glitterwings?”

  “Yeah.” She pokes her tongue between her teeth. “He’s lush.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “He partnered up?”

  Frankie gives her a rueful smile. “No. He’s not into”—she sweeps her hands up and down her body—“our sort.”

  “Don’t tell me… Elf-fucker, am I right?”

  “Yes.”

  Angelique sighs. “Typical. Always the hot ones. Now move it, love. Krill won’t be there for long.”

  The second Frankie is through the metal door, her ears are assailed with the bellow and hiss of pistons humping, and a crunching sound that sets her wings on edge. Scores of sweaty elves are shovelling teeth into panniers, and moulded steel fists are grinding down on them, crushing them into powder. The sound of teeth being splintered sends a primal shudder into her wing base
s. The scuttling elves pay her no heed.

  Covering her ears, she zips past them and into a cavernous space where more elves in respirator masks and white overalls are scooping powder into small plastic bags. They machine-wrap the bags in thick plastic and stick on a label in English and Chinese letters. She pauses to read one:

  MANLY LOVE POTION. CONTAINS GENUINE JUVENILE DENTINE FOR SUPER LENGTH AND SUPER STRENGTH. (works for ladies too.)

  This—this is what it’s all for? The proud lies she’s told her children. “We’re doing important work,” she’s told them. “We’re part of something good.” The mortifying pride she’s felt all this time. Her eyes water and she has to gasp to get her lungs to start again.

  Now she pushes herself through the next room, where the bags are being packaged into cardboard boxes, finally reaching the gleam of pallid morning light sneaking in through a half-open dispatch door at the far end. It’s here that she finds Moshpit Krill hovering above a stack of boxes, puffing on a cigarette and staring into space. She fizzes towards him, passing a number of sacks bundled with money, notes almost as big as her and smelling of concentrated faeces.

  She has to fly right past his eye-line before he notices her. He jumps, goes to stash his cigarette, then relaxes as he clocks she’s no-one important. “Not supposed to be here. Factory’s out of bounds for collectors.”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Then put in a request. I’m busy.” He squints at her. “Wait … don’t I know you?”

  “Seriously? Are you really asking me that? You just watched me get fired.”

  “Oh yeah.” He’s lost his veneer of professional coldness. Now he just looks bored.

  “Look, I need your help. I need this job. I’ve got mouths to feed. I can’t lose it. I just can’t.”

  “Shouldn’t have broken the rules then, should you?”

  “It wasn’t my fault. Please, I’m begging you. Please, can’t you speak to someone, explain that—”

  “No can do. I don’t make the rules.”

  There’s nothing behind his eyes. He’s as soulless as Spades. She glances at the boxes, and this brings on a fresh wave of anger at the pointlessness of it all. To think that all her sweat, blood and tears, her professional pride was for this: to make humans longer and stronger and more loveable.

  “I could tell them,” she says. “I could tell the parents/guardians/carers what you’re doing with their teeth.” She flickers over one of the bags of money. “I’m sure they’d like to know how much profit you’re making off them.”

  “A whistleblower, huh?”

  “Yes.” She’s trembling now: Anger, fear, and exhilaration.

  He shrugs, lights another cigarette from the butt of the last. “Go for it. Less of a fuck I could not give.” He’s tired, she realises. As exhausted as she is. “Sorry you got the boot and all that, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m nothing more than a cog in the wheel, just like you.”

  “I’m not a cog.”

  He snorts. “Yeah. Forgot. Not anymore you’re not.”

  It couldn’t be more obvious that the trainee, a fey male of around her age named Kylie, doesn’t have the stomach for it. Some don’t. Glitterwings didn’t either, which surprised Frankie when she first suggested the idea to him. She has no idea where he is these days. Angelique says she heard he’d joined one of those fairy circle cults, but Frankie can’t—or won’t—believe that of him.

  She gives Kylie an encouraging, if somewhat rote, smile. “We all feel like this at first. It helps if you remember the donor won’t be needing them again.” Old Mr Truffaut from the dementia ward will be lucky to see out the week.

  “It’s just… it just seems so unnatural,” Kylie complains.

  Frankie should be more patient; she was exactly like this not so long ago, but soon the nurses will start their rounds—and besides, she’s in a hurry to get home. The OLED screen the kids have been demanding is arriving this morning and she wants to make sure it’s installed correctly.

  Kylie shudders. “And it really won’t hurt him?”

  “He won’t feel a thing.” Mr Truffaut is living out his last days on a morphine marshmallow cloud. His mouth’s even slumped so far open, she doesn’t even need to help the trainee jack it open.

  Kylie steels himself, then tentatively pokes the forceps at the yellowed enamel.

  It all turned out well in the end, Frankie considers as she watches the first tooth’s easy slide out of the old man’s molars. Judith from Arbour House showed her a whole new world, and their partnership had taught Frankie so much. Judith was a real mentor, showing her the layout and security weak spots of several care homes, where the medication was kept and what you could do with it; and, crucially, introducing her to her black-market contacts before she shuffled off. So now, Frankie’s an entrepreneur, in charge of her own business with a sideline in gold and a main income stream derived from undercutting top-heavy companies like DRRC with senile dentine that is so much easier to procure than juvenile, and which is indistinguishable to her clients—they both do the same amount of nothing for their flaccid libidos. Another plus: there’s no messing around hiding pound coins under pillows. Her uncluttered business model has been a key part of her growth, so it was a tough decision to start employing contractors. But there are so many mouths waiting and only one of her. The trainees, on the whole, have been fine, but it’s getting repetitive having to justify herself to every neophyte who approaches her looking for a job. And there’ve been a lot of those lately, what with DRRC downsizing.

  The third molar’s halfway out, and Kylie starts to get the shakes, the forceps clattering across the enamel as he loses his nerve. Frankie plucks the tool from his hand. “It’s not that hard. Look.” He swallows as she fixes the forceps in place and engages their spikes and with a practised flick of the wrist, she twists, pulling back at just the right moment to ensure the tooth comes out whole—she hates wastage. Kylie blanches at the sight of the blood as Frankie snips the nerves from the root, stems the blood welling in the donor’s jaw with padding, and drops the tooth into the bag. Tonight’s crop will make a good ounce of powder, if the new crusher can be trusted not to skim any of it.

  “You make it look easy,” ashen-faced Kylie says.

  Frankie wipes the blood from the clamp and gathers her things together. “Listen, this gig isn’t for everyone. Are you sure you’re cut out for it?”

  Kylie sighs. “I got four kids, lady. I’ll do what I need to do.”

  Frankie shrugs. “All right,” she says. “But you know the terms, right? If you sign up with me, you’re your own boss, remember?”

  “Yeah.” He manages a weak smile. “I remember.”

  Frankie doesn’t know what the lad’s looking so sour about as she leaves him at the front vent. As far as she can see, it’s a dream job: he’ll be working as much or as little as he likes. No bureaucracy, no disciplinary hearings, no endless fear of hours being cut. No TeenyGoPro cams. He’ll take ownership of the work, and if he can’t, it’s his problem—his challenge, let’s rather say—if he can’t make ends meet. Sure, her team has to give her a share of the profits, but that’s only fair—it’s her intellectual capital they’re profiting from. Really, she thinks, as she buzzes out into the early morning light, it’s a win-win for everyone. The vocational model of the future.

  One Gram

  Leah Moore

  It was past five by the time she got into the shower. The last of the daylight caught in the steam on the window. As the scalding water unknotted her muscles, Bette noticed again the bruises on her bicep. They were fading a bit now, spreading out amongst her tattoos. She turned so the water hit her chest, closing her eyes and feeling for the other bruises, the ones on her side and on her arse. Pressing them to see if they hurt still. They did.

  She frowned.

  It was twenty to six by the time she was dressed, skinny black jeans dragged up damp legs, small black work T-shirt and boots. She had worn the same outfi
t, or a minute variation of it, every shift for the last two and a half years. She did not wear makeup, just lip balm against the cold air. She didn’t style her hair, just brushed it and left it to dry by itself.

  She sat next to an old woman on the bus. There were no empty seats. Several of them had men sat on their own, but they were engrossed, in music or a book. The men all had their bags next to them, their feet in the aisle, their arms along the back of their seat. Two of them looked her up and down.

  There was a crush when the bus got to her stop. As she let herself move with the flow of the crowd toward the doors, she felt hands on her, squeezing her arse, or was it rubbing against her? Turning only her head, the faces around her were blank. No clue to the culprit. Earbuds gave out tinny beats. A man chewed gum. A man played a game on his phone, one arm holding it an inch or so from his face. As they were released onto the pavement, the crowd spilled off in all directions, urgent and definite.

  Bette watched them all walk away, and she frowned. She felt spots of rain on her cheek.

  The girl was about to close when Bette got to the shop, and then it took her a while to find the right packet in the baskets on the shelves.

  While she waited, Bette tried to work out how many jars there were in there, or how many little drawers. She lost count twice and then gave up. She could see some with pods and seeds and dried fruits or berries in them, some with gnarly, twig-like roots, some with regular slices of something like ginger or mooli, and some with whole leaves of varying shapes and sizes. There were boxes with beautiful script on them. Some helpfully displayed pictures of animals on them, but she didn’t know if those stood for the contents or just the brand. There were baskets on the floor too, below the shelving, with dried and cured things. She could see something that might be a really big mushroom. Or it might, she thought, be an ear.

  The woman returned.

  “Fu Zi was it?”

  “Uh, yes. I was told that’s what I needed.”